A friend mentioned that my name was entrenched in the midst of a pitted blog-war over at Great Bong's. I followed the thread (which, of course, in a different metaphorical thread of thought, led me to feel slightly disgruntled because, hey, if you're talking about me and my views, come do it on my blog, will you? This whole experience felt like eavesdropping outside a stranger's drawing-room where the conversation is all about me) with part-horrified fascination and part-bewildered amusement.... I mean, gosh! 'Intense hatred'?
Surely, surely not.
I would not have reacted except for that phrase. Hatred disturbs me. Hate is a strong word; I use it advisedly.
But let me clarify a few things here (and let this also serve as a response to those who did leave me comments, whether in agreement or not) with reference to my last post:
Okay, I'll concede that women too live trapped in women's bodies, as much as men in men's bodies. However, in general, women are not given to making assertions about men being the weaker sex. What's more, we are not permitted to make decisions based on such assertions. Hence, the reference to logic and rationale. What I was trying to say was - 'don't talk about the abilities and limitations of a woman when you don't know what it means to be one'.
The bit about women being more qualified to be in/lead armies, was based on an assumption made in the previous paragraph. There was an 'if' there, without which it wasn't complete. That 'if' was ignored and the whole sentence made non-contextual, and thereby, unfair. Which, to me, seems a little bit unfair.
Am I a female chauvinist?
Let me tell you something. It is said that all battles are finally fought for jar, joru, jameen. Gold, women, land. All three being things that are valuable. And possess-able.
Why?
Because women are the source of the most basic of all resources - human resource. And so, they had to be possessed. Controlled.
I believe that right through the history of mankind (and I use the term 'mankind' instead of womankind, with a careful pause for thought, because history in general has been written by men, for men), there has been an ongoing battle of the sexes. This is not a battle for a metaphorical supremacy. This is a battle for real power.
I don't like such battles. I think 'make love, not war' is a very good motto. But the battle-lines were drawn long before and the battle is being well and truly fought, like it or not. Sometimes, it was verbal, or artistic, fought through words and images. Most often, it was fought on terra firma. A fight for social control.
There were times when women were in control of human civilisation. Most societies have had some sort of matriarchal past. There was a time when women controlled land/property. And property is one of the main sources of power. Material/money/resource power.
The other major source of power was spiritual, which translates into religious, in practical terms. We all know that before the gods came, there were the goddesses. All humanity began with worshipping the earth-mother: the source of all life.
Which leaves one source of power - armed collectives - or the army. If we are to trust history, most armies (with the exception of records about tribes like the Amazons) were male.
We do not know, at what point of history men took up the sword/the gun/the missile. It might have begun as tribe/clan-wars. It might have been that women fought alongside. I don't know. Maybe it was that one group decided, maybe both did. Maybe women stayed away from war at first, in the mistaken belief that it was better for self/child-preservation. Maybe the men discovered soon enough, as was inevitable, that with a weapon in your hand, you become even more powerful than nature intended you to be.... who knows how it happened. But it did.
Like I've said before, swords and guns are dangerous things. Groups of people with arms are dangerous things. When you arm only one group, you make the world a more dangerous place for the other group. When you restrict weapons (and most countries do restrict weapons to the police and the armed forces) and the training required to use weapons to only one group, you automatically disempower and disarm the other group. When you say 'only men will fight', you automatically say 'women will not fight', which soon becomes 'women cannot fight'.... which becomes a belief. And widespread beliefs are often mistaken for facts.
Between the battle of the sexes, that leaves women staring into the muzzles of guns. Always. Never holding the gun. Not allowed to.
As long as society stayed matriarchal and matrilinear, and God didn't become a single HE, the balance of power was manageable. But as things stand, and have stood for centuries, the balance of power is tilted against women. Patriarchal systems ensured that women have control over nothing - not religion, not property, not arms-and-ammunition.
Do I want the balance of power to shift?
Yes, indeed. Equality is not even debatable. Like independence, it is our birthright. If it is not given, we will take it. But if it is a choice between male domination and female domination, I want the latter.
Does that make me a female chauvinist sow? (shrug-shrug) Please feel free to call me a sow. If it pleases you, you can even append 'virulent' and 'sophomoric' (Is that a bad word? Explain yourself, please) as adjectives.
But 'Misandrist'?
No, I do not hate men. I do NOT want to rid the world of all men. There are some men I love. I trust them with my life and I would give my life for them. But, there is not one man on earth who can persuade me that women cannot do X or Y task because they're not good enough.
Also, I've lived long enough in a male-dominated world. I'd like to live at least some of it in a woman's world and see if I don't prefer that instead, thank you very much. Does that spell misandrist? If it does... guess what I'm thinking?
On an entirely different note, I find it strange that a discussion about armies and women should lead to a generic discussion on feminism and that should prompt people to start mentioning lesbians and dildos.
Why?
Misogynists are simply called misogynists. Nobody refers to them as homosexual men running about with penis pumps. Why do feminists attract the lesbian-dildo analogy?
You guys wants to think about that?
PS - Did anybody notice that certain people slip in 'nutty' along with 'feminists' completely unselfconsciously. As if it were the most natural combination of words possible?
And this one is for the mirthful Mental Baba - http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/conflict_disasters/downloads/bn_tsunami_women.pdf
PPS - Aravind said, elsewhere, that he would never come back here. Will somebody please communicate to him that I do NOT make gentlemen get up for me in buses or trains, even if it is a seat reserved for Ladies? On the contrary, when I see elderly men, I offer my seat to them - and they gratefully accept. I have also seen several instances where men occupy the handicapped/eldery seat and do not get up when a handicapped or elderly person enters the bus. It was the women who vacated their seats and offered them to the person on crutches, each time.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Women and the warpath.
Here I was, lounging through desipundit, thinking how lucky I am to live in times when we can demand gender sensitivity, when wise people are beginning to ask themselves whether the world would not be better if run by women, when every so often we hear that delicious crunchy sound of the another crack in the glass ceiling, when it is universally acknowledged that women are people too... things could be worse. A lot worse. They have been.
But suddenly, I was forced to sit up - did I hear that right? In this lovely liberal blogosphere, did I hear someone say ‘Does the army really need women’?
The trouble is that men live trapped in men’s bodies (and of course, they don’t have a choice in the affair) which makes them utterly incapable of forming rational, logical views on the subject of strength, fortitude, courage etc. Some of them labour under the mistaken assumption that pressing a trigger or flicking open a switchblade requires a great deal of strength and fortitude and whathaveyou.
You’ll must have heard that one about the man who wanted to know why his wife claimed to be so tired, when he (glorious HE) did all the hard work? It’s an old one. Man prays to God to let him switch bodies with his wife. God (probably a wicked man with a bizarre sense of humour) grants his wish. A day later, man begs on his knees, to be given back his body. He’s seen and felt and suffered enough. But God, chortling, tells him to wait nine months; man just got pregnant.
While making random statements about strength, training, courage etc, do people stop to think about childbirth? Think about it. It involves having your pelvis ripped apart, pretty much. If somebody did that to you in Guantanamo, you’d be crying torture.
Have you thought about what comes after childbirth? Sleepless night, after sleepless night, after sleepless night… Don’t you know that it is an oft-used method of torture – not allowing a person to sleep for long periods of time?
Have you considered the fact that female foetuses have a naturally better chance of survival than male ones? Naturally tougher, if you like.
Or, thought about walking twenty kilometers or more, to fetch water. Twenty kilometers a day in the blistering deserts of Rajasthan. Without protective gear or proper shoes. I’ve seen soldiers in Rajasthan. They travel in jeeps, gypsies or trains.
You tell me: who’s tougher? Who’s more likely to survive under tough conditions, assuming they’re given the same kind of nutrition?
People also seem to fail to notice that in most mammal species, the task of protecting (the army’s task, in effect) falls to the female. She protects her young, even against her own mate, if she has to. It is not for nothing that they say, there is nothing more dangerous than a new mother in the wild.
In short, if you left mothers to mother nature, each one would be like a one-woman army. And each one would be like a mini-academy, because she teaches the young ones too. Combat or training, the responsibility is as feminine as it gets.
We, being a flawed, weak species, needed to stick together to survive. So, we worked out this whole division-of-labour civilization. Some dude, in a moment of self-delusion about his own abilities (or possibly in a stroke of genius for the rest of the male population) decided that it would be men who’d take up arms and join armies. Because women and children needed protection (but guns and swords represent power and control; see? Stroke of genius, after all).
The question is – who did women and children need protection from?
Obvious, isn't it? From other men. Other armies.
Because, really, what else is there to protect against? Against the forces of nature, men are as helpless as women. Except when our flawed civilization renders women even more helpless than they were intended to be. For instance, during the Tsunami, more women died because women are not taught to swim. Because women must not be seen at rivers and swimming pools. Because women’s bodies were made for the express purpose of tempting men to sin. Because….oh, don’t let me start on that, now.
Point being: in general, men fight for, and against, men. Not for women.
And if you want to talk about masculine/feminine natures, then, as history is our witness – the male fights to acquire. The female fights to protect.
So, let me pose a more pertinent question – Do women need the army?
An army serves only two functions. Either to protect, or to conquer.
There might well have been a time when women were not fit for war. Not because they were physically weaker – after all, a feminine hand that is strong enough to plow a field when the men run off to play with swords is definitely strong enough to use that sword.
But it is possible that women were emotionally unprepared for a conquest war. War meant looting, burning villages, raping, impaling children. Ever heard of a historic battle where women took the initiative to loot, rape or impale, en masse?
Neither have I.
(We’re not talking about individual cases of brutal murder that may have been motivated by greed, jealousy or a twisted mind. We’re talking war. Because that’s what armies are for. Conquest is a brutal business. Torture and enslavement is a brutal business and possibly, women were possibly ill-equipped to deal with it. )
In my imagination, once upon a time, a bunch of men OD-ing on testosterone must have decided that women are tender, fragile, weak things who were at their mercy and that they were going to play this game of attacking and abducting of other clans and tribes, so they could possess many more tender, fragile things. Just to protect them, mind you. Noble creatures, them.
That’s probably the history of war.
Now, some things have changed. We’ve got things like the UN and the international courts of justice and human rights commissions and television and journalists who will tell on you if you let your testosterone get the better of you. Conquering territory is frowned upon. To make war, you have to find defensive reasons; pretend to be under threat (as we have witnessed in recent times, the whole WMD-that-never-were war in Iraq).
We also have bombs nowadays, and hey, you don’t need to be a wrestler to hurl a bomb. All you got to do is push a few buttons, operate a lever or two – and boom! Half a country gets wiped out. Guess what? You don’t even have to fly too close to destroy. You don’t have to be directly overhead where you might be a target for retaliatory fire. You’ve got guided missiles! (I personally believe that modern warfare is an act of cowardice, not courage, but more on that another time)
But let me be bloody-minded and, for a minute, assume that women lack those necessary masculine qualities of strength, ability and aggression that an army needs.
Even so, how much strength does it take to fly a plane? And how strong do you think a fingertip needs to be, to direct a guided missile?
Oh, I know all the usual arguments. Soldiers need to be fit. To survive in difficult conditions.
How many soldiers survive in the kind of conditions that the average slum-dwelling mother in our metros? No toilets, queuing up for hours for drinking water, or walking miles for water, and a husband who might beat you if you complain. How many brave soldiers in the country have had to put up with that every day, day after day? And how many can, with all honesty, claim that a woman might not have survived just as well in those circumstances?
As a woman and a citizen, I can say two things with certainty.
One, that if an army requires strength, courage or sheer tenacity, women are more fit for the job than men are.
Two, that what the average soldier in the average army today needs, is not strength or aggression, but the ability to take orders without questioning them. To be able to blow up a school or a hospital without asking why. To counter ‘militants’ or ‘separatists’ without thinking about whether they have a right to separate or not. In short, what you have as your average soldier is a guy who doesn’t often exercise his mental/emotional/spiritual/social faculties. This is true of the average guerrilla soldier too. Or the average jehadi. He’s a trained killer, who is paid to kill without allowing his personal conscience to get in the way. Sure, he probably believes that he’s doing it for the motherland. But he doesn’t wonder, isn’t allowed to wonder, about what or who this motherland is and how it benefits. The day he starts asking questions, he stops being useful.
That is the way of the army (for which, we, the civilians, pay taxes... and no, we don't sleep in peace at night).
So, here’s another question – are women more likely to ask questions, worry about who they’re killing and why, as compared to men?
I wish I could say an emphatic ‘yes!’ ... but, I don’t know. Yet, I do know this – if women are more likely to stop and think before killing, then that is all the more reason to have women in the army.
Who knows, we just might have fewer wars?
PS – I cannot resist telling this little story that's not about the army:
I went to a girls’ college. The undergraduate cricket team once played against grown men from the town. They got beaten. Hollow. The men, that is.
Most of these girls hadn’t played cricket before, not even in the gully behind their homes. But they trained well, trained hard, for two years. These were girls who weren’t afraid of getting their hands calloused and bruised. I was not one of them, but I took immense pride in them. It was said in our college that you could tell a cricket-team-girl by her hands. You could. They felt like men’s hands.
The same girls who were so tough, went out into the world of men, and felt the need to become ‘feminine’. Girls who worked out two hours a day and could lift toss another full-sized girl in the air, learnt to paint their nails, straighten their hair and wear gold. Nothing wrong with that. But they’re not beating the men hollow, anymore.
All girls begin by being tomboys, if you let them be. But if you keep telling a girl that feminine means soft and smooth, and that masculine means rough and tough, and that she is a ‘tomboy’… of course, she’s going to try and change. Become soft. The opposite of male. Because that’s what she is. She’s not going to roll about in the mud. She’s going to wear fairy frocks and dream of a prince who will ‘protect’ her. And the prince will have a sword or a gun. He will lead armies. Because that’s the masculine thing to do, right?
What makes (or breaks) a woman is attitudes. What makes (or breaks) a civilization is its people. And women are people too.
But suddenly, I was forced to sit up - did I hear that right? In this lovely liberal blogosphere, did I hear someone say ‘Does the army really need women’?
The trouble is that men live trapped in men’s bodies (and of course, they don’t have a choice in the affair) which makes them utterly incapable of forming rational, logical views on the subject of strength, fortitude, courage etc. Some of them labour under the mistaken assumption that pressing a trigger or flicking open a switchblade requires a great deal of strength and fortitude and whathaveyou.
You’ll must have heard that one about the man who wanted to know why his wife claimed to be so tired, when he (glorious HE) did all the hard work? It’s an old one. Man prays to God to let him switch bodies with his wife. God (probably a wicked man with a bizarre sense of humour) grants his wish. A day later, man begs on his knees, to be given back his body. He’s seen and felt and suffered enough. But God, chortling, tells him to wait nine months; man just got pregnant.
While making random statements about strength, training, courage etc, do people stop to think about childbirth? Think about it. It involves having your pelvis ripped apart, pretty much. If somebody did that to you in Guantanamo, you’d be crying torture.
Have you thought about what comes after childbirth? Sleepless night, after sleepless night, after sleepless night… Don’t you know that it is an oft-used method of torture – not allowing a person to sleep for long periods of time?
Have you considered the fact that female foetuses have a naturally better chance of survival than male ones? Naturally tougher, if you like.
Or, thought about walking twenty kilometers or more, to fetch water. Twenty kilometers a day in the blistering deserts of Rajasthan. Without protective gear or proper shoes. I’ve seen soldiers in Rajasthan. They travel in jeeps, gypsies or trains.
You tell me: who’s tougher? Who’s more likely to survive under tough conditions, assuming they’re given the same kind of nutrition?
People also seem to fail to notice that in most mammal species, the task of protecting (the army’s task, in effect) falls to the female. She protects her young, even against her own mate, if she has to. It is not for nothing that they say, there is nothing more dangerous than a new mother in the wild.
In short, if you left mothers to mother nature, each one would be like a one-woman army. And each one would be like a mini-academy, because she teaches the young ones too. Combat or training, the responsibility is as feminine as it gets.
We, being a flawed, weak species, needed to stick together to survive. So, we worked out this whole division-of-labour civilization. Some dude, in a moment of self-delusion about his own abilities (or possibly in a stroke of genius for the rest of the male population) decided that it would be men who’d take up arms and join armies. Because women and children needed protection (but guns and swords represent power and control; see? Stroke of genius, after all).
The question is – who did women and children need protection from?
Obvious, isn't it? From other men. Other armies.
Because, really, what else is there to protect against? Against the forces of nature, men are as helpless as women. Except when our flawed civilization renders women even more helpless than they were intended to be. For instance, during the Tsunami, more women died because women are not taught to swim. Because women must not be seen at rivers and swimming pools. Because women’s bodies were made for the express purpose of tempting men to sin. Because….oh, don’t let me start on that, now.
Point being: in general, men fight for, and against, men. Not for women.
