Ice Cream Soda

We had gone to the fair at the Traffic grounds. This fair used to be held every year during Kali Puja for a whole month. That’s where I first got fascinated with guns that shot at balloons; and developed a paranoia for the merry-go-round and those huge ferrous wheels – rather anything that went round and fast. Every year we would go to this fair at least four of five times during that month. The toy train was my favourite and I would refuse to get off even after our round trip was over. I would also buy those rice grains where they said they could write the whole Mahabharat. I would buy one, every year. And I would try to read a few lines of the epic through a magnifying glass. Obviously I could not proceed much and lost interest in it soon. Till it was next year and I would cry hopelessly till I got another one.

So, we had gone to the fair that evening. It was rather late. Baba got delayed with an emergency patient last minute and by the time we entered the fair, the stalls were already closing. I started looking around miserably. There goes the guy with the old lady’s hair, (the pink candyfloss had that peculiar local name); there went the photo shop that could take pictures of you standing in from of the Taj Mahal of next to Rajesh Khanna and the bamboo shutters went down on the lady who sold clay pots and pans for dolls. I liked licking the shiny purple paint off them and stick my tongue out at the mirror pretending to be Ma Kaali. My Baba was as disconcerted as me, since he realized it was really his fault that we were so late.

So we went looking for at least one open stall and after some time we did find one. It sold small chessboards with little black and white pawns. I had never seen a chessboard before and stood awestruck at the little figures of kings and queens and horses and elephants standing in straight lines facing each other ready for battle. Baba decided this was the right time to pacify me, so he declared it was time I learnt some chess. As soon as we bought the box I wanted to go home. I had lost all interest in the fair and wanted to open up the box and lay my soldiers down on the board. I wanted to learn how to make them move around the board and see what happens then. We quickly got home and even before my Baba could wash his hands and have his tea I wanted him to sit with me and start playing with our new chess board. I had my own ideas about how the little pieces should move around the board and very soon Baba realized that I had no intention of learning how to play it right. On his eleventh attempt to teach me a rule, I started howling very loudly. I don’t quite remember why though! But I remember that Ma intervened and the war that had moved from the board to the dining table was somehow impeded.

I was still crying. I remember there was a sense of huge betrayal that was welling up inside me and I reused to speak to anyone. Dinner was laid out. Ma and Baba tried coxing me to eat, but somehow, I cried and cried. Then Baba took out one of his favourite bottles from the fridge and poured all three of us a fizzy white drink. I knew this was a drink he liked a lot and every evening when he came back from his lab, he would pour himself one. I could smell the sweetness and stopped crying to understand what was going to happen now. You see, those days I was not allowed any soft drinks and I always eyed these drinks made for adults greedily at get-togethers. Baba said that since I was going to make my own rules for chess, I must have grown up while he was not looking. And so I could have this drink – Bijoligrill’s Ice Cream Soda, his favourite. I took a sip. The cold sweet drink fizzed right into me. I could smell the ice-cream in it, better than any I had ever had. I had stopped crying completely by then and gulped down the entire glass in a few seconds wanting more. I don’t quite remember how that evening ended but Ma tells me that I had refused to let the glass go and held it till I went off to sleep. From then on, every time Baba Ma and me sat together in the evenings, bottles of ice cream soda would accompany us.

Thirty years have gone by. Bijoligrill has gone out of business in the soft drink sector many years ago. Occasionally I have looked out for this drink “Ice Cream Soda”, but never found it on any shelf. The other day, I was looking for a bottle of orange juice at the local departmental store and quite accidentally found a pale blue bottle that I had not seen before. It read “Ice Cream Soda”. It was some new brand. I picked it up - a bit on impulse and the rest for the sake of nostalgia. Sitting alone at home I poured myself a drink from that blue bottle. Gosh…it tasted just like the ones I used to have thirty years ago. They say things from one’s childhood never smell or taste the same ever, but here it was in a pet bottle - a drink I so associated with the smell of my Baba’s hands when he came straight from the laboratory and opened bottles of ice cream soda for Ma and me. It filled me with a strange emptiness, a feeling that makes you want to touch something that you can remember very clearly but is not there anymore. I wish. I wish we had more time. And I could finally learn how to play chess. With him.