And if you want to talk about masculine/feminine natures, then, as history is our witness – the male fights to acquire. The female fights to protect.
So, let me pose a more pertinent question – Do women need the army?
An army serves only two functions. Either to protect, or to conquer.
There might well have been a time when women were not fit for war. Not because they were physically weaker – after all, a feminine hand that is strong enough to plow a field when the men run off to play with swords is definitely strong enough to use that sword.
But it is possible that women were emotionally unprepared for a conquest war. War meant looting, burning villages, raping, impaling children. Ever heard of a historic battle where women took the initiative to loot, rape or impale, en masse?
Neither have I.
(We’re not talking about individual cases of brutal murder that may have been motivated by greed, jealousy or a twisted mind. We’re talking war. Because that’s what armies are for. Conquest is a brutal business. Torture and enslavement is a brutal business and possibly, women were possibly ill-equipped to deal with it. )
In my imagination, once upon a time, a bunch of men OD-ing on testosterone must have decided that women are tender, fragile, weak things who were at their mercy and that they were going to play this game of attacking and abducting of other clans and tribes, so they could possess many more tender, fragile things. Just to protect them, mind you. Noble creatures, them.
That’s probably the history of war.
Now, some things have changed. We’ve got things like the UN and the international courts of justice and human rights commissions and television and journalists who will tell on you if you let your testosterone get the better of you. Conquering territory is frowned upon. To make war, you have to find defensive reasons; pretend to be under threat (as we have witnessed in recent times, the whole WMD-that-never-were war in Iraq).
We also have bombs nowadays, and hey, you don’t need to be a wrestler to hurl a bomb. All you got to do is push a few buttons, operate a lever or two – and boom! Half a country gets wiped out. Guess what? You don’t even have to fly too close to destroy. You don’t have to be directly overhead where you might be a target for retaliatory fire. You’ve got guided missiles! (I personally believe that modern warfare is an act of cowardice, not courage, but more on that another time)
But let me be bloody-minded and, for a minute, assume that women lack those necessary masculine qualities of strength, ability and aggression that an army needs.
Even so, how much strength does it take to fly a plane? And how strong do you think a fingertip needs to be, to direct a guided missile?
Oh, I know all the usual arguments. Soldiers need to be fit. To survive in difficult conditions.
How many soldiers survive in the kind of conditions that the average slum-dwelling mother in our metros? No toilets, queuing up for hours for drinking water, or walking miles for water, and a husband who might beat you if you complain. How many brave soldiers in the country have had to put up with that every day, day after day? And how many can, with all honesty, claim that a woman might not have survived just as well in those circumstances?
As a woman and a citizen, I can say two things with certainty.
One, that if an army requires strength, courage or sheer tenacity, women are more fit for the job than men are.
Two, that what the average soldier in the average army today needs, is not strength or aggression, but the ability to take orders without questioning them. To be able to blow up a school or a hospital without asking why. To counter ‘militants’ or ‘separatists’ without thinking about whether they have a right to separate or not. In short, what you have as your average soldier is a guy who doesn’t often exercise his mental/emotional/spiritual/social faculties. This is true of the average guerrilla soldier too. Or the average jehadi. He’s a trained killer, who is paid to kill without allowing his personal conscience to get in the way. Sure, he probably believes that he’s doing it for the motherland. But he doesn’t wonder, isn’t allowed to wonder, about what or who this motherland is and how it benefits. The day he starts asking questions, he stops being useful.
That is the way of the army (for which, we, the civilians, pay taxes... and no, we don't sleep in peace at night).
So, here’s another question – are women more likely to ask questions, worry about who they’re killing and why, as compared to men?
I wish I could say an emphatic ‘yes!’ ... but, I don’t know. Yet, I do know this – if women are more likely to stop and think before killing, then that is all the more reason to have women in the army.
Who knows, we just might have fewer wars?
PS – I cannot resist telling this little story that's not about the army:
I went to a girls’ college. The undergraduate cricket team once played against grown men from the town. They got beaten. Hollow. The men, that is.
Most of these girls hadn’t played cricket before, not even in the gully behind their homes. But they trained well, trained hard, for two years. These were girls who weren’t afraid of getting their hands calloused and bruised. I was not one of them, but I took immense pride in them. It was said in our college that you could tell a cricket-team-girl by her hands. You could. They felt like men’s hands.
The same girls who were so tough, went out into the world of men, and felt the need to become ‘feminine’. Girls who worked out two hours a day and could lift toss another full-sized girl in the air, learnt to paint their nails, straighten their hair and wear gold. Nothing wrong with that. But they’re not beating the men hollow, anymore.
All girls begin by being tomboys, if you let them be. But if you keep telling a girl that feminine means soft and smooth, and that masculine means rough and tough, and that she is a ‘tomboy’… of course, she’s going to try and change. Become soft. The opposite of male. Because that’s what she is. She’s not going to roll about in the mud. She’s going to wear fairy frocks and dream of a prince who will ‘protect’ her. And the prince will have a sword or a gun. He will lead armies. Because that’s the masculine thing to do, right?
What makes (or breaks) a woman is attitudes. What makes (or breaks) a civilization is its people. And women are people too.
Friday, June 16, 2006
What is wrong with them?
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Crows, Peruvian voters, Brazilian farmers, Indian theatre
Speaking of crows, according to nature writer Candace Savage, crows can make tools, play tricks on each other, and caw among kin in a dialect all their own.
As a sign of crows' advanced smarts, Savage cites Kacelnik's 2002 study in the journal Science on a captive New Caledonian crow that bent a straight piece of wire into a hook to fetch a bucket of food in a tube. "No other animal—not even a chimp—has ever spontaneously solved a problem like this, a fact that puts crows in a class with us as toolmakers," Savage writes in her book.
Go here, to see a video of a crow making that hook.
As a sign of crows' advanced smarts, Savage cites Kacelnik's 2002 study in the journal Science on a captive New Caledonian crow that bent a straight piece of wire into a hook to fetch a bucket of food in a tube. "No other animal—not even a chimp—has ever spontaneously solved a problem like this, a fact that puts crows in a class with us as toolmakers," Savage writes in her book.
Go here, to see a video of a crow making that hook.
---- ----
And it would seem that Indians are not the only ones who make incomprehensible voting decisions. Peru has returned to power a man who led the country to the brink of destitution and despair in the eighties.
This article says -
'... shortages meant nonpowdered milk was an inconceivable luxury, and hours-long lines for food were a weekly occurrence... One woman described how her next-door neighbor was gunned down by Shining Path guerrillas; her friend talked about an uncle who was unjustly imprisoned as a Maoist sympathizer. These young professionals were spared the most horrific experiences of the 1980s—like mass executions in the countryside or outright hunger. Still, even as 10-year-olds they knew Peru's chief executive was grossly incompetent. And yet on Sunday each of them voted for Alan GarcĂa to be returned to the presidential mansion 16 years after he left in disgrace.'
The turn of events in Peru is mystifying, but awfully interesting. Also, please note that Peru has compulsory voting; there's a fine for those who don't vote. It would be very interesting to find out how the administration manages to keep track of who votes and who doesn't and what happens if people cannot pay the fine.
---- ----
Another bit from South America : landless farmers have decided that if the law will not do anything about land reform, they're going to break the law, under the aegis of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST).
'The goal of the MST is to force the federal government to speed up land redistribution. Theoretically, the group has the constitution on its side. Much of the privately held farmland in Brazil lies fallow.... guided by the spirit of the legislation, the movement's strategy is to break the law....The MST has moved more than 300,000 Brazilian families from temporary quarters like the one in Sinop to permanent farm settlements. But the confrontations have levied a heavy toll. Police and landowners have killed more than 1,200 landless activists since the movement began in the mid-1980s...'
How many more will it take?
---- ----
Did you know that India could have more than 40,000 theatre groups?
I certainly didn't.
This article has much information about theatre in India, though it is essentially a review of Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker's Theatres of Independence.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Libertarianism, and the escaping of hurt
People have often thrown strange tags at me – this -ist and that -ist.
Now, there are several online tests that will give you your tags if you’re fond of wearing them. I took a test, and it turns out I’m libertarian. Though my quadrant is left-libertarian rather than right, and since I appear to stand close to where Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are positioned on the analysis graph, I'm not worried.
Yet, on the face of it, who isn’t a libertarian?
If the essential guiding philosophy of libertarianism is ‘liberty’, then I certainly am one.
Freedom - of the individual, of the community, of the mind, of the body, of the species, of other species, of speech, of action, of thought, of expression, of enterprise, of art, of science, of trade, of service – is precious.
If there is one thing worth fighting for – it is freedom. The right to live as you choose. The right to say what you think. The right to do what you will – as long as you’re not hurting anybody.
But that is a bit of a stumbling block - this business of 'victimless' living. It is so easy to assume that you’re not hurting someone else, and so impossible to believe it. Like the poet said, ‘No man is an island…’
In fact, no island is an island, either. One volcano on one island causes currents and ripples in the ocean, which might cause a Tsunami on another island.
Let’s begin with simple examples.
You want a divorce.
Your husband doesn’t. Would a libertarian go ahead with the divorce? Because the husband is going to hurt like hell... What’re you going to do?
Or
Your son wants to be a Bollywood actor.
You want to thrash him, but you don’t. You simply cut off his allowance. Your money… you have the right to do what you want. Your son has the right to pursue his Bollywood career. But he can no longer afford to. He gives in to your wishes and decides to become a bank manager instead. He spends the rest of his life feeling miserable. And hurt.
What’re you going to do?
Now, let’s take this to another level.
Let’s say you drive a car.
You need this car. You may have worked your backside off to acquire and fuel this car. You might drive very carefully, following all the traffic rules, but what will you do about pollution? Pollution in a major city might translate into a toddler being exposed to the equivalent of twenty cigarettes a day. If there are one million cars and one million toddlers…?
Are you hurting nobody?
Let’s say you live next door to an unhappy Muslim woman who wants a divorce but is not getting one, because she will lose custody of her children. It is none of your business, so you do not interfere. You are not a Muslim woman so you will not campaign for changes in the Sharia, nor fight to change the law of the land.
Have you hurt nobody?
Let’s say you set up a cola factory in a rural district where there’s only one source of fresh water. You set up shop, you pay your taxes, you put your little profit in the bank. It is true that there’s less water available for the villagers’ drinking, bathing, cooking, irrigation…
But nobody’s getting hurt, surely?
Let’s say you’ve got a girlfriend in another city. With cheaper airlines, it is absolutely glorious being able to fly down every weekend… and let’s assume that you’ve been convinced, beyond your ability to doubt, that human self-indulgence has led to climate change. That every decade of our development leads to rivers receding, polar bears dying, Amazon rainforests shrinking, deserts expanding, more frequent floods and hurricanes. The events that in the long history of planet earth used to occur at intervals of a thousand years, are now occurring at intervals of a hundred years, and by the time our kids grow up, will by happening every few years. There is more drought, more famine… and there’s cheaper air travel. Now, you just want to hold onto your girlfriend. You don’t want to hurt anybody.
In all honesty, have you hurt nobody?
Sure, we’re all advocates of individual freedom here. We’re all libertarians here… but each minute of each day, you are hurting someone.
Because you hurt people through silence. You hurt people when you refuse to rethink what you’re doing and why. You hurt people when you fail to acknowledge their needs and rights and ambitions and furies, as equal to your own. You hurt people when you betray their voice by superimposing your own agenda over it. You hurt people when you form opinions without checking on facts, when you fudge data, or tell only half the truth, show only half the picture, or fail to ask questions.
For, no man is an island...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...
I know I should get on with my life. It is beyond one individual, trying to tackle the concerns of an ever-expanding, forever-besieged world…
But you know what?
I want those polar bears to live... I want the desert to stop somewhere far, far away from the doorstep. And the tides to stop at the shore. I want rivers to flow. I want children to eat. I want women to feel free. I want men to be happy and non-aggressive. I want everybody to work equally, but also to have the leisure to write poetry and paint masterpieces…
And it hurts me to see a pregnant mother bear dive into a frozen sea, again and again, coming up empty-handed, going hungry for eight months, giving birth, only to see a cub die...
It doesn’t kill me. But it hurts. It hurts even more to think that I am as culpable as anybody else, since I’m so busy doing my bit to warm up good old mother earth.
----
I don’t know about being this ‘-ian’ or that ‘-ist’. But I know we need to rethink ‘humanity’ and ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ and ‘growth’. A close friend recently pointed out to me that human civilization has charted a warped course for itself.
It has given us the tools to make nuclear missiles and to create the wonders of the world, to write poetry and to perform brain surgery. But it has failed to give us the tools to be content, to give each other the minimum possible pain. We have failed, as a species, to avoid hurting ourselves or each other.
We’re quite pathetic, come to think of it. We cannot be content with three pairs of clothes, or even thirty. We buy new jeans (and cell phones and ipods and laptops and television sets and insurance) each year. We buy bathtubs to bathe in. We buy plastic shower curtains for our bathrooms. And we don’t just take a dip in the sea. Instead, we buy bottled ‘sea minerals’ mixed with ‘soap-free shower gel’.
Guess what nobody buys?
An argument.
The argument that we need to stop, and think about all this ‘growth’ and where we’re headed. To think about reversing some of our damage, and to acknowledge the victims of our passivity, to acknowledge the need to make amends when we do cause damage. That argument, nobody wants to buy.
(Disclaimer: There is no particular agenda to this post. I was writing all this in my diary really, chewing my intellectual cud… and thought it might be fun to get others to chew along. Chomp-chomp.)
Now, there are several online tests that will give you your tags if you’re fond of wearing them. I took a test, and it turns out I’m libertarian. Though my quadrant is left-libertarian rather than right, and since I appear to stand close to where Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are positioned on the analysis graph, I'm not worried.
Yet, on the face of it, who isn’t a libertarian?
If the essential guiding philosophy of libertarianism is ‘liberty’, then I certainly am one.
Freedom - of the individual, of the community, of the mind, of the body, of the species, of other species, of speech, of action, of thought, of expression, of enterprise, of art, of science, of trade, of service – is precious.
If there is one thing worth fighting for – it is freedom. The right to live as you choose. The right to say what you think. The right to do what you will – as long as you’re not hurting anybody.
But that is a bit of a stumbling block - this business of 'victimless' living. It is so easy to assume that you’re not hurting someone else, and so impossible to believe it. Like the poet said, ‘No man is an island…’
In fact, no island is an island, either. One volcano on one island causes currents and ripples in the ocean, which might cause a Tsunami on another island.
Let’s begin with simple examples.
You want a divorce.
Your husband doesn’t. Would a libertarian go ahead with the divorce? Because the husband is going to hurt like hell... What’re you going to do?
Or
Your son wants to be a Bollywood actor.
You want to thrash him, but you don’t. You simply cut off his allowance. Your money… you have the right to do what you want. Your son has the right to pursue his Bollywood career. But he can no longer afford to. He gives in to your wishes and decides to become a bank manager instead. He spends the rest of his life feeling miserable. And hurt.
What’re you going to do?
Now, let’s take this to another level.
Let’s say you drive a car.
You need this car. You may have worked your backside off to acquire and fuel this car. You might drive very carefully, following all the traffic rules, but what will you do about pollution? Pollution in a major city might translate into a toddler being exposed to the equivalent of twenty cigarettes a day. If there are one million cars and one million toddlers…?
Are you hurting nobody?
Let’s say you live next door to an unhappy Muslim woman who wants a divorce but is not getting one, because she will lose custody of her children. It is none of your business, so you do not interfere. You are not a Muslim woman so you will not campaign for changes in the Sharia, nor fight to change the law of the land.
Have you hurt nobody?
Let’s say you set up a cola factory in a rural district where there’s only one source of fresh water. You set up shop, you pay your taxes, you put your little profit in the bank. It is true that there’s less water available for the villagers’ drinking, bathing, cooking, irrigation…
But nobody’s getting hurt, surely?
Let’s say you’ve got a girlfriend in another city. With cheaper airlines, it is absolutely glorious being able to fly down every weekend… and let’s assume that you’ve been convinced, beyond your ability to doubt, that human self-indulgence has led to climate change. That every decade of our development leads to rivers receding, polar bears dying, Amazon rainforests shrinking, deserts expanding, more frequent floods and hurricanes. The events that in the long history of planet earth used to occur at intervals of a thousand years, are now occurring at intervals of a hundred years, and by the time our kids grow up, will by happening every few years. There is more drought, more famine… and there’s cheaper air travel. Now, you just want to hold onto your girlfriend. You don’t want to hurt anybody.
In all honesty, have you hurt nobody?
Sure, we’re all advocates of individual freedom here. We’re all libertarians here… but each minute of each day, you are hurting someone.
Because you hurt people through silence. You hurt people when you refuse to rethink what you’re doing and why. You hurt people when you fail to acknowledge their needs and rights and ambitions and furies, as equal to your own. You hurt people when you betray their voice by superimposing your own agenda over it. You hurt people when you form opinions without checking on facts, when you fudge data, or tell only half the truth, show only half the picture, or fail to ask questions.
For, no man is an island...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...
I know I should get on with my life. It is beyond one individual, trying to tackle the concerns of an ever-expanding, forever-besieged world…
But you know what?
I want those polar bears to live... I want the desert to stop somewhere far, far away from the doorstep. And the tides to stop at the shore. I want rivers to flow. I want children to eat. I want women to feel free. I want men to be happy and non-aggressive. I want everybody to work equally, but also to have the leisure to write poetry and paint masterpieces…
And it hurts me to see a pregnant mother bear dive into a frozen sea, again and again, coming up empty-handed, going hungry for eight months, giving birth, only to see a cub die...
It doesn’t kill me. But it hurts. It hurts even more to think that I am as culpable as anybody else, since I’m so busy doing my bit to warm up good old mother earth.
----
I don’t know about being this ‘-ian’ or that ‘-ist’. But I know we need to rethink ‘humanity’ and ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ and ‘growth’. A close friend recently pointed out to me that human civilization has charted a warped course for itself.
It has given us the tools to make nuclear missiles and to create the wonders of the world, to write poetry and to perform brain surgery. But it has failed to give us the tools to be content, to give each other the minimum possible pain. We have failed, as a species, to avoid hurting ourselves or each other.
We’re quite pathetic, come to think of it. We cannot be content with three pairs of clothes, or even thirty. We buy new jeans (and cell phones and ipods and laptops and television sets and insurance) each year. We buy bathtubs to bathe in. We buy plastic shower curtains for our bathrooms. And we don’t just take a dip in the sea. Instead, we buy bottled ‘sea minerals’ mixed with ‘soap-free shower gel’.
Guess what nobody buys?
An argument.
The argument that we need to stop, and think about all this ‘growth’ and where we’re headed. To think about reversing some of our damage, and to acknowledge the victims of our passivity, to acknowledge the need to make amends when we do cause damage. That argument, nobody wants to buy.
(Disclaimer: There is no particular agenda to this post. I was writing all this in my diary really, chewing my intellectual cud… and thought it might be fun to get others to chew along. Chomp-chomp.)
Monday, May 29, 2006
last day extended
Update: I hear the last date has been stretched forward until June 10th.
There is a travel-writing contest on, for bloggers.
I had written back to the mail-sender, to ask what the selection criteria was going to be like, since this is intended as a sort-of reality show, of which I have an inherent suspicion. I didn't like Indian Idol, I detest Big Brother.
But the good lady wrote back to reassure me - "oktatabyebye has nothing to do at all with anything which even remotely resembles the indian idol madness. This is an experimentative idea where the winner will blog about the trip across India on the oktatabyebye blog."
She further says that the selection process will be like this - "after registrations close on 30th May, we are going to ask all who have registered to send in a small writeup on any of their prior travel experiences in 150 to 200 words. Once these writeups are scrutinised, further shortlisting will happen followed by personal interview. Sidharth,Webchutney's CEO and a couple of people from makemytrip.com who are jointly supporting us are going to personally meet them. A final winner is then declared. Nothing emotional, nothing personal.... Also, this won't be on TV, its all online, travel and blog! That's why the initiative to talk about it through blogs and communities, if its online so should be the talk...."
So, it won't be on TV, all you've got to do is travel and write... that sounds ok-ish to me.
There is a travel-writing contest on, for bloggers.
I had written back to the mail-sender, to ask what the selection criteria was going to be like, since this is intended as a sort-of reality show, of which I have an inherent suspicion. I didn't like Indian Idol, I detest Big Brother.
But the good lady wrote back to reassure me - "oktatabyebye has nothing to do at all with anything which even remotely resembles the indian idol madness. This is an experimentative idea where the winner will blog about the trip across India on the oktatabyebye blog."
She further says that the selection process will be like this - "after registrations close on 30th May, we are going to ask all who have registered to send in a small writeup on any of their prior travel experiences in 150 to 200 words. Once these writeups are scrutinised, further shortlisting will happen followed by personal interview. Sidharth,Webchutney's CEO and a couple of people from makemytrip.com who are jointly supporting us are going to personally meet them. A final winner is then declared. Nothing emotional, nothing personal.... Also, this won't be on TV, its all online, travel and blog! That's why the initiative to talk about it through blogs and communities, if its online so should be the talk...."
So, it won't be on TV, all you've got to do is travel and write... that sounds ok-ish to me.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The dead fish that's making me gag
Recently, I finished reading a book called Machhli Mari Hui, by Rajkamal Chowdhary.
It is not a new book – probably written in the sixties, certainly set in Calcutta of that time.
I began by liking the book, especially since the introduction itself was written well. I liked the lusciousness of certain phrases. The extreme qualities of the characters, even though some of them didn’t ring true. The way the city and the stock market players are described.
There were flaws but one goes on, thinking the flaws are only logical, sequential failings… but by the time one gets to the end, one is worse than disappointed!
The author just doesn’t understand his material.
The trouble with books like Machhli Mari Hui is that they deal with multidimensional subjects with a unidimensional vision. Sex is a multidimensional subject. Homosexuality is a multidimensional subject. It is a mistake to approach such subjects unless you’ve either got some first-hand experience of it, or you’ve talked to a lot of people who had first-hand experience. This author, clearly, doesn’t know s**t about women’s sexuality or their feelings.
In the introduction, the author claims to have read almost everything there is to read on the subject of female homosexuality. From early medical books by psychologists, to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. He makes references to Sappho, and to lesbians’ autobiographies. With this wealth of knowledge and this spectrum of perceptions, how he could end his book the way he did, is beyond my comprehension!
In the last chapter, his female protagonist Shirin is described as shedding her homosexual skin, and turning into a ‘woman’, instead of a fish. The fish is now dead. (That is where the title’s reference to dead fish comes from. In the book, the fish is used as a symbol of lesbian desire. The image of two fishes swimming are used to represent a lesbian encounter between Shirin and a younger girl, Priya)
What is most appalling is the sequence of events after which this ‘transformation’ comes about.
I’ll try to tell the story straight, in some sort of sequence as events happen, and not in the back and forth flashback style adopted by the author.
(Shirin’s husband) Nirmal Padmavat is the main protagonist, the ‘hero’ if you like.
He is a tall, dark, strong, hard-working, honest businessman with humble origins, who neither tells lies, nor bribes, nor discriminates on the basis of colour or religion etc. People think of him as either a magician or a monster.
From a village in Bihar, via Lahore and Bombay, he reaches New York, where he meets a beautiful woman called Kalyani. She used to be a medical student but has now become a ‘model’ (the author uses quotation marks) and a prostitute. She is sexy, fearless, alcoholic.
Nirmal falls for her.
Kalyani uses his support when she needs to. Hard times fall upon her. She empties his bank balance and offers herself to him. But there’s a problem. He loses his erection (or maybe ejaculates too soon – the details are not clear; there are euphemisms like ‘he was like a tiger/wild animal’ and then suddenly ‘he was cold; the fire was gone’)
So, Kalyani insults him and screams at him to go away and never come back. He never comes back.
But he returns to India when he hears of her death, some years later, in Calcutta. She is buried there, in a cemetery, by her husband - a well-known neurosurgeon, Dr Raghuvansh. The good old doctor has a daughter by Kalyani, six year old Priya.
A leap of some fifteen years - Nirmal is now a very rich man in Calcutta. Fortyish. He has built a thirty-storeyed skyscraper – the tallest building in the city – called Kalyani Mansion. He has married the socialite, Shirin.
She was married earlier to another rich businessman called Vijay Mehta, who made the mistake of insulting the dead Kalyani (he was one of her clients in New York). Nirmal punches him in the face. Shirin is curious about the man who punches her husband; she likes powerful men. So she lives with Nirmal and divorces Mehta (in that order).
Sex is awful.
Nirmal turns into a ‘wild animal’ (author's descrption; I don't believe wild animals behave as he does) and loses erection after erection, hurting Shirin both physically and emotionally.
In the meantime, since Priya is Kalyani’s daughter, Nirmal is attracted to her too. (The author suggests that she is both afraid and attracted, though she stays away from boys in general. )
The good old doctor smiles upon this, and is open to the idea of his daughter marrying her mother’s lover... oh yes, he knows all about his wife’s past. He is full of nothing but empathy for Nirmal.
Priya gets friendly with Shirin. They begin having sex. Shirin is described as ‘cheap’, as being obsessed with her looks and her body, and as scarred – because she saw her parents having sex, because her mother died during childbirth, because her mother disliked and was afraid of men, because her elder sister introduced her to some awesome lesbian sex.
In short, Shirin cannot enjoy men, because she is afraid of getting pregnant and wants to sleep with girls – like herself, like her elder sister. Her room has a painting of two women looking at each other with fire in their eyes. There’s a statue of a naked Negro woman, red eyes and red lips, in that room where ‘the two fishes swim and play’.
Nirmal wants Kalyani; he sees her image everywhere – in Shirin, in Priya.
One day, Nirmal goes to Shirin’s room. (The marriage is a clear disaster; they live on different floors of Kalyani Mansion). He begins making out, but loses it – both his temper and his erection. Shirin goes wild – calls him names, screams at him. Repeat of what happened with Kalyani.
At this point, Priya walks into the room. Nirmal gets dressed and orders her – Priya, not Shirin - to come to his own flat. Priya wants to go back to Shirin… Shirin is crazy already, and is tearing at her own body… but Priya is stuck with Nirmal. She is frightened, but reproaches him for mistreating his wife. Priya is a medical student herself and has seen the scars on his wife’s body.
Nirmal loses his temper and rapes her : please note, this time, no loss of erection... He rapes her repeatedly. He almost kills her.
When she leaves his place, she throws up, and rolls down the stairs. The lift-man and building guards have been warned to expect Priya, they come looking for her. They find her and deposit her unconscious body at Dr Raghuvansh’s house. He takes one look, and understands what has happened. Since he’s a doctor, he dresses her wounds, treats her, bathes her, puts her to sleep, and Nirmal calls to ask how Priya is, and this empathetic father says ‘she’s alive’.
After three days, Priya seems to be better. She doesn’t go out anywhere, doesn’t take calls. Not even Shirin’s calls.
Dr Raghuvansh sits down to write a letter to Nirmal, saying that he knows his daughter has been raped, repeatedly and brutally. He was afraid this would happen. But at least, he is glad that his daughter has helped him get over the sexual maladjustment (author’s words), for he knew Priya could cure him of it. He was hoping that Nirmal would marry Kalyani’s daughter, and would have if he hadn’t ended up marrying the unfortunate unhealthy homosexual Shirin (authors’ description) – whom he has tried to cure earlier (author’s words), but who is a gone case, quite hopelessly lesbian.
The empathetic doctor is also glad that his own daughter has been ‘cured’ of her lesbian ways; she is now 'healthy'. Normal. He insists it a great thing to be normal. It is easy to be extraordinary/abnormal (the author uses a word that is interchangeably used for both).
The doctor wills away his whole property to the medical college, leaving his brutally raped daughter penniless, and overnight, drinks himself to death.
His daughter goes through the funeral. At the funeral, she imagines that Nirmal is not only carrying the dead body of her father, but her own, and that of Shirin and that of her own mother.
But what does this girl do?
She takes her father’s last latter to Nirmal’s house. Back to the same house where she was raped. Puts the letter on the table, and offers to make some coffee.
Yes, coffee.
Shirin is still waiting – for Priya. For Nirmal. For somebody. And while she waits, she drinks and drinks, and drinks. If some cheap society ladies (author’s phrase, not mine) come to visit, she makes a little noise, then goes back to drinking, and waiting.
In the meantime, Nirmal has been surrounded by 'enemies', mostly led by the old and vindictive Vijay Mehta, whose wife got carried away by Nirmal’s power and stature, not to mention, relative youth. His little coterie of capitalists is bribing people in the audit and income tax department to ruin this honest ‘black prince’.
Nirmal’s little business empire is crashing because he refuses to pay bribes. And the workers are ungrateful – the more he does for them, the more they want. So he gets rid of them, by selling his mill to his arch-enemy Mehta. But still, he is losing everything. He doesn’t mind losing everything, only wants to keep Kalyani Mansion. His home, his sky-scraper.
Honest and incorruptible to the last, the black prince loses everything (how this happens is very vague). But to save Kalyani Mansion, he is forced to lie – that he had taken a huge loan from Kalyani, Dr Raghuvansh’s wife, to construct this building and that he is now forced to sell it to their daughter Priya.
Priya knows it is only a paper transaction, but she plays along.
At the end of it all, Nirmal realizes that he has never even looked properly at his beautiful wife, Shirin. Never looked into her eyes properly. So he goes to her room, looks at her, caresses her. She, meawhile, is all admiration and adoration. He spends the night. When he wakes up, he sees Shirin is emerging from a bath, with sindoor in her hair, and face glowing with empathetic love.
She is no longer dead fish. She is a woman (author’s description).
I cannot describe how I felt after readin that last chapter. It nullified the author and whatever virtues the writing itself may have had.
One can deal with complexes and sexual ‘maladjustments’. One can even understand a situation where a woman wants to be raped (have read of similar situations in other books, written much more realistically, much more empathetically). But one fails to understand the concept of a violent man and a lesbian girl being made ‘normal’ through rape. Or, that all this violence makes him into a tender, caring husband (with his dead lady-love’s daughter thrown in for free). It is more than unpalatable. It is disturbing.
The author is either completely insensitive, or completely clueless.
Homosexuals do not overnight become ‘normal’. After great lesbian lovemaking, somebody gets raped, and wham! Everybody’s happy...? Even if a reader goes along with the theory that a woman will feel ‘normal’ and wholly ‘woman’ only if she has sex with a man (idiotic though the presumption is, even if one agrees to go along with the theory), this book would have been worth the paper its printed on, only if the author explored the psychological complexity of the idea.
I personally do not like authors who think in terms of ‘fish’ and ‘woman’. But personal opinions aside, the book could have handled so differently.
Imagine the plight of a girl, whose father just died, deliberately leaving her penniless, leaving her at the mercy of her rapist, whom he is thanking for having ‘cured’ her of lesbianism. Imagine the plight of this girl who goes back to her rapist, knowing he was her mother’s lover, and that she might have to depend on him now – where else will she go? Imagine that she is love with this man’s wife…. Imagine what is going on inside the mind of the lesbian wife, who lives with a powerful man, who has just raped her lover.
Imagine what is going on inside the man’s head. This wonderful powerful incorruptible business genius – who has raped the daughter of the two people he loved most.
It is plot with potential, but the author fails it.
He thinks in grandiose terms – tall, black, strong, built like a rock, incorruptible ‘black prince’… the lesbian’s bedroom, the negro’s naked statue, red lips, an old empathetic doctor, a prostitute who loved so long, lived so little… ClichĂ©-ridden to the last.
The author seems to be able to think only in black and white. His hero, Nirmal, is a larger-than-life hero: neither anti-hero nor merely human; his sexual ‘maladjustment’ is more like a fatal flaw, his hamartia, if you like, which, instead of destroying him, is sorted out eventually… at the cost of two women’s happiness and ravaged bodies.
When you finish reading it, you cannot help thinking that this is a judgmental book. That is the final, fatal flaw.
In some ways, it is a man’s book. I doubt if the author even understands women’s bodies. I doubt if a woman could have written a book like this (though I shouldn’t be making sweeping statements; time and time again, women have unpleasantly surprised me by going ahead and behaving exactly like men...much to our collective shame and despair).
A writer is a creator. Like all creators, he/she has to shed his/her skin. Nothing except your own writing style is permissible. You cannot be any gender, if you’re going to be a good writer. You can adopt the cover of a gendered voice. But your mind must be gender-free. Your values must be gender-free… and race-free, shape-free, nationality-free, colour-free, class-free, sexual orientation-free.
If you’re not free, you’re merely a peddler of words with X amount of skill... And words alone do not a writer make.
It is not a new book – probably written in the sixties, certainly set in Calcutta of that time.
I began by liking the book, especially since the introduction itself was written well. I liked the lusciousness of certain phrases. The extreme qualities of the characters, even though some of them didn’t ring true. The way the city and the stock market players are described.
There were flaws but one goes on, thinking the flaws are only logical, sequential failings… but by the time one gets to the end, one is worse than disappointed!
The author just doesn’t understand his material.
The trouble with books like Machhli Mari Hui is that they deal with multidimensional subjects with a unidimensional vision. Sex is a multidimensional subject. Homosexuality is a multidimensional subject. It is a mistake to approach such subjects unless you’ve either got some first-hand experience of it, or you’ve talked to a lot of people who had first-hand experience. This author, clearly, doesn’t know s**t about women’s sexuality or their feelings.