Ayodhya

News flash, flash, flash (madras cut): As per the reports of ASI and the faith and belief of the “Spent My Life Pining Over My Lost Love” Trust, it has been proven that the village of Kanfala in Murshidabad in West Bengal is the birthplace of Devdas. Keeping in mind the sentiments of millions of rejected, dejected and desperate (but cowardly) lovers the High Court has granted permission to the Trust to build a temple at the disputed sight in Kanfala, dedicating it to the iconic Devdas. Since Devdas was a Hindu, the RSS has allowed Valentine’s Day to be celebrated there too. Mr Omkaarhumkaar has told the press that this should be treated as an exception. The 2-1 majority verdict upholds the fundamental right of rejected lovers to drown their misery in high spirits. However, not much attention is being paid to the sole dissenter since she is an atheist single woman considered not having much knowledge of divine and carnal love.

As strange as it may sound, the above is true, or should be, given the Ayodhya verdict that has been received with much pataka bursting fervor in many segments of our society. A few others are calling it the most pragmatic decision and thanking their stars that the aftermath war rather bloodless. There are just so many things wrong with the verdict which is slowly being discussed by the media and some publics, but let’s deal with the bloodless aftermath first. I think it’s only because the verdict is so pro-Hindu. If this was a pro-Muslim verdict then we would have seen cities burn. Surely, I am not crediting the Muslim fanatics to be more sensitive than their Hindu counterparts; however, their numbers are small – or at least smaller than that of Hindus. In any given city, there are lesser Muslim ghettos than Hindu ones for example. The Diaspora of Muslim fanatics will surely rise to this, as they have before. And so, to all my friends who are sleeping tight, beware that this may not just be the end of the aftermath.

Now to begin our enquiry into the verdict. I am at a loss of direction here, not because I have none, but because I can enter it in so many ways. Do I enter this as a liberal, leftist, atheist, feminist, rationalist – well, each could gift me an entire article. So here I will choose to just talk about those issues that irk and exhaust me the most.

History: Historians across the country are seething. To quote one, “This is a verdict of theology, not history”. History says that a Masjid was built 500 years ago, over the ruins of what most probably was temple. History also says that this was most probably built by Babar or his deputy Mir Baqt. Sometime before 1949, an idol put installed in the space that was ‘thought’ to be Ram’s birthplace and the whole Pandora’s box opened. Some crazy people are talking about correcting history. Since Babar destroyed our temple, let us destroy his mosque. Well, for one, historically there is no proof that Babar ‘destroyed the temple’ but of course we did destroy his mosque! Secondly, correcting history this way may well be a dangerous thing and can become extremely convoluted – so are Aryans outsiders and not from this land, and did they write the Vedas, because if they did, then the Vedas must have come from Persia or Iran – and write now Iran is a Muslim country. What would our gurudevs of Hinduism say to that? Correcting history this way would enable one thing only – all of us hang our tails and sit on branches chewing bananas – because that is the one thing we have in common – our ancestors.

ASI and Faith: When ASI was asked to study/ excavate the disputed site, it seemed strange to me. Excavations could prove that a temple might have been there, but how would it prove that it belonged to Ram, a fictional character from an epic! So after all of ASI’s the verdict never even refers to it. Why? Is it because bones were found there which could not have been in a Ram temple or because broken pottery with Muslim motifs engraved in them could suggest that this was a Muslim neighbourhood? So finally our judges latch on to faith and belief of Hindus in claiming this as the birthplace of Ram. I wonder why PC Sarkar could not demand a railway station anywhere he wanted since he could make thousands of people believe they saw a train where there was none. The verdict is populist and political to say the least.

Pragmatism: What does pragmatic really mean/ Does it have to be cowardly too? Does that mean that in reverse any act of courage is foolish? While some people may think this was a pragmatic verdict, I disagree. What if the court said that the dispute cannot be unraveled since neither side can quite satisfactorily prove their claim. Because, that’s what really happened if you see the long list of ‘discoveries’ published in The Hindu. Could they not have then given the site up for a secular facility – park, hospital, bathrooms, whatever? That would have been very foolish? Ok, so what about one third to Hindus, one third to Muslims and one third to the idea of secular. At least let it be known that there are people in this country who have concerns different from whether they are Hindus or Muslims.