In the introduction, the author claims to have read almost everything there is to read on the subject of female homosexuality. From early medical books by psychologists, to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. He makes references to Sappho, and to lesbians’ autobiographies. With this wealth of knowledge and this spectrum of perceptions, how he could end his book the way he did, is beyond my comprehension!
In the last chapter, his female protagonist Shirin is described as shedding her homosexual skin, and turning into a ‘woman’, instead of a fish. The fish is now dead. (That is where the title’s reference to dead fish comes from. In the book, the fish is used as a symbol of lesbian desire. The image of two fishes swimming are used to represent a lesbian encounter between Shirin and a younger girl, Priya)
What is most appalling is the sequence of events after which this ‘transformation’ comes about.
I’ll try to tell the story straight, in some sort of sequence as events happen, and not in the back and forth flashback style adopted by the author.
(Shirin’s husband) Nirmal Padmavat is the main protagonist, the ‘hero’ if you like.
He is a tall, dark, strong, hard-working, honest businessman with humble origins, who neither tells lies, nor bribes, nor discriminates on the basis of colour or religion etc. People think of him as either a magician or a monster.
From a village in Bihar, via Lahore and Bombay, he reaches New York, where he meets a beautiful woman called Kalyani. She used to be a medical student but has now become a ‘model’ (the author uses quotation marks) and a prostitute. She is sexy, fearless, alcoholic.
Nirmal falls for her.
Kalyani uses his support when she needs to. Hard times fall upon her. She empties his bank balance and offers herself to him. But there’s a problem. He loses his erection (or maybe ejaculates too soon – the details are not clear; there are euphemisms like ‘he was like a tiger/wild animal’ and then suddenly ‘he was cold; the fire was gone’)
So, Kalyani insults him and screams at him to go away and never come back. He never comes back.
But he returns to India when he hears of her death, some years later, in Calcutta. She is buried there, in a cemetery, by her husband - a well-known neurosurgeon, Dr Raghuvansh. The good old doctor has a daughter by Kalyani, six year old Priya.
A leap of some fifteen years - Nirmal is now a very rich man in Calcutta. Fortyish. He has built a thirty-storeyed skyscraper – the tallest building in the city – called Kalyani Mansion. He has married the socialite, Shirin.
She was married earlier to another rich businessman called Vijay Mehta, who made the mistake of insulting the dead Kalyani (he was one of her clients in New York). Nirmal punches him in the face. Shirin is curious about the man who punches her husband; she likes powerful men. So she lives with Nirmal and divorces Mehta (in that order).
Sex is awful.
Nirmal turns into a ‘wild animal’ (author's descrption; I don't believe wild animals behave as he does) and loses erection after erection, hurting Shirin both physically and emotionally.
In the meantime, since Priya is Kalyani’s daughter, Nirmal is attracted to her too. (The author suggests that she is both afraid and attracted, though she stays away from boys in general. )
The good old doctor smiles upon this, and is open to the idea of his daughter marrying her mother’s lover... oh yes, he knows all about his wife’s past. He is full of nothing but empathy for Nirmal.
Priya gets friendly with Shirin. They begin having sex. Shirin is described as ‘cheap’, as being obsessed with her looks and her body, and as scarred – because she saw her parents having sex, because her mother died during childbirth, because her mother disliked and was afraid of men, because her elder sister introduced her to some awesome lesbian sex.
In short, Shirin cannot enjoy men, because she is afraid of getting pregnant and wants to sleep with girls – like herself, like her elder sister. Her room has a painting of two women looking at each other with fire in their eyes. There’s a statue of a naked Negro woman, red eyes and red lips, in that room where ‘the two fishes swim and play’.
Nirmal wants Kalyani; he sees her image everywhere – in Shirin, in Priya.
One day, Nirmal goes to Shirin’s room. (The marriage is a clear disaster; they live on different floors of Kalyani Mansion). He begins making out, but loses it – both his temper and his erection. Shirin goes wild – calls him names, screams at him. Repeat of what happened with Kalyani.
At this point, Priya walks into the room. Nirmal gets dressed and orders her – Priya, not Shirin - to come to his own flat. Priya wants to go back to Shirin… Shirin is crazy already, and is tearing at her own body… but Priya is stuck with Nirmal. She is frightened, but reproaches him for mistreating his wife. Priya is a medical student herself and has seen the scars on his wife’s body.
Nirmal loses his temper and rapes her : please note, this time, no loss of erection... He rapes her repeatedly. He almost kills her.
When she leaves his place, she throws up, and rolls down the stairs. The lift-man and building guards have been warned to expect Priya, they come looking for her. They find her and deposit her unconscious body at Dr Raghuvansh’s house. He takes one look, and understands what has happened. Since he’s a doctor, he dresses her wounds, treats her, bathes her, puts her to sleep, and Nirmal calls to ask how Priya is, and this empathetic father says ‘she’s alive’.
After three days, Priya seems to be better. She doesn’t go out anywhere, doesn’t take calls. Not even Shirin’s calls.
Dr Raghuvansh sits down to write a letter to Nirmal, saying that he knows his daughter has been raped, repeatedly and brutally. He was afraid this would happen. But at least, he is glad that his daughter has helped him get over the sexual maladjustment (author’s words), for he knew Priya could cure him of it. He was hoping that Nirmal would marry Kalyani’s daughter, and would have if he hadn’t ended up marrying the unfortunate unhealthy homosexual Shirin (authors’ description) – whom he has tried to cure earlier (author’s words), but who is a gone case, quite hopelessly lesbian.
The empathetic doctor is also glad that his own daughter has been ‘cured’ of her lesbian ways; she is now 'healthy'. Normal. He insists it a great thing to be normal. It is easy to be extraordinary/abnormal (the author uses a word that is interchangeably used for both).
The doctor wills away his whole property to the medical college, leaving his brutally raped daughter penniless, and overnight, drinks himself to death.
His daughter goes through the funeral. At the funeral, she imagines that Nirmal is not only carrying the dead body of her father, but her own, and that of Shirin and that of her own mother.
But what does this girl do?
She takes her father’s last latter to Nirmal’s house. Back to the same house where she was raped. Puts the letter on the table, and offers to make some coffee.
Yes, coffee.
Shirin is still waiting – for Priya. For Nirmal. For somebody. And while she waits, she drinks and drinks, and drinks. If some cheap society ladies (author’s phrase, not mine) come to visit, she makes a little noise, then goes back to drinking, and waiting.
In the meantime, Nirmal has been surrounded by 'enemies', mostly led by the old and vindictive Vijay Mehta, whose wife got carried away by Nirmal’s power and stature, not to mention, relative youth. His little coterie of capitalists is bribing people in the audit and income tax department to ruin this honest ‘black prince’.
Nirmal’s little business empire is crashing because he refuses to pay bribes. And the workers are ungrateful – the more he does for them, the more they want. So he gets rid of them, by selling his mill to his arch-enemy Mehta. But still, he is losing everything. He doesn’t mind losing everything, only wants to keep Kalyani Mansion. His home, his sky-scraper.
Honest and incorruptible to the last, the black prince loses everything (how this happens is very vague). But to save Kalyani Mansion, he is forced to lie – that he had taken a huge loan from Kalyani, Dr Raghuvansh’s wife, to construct this building and that he is now forced to sell it to their daughter Priya.
Priya knows it is only a paper transaction, but she plays along.
At the end of it all, Nirmal realizes that he has never even looked properly at his beautiful wife, Shirin. Never looked into her eyes properly. So he goes to her room, looks at her, caresses her. She, meawhile, is all admiration and adoration. He spends the night. When he wakes up, he sees Shirin is emerging from a bath, with sindoor in her hair, and face glowing with empathetic love.
She is no longer dead fish. She is a woman (author’s description).
I cannot describe how I felt after readin that last chapter. It nullified the author and whatever virtues the writing itself may have had.
One can deal with complexes and sexual ‘maladjustments’. One can even understand a situation where a woman wants to be raped (have read of similar situations in other books, written much more realistically, much more empathetically). But one fails to understand the concept of a violent man and a lesbian girl being made ‘normal’ through rape. Or, that all this violence makes him into a tender, caring husband (with his dead lady-love’s daughter thrown in for free). It is more than unpalatable. It is disturbing.
The author is either completely insensitive, or completely clueless.
Homosexuals do not overnight become ‘normal’. After great lesbian lovemaking, somebody gets raped, and wham! Everybody’s happy...? Even if a reader goes along with the theory that a woman will feel ‘normal’ and wholly ‘woman’ only if she has sex with a man (idiotic though the presumption is, even if one agrees to go along with the theory), this book would have been worth the paper its printed on, only if the author explored the psychological complexity of the idea.
I personally do not like authors who think in terms of ‘fish’ and ‘woman’. But personal opinions aside, the book could have handled so differently.
Imagine the plight of a girl, whose father just died, deliberately leaving her penniless, leaving her at the mercy of her rapist, whom he is thanking for having ‘cured’ her of lesbianism. Imagine the plight of this girl who goes back to her rapist, knowing he was her mother’s lover, and that she might have to depend on him now – where else will she go? Imagine that she is love with this man’s wife…. Imagine what is going on inside the mind of the lesbian wife, who lives with a powerful man, who has just raped her lover.
Imagine what is going on inside the man’s head. This wonderful powerful incorruptible business genius – who has raped the daughter of the two people he loved most.
It is plot with potential, but the author fails it.
He thinks in grandiose terms – tall, black, strong, built like a rock, incorruptible ‘black prince’… the lesbian’s bedroom, the negro’s naked statue, red lips, an old empathetic doctor, a prostitute who loved so long, lived so little… ClichĂ©-ridden to the last.
The author seems to be able to think only in black and white. His hero, Nirmal, is a larger-than-life hero: neither anti-hero nor merely human; his sexual ‘maladjustment’ is more like a fatal flaw, his hamartia, if you like, which, instead of destroying him, is sorted out eventually… at the cost of two women’s happiness and ravaged bodies.
When you finish reading it, you cannot help thinking that this is a judgmental book. That is the final, fatal flaw.
In some ways, it is a man’s book. I doubt if the author even understands women’s bodies. I doubt if a woman could have written a book like this (though I shouldn’t be making sweeping statements; time and time again, women have unpleasantly surprised me by going ahead and behaving exactly like men...much to our collective shame and despair).
A writer is a creator. Like all creators, he/she has to shed his/her skin. Nothing except your own writing style is permissible. You cannot be any gender, if you’re going to be a good writer. You can adopt the cover of a gendered voice. But your mind must be gender-free. Your values must be gender-free… and race-free, shape-free, nationality-free, colour-free, class-free, sexual orientation-free.
If you’re not free, you’re merely a peddler of words with X amount of skill... And words alone do not a writer make.
Money and my mouth
Here's another blog I’ve been following with a great deal of interest.
Via this blog, we hear of the great tragedy of the Jarawas, and how the law is being flouted with impunity, not to mention, with disastrous consequences. Not enough people protesting, and therefore, very little fear of being found out, being thrown out of office or being arrested for contempt of court and illegal construction.
At How the Other Half Lives (I’ve hopped on board recently) a maiden post led to a flurry of comments, some of which have made me think about myself and my take on the issue at hand.
Somebody supported reservation but not caste-based ones. Somebody else supports academic reservations, but not professional ones. Somebody asks me to ‘donate’ my job if I am such a great advocate of reservations in the private sector.
The first two have made me think a little harder about the precise form of affirmative action that I would like to see being implemented.
The third is a very pertinent question – because it all comes down to putting your money where your mouth is.
Would I?
My answer: firstly, reservations do not imply charity. They imply giving someone a leg-up.
Secondly, I do not control my own job. I don’t have hiring and firing rights, but if I did, I would still support a reserved percentage of positions in the organisation. Especially media organisations. (How many backward castes, or even poor people from upper castes, are represented in the mainstream media? Do a head-count. You’ll find a few answers as to why and how certain stories get covered) and if, as a result, my own chances of finding and keeping jobs is lessened, lowered… well, too bad. It won’t be the first time I’m sitting at home, jobless. And it certainly won’t be end of the world.
Let us assume that I did have hiring-firing rights.
Let’s say I have this little dhaba by the highway and I need a cook. Given a choice between candidate A and candidate B, both being competant, I’d give the job to whoever needed it more. And no, I would not give it to somebody who came with a hotel management diploma. I’d send both candidates to the kitchen and watch them roll out parathas – trying to gauge creativity, speed, and their enjoyment of the task at hand.
If there isn’t a vast gulf between the two candidates, skill-wise, I’ll look at their needs. Let’s say A is a runaway kid and this is a first attempt to make an honest living, or that A is the eldest child of retired parents and has two other siblings to put through school… if B has healthy parents and faces no immediate financial crunch – I would choose A over B, at least in the short term (in the long term, hopefully, such considerations would not be needed, if there aren’t vast gulfs between people’s assets and needs)
If I could give away four jobs, instead of one, I’d reserve one for a man who comes from backward origins, even if he is less competent than others, assuming he is eager to learn and work a little harder than the rest.
And I would hire at least two women, even if the men are just as skilled, giving preference to single mothers, divorcees, widows or just women with a very strong independent streak who want to live on their own. Because I have a vested interest in ensuring that women make their own money.
So yes, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Not as charity, but as a way of investing in people.
Via this blog, we hear of the great tragedy of the Jarawas, and how the law is being flouted with impunity, not to mention, with disastrous consequences. Not enough people protesting, and therefore, very little fear of being found out, being thrown out of office or being arrested for contempt of court and illegal construction.
At How the Other Half Lives (I’ve hopped on board recently) a maiden post led to a flurry of comments, some of which have made me think about myself and my take on the issue at hand.
Somebody supported reservation but not caste-based ones. Somebody else supports academic reservations, but not professional ones. Somebody asks me to ‘donate’ my job if I am such a great advocate of reservations in the private sector.
The first two have made me think a little harder about the precise form of affirmative action that I would like to see being implemented.
The third is a very pertinent question – because it all comes down to putting your money where your mouth is.
Would I?
My answer: firstly, reservations do not imply charity. They imply giving someone a leg-up.
Secondly, I do not control my own job. I don’t have hiring and firing rights, but if I did, I would still support a reserved percentage of positions in the organisation. Especially media organisations. (How many backward castes, or even poor people from upper castes, are represented in the mainstream media? Do a head-count. You’ll find a few answers as to why and how certain stories get covered) and if, as a result, my own chances of finding and keeping jobs is lessened, lowered… well, too bad. It won’t be the first time I’m sitting at home, jobless. And it certainly won’t be end of the world.
Let us assume that I did have hiring-firing rights.
Let’s say I have this little dhaba by the highway and I need a cook. Given a choice between candidate A and candidate B, both being competant, I’d give the job to whoever needed it more. And no, I would not give it to somebody who came with a hotel management diploma. I’d send both candidates to the kitchen and watch them roll out parathas – trying to gauge creativity, speed, and their enjoyment of the task at hand.
If there isn’t a vast gulf between the two candidates, skill-wise, I’ll look at their needs. Let’s say A is a runaway kid and this is a first attempt to make an honest living, or that A is the eldest child of retired parents and has two other siblings to put through school… if B has healthy parents and faces no immediate financial crunch – I would choose A over B, at least in the short term (in the long term, hopefully, such considerations would not be needed, if there aren’t vast gulfs between people’s assets and needs)
If I could give away four jobs, instead of one, I’d reserve one for a man who comes from backward origins, even if he is less competent than others, assuming he is eager to learn and work a little harder than the rest.
And I would hire at least two women, even if the men are just as skilled, giving preference to single mothers, divorcees, widows or just women with a very strong independent streak who want to live on their own. Because I have a vested interest in ensuring that women make their own money.
So yes, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Not as charity, but as a way of investing in people.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
An argument and a few stories
A story from nine years ago, in Lucknow.
I was enrolled at Aptech for a computer course and had shifted location to Lucknow during the summer vacations (for the record, I dropped out of the course, after the ignominy of flunking miserably in the programming module; in the instructor’s words, my efforts to write a computer program had ‘gone for a six... gone for a toss.’).
My old and mostly immobile grandparents lived in Gomtinagar; I had to attend classes in Halwasiya. It is a long commute, involving a ride over a bridge over the river Gomti, usually in a rickety six-seater called a ‘Vikram’, though I obstinately insist on calling it ‘tempoo’. It used to cost me ten rupees everyday.
One day, a tempo strike had been announced. In solidarity, all the auto-wallahs were also staying off the roads.
All of a sudden? Not all of a sudden - the tempo-walas must have given out a date and time when the strike would begin, which I didn’t know about.
After my classes, I stepped out and found that there was no way of getting back home, except a cab. I emptied out my purse – only thirty-three rupees left. Rs 33 will not get you a taxi ride to anywhere, not in Lucknow…not even round-n-round, in your own garden.
To add insult to injury, the clouds broke water and the rain came pouring down. All of a sudden… this was June. No umbrella, no raincoat, because monsoon was a month away.
No umbrella, no raincoat, no money for a taxi.
A very young and very clueless me, drenched in the rain, walking down Hazratgunj, getting stared at by loafers who had nothing better to do. It wasn’t pleasant.
And then, I saw a cycle-rickshaw. Not one, but many cycle-rickshaws. But the point was… would they agree? Hazratgunj to Gomtinagar takes half an hour even in a nonrenewableenergysource-guzzling tempo. No cycle-rickshaw would go that far.
Even if they did agree to, with this tempo-strike on, they’d want to make a killing. Anybody would ask for a hundred rupees. Even an auto-wala would have asked. But that day, I didn’t have that hundred; I had only Rs 33.
But the rain was pouring. And men were staring. So finally, I went up to an old rickshaw-wala, “Tees rupaye mein kahaan tak chhodenge, bhaiya? (How far can you take me, for thirty rupees?”)
He peered at me, surprised at the question. “Kahaan tak jaogi? (How far do you have to go?)”
I said, “Gomtinagar.”
He thought this over, then, agreed to take me as far as the petrol pump, just before Gomtinagar starts.
I agreed. The petrol pump was about a kilometer and a half, from my grandparents’ place. I could walk the rest, and hopefully, the rain would have stopped by that time.
The old rickshaw-wala put up the hood to offer me whatever little protection and privacy he could offer, and pedalled away. Through the rain, against the wind.
It was bitterly cold, and I can’t imagine how difficult this trip must have been for that old man.
Near the petrol pump, I got off, gave him all the money I had. Each paisa in my purse, and started to walk. It was still drizzling.
The old man called out to me. “Kahaan tak jaogi, bitiya (How much further, little daughter)?”
I told him, pointing, - the colony on the left.
He asked me to get back on the rickshaw. I protested, said I hadn’t have any more money.
He just said, “Ladkiyon ke liye theek nahin hain. Hum kone tak chhod aate hain. Phir chali jaana. (It isn’t safe for girls. I’ll drop you at the corner. Then you can walk.)”
And he did.
I can’t quite describe the feeling as he dropped me off at the corner of our lane. Partly, it was being eaten up by guilt at not paying him as much as he deserved… how much did he deserve anyway?
But mostly, it was the knowledge, that I could not pay him as much as he deserved. Even if I had a hundred rupees, two hundred rupees, five hundred rupees to give him - it would not be enough to repay him, now.
Because now, he was the bada aadmi; the big man.
He had done his good deed, and in my eyes, developed a stature that prevents me from monetizing the value of the service. He left me spiritually bankrupt.
Today, people ask why cycle-rickshaws should stay – in a city that is crawling with cars, autos, taxis and cows – where is the place for these shabby, skinny men who bring nothing to this city except their sweat and sinew?
I have the standard arguments - the ‘cycles are easy on the environment’ argument. The ‘need for cheap modes of transportation in smaller geographical units’ argument. The ‘right to livelihood’ argument. The ‘who are you to decide who stays and who goes’ argument.
But those are not real arguments.
My real argument is that memory – of an old man who took pity on a hard-up young girl in the rain and pedalled and pedalled, all the way to a distant suburb, when he could have made five time as much money, if he’d hung around in the market-centre, to take advantage of an auto/tempo strike.
My argument is not his sweat and sinew, or his right to life. It is his calling me ‘bitiya’ and taking me that extra mile, that had not been agreed upon.
My argument is that I have a debt to pay and I will go on arguing for cycle-rickshaws as long as there are men who want to pull rickshaws for a living.
Because transport is not just about fares or convenience. It is also about journeying. Low fares, quick modes, quality service and all that jazz… but what about lasting memories?
Transport and commutes are about stories.
You want to hear other stories? I have more. Many more.
One of my favourites is about my friend, G, who used to study at Allahabad university, and lived in Civil Lines; a cycle-rickshaw was appointed to take her there and to drop her back home, everyday.
As old men do in bhaiyya-land, this man used to call my friend, ‘bitiya’. Little girl or daughter.
This shabby old man who had nothing to offer but his scrawny muscles, but he didn’t just stop at calling her ‘bitiya’. You see, in north-India, according to tradition, you do not touch your daughter’s money. So he would not accept money from G’s hands.
She tried to explain, to protest. But it was no point arguing. He would accept money only on days when G’s parents paid him.
Silly traditional nonsense? I know.
Pointless sentiment injected into, what was essentially, a commercial transaction? I don’t know…. I don’t know about that.
Because, this man is another of my personal arguments. A man who knows how to treat you like a daughter, when he addresses you like one, is worth having in our cities, don’t you think?
I can also tell you about the young boy who helped me bring up mattresses to the third floor, when we didn’t have a lift. Yes, I paid him extra, but that’s not the point. He is not a loader, he is not a coolie, he is not a manual labourer – he pulls a rickshaw and his job only required him to drop me at my doorstep. But I asked for help, and he agreed to help.
I can tell you that some of my most beautiful childhood memories are from the time when six of us kids would be on one rickshaw, me standing on a narrow plank behind the wheels, holding onto the hood for support, the wind in my face, shrieking with delight.
I can tell you of the look on the faces of some of the rickshaw-walas, as they turn to look over their shoulders, meeting this delight with their own smiles.
I can tell you of the time in Ajmer, when six unruly college girls hailed a tonga, took the reins from the driver’s hands, and bullied him into letting them drive. I can tell you about all the crazy men who deck up their cycle/auto-rickshaws like new brides. I can tell you about boring flights too. You can see for yourself which is more fun, or worth holding on to.
Some day, maybe I will acquire and learn to drive a khataaraa piece of metal, and start navigating the roads myself. Some day, maybe I will not need the rickshaws. But if I ever forget that old man who left me spiritually bankrupt at the corner of a lane in Lucknow, may the gods strike me down, when I take the wheel... Because if I forget the things that make life worth living and fighting for, I might as well be dead.
My point:
When I began writing this, it was in an entirely different context – the context of anger, alienation and the difficulties of transportation in a western, modern society... Their clean, clean roads and their organised, rule-bound traffic. Cars and buses only. Bicycles being the only alternative.... If there is one thing I miss in this small Scottish town, it is the cycle-rickshaw… no, that's not entirely true: I miss seeing dogs and cows too, and the occasional horse or elephant or camel.
[Those who think they’re are a traffic menace, I’d like to point them in the direction of a certain busy road near Andrewsganj, Delhi; with mine own eyes I have seen a row of cows balancing delicately, all hoofed fours, atop a narrow road-divider, patiently waiting for the traffic to slow down before crossing. Which is more than you can say for half the speeding guys on speed, who treat narrow kuchha lanes like virtual superhighway]
Then, I began thinking of those people who actually believe that cycle-rickshaws are a menace!
I am writing this post, because too many people have been lobbying to allow fewer and fewer cycle-rickshaws in Delhi. First it was just the heart of New Delhi; now, there are moves afoot to keep them off the suburbs too. I could cite reports by way of counter-argument.
But the point is this - we talk about giving the public a choice.
So, I want that choice. Have low-cost airlines by all means; I want those too. But I also want buses. I want my tonga, I want my metro, AND I want the cycle-rickshaws. I see absolutely no reason why not.
The roads are public property.
The rickshaw-pullers are as much the public as the cabbies or pilots. If you want them out of the way, build separate tracks for rickshaws, and then talk about speed and safety issues. Delhi does have separate 'priority' bus lanes, in some suburbs. How difficult would it be to just plan for different sets of tracks, in different regions, starting right now?
Make it a part of the master plan. Listen to the experts. It is not undo-able.
And if it is undo-able, tough!
Learn to drive slow, and pay at least as much respect to the man pulling a rickshaw, as you do to the cows. Defer. Slow down. Wait to let them pass.
For the world-class wannabes, a reminder: out here, in the UK, cars wait, while a duck waddles across; those are the rules.
I was enrolled at Aptech for a computer course and had shifted location to Lucknow during the summer vacations (for the record, I dropped out of the course, after the ignominy of flunking miserably in the programming module; in the instructor’s words, my efforts to write a computer program had ‘gone for a six... gone for a toss.’).
My old and mostly immobile grandparents lived in Gomtinagar; I had to attend classes in Halwasiya. It is a long commute, involving a ride over a bridge over the river Gomti, usually in a rickety six-seater called a ‘Vikram’, though I obstinately insist on calling it ‘tempoo’. It used to cost me ten rupees everyday.
One day, a tempo strike had been announced. In solidarity, all the auto-wallahs were also staying off the roads.
All of a sudden? Not all of a sudden - the tempo-walas must have given out a date and time when the strike would begin, which I didn’t know about.
After my classes, I stepped out and found that there was no way of getting back home, except a cab. I emptied out my purse – only thirty-three rupees left. Rs 33 will not get you a taxi ride to anywhere, not in Lucknow…not even round-n-round, in your own garden.
To add insult to injury, the clouds broke water and the rain came pouring down. All of a sudden… this was June. No umbrella, no raincoat, because monsoon was a month away.
No umbrella, no raincoat, no money for a taxi.
A very young and very clueless me, drenched in the rain, walking down Hazratgunj, getting stared at by loafers who had nothing better to do. It wasn’t pleasant.
And then, I saw a cycle-rickshaw. Not one, but many cycle-rickshaws. But the point was… would they agree? Hazratgunj to Gomtinagar takes half an hour even in a nonrenewableenergysource-guzzling tempo. No cycle-rickshaw would go that far.
Even if they did agree to, with this tempo-strike on, they’d want to make a killing. Anybody would ask for a hundred rupees. Even an auto-wala would have asked. But that day, I didn’t have that hundred; I had only Rs 33.
But the rain was pouring. And men were staring. So finally, I went up to an old rickshaw-wala, “Tees rupaye mein kahaan tak chhodenge, bhaiya? (How far can you take me, for thirty rupees?”)
He peered at me, surprised at the question. “Kahaan tak jaogi? (How far do you have to go?)”
I said, “Gomtinagar.”
He thought this over, then, agreed to take me as far as the petrol pump, just before Gomtinagar starts.
I agreed. The petrol pump was about a kilometer and a half, from my grandparents’ place. I could walk the rest, and hopefully, the rain would have stopped by that time.
The old rickshaw-wala put up the hood to offer me whatever little protection and privacy he could offer, and pedalled away. Through the rain, against the wind.
It was bitterly cold, and I can’t imagine how difficult this trip must have been for that old man.
Near the petrol pump, I got off, gave him all the money I had. Each paisa in my purse, and started to walk. It was still drizzling.
The old man called out to me. “Kahaan tak jaogi, bitiya (How much further, little daughter)?”
I told him, pointing, - the colony on the left.
He asked me to get back on the rickshaw. I protested, said I hadn’t have any more money.
He just said, “Ladkiyon ke liye theek nahin hain. Hum kone tak chhod aate hain. Phir chali jaana. (It isn’t safe for girls. I’ll drop you at the corner. Then you can walk.)”
And he did.
I can’t quite describe the feeling as he dropped me off at the corner of our lane. Partly, it was being eaten up by guilt at not paying him as much as he deserved… how much did he deserve anyway?
But mostly, it was the knowledge, that I could not pay him as much as he deserved. Even if I had a hundred rupees, two hundred rupees, five hundred rupees to give him - it would not be enough to repay him, now.
Because now, he was the bada aadmi; the big man.
He had done his good deed, and in my eyes, developed a stature that prevents me from monetizing the value of the service. He left me spiritually bankrupt.
Today, people ask why cycle-rickshaws should stay – in a city that is crawling with cars, autos, taxis and cows – where is the place for these shabby, skinny men who bring nothing to this city except their sweat and sinew?
I have the standard arguments - the ‘cycles are easy on the environment’ argument. The ‘need for cheap modes of transportation in smaller geographical units’ argument. The ‘right to livelihood’ argument. The ‘who are you to decide who stays and who goes’ argument.
But those are not real arguments.
My real argument is that memory – of an old man who took pity on a hard-up young girl in the rain and pedalled and pedalled, all the way to a distant suburb, when he could have made five time as much money, if he’d hung around in the market-centre, to take advantage of an auto/tempo strike.
My argument is not his sweat and sinew, or his right to life. It is his calling me ‘bitiya’ and taking me that extra mile, that had not been agreed upon.
My argument is that I have a debt to pay and I will go on arguing for cycle-rickshaws as long as there are men who want to pull rickshaws for a living.
Because transport is not just about fares or convenience. It is also about journeying. Low fares, quick modes, quality service and all that jazz… but what about lasting memories?
Transport and commutes are about stories.
You want to hear other stories? I have more. Many more.
One of my favourites is about my friend, G, who used to study at Allahabad university, and lived in Civil Lines; a cycle-rickshaw was appointed to take her there and to drop her back home, everyday.
As old men do in bhaiyya-land, this man used to call my friend, ‘bitiya’. Little girl or daughter.
This shabby old man who had nothing to offer but his scrawny muscles, but he didn’t just stop at calling her ‘bitiya’. You see, in north-India, according to tradition, you do not touch your daughter’s money. So he would not accept money from G’s hands.
She tried to explain, to protest. But it was no point arguing. He would accept money only on days when G’s parents paid him.
Silly traditional nonsense? I know.
Pointless sentiment injected into, what was essentially, a commercial transaction? I don’t know…. I don’t know about that.
Because, this man is another of my personal arguments. A man who knows how to treat you like a daughter, when he addresses you like one, is worth having in our cities, don’t you think?
I can also tell you about the young boy who helped me bring up mattresses to the third floor, when we didn’t have a lift. Yes, I paid him extra, but that’s not the point. He is not a loader, he is not a coolie, he is not a manual labourer – he pulls a rickshaw and his job only required him to drop me at my doorstep. But I asked for help, and he agreed to help.
I can tell you that some of my most beautiful childhood memories are from the time when six of us kids would be on one rickshaw, me standing on a narrow plank behind the wheels, holding onto the hood for support, the wind in my face, shrieking with delight.
I can tell you of the look on the faces of some of the rickshaw-walas, as they turn to look over their shoulders, meeting this delight with their own smiles.
I can tell you of the time in Ajmer, when six unruly college girls hailed a tonga, took the reins from the driver’s hands, and bullied him into letting them drive. I can tell you about all the crazy men who deck up their cycle/auto-rickshaws like new brides. I can tell you about boring flights too. You can see for yourself which is more fun, or worth holding on to.
Some day, maybe I will acquire and learn to drive a khataaraa piece of metal, and start navigating the roads myself. Some day, maybe I will not need the rickshaws. But if I ever forget that old man who left me spiritually bankrupt at the corner of a lane in Lucknow, may the gods strike me down, when I take the wheel... Because if I forget the things that make life worth living and fighting for, I might as well be dead.
My point:
When I began writing this, it was in an entirely different context – the context of anger, alienation and the difficulties of transportation in a western, modern society... Their clean, clean roads and their organised, rule-bound traffic. Cars and buses only. Bicycles being the only alternative.... If there is one thing I miss in this small Scottish town, it is the cycle-rickshaw… no, that's not entirely true: I miss seeing dogs and cows too, and the occasional horse or elephant or camel.
[Those who think they’re are a traffic menace, I’d like to point them in the direction of a certain busy road near Andrewsganj, Delhi; with mine own eyes I have seen a row of cows balancing delicately, all hoofed fours, atop a narrow road-divider, patiently waiting for the traffic to slow down before crossing. Which is more than you can say for half the speeding guys on speed, who treat narrow kuchha lanes like virtual superhighway]
Then, I began thinking of those people who actually believe that cycle-rickshaws are a menace!
I am writing this post, because too many people have been lobbying to allow fewer and fewer cycle-rickshaws in Delhi. First it was just the heart of New Delhi; now, there are moves afoot to keep them off the suburbs too. I could cite reports by way of counter-argument.
But the point is this - we talk about giving the public a choice.
So, I want that choice. Have low-cost airlines by all means; I want those too. But I also want buses. I want my tonga, I want my metro, AND I want the cycle-rickshaws. I see absolutely no reason why not.
The roads are public property.
The rickshaw-pullers are as much the public as the cabbies or pilots. If you want them out of the way, build separate tracks for rickshaws, and then talk about speed and safety issues. Delhi does have separate 'priority' bus lanes, in some suburbs. How difficult would it be to just plan for different sets of tracks, in different regions, starting right now?
Make it a part of the master plan. Listen to the experts. It is not undo-able.
And if it is undo-able, tough!
Learn to drive slow, and pay at least as much respect to the man pulling a rickshaw, as you do to the cows. Defer. Slow down. Wait to let them pass.
For the world-class wannabes, a reminder: out here, in the UK, cars wait, while a duck waddles across; those are the rules.
This year, I have not been able to read properly.
I am reading, but in fits and starts, as if I have lost the art of being absorbed. Or at least, of being absorbed in a linear, narrative fashion… I get fascinated by an idea, then I let go. I grasp again, cling, flounder, tentatively touch, but then, float away.