I do not want to get into the whole presentation of the verdict to the media on behalf of the lawyers of the Hindu side which was patronizing to say the least, nor how the country came to a standstill that day – but I would like to mention that there is an eerie silence that I feel right now. A silence that is not content, that feels betrayed, moreover, a silence that says “We knew it, how could we have expected anything else”. We need to deal with that silence. Soon.

Peepli (LIVE)

The first review I read on Peepli (Live) compared it with Jane Bhi Do Yaaron. The second, third, fourth and fifth talked about its novelty of concept, skillful artistry, perfect depictions, topicality, and message. An editorial used Peepli (Live) as a metaphor to comment on the much written about urban rural divide. The very media that Peepli (Live) took to the dhobi ghat can’t seem to stop talking about it! So, when I went to see Peepli (Live) I went with trepidation. After two and half hours of it, I have decided not to write yet another review but what I felt sitting there, walking out, driving back home and now sitting at my laptop.

The first thing that struck me about the film is the clothes people wore. I am tired of seeing either Rin-safed kurta dhoti or the Anokhi style bandhi print ghahra choli clad people from our villages on Bollywood screens. The opening shots of Budhiya and Natha wearing what they did made me settle more comfortably in my seat. However, that was the last bit of comfort I felt throughout the film. It is one of the most violent films I have seen from Bollywood in recent times other than Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. The barren terrains of Mukhya Pradesh, the helpless submissions of Budhiya and Natha, the smiling faces of the various power players, the antics of the media, the sharp tongue of Dhaniya and even the colourful mela that sets itself up outside Budhiya’s house speak of a violence that is so powerful that it remains silent throughout the entire length of the film.

The violence seethes, it fumes and never erupts. I felt I was sitting on an ugly, annoyed, powerful giant who has just been woken from his sleep and he does not like it. I waited for him to wake up fully, come out from the underworld, reign havoc - but he never did. And that is the most fearful part of this story. The ferocity is not just in the story but also how the story is told. Anusha Rizvi does not let Shankar Raman’s camera tire even once of staring blankly into the faces; does not once bend or shake or shy away. She tediously follows the terror that enters each frame and refuses to leave. The terror of the silent bystanders who have nothing much to do but become fodder for the media, conscience- striken young bureaucrats who have not yet learnt to play the game and that of Rakesh, the young journalist from Peepli who broke the news in the first place in the hope of a better future.

The audience laughs at lines with abuses quipped by the characters throughout and I laugh with them at the perfect timing of the actors. And I am also thinking how so much has gone wrong so quickly. But then when Natha goes missing and the accident clears any doubts of keeping the story ‘newsy’ for them the TV crews start leaving. And the screen goes quiet, very quiet as the dust settles on Peepli. You don’t even hear the leaves or the wind - just the everyday routine of Dhaniya serving water to Budhiya as they sit outside their now forsaken home wondering if the money will ever come. And I probably begin to understand when Anusha leaves Peepli and the roads fly back to return to the city where I belong – the distance, the gap, the two world of this country so far apart. And I realised that it's not ironic at all that the media is giving this film so much attention. The very phenomenon that the film critiques is the reason for its popularity. There is no bigger Tamasha than other people's misfortunes and helplessness thrown to us LIVE.

Dhaniya stays will me as I drive back. She is the only woman I remember from the film. And I think warily - perhaps the man was right, “There is hope, but not for us.”

Allah Megh De

“There will be no water from 1 pm to 5 pm and from 11 pm to 5 am”, the notice board at our apartment block announced on a hot March afternoon. I had just come back from a trip to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata – boiling, baking and boiling some more – hoping to land into the cooling embrace of dear old Bangalore. To my horror namma Bengaluru was as hot, as stifling and to top that, the water crisis. I have been reading about the shortage of water in newspapers and for some time Margaret, my help at home had been telling me about her body aches from carrying water from a faraway tap to her home every day. She also told me that the crisis would only get worse because people were not being careful. I understood her problems from the distance of my class, concerned and caring but not really spending too much thought since the problem still had not touched me. So the notice was a sort of wake up call.
Anyway, we were storing water in buckets and tubs and reduced our consumption significantly. But on Friday when I reached home at 8.30 pm I realized there was no water in the taps. I called the security at the gate who informed me that there has been an acute shortage and the tankers are coming in but he did not know when the water would be released. I waited till ten and then walked down to the gate to see what was happening.