I go away from a book, but return a month later. I run beside one author, but abruptly abandon him/her, change tracks and start running with another. This is guilt-inducing – because I usually don’t leave authors in the lurch; I’m a faithful reader. Or was, until now.
Now, it is impossible to become one with a book; my whole brain refuses to be dragged into the experience of reading. Part of the problem is being bilingual.
It all started when I began to read Hindi literature seriously again, some time last year.
As a result of being more or less equally fluent in both English and Hindustani (my real mother-tongue is Hindustani, which is neither pure Hindi nor pure Urdu, but a colloquial mixture of the two), there’s this corner of my mind that begins to translate it back to me. Hindi to English.
This corner of my mind is busy translating simultaneously. Each word, each sentence - this corner pokes at it, picks it up as if it was a curio and then translates it into another language, to make it a souvenir.
This corner wants to feel the intricacies, the fine-ness of the ideas, in another tongue. I like to wrap my mind around the words and turn them over and over until they’re something else, and yet, the same.
Sometimes, I even go from English to Hindi. Especially when the book has an Indian context. The bilingual corner of my brain immediately begins to wonder how this would sound in Hindustani: would it sound better? Worse? More natural? Would this narrative sound as if this could be any place, in any other nation, if I put these thoughts into English? Would the flow be more delicate, the language more impactful, in Hindustani? Suppose you mixed up the two?
Most recently, this habit has transcended books with an Indian context. I find myself trying to translate Orhan Pamuk and Murakami into Hindustani – just to see if it works.
Unfortunately, this means that there’s a one-second time lag between one part of my brain and the other. Sometimes, I get stuck, because the part of my brain that is translating is stuck for a word or appropriate idiomatic transformation. It gets larger and more assertive and refuses to let me read further, until I can solve its bilingual dilemma.
Sometimes, I must take a firm stand and yell at the corner – ‘I don’t care what this means in English, okay? I want to finish the damn story!’
Sometimes, I go and google up the word in an online dictionary. Sometimes, I run down my address book, to check if there’s somebody whom I could randomly call or email, to see if they’d help me with word-meanings.
And sometimes, I just content myself by telling unsuspecting bibliophiles - ‘Read this, read this; get a translation. Is there a translation? There should be a translation; why doesn’t somebody do a translation?’
All the same, it has become impossible to read with the old fluency of thought. Maybe I should just translate something and exorcise the ghost, once and for all.
I am reading, but in fits and starts, as if I have lost the art of being absorbed. Or at least, of being absorbed in a linear, narrative fashion… I get fascinated by an idea, then I let go. I grasp again, cling, flounder, tentatively touch, but then, float away.
I go away from a book, but return a month later. I run beside one author, but abruptly abandon him/her, change tracks and start running with another. This is guilt-inducing – because I usually don’t leave authors in the lurch; I’m a faithful reader. Or was, until now.
Now, it is impossible to become one with a book; my whole brain refuses to be dragged into the experience of reading. Part of the problem is being bilingual.
It all started when I began to read Hindi literature seriously again, some time last year.
As a result of being more or less equally fluent in both English and Hindustani (my real mother-tongue is Hindustani, which is neither pure Hindi nor pure Urdu, but a colloquial mixture of the two), there’s this corner of my mind that begins to translate it back to me. Hindi to English.
This corner of my mind is busy translating simultaneously. Each word, each sentence - this corner pokes at it, picks it up as if it was a curio and then translates it into another language, to make it a souvenir.
This corner wants to feel the intricacies, the fine-ness of the ideas, in another tongue. I like to wrap my mind around the words and turn them over and over until they’re something else, and yet, the same.
Sometimes, I even go from English to Hindi. Especially when the book has an Indian context. The bilingual corner of my brain immediately begins to wonder how this would sound in Hindustani: would it sound better? Worse? More natural? Would this narrative sound as if this could be any place, in any other nation, if I put these thoughts into English? Would the flow be more delicate, the language more impactful, in Hindustani? Suppose you mixed up the two?
Most recently, this habit has transcended books with an Indian context. I find myself trying to translate Orhan Pamuk and Murakami into Hindustani – just to see if it works.
Unfortunately, this means that there’s a one-second time lag between one part of my brain and the other. Sometimes, I get stuck, because the part of my brain that is translating is stuck for a word or appropriate idiomatic transformation. It gets larger and more assertive and refuses to let me read further, until I can solve its bilingual dilemma.
Sometimes, I must take a firm stand and yell at the corner – ‘I don’t care what this means in English, okay? I want to finish the damn story!’
Sometimes, I go and google up the word in an online dictionary. Sometimes, I run down my address book, to check if there’s somebody whom I could randomly call or email, to see if they’d help me with word-meanings.
And sometimes, I just content myself by telling unsuspecting bibliophiles - ‘Read this, read this; get a translation. Is there a translation? There should be a translation; why doesn’t somebody do a translation?’
All the same, it has become impossible to read with the old fluency of thought. Maybe I should just translate something and exorcise the ghost, once and for all.
A story
I'd come across this story weeks ago. It's worth reading. It's worth replicating.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar242006/she105642006324.asp
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar242006/she105642006324.asp
Thursday, April 20, 2006
excuses, excuses
Since people have begun to ask, I had better post something about where I am and what keeps me from blogging (though I must confess that I have also been wondering and testing the issue of how long it takes before bloggers start wondering about where another blogger is, and why the blog is silent... it took nearly three weeks.)
Anyway, the blog is silent because I am not in India at the moment. I'm at Stirling University, UK, and will be here for another couple of months, thanks to a residency offered by the Charles Wallace India Trust... which is no reason to abandon the blog. Some friends suggest that it is all the more reason why I should blog - new stuff, new country, new eyes.
But the thing is - this blog has a persona, an identity of her own.
Known Turf has never been a 'personal' blog, yes, I do believe that the personal is public and the public is personal, but I have rarely written about my life, my feelings - unless it was in the context of my work. Known Turf is the result of my experiences on the reporting field, the discovering my own country and people, smaller and larger issues of social concern, media debates...
and well, also about chai (but that is only because chai is an issue of great social import. And while I am on the subject, I might as well say that I have a peculiar longing for extra-sweet, extra-strong, thick and full-bodied chai, which is impossible to get anywhere except at street corners in Bombay, where the tea-leaves are boiled for at least an hour... here, I manage by boiling tea-bags - yes, you can get a reasonably strong brew if you boil two dainty English Breakfast tea bags, for a good ten minutes - am wise enough not to attempt buying ready-made tea from a cafe.... and oh, there's an advertisement for Tetley Extra-strong which I totally love: a hefty, middle-aged lady is held up, horizontally, by three young men with big muscles, smiling faint but determined smiles. Winking, the lady advocates the virtues of 'extra-strong' tea. Must try it next.)
But what I'm trying to say is - Known Turf is the record of what I see, wonder at, grow thoughtful about, fail to understand, want to change - but only when I looking outward, especially in my own country.
Over here, my life is turned inward... I don't step out much, or travel much, or even talk to people all that much.
I'm still keeping a record of living and thinking and wondering etc - but am not sure if I want to blog all of it (though I get tempted sometimes - there is a certain amount of gratification that comes from writing and immediately being able to hit 'publish'). But I am not yet ready to make Known Turf a personal diary... so the likelihood of updates happening is not high.
I may change my mind, though... and if I do... well, either your bloglines account will inform you of the change. Or, just keep coming back here every week or so, to check.
PS - for the reader who asked me about the Jesustan Diaries: I do know that the said blogger is alive, but I don't know why he isn't updating. To the best of my knowledge, he does not have another blog. But it is possible - if and when he chooses to tell me, I'll post the link.
Anyway, the blog is silent because I am not in India at the moment. I'm at Stirling University, UK, and will be here for another couple of months, thanks to a residency offered by the Charles Wallace India Trust... which is no reason to abandon the blog. Some friends suggest that it is all the more reason why I should blog - new stuff, new country, new eyes.
But the thing is - this blog has a persona, an identity of her own.
Known Turf has never been a 'personal' blog, yes, I do believe that the personal is public and the public is personal, but I have rarely written about my life, my feelings - unless it was in the context of my work. Known Turf is the result of my experiences on the reporting field, the discovering my own country and people, smaller and larger issues of social concern, media debates...
and well, also about chai (but that is only because chai is an issue of great social import. And while I am on the subject, I might as well say that I have a peculiar longing for extra-sweet, extra-strong, thick and full-bodied chai, which is impossible to get anywhere except at street corners in Bombay, where the tea-leaves are boiled for at least an hour... here, I manage by boiling tea-bags - yes, you can get a reasonably strong brew if you boil two dainty English Breakfast tea bags, for a good ten minutes - am wise enough not to attempt buying ready-made tea from a cafe.... and oh, there's an advertisement for Tetley Extra-strong which I totally love: a hefty, middle-aged lady is held up, horizontally, by three young men with big muscles, smiling faint but determined smiles. Winking, the lady advocates the virtues of 'extra-strong' tea. Must try it next.)
But what I'm trying to say is - Known Turf is the record of what I see, wonder at, grow thoughtful about, fail to understand, want to change - but only when I looking outward, especially in my own country.
Over here, my life is turned inward... I don't step out much, or travel much, or even talk to people all that much.
I'm still keeping a record of living and thinking and wondering etc - but am not sure if I want to blog all of it (though I get tempted sometimes - there is a certain amount of gratification that comes from writing and immediately being able to hit 'publish'). But I am not yet ready to make Known Turf a personal diary... so the likelihood of updates happening is not high.
I may change my mind, though... and if I do... well, either your bloglines account will inform you of the change. Or, just keep coming back here every week or so, to check.
PS - for the reader who asked me about the Jesustan Diaries: I do know that the said blogger is alive, but I don't know why he isn't updating. To the best of my knowledge, he does not have another blog. But it is possible - if and when he chooses to tell me, I'll post the link.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Will somebody please sit up and take notice?
This is a mail I received from an activist with the Samajwadi Jan Parishad, in Betul, Madhya Pradesh (I am reproducing it, sic, below) and I'm wondering what to make of it because, despite all the talk of a victory of sorts in the Jessica Lal case, thanks to a media-supported campaign, I see no sign of a report in the national dailies in Delhi, which might have prompted some action.
And to think that these are journalists getting murdered... whither solidarity?
A LONE WITEENESS TO JOURNALIST'S MURDER SHOT DEAD
Betul, March 11, 2006
Within a week of framing the charges in the journalist's murder, today the main and the only eye witness has been shot dead in bright day light at point blank range in Betul city of M. P. The bureau chief of Hindi Daily Raj Express was lynched in his office in Betul on 13th September2005. The witness Manoj Arya had, many times, complained to the police that there was a threat to his life, but he was not provided with any security. The same Journalist had expressed his apprehension to police before his murder but he was not taken seriously.
While lot of heat is being generated by Jesica Lal case, this murder of a lone whiteness to journalist's murder has exposed corrupt nexuses between police and criminals. Samajwadi Jan Parishad demands immediate action in the matter and action against erring police officer. SJP also demand overhauling of Criminal Justice System.
And to think that these are journalists getting murdered... whither solidarity?
A LONE WITEENESS TO JOURNALIST'S MURDER SHOT DEAD
Betul, March 11, 2006
Within a week of framing the charges in the journalist's murder, today the main and the only eye witness has been shot dead in bright day light at point blank range in Betul city of M. P. The bureau chief of Hindi Daily Raj Express was lynched in his office in Betul on 13th September2005. The witness Manoj Arya had, many times, complained to the police that there was a threat to his life, but he was not provided with any security. The same Journalist had expressed his apprehension to police before his murder but he was not taken seriously.
While lot of heat is being generated by Jesica Lal case, this murder of a lone whiteness to journalist's murder has exposed corrupt nexuses between police and criminals. Samajwadi Jan Parishad demands immediate action in the matter and action against erring police officer. SJP also demand overhauling of Criminal Justice System.
Blood for belief?
My grandmother used to say 'qayamat se daro' (Or maybe she didn't; maybe it was some other grand-maternal figure in the family). She taught me to fear the Day of Judgment, when we're confronted with ourselves : that truly is qayamat... What we did, didn't do, should have done, and wanted to do.
I must confess that I don't believe in an apocalypse, or a final confrontation. I must also confess that if I'm wrong and grandma's right, then I don't look forward to giving an account of myself.
But, in times like these, when the 'judiciary' in Afghanistan thinks it can kill a man for converting to christianity... at times like these, I begin to wish for a day of final reckoning, now, so they could come face to face with a god, his messengers, or somebody who's THE authority.
Because, how, in god's name, can you justify the taking of life? Especially when a man's done nothing except admit that his beliefs have undergone a slight change? Not murdered, not abetted, not waged war, not abused children... all he did was convert.
How, how, how can anyone justify a death sentence?
How can you justify even wanting to pass that death sentence? How can you justify putting somebody on trial for a new set of beliefs? How can you call yourself a muslim, if you do so?
How can you forget that before Islam, there was Cristianity, and Judaism, and a thousand different kinds of faiths in the world? That every single person who took to Islam, must once have belonged to another religious community? Mohammad himself was not born into Islam; he created a new religion, and got a whole lot of others to convert.
If these Afghan 'judges' were to come face to face with Mohammad tonight, how would they justify ending a life, just because that life wanted to try a different route to finding god. How would they explain their greed for spilling blood?
Because that is all it is, finally.
I must confess that I don't believe in an apocalypse, or a final confrontation. I must also confess that if I'm wrong and grandma's right, then I don't look forward to giving an account of myself.
But, in times like these, when the 'judiciary' in Afghanistan thinks it can kill a man for converting to christianity... at times like these, I begin to wish for a day of final reckoning, now, so they could come face to face with a god, his messengers, or somebody who's THE authority.
Because, how, in god's name, can you justify the taking of life? Especially when a man's done nothing except admit that his beliefs have undergone a slight change? Not murdered, not abetted, not waged war, not abused children... all he did was convert.
How, how, how can anyone justify a death sentence?
How can you justify even wanting to pass that death sentence? How can you justify putting somebody on trial for a new set of beliefs? How can you call yourself a muslim, if you do so?
How can you forget that before Islam, there was Cristianity, and Judaism, and a thousand different kinds of faiths in the world? That every single person who took to Islam, must once have belonged to another religious community? Mohammad himself was not born into Islam; he created a new religion, and got a whole lot of others to convert.
If these Afghan 'judges' were to come face to face with Mohammad tonight, how would they justify ending a life, just because that life wanted to try a different route to finding god. How would they explain their greed for spilling blood?
Because that is all it is, finally.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
When in trouble, blame the blog
And now, Judith Miller blames the bloggers too!
Them, and a lot of other people... But seriously, now who's slandering whom, I'd like to know.
Miller describes to Vanity Fair the process by which the Pajama People destroyed her:
The bloggers were without editing, without a way for people to understand what was good, what was well reported—to distinguish between the straight and the slanderous. Things would get instantly picked up, magnified, and volumized.
The bloggers were without editing, without a way for people to understand what was good, what was well reported—to distinguish between the straight and the slanderous. Things would get instantly picked up, magnified, and volumized.
In Miller's mind, the bloggers not only poisoned her relationship with the Times brass but also with her colleagues, who, she says, "believed what they read on the blogs."
Them, and a lot of other people... But seriously, now who's slandering whom, I'd like to know.
This is how you show some respect
Now this is how a government deals properly with women, if it wants to treat them with respect.
To me, the act - of letting strippers take meal breaks and a weekly day off - is a strong indicator that this country, or at least the majority of her people, respect the women who may choose to strip for a living.
In the process, it sends out a signal that everybody has the right to choose their own livelihoods, without facing moral umbrage from those who do not wish to make their livelihoods in the same way. It also helps organise a sector, however small the numbers of workers involved, letting them know that their rights are worth protecting, and that they are valuable as workers and citizens.
Compare and contrast this with our own Maharashtra government's decision to ban dancing bars altogether, thereby depriving thousands of women of their livelihood. Such blatant disregard... such an impoverished sense of right and wrong.
To me, the act - of letting strippers take meal breaks and a weekly day off - is a strong indicator that this country, or at least the majority of her people, respect the women who may choose to strip for a living.
In the process, it sends out a signal that everybody has the right to choose their own livelihoods, without facing moral umbrage from those who do not wish to make their livelihoods in the same way. It also helps organise a sector, however small the numbers of workers involved, letting them know that their rights are worth protecting, and that they are valuable as workers and citizens.
Compare and contrast this with our own Maharashtra government's decision to ban dancing bars altogether, thereby depriving thousands of women of their livelihood. Such blatant disregard... such an impoverished sense of right and wrong.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Links and meets
Two spaces I've been meaning to link to, for a while now.
How The Other Half Lives
For some good writing and some significant questions,
Tattletale
for some exceptional writing by someone I'm proud to call a close friend.
In other news, Neha - of Desipundit and Within/Without fame, is going to be in town this weekend, and there's a blogmeet happening. I am not in town, unfortunately, but am sure the others will turn up in droves for coffee and conversation.
How The Other Half Lives
For some good writing and some significant questions,
Tattletale
for some exceptional writing by someone I'm proud to call a close friend.
In other news, Neha - of Desipundit and Within/Without fame, is going to be in town this weekend, and there's a blogmeet happening. I am not in town, unfortunately, but am sure the others will turn up in droves for coffee and conversation.
Friday, March 10, 2006
rimjhim-rimjhim
When rows upon rows of cycle-rickshaw-wale lie curled up on the passenger seat of their blue rickshaws, head and shoulders swallowed by their dusty gamchhas, at 11 in the late morning...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When white china roses, growing a few feet from the ring road, who've spent February refusing to sit up and take notice of the spring, suddenly sit up straight on their delicate stalks, each petal achingly poised like a butterfly wing waiting to be painted upon...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When your chin turns out, and up, to meet the gulpworthy crisp air...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When there's traffic jammed on both sides of a railways crossing, but no horns are blaring and no faces are frowning....
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
Dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When white china roses, growing a few feet from the ring road, who've spent February refusing to sit up and take notice of the spring, suddenly sit up straight on their delicate stalks, each petal achingly poised like a butterfly wing waiting to be painted upon...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When your chin turns out, and up, to meet the gulpworthy crisp air...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When there's traffic jammed on both sides of a railways crossing, but no horns are blaring and no faces are frowning....
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
Dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
If, when... and until then
Yesterday, I was filled with a deep, deep sense of despair.
Never, in recent memory, have I felt this numb, this deflated. As I read, account after account, after abusive account - from women and men and the children we have been - I was engulfed by a frozen sort of exhaustion.
Account after abusive account on Blank Noise led to more windows opening up into my own memory - this happened to me too, at ages six, eight, nine, ten, eighteen, fifteen, twenty-five.... all of this and more. That man, that place...
Writing the last post, I had thought I was making the token gesture - how difficult could it be to speak up, anyway? If I can live it, I can talk about it.
Talk about something that's choking our gender-divisive culture, something that is making monsters of us when it comes to sexual attitudes and liberties.
When the comments started pouring in, I was a little overwhelmed. Then the downpour became a deluge, and now, I am very quiet, very sad.
Because... that these 'strategies' I had written of, in part-horror, part-rage, with a sense of bitter irony, should be taken as 100% serious advice.... could anything be sadder than that?
One part of me wants to un-read it all - all those hundreds of stories here, in the comments and those entries for the blog-a-thon. As if un-reading it, could undo it.
But for all that, I have more to say.
If we're going to build a serious debate around this issue of abuse (please let's give 'eve-teasing' a grand burial right now. This minute. The word has no significance, no relevance, no place in our experience), we need to talk beyond the rage, beyond the sharing, beyond the opinions.
Because if we stop here, then we might as well have never started.
The first thing we have to deal with is the definition and scope of 'harrassment'.
We may recognize that each individual has different needs for personal space and different perceptions of appropriate behaviour, BUT if we're going to take a legal stand, insist upon pan-Indian, or even global standard of behaviour as a norm, we're going to need specifics.
Is staring/ ogling/ checking out/ leching wrong?
I don't think so.
Does it make me uncomfortable?
Yes.
A man leering at you through the evening can ruin your party. But I also recognize that this bothers me more in situations where I know the leer can easily turn into a grope.
Besides, there are many occassions on which I have 'checked out' members of the oposite sex (no pun intended, she says, biting down a smile). I want to continue to have the right to look at men, appreciatively or just to guage the attraction quotient. Men have the same rights, then.
Is whistling, passing comments, singing songs wrong?
No.
Does it annoy me, as a woman?
Sometimes.
But I recognize that the man is not phycially or psychologically damaging me in any way, and so he has a right to whistle, sing or comment.
EXCEPT when the words turn abusive or sexully violent. Verbal violence is punishable by law. Threats are punishable by law, and there is no reason a woman(or man) should have to hear any.
Is touching wrong?
Yes.
When you touch a another person without his/her permission, you run the risk of violating the person. If you touch them in places that are - in normative terms - regarded as sexual areas, therefore off-limits for those who do not have sexual rights over you, this person will be perfectly justified in snarling, snapping, slapping or otherwise reacting violently to your gesture. You could also be punished for it legally, though we - as a society - must come to some sort of agreement about what punitive action is fair, or deterrant enough. (One blogger - I'm confused about who - suggested community service. Picking up trash. Scavenging. I think that's not a bad idea, actually.)
I also believe that we Indians already recognize this, cultural conditioning be damned!
That is why there are many more incidents of feeling up/groping/pinching in crowded places like buses, trains, bazaars, footpaths - where it would be hard to pin blame, where one can pretend it was all an accident. That is also why men will take fewer chances if a woman is accompanied by a man, but will grope and pinch with alacrity if they're in a big group themselves.
Is following/stalking wrong?
Yes.
I have not figured out the precise definitions for this, but legally, at least, there is a precedent for disallowing stalking. (And we really must learn to use the word 'stalking' instead of 'following', which sounds like a benign sort of thing a cute puppy-dog might do, when he isn't nipping at your ankles.)
Is propositioning wrong?
I don't know.
We are swimming in slightly murky waters here. Almost all relationships begin with a proposition of some sort. (This, incidentally, is the same line adopted by every single stranger who has come up to me with a proposition for 'friendship') Almost all of us have accepted some propositions at least partially, tentatively, from some trusted people.
I personally do not blame the stranger who walks up to me, saying he wants to have sex, or offers to 'buy' me. He is only asking me a question. I find it offensive - but I think we, as women, must also learn to question the reasons for our taking offense at such a question. Why are we so insulted if somebody equates us with, or treats us like, a prostitute?
(Speaking for myself, I find it equally offensive when I am asked my religion while entering a temple or a mosque, or filling up a government form. In all honesty, I think the latter is a far more dangerous question).
But when I have said 'no', and this stranger persists in making his offer, it does amount to harrassment. Then, I have the right to tell him to get lost. If he doesn't listen, I have the right to drag him to the law enforcement authority.
Which brings us to the cops.
The police is known to be unsympathetic. I think we should lobby for the police to be especially trained in dealing with instances of harrassment and I also think that the women's cell of the police should be prepared for complaints against their colleagues who fail to treat a victim of sexual harrassment as they should. The battle will be uphill at first, but a few prosecutions should set a precedent. Precedents are good weapons.
And yes, I believe training and counselling does help.
I have been to a police station alone in Delhi - fighting off my own instinctive misgivings - and have found at least one bunch of officials to be polite and non-lecherous, even though they may not have been as quick and efficient as I want them to be. I was later told that some sections of Delhi police have been slowly workshopped into behaving with a modicum of courtesy. If this is true, bless the workshoppers.
Some people have spoken of clothes and the impact they have on harrassment.
From personal experience, I know there is no direct correlation.
The first incident I mentioned, when I was 13, occurred when I was in frilly frocks and still had ribbons in my hair. Almost all later incidents have happened when I have been in shalwaars and full-sleeved kameezes.
Strangely, the rare times when I have stepped out wearing short skirts and tank tops, men have kept a slight distance. I fail to understand this paradox. But I do have a hypothesis -
When I am wearing a short skirt in public, I give out a signal. That I am not meek. I'm not your regular bhartiya naari and that you cannot count on my being a placid, accepting victim.
Many more men stare at bare shoulders, bare legs... many more women stare too. But, in my limited experience, few men dare to touch a woman they're shocked by.
And yet, knowing this, I find myself hesitating. Worrying.
I bring out my short, revealing clothes every week, try them on and put them back in the cupboard. This is not because I will attract potential molesters. This is because I know that IF there is an attempt, I will be held responsible. I will hear 'but look at what she's wearing'.
I do this because my own women-friends come up with quasi-insulting statements like 'you don't like clothes, do you?'. Because I've been told that there's a time and place for every dress; high heels and bare shoulders are only okay if you're at a private party, amongst friends and are getting picked up and dropped off in a private car.
I've been told and I cannot shake off the fear that IF something goes wrong, I will be humiliated even further by allegations that I was 'asking for it'.
THIS fear is what we have to counter.
We begin by watching our own tongues. When we see a girl in a mini-skirt in the train or in the vegetable market, we stop saying 'ohmygod! what's wrong with her?'. We have to stop telling each other 'your bra strap is showing'. (It's only an effing strap! Give me one good reason why it should not show?)
Sure, the change will take time. But the change must come from us. From everybody who believes that a person has the right to not be molested, whatever the circumstances.
Some other men mentioned feeling ashamed. They are angry that all women view them with suspicion, contempt and fear.
All I can say, is - the burnt child dreads the fire.
Or like we say, doodh ka jalaa chhaas ko bhi phook-phoonk ke peeta hai.
Besides, the nice men are in a bit of a minority. I can recount more than ten incidents of harrassment, right now, without having to dig into the darker recesses of memory. Listening to other women, I'd say that ratio is fairly average. If there are ten wrong-doers for every one victim.... you do the math.
Can you imagine the scale of this gender's collective fear? Where is the room for rational behaviour, or trust?
Yes, this too can change.
For every man that tries to grope me, if there are five men stopping him, it will change.
For every small gang that roams the streets looking for somebody to harrass, if there are two small gangs on the lookout to protect, it will change.
For every woman in an oversize t-shirt, walking with a file across her chest, if there are a hundred who refuse to cover up, refuse to de-sex their persona, refuse to slouch, it will change.
For every family that tells a daughter 'don't go out alone at night', if there are fifty families who send their girls out at night, armed with the determination to have fun and the confidence that they're not going to be the only women out alone, it will change.
For every woman who scurries past, head bowed, if there are ten who strut, and smile at nothing and everything, it will change.
When we have men and women talking to each other without being censured for it,
when boys in school are taught to take permission before touching women,
when girls in school are taught that it is okay to give this permission, if they want to,
when both genders can interact without fear of ostracism or moral policing,
it will change.
Until then, I leave you with these lines by Dushyant Kumar :
"sirf hangama khadaa karna meraa maqsad nahin
meri koshish ye hai, ki ye surat badalani chahiye.
mere seene me.n nahin to tere seene me.n sahi
ho kahin bhi aag, lekin aag jalni chaahiye"
[My purpose is not to simply create a furor
this attempt is to try and change our situation.
And if not in my breast, then let it be in yours -
it doesn't matter where, but the fire must burn]
Let's keep this fire burning.
Never, in recent memory, have I felt this numb, this deflated. As I read, account after account, after abusive account - from women and men and the children we have been - I was engulfed by a frozen sort of exhaustion.
Account after abusive account on Blank Noise led to more windows opening up into my own memory - this happened to me too, at ages six, eight, nine, ten, eighteen, fifteen, twenty-five.... all of this and more. That man, that place...
Writing the last post, I had thought I was making the token gesture - how difficult could it be to speak up, anyway? If I can live it, I can talk about it.
Talk about something that's choking our gender-divisive culture, something that is making monsters of us when it comes to sexual attitudes and liberties.
When the comments started pouring in, I was a little overwhelmed. Then the downpour became a deluge, and now, I am very quiet, very sad.
Because... that these 'strategies' I had written of, in part-horror, part-rage, with a sense of bitter irony, should be taken as 100% serious advice.... could anything be sadder than that?
One part of me wants to un-read it all - all those hundreds of stories here, in the comments and those entries for the blog-a-thon. As if un-reading it, could undo it.
But for all that, I have more to say.
If we're going to build a serious debate around this issue of abuse (please let's give 'eve-teasing' a grand burial right now. This minute. The word has no significance, no relevance, no place in our experience), we need to talk beyond the rage, beyond the sharing, beyond the opinions.
Because if we stop here, then we might as well have never started.
The first thing we have to deal with is the definition and scope of 'harrassment'.
We may recognize that each individual has different needs for personal space and different perceptions of appropriate behaviour, BUT if we're going to take a legal stand, insist upon pan-Indian, or even global standard of behaviour as a norm, we're going to need specifics.
Is staring/ ogling/ checking out/ leching wrong?
I don't think so.
Does it make me uncomfortable?
Yes.
A man leering at you through the evening can ruin your party. But I also recognize that this bothers me more in situations where I know the leer can easily turn into a grope.
Besides, there are many occassions on which I have 'checked out' members of the oposite sex (no pun intended, she says, biting down a smile). I want to continue to have the right to look at men, appreciatively or just to guage the attraction quotient. Men have the same rights, then.
Is whistling, passing comments, singing songs wrong?
No.
Does it annoy me, as a woman?
Sometimes.
But I recognize that the man is not phycially or psychologically damaging me in any way, and so he has a right to whistle, sing or comment.
EXCEPT when the words turn abusive or sexully violent. Verbal violence is punishable by law. Threats are punishable by law, and there is no reason a woman(or man) should have to hear any.
Is touching wrong?
Yes.
When you touch a another person without his/her permission, you run the risk of violating the person. If you touch them in places that are - in normative terms - regarded as sexual areas, therefore off-limits for those who do not have sexual rights over you, this person will be perfectly justified in snarling, snapping, slapping or otherwise reacting violently to your gesture. You could also be punished for it legally, though we - as a society - must come to some sort of agreement about what punitive action is fair, or deterrant enough. (One blogger - I'm confused about who - suggested community service. Picking up trash. Scavenging. I think that's not a bad idea, actually.)
I also believe that we Indians already recognize this, cultural conditioning be damned!
That is why there are many more incidents of feeling up/groping/pinching in crowded places like buses, trains, bazaars, footpaths - where it would be hard to pin blame, where one can pretend it was all an accident. That is also why men will take fewer chances if a woman is accompanied by a man, but will grope and pinch with alacrity if they're in a big group themselves.
Is following/stalking wrong?
Yes.
I have not figured out the precise definitions for this, but legally, at least, there is a precedent for disallowing stalking. (And we really must learn to use the word 'stalking' instead of 'following', which sounds like a benign sort of thing a cute puppy-dog might do, when he isn't nipping at your ankles.)
Is propositioning wrong?
I don't know.
We are swimming in slightly murky waters here. Almost all relationships begin with a proposition of some sort. (This, incidentally, is the same line adopted by every single stranger who has come up to me with a proposition for 'friendship') Almost all of us have accepted some propositions at least partially, tentatively, from some trusted people.
I personally do not blame the stranger who walks up to me, saying he wants to have sex, or offers to 'buy' me. He is only asking me a question. I find it offensive - but I think we, as women, must also learn to question the reasons for our taking offense at such a question. Why are we so insulted if somebody equates us with, or treats us like, a prostitute?
(Speaking for myself, I find it equally offensive when I am asked my religion while entering a temple or a mosque, or filling up a government form. In all honesty, I think the latter is a far more dangerous question).
But when I have said 'no', and this stranger persists in making his offer, it does amount to harrassment. Then, I have the right to tell him to get lost. If he doesn't listen, I have the right to drag him to the law enforcement authority.
Which brings us to the cops.
The police is known to be unsympathetic. I think we should lobby for the police to be especially trained in dealing with instances of harrassment and I also think that the women's cell of the police should be prepared for complaints against their colleagues who fail to treat a victim of sexual harrassment as they should. The battle will be uphill at first, but a few prosecutions should set a precedent. Precedents are good weapons.
And yes, I believe training and counselling does help.
I have been to a police station alone in Delhi - fighting off my own instinctive misgivings - and have found at least one bunch of officials to be polite and non-lecherous, even though they may not have been as quick and efficient as I want them to be. I was later told that some sections of Delhi police have been slowly workshopped into behaving with a modicum of courtesy. If this is true, bless the workshoppers.
Some people have spoken of clothes and the impact they have on harrassment.
From personal experience, I know there is no direct correlation.
The first incident I mentioned, when I was 13, occurred when I was in frilly frocks and still had ribbons in my hair. Almost all later incidents have happened when I have been in shalwaars and full-sleeved kameezes.
Strangely, the rare times when I have stepped out wearing short skirts and tank tops, men have kept a slight distance. I fail to understand this paradox. But I do have a hypothesis -
When I am wearing a short skirt in public, I give out a signal. That I am not meek. I'm not your regular bhartiya naari and that you cannot count on my being a placid, accepting victim.
Many more men stare at bare shoulders, bare legs... many more women stare too. But, in my limited experience, few men dare to touch a woman they're shocked by.
And yet, knowing this, I find myself hesitating. Worrying.
I bring out my short, revealing clothes every week, try them on and put them back in the cupboard. This is not because I will attract potential molesters. This is because I know that IF there is an attempt, I will be held responsible. I will hear 'but look at what she's wearing'.
I do this because my own women-friends come up with quasi-insulting statements like 'you don't like clothes, do you?'. Because I've been told that there's a time and place for every dress; high heels and bare shoulders are only okay if you're at a private party, amongst friends and are getting picked up and dropped off in a private car.
I've been told and I cannot shake off the fear that IF something goes wrong, I will be humiliated even further by allegations that I was 'asking for it'.
THIS fear is what we have to counter.
We begin by watching our own tongues. When we see a girl in a mini-skirt in the train or in the vegetable market, we stop saying 'ohmygod! what's wrong with her?'. We have to stop telling each other 'your bra strap is showing'. (It's only an effing strap! Give me one good reason why it should not show?)
Sure, the change will take time. But the change must come from us. From everybody who believes that a person has the right to not be molested, whatever the circumstances.
Some other men mentioned feeling ashamed. They are angry that all women view them with suspicion, contempt and fear.
All I can say, is - the burnt child dreads the fire.
Or like we say, doodh ka jalaa chhaas ko bhi phook-phoonk ke peeta hai.
Besides, the nice men are in a bit of a minority. I can recount more than ten incidents of harrassment, right now, without having to dig into the darker recesses of memory. Listening to other women, I'd say that ratio is fairly average. If there are ten wrong-doers for every one victim.... you do the math.
Can you imagine the scale of this gender's collective fear? Where is the room for rational behaviour, or trust?
Yes, this too can change.
For every man that tries to grope me, if there are five men stopping him, it will change.
For every small gang that roams the streets looking for somebody to harrass, if there are two small gangs on the lookout to protect, it will change.
For every woman in an oversize t-shirt, walking with a file across her chest, if there are a hundred who refuse to cover up, refuse to de-sex their persona, refuse to slouch, it will change.
For every family that tells a daughter 'don't go out alone at night', if there are fifty families who send their girls out at night, armed with the determination to have fun and the confidence that they're not going to be the only women out alone, it will change.
For every woman who scurries past, head bowed, if there are ten who strut, and smile at nothing and everything, it will change.
When we have men and women talking to each other without being censured for it,
when boys in school are taught to take permission before touching women,
when girls in school are taught that it is okay to give this permission, if they want to,
when both genders can interact without fear of ostracism or moral policing,
it will change.
Until then, I leave you with these lines by Dushyant Kumar :
"sirf hangama khadaa karna meraa maqsad nahin
meri koshish ye hai, ki ye surat badalani chahiye.
mere seene me.n nahin to tere seene me.n sahi
ho kahin bhi aag, lekin aag jalni chaahiye"
[My purpose is not to simply create a furor
this attempt is to try and change our situation.
And if not in my breast, then let it be in yours -
it doesn't matter where, but the fire must burn]
Let's keep this fire burning.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Streets, stories, strategies
I had my doubts about blogging this - writing about street harassment. After all, it's as common-place as paan stains, as ubiquitous as spit.... Will my saying 'NO' to harrassment prevent it? How does telling my stories serve any purpose?
But while discussing the Blank Noise Project with a male friend (who has never maaro-ed seeti, never chhedo-fied, never sung lewd songs, never felt up, pinched, grabbed any part of any woman), he told me: "How do you know? Some teenaged boy somewhere reads this and decides not to molest women... you never know." For men like him, I write this.
Some things, you learn to expect, growing up a girl.
You expect to confront harrassment as surely as the sun in May and the fog in a Delhi December.
When you leave the house, an invisible snake of alert suspicion will wind down from your shoulders down your back and become a clenched fist in all public spaces, through all journeys.
How optimistic you're feeling about man-kind, on any given day, determines whether you take a bus home, or just hop into an auto, or a cab, knowing you cannot really afford it. If you really cannot afford an auto some day, you will not take the bus at rush-hour.
You'll let bus after bus after bus go past. Waiting is tiresome. But waiting is easier than bristling.
You didn't always expect to do this, of course. One learns these things, by and by.
I began learning in Bombay. Yes, that delightfully sprawling city that is so kind to its women.
My first lesson was delivered atop the railway bridge at Andheri station when I was 13 years old. My first visit to this city by the sea. The first brush with the overspilling local trains. The first time someone grabbed my 13-year old breast.
After all these years, I cannot forget - his face pudgy, more fair than dark, moustache, white shirt, briefcase in hand, big belly, must have been about 40. Old enough to be my father. I remember he had walked into me - or pretended to - and while I struggled with the shock of what he'd been doing under the guise of walking into me, he calmly walked away... Just a regular uncle-ji hurrying home after a hard day at work.
What did I do?
Nothing. I kept walking, alongside my brother.... My 17-year old brother who might have picked a fight if I'd told him.... What could I have told him?...
It was too late anyway. The crowds had swallowed all of us so completely.
Some things, you learn to expect (though relief is always unexpected).
Therefore, you will be very pleasantly surprised when a man takes the seat next to you, and actually leaves two inches breathing space between you, instead of pushing so close that the windowpane leaves marks on your forearm.... All the same, old habits die hard, and you will spend the journey with a clenched fist balled up somewhere in your shoulderblades, because, you never know when he'll start acting up, do you?
You will also feel miserable when the well-behaved one gets down two stops before yours - it's too much to expect two well-behaved men sitting next to you on a single trip.
But no matter how much you steel yourself to it, sometimes, you will still get reduced to tears.
Seven years later, again in Bombay, after swearing to travel only in the ladies compartment of the local train, I learnt yet another lesson: some 'ladies' compartments turn into a free-for-all feel-up-jam-session after nine o'clock at night.
Suddenly, there were men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the door. Only to be surrounded by half a dozen men offering to 'get me out safely'. As the train stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got off. Trapped between them for a few seconds, I lost count of how many hands felt me up.
I cried tears of rage - if only that train hadn't moved away. I wanted badly to drag at least one of them off that train and smash his skull on the nearest railway track.
Some things, you get used to. Like rage.
Your ears will be whispered into, your behind will be touched. Songs will be sung...
You will learn to laugh. Humour is a great self-defence tool.
For instance, when a boy calls out 'good morning, madam' on a busy street crossing, I laugh it off.
When a boy follows me from my office everyday, offering to marry me, I laugh it off.
When silly men accost me on the streets and demand to 'make friendship', refusing to take 'no' for an answer, offer me lifts, I laugh it off.
When somebody calls me 'taazaa malaai', 'mirchi', 'badhiya maal', 'chhammak-chhallo', 'lassun-pyaaz' (yes, even that!), I shake my head and laugh it off.
Over the years, I even learnt to focus on the merits of the songs being sung/whistled, thinking about the musical tastes of the modern roadside romeo, instead of the intent behind the singing or whistling.
But when I am walking home at night and a car full of drunk men slows down, I cannot laugh. I can only seek relief in the other car coming down the road. If that car also turns out to be full of drunk men who also slow down near me... it is hard to keep up a sense of humour all the time.
Five years ago, once again in Bombay, I lost my humour and learnt not to NOT do anything. At Andheri station, again, for the first time, I used violence.
A man asked me 'how much?'.
I tried to walk past quickly.
He asked me a second time. 'How much?'
I took a step forward, then stepped backward, swung around, and threw a punch.
He looked very surprised and asked 'what did I do?'
I didn't stay to explain. That night, my fist was swollen. I'd never seriously hit anyone before.
The next time two times I punched men, it was at railway stations in Bombay. In both instances, I didn't hit out immediately. It was only when they persisted a second or third time, despite my obvious disinterest.
The third time was in Kathmandu, outside a movie hall. The man touched me three times before I finally lost it. He began by protesting - 'I didn't do anything' - and ended by saying 'sorry, sister'.
(Bless his poor sister, if he has one; I wouldn't want to be in her shoes.)
Some things, you learn. Some things are shaken and scolded into you. For example:
When walking, don't think. If you get lost in your own internal world, somebody or the other might misinterpret this as an invitation to grab some piece of you.
You stay alert. Not glaring at every passerby suspiciously can be interpreated as an invitation.
When walking, don't take quieter, narrower lanes which are more picturesque and less polluted. Those are pretty much reserved for the goonda-types and 'eve-teasers' of the city.
When walking past a parked car with the engine idling and man/men sitting inside it, step aside and put at least four feet between you and the car's doors ... don't you read the newspapers?
When lost, don't roll down the car windows all the way while asking for directions. Ask women and chowkidaars for directions, preferably.
Try not to park in basement parkings zone, if alone.
When in public - don't sing, don't smile, don't swing your arms, or your hips. It is better to wear a frown on the streets, along with mouth that looks like it can chew your head off, spewing some rather choice invective, if bothered.
Learn filthy abuse; use it.
When something is lost/stolen, don't go to the police station alone.
If propositioned in a dark, lonely spot, do not slap or insult. In a low, pleasant voice, say you're already engaged. If cornered in a really dark, really lonely spot, give him a fake name, fake phone number.
When accosted by a cop, tell him your dad/grandad/uncle is a senior cop.
If there are less than six people in a bus, don't get on. From Churchgate, at night, don't travel in Ladies first class. From Andheri, early in the morning, don't take the Ladies first class.
Don't hitchhike.
Don't sit alone by the sea for more than ten minutes.
Stop thinking about watching the sun rise over a field, all by yourself.
Stop thinking about long, leafy walks that lead nowhere.
Stop wondering how the streets looks at midnight, after a drizzle.
Stop... I don't know where, if, and how, this will stop. But I hope it does.
There is another aspect to this that I can't help thinking about: it creates a never-ending trap of dependence that many men resent equally.
We women depend - are taught to depend, are left with no option but to depend - on men for our safety and survival.
We can go out, but with 'ghar ke ladke' to take care of us. The brother, husband, father, cousin or boys known to the family will escort us - to a movie, to a mall, to a party. At best, you might be able to manage if you're a big group of girls. But how many times can you walk around as girl-gangs?
We learn, consciously and sub-consciously, that we cannot do anything alone. And if we do, we're going to have wage war every inch of the way.
That lesson is etched in so deep that conceiving of 'life' alone is...
No wonder you need men. No wonder you need marriage. No wonder you cling to the man, because how will you manage alone?
But while discussing the Blank Noise Project with a male friend (who has never maaro-ed seeti, never chhedo-fied, never sung lewd songs, never felt up, pinched, grabbed any part of any woman), he told me: "How do you know? Some teenaged boy somewhere reads this and decides not to molest women... you never know." For men like him, I write this.
Some things, you learn to expect, growing up a girl.
You expect to confront harrassment as surely as the sun in May and the fog in a Delhi December.
When you leave the house, an invisible snake of alert suspicion will wind down from your shoulders down your back and become a clenched fist in all public spaces, through all journeys.
How optimistic you're feeling about man-kind, on any given day, determines whether you take a bus home, or just hop into an auto, or a cab, knowing you cannot really afford it. If you really cannot afford an auto some day, you will not take the bus at rush-hour.
You'll let bus after bus after bus go past. Waiting is tiresome. But waiting is easier than bristling.
You didn't always expect to do this, of course. One learns these things, by and by.
I began learning in Bombay. Yes, that delightfully sprawling city that is so kind to its women.
My first lesson was delivered atop the railway bridge at Andheri station when I was 13 years old. My first visit to this city by the sea. The first brush with the overspilling local trains. The first time someone grabbed my 13-year old breast.
After all these years, I cannot forget - his face pudgy, more fair than dark, moustache, white shirt, briefcase in hand, big belly, must have been about 40. Old enough to be my father. I remember he had walked into me - or pretended to - and while I struggled with the shock of what he'd been doing under the guise of walking into me, he calmly walked away... Just a regular uncle-ji hurrying home after a hard day at work.
What did I do?
Nothing. I kept walking, alongside my brother.... My 17-year old brother who might have picked a fight if I'd told him.... What could I have told him?...
It was too late anyway. The crowds had swallowed all of us so completely.
Some things, you learn to expect (though relief is always unexpected).
Therefore, you will be very pleasantly surprised when a man takes the seat next to you, and actually leaves two inches breathing space between you, instead of pushing so close that the windowpane leaves marks on your forearm.... All the same, old habits die hard, and you will spend the journey with a clenched fist balled up somewhere in your shoulderblades, because, you never know when he'll start acting up, do you?
You will also feel miserable when the well-behaved one gets down two stops before yours - it's too much to expect two well-behaved men sitting next to you on a single trip.
But no matter how much you steel yourself to it, sometimes, you will still get reduced to tears.
Seven years later, again in Bombay, after swearing to travel only in the ladies compartment of the local train, I learnt yet another lesson: some 'ladies' compartments turn into a free-for-all feel-up-jam-session after nine o'clock at night.
Suddenly, there were men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the door. Only to be surrounded by half a dozen men offering to 'get me out safely'. As the train stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got off. Trapped between them for a few seconds, I lost count of how many hands felt me up.
I cried tears of rage - if only that train hadn't moved away. I wanted badly to drag at least one of them off that train and smash his skull on the nearest railway track.
Some things, you get used to. Like rage.
Your ears will be whispered into, your behind will be touched. Songs will be sung...
You will learn to laugh. Humour is a great self-defence tool.
For instance, when a boy calls out 'good morning, madam' on a busy street crossing, I laugh it off.
When a boy follows me from my office everyday, offering to marry me, I laugh it off.
When silly men accost me on the streets and demand to 'make friendship', refusing to take 'no' for an answer, offer me lifts, I laugh it off.
When somebody calls me 'taazaa malaai', 'mirchi', 'badhiya maal', 'chhammak-chhallo', 'lassun-pyaaz' (yes, even that!), I shake my head and laugh it off.
Over the years, I even learnt to focus on the merits of the songs being sung/whistled, thinking about the musical tastes of the modern roadside romeo, instead of the intent behind the singing or whistling.
But when I am walking home at night and a car full of drunk men slows down, I cannot laugh. I can only seek relief in the other car coming down the road. If that car also turns out to be full of drunk men who also slow down near me... it is hard to keep up a sense of humour all the time.
Five years ago, once again in Bombay, I lost my humour and learnt not to NOT do anything. At Andheri station, again, for the first time, I used violence.
A man asked me 'how much?'.
I tried to walk past quickly.
He asked me a second time. 'How much?'
I took a step forward, then stepped backward, swung around, and threw a punch.
He looked very surprised and asked 'what did I do?'
I didn't stay to explain. That night, my fist was swollen. I'd never seriously hit anyone before.
The next time two times I punched men, it was at railway stations in Bombay. In both instances, I didn't hit out immediately. It was only when they persisted a second or third time, despite my obvious disinterest.
The third time was in Kathmandu, outside a movie hall. The man touched me three times before I finally lost it. He began by protesting - 'I didn't do anything' - and ended by saying 'sorry, sister'.
(Bless his poor sister, if he has one; I wouldn't want to be in her shoes.)
Some things, you learn. Some things are shaken and scolded into you. For example:
When walking, don't think. If you get lost in your own internal world, somebody or the other might misinterpret this as an invitation to grab some piece of you.
You stay alert. Not glaring at every passerby suspiciously can be interpreated as an invitation.
When walking, don't take quieter, narrower lanes which are more picturesque and less polluted. Those are pretty much reserved for the goonda-types and 'eve-teasers' of the city.
When walking past a parked car with the engine idling and man/men sitting inside it, step aside and put at least four feet between you and the car's doors ... don't you read the newspapers?
When lost, don't roll down the car windows all the way while asking for directions. Ask women and chowkidaars for directions, preferably.
Try not to park in basement parkings zone, if alone.
When in public - don't sing, don't smile, don't swing your arms, or your hips. It is better to wear a frown on the streets, along with mouth that looks like it can chew your head off, spewing some rather choice invective, if bothered.
Learn filthy abuse; use it.
When something is lost/stolen, don't go to the police station alone.
If propositioned in a dark, lonely spot, do not slap or insult. In a low, pleasant voice, say you're already engaged. If cornered in a really dark, really lonely spot, give him a fake name, fake phone number.
When accosted by a cop, tell him your dad/grandad/uncle is a senior cop.
If there are less than six people in a bus, don't get on. From Churchgate, at night, don't travel in Ladies first class. From Andheri, early in the morning, don't take the Ladies first class.
Don't hitchhike.
Don't sit alone by the sea for more than ten minutes.
Stop thinking about watching the sun rise over a field, all by yourself.
Stop thinking about long, leafy walks that lead nowhere.
Stop wondering how the streets looks at midnight, after a drizzle.
Stop... I don't know where, if, and how, this will stop. But I hope it does.
There is another aspect to this that I can't help thinking about: it creates a never-ending trap of dependence that many men resent equally.
We women depend - are taught to depend, are left with no option but to depend - on men for our safety and survival.
We can go out, but with 'ghar ke ladke' to take care of us. The brother, husband, father, cousin or boys known to the family will escort us - to a movie, to a mall, to a party. At best, you might be able to manage if you're a big group of girls. But how many times can you walk around as girl-gangs?
We learn, consciously and sub-consciously, that we cannot do anything alone. And if we do, we're going to have wage war every inch of the way.
That lesson is etched in so deep that conceiving of 'life' alone is...
No wonder you need men. No wonder you need marriage. No wonder you cling to the man, because how will you manage alone?
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