At the gate I found a group of ten –twelve residents talking to the secretary of our association, an old man in his sixties who was sitting there in the little office room ticking off in a book as the tankers rolled in one by one. He was explaining to the group why this shortage and what the association was doing about it. He seemed to be an old Bangalorian and was explaining how this was the first year, he himself was affected. Most years the drought prone areas are normally the slums and the busties but this year it was different. I was listing to them talking and suddenly the power went off. The people standing around had started chit chatting with each other. A young man asked the older guy next to him for a light and lit up his cigarette. Another gentleman asked me which block I lived in. I explained I lived in R block and my parents in T. He said his parents were also in the same block as me. They were originally from Delhi but last year they shifted to Bangalore so the son could look after them better here. We discussed about our old parents, their needs, their idiosyncracies and laughed. Someone said that his mother had a problem of wanting to wash her hands many time a day and the water not being there was good. She now wanted to use a bottled sanitizer. Our secretary, the old man who was listening to us chat, got a call on his cell and he sounded quite stern on the phone. He was speaking in Kannada which I don’t understand so I asked the gentleman standing next to me to translate. He smiled, he did not understand either. So we did a quick look around to see if anyone standing there understood. Our secretary was smiling realizing our plight as we found one person who translated the phone conversation for us. He was speaking to the guy from the water company who was giving excuses for being late with the extra tankers we needed. Our secretary was trying to be stern with him and told him that he must keep his promise or else we would look for another vendor. Our secretary told us that he was hoping by eleven he would be able to release water. A couple of people looked at their watches, swore under their breath and started leaving for the lifts to their apartments when a young boy arrived with a kettle of coffee and some plastic cups. I recognized him. He worked in the tea shop across the road. He had seen this group of people hanging around her, chatting, sitting around and decide this might be a good time for business. Everyone had a cup and our secretary very magnanimously told us not to pay. He bought us our coffees.

I had my coffee, said good night to the people there and started walking back to my flat when our secretary called out to say, “Leave your taps open so you know when the water comes, but don’t go to sleep leaving them open”. As I was walking back, I was feeling very strangely happy and light hearted. I was thinking, today because of this water crisis, I came down and met twelve people from this community. These are people I have never met before. Well, I have not met my neighbor either actually. And I had a lovely time chatting, drinking coffee, talking about things. This was what middle class community life was in Asansol where I came from. Hwne there was no water, no power, people would saunter to the roads in front of their houses, chat, drink chai, criticize the government, talk about cricket. This was how it used to be. In our modern day living, we needed crisis like this to get a sense of community life. I felt happy that I was in this crisis and this brought us together, here, in a sort of shared common space. While I did not know their names, or what they did for a living or where they came from, I would smile at these faces if I saw them in the corridors or in the lift or in the parking lot. I felt a strange connection to them and to this fifteen year old apartment block that did not have enough water for its residents.

The next morning when Margaret came to help with my domestic work, I asked her about the water situation at her home. She complained as usual and I did too. Driving to office that morning I saw a group of women chatting in front of a tap next to the road carrying multi coloured plastic pots. Unconcerned about the Modis and Tharoors of the world, they were standing around probably discussing the latest Kannada film or what to cook for lunch. I felt a strange sense of calm seeing them bundled together, knowing there are still some things we share in common. Knowing that nature often has a weird way of bringing everyone down to the same point. As our political concerns, social agendas, cultural spaces get further and further away from a large part of the population, there are still some things we can think about together.

As I am writing this, I understand how awful that might sound. How much do I understand about their daily issues, their problems, their lives which are tough and hard? Am I glorifying the water crisis because end of the day I don’t have to stand in line for water? Am I looking at this as a sort of getting rid of my guilt trip for belonging to my class? Am I looking for an excuse? May be I am. But I still have to say this that after many days of fuming and fretting about the IPL trauma, this seems more real, more close at home, a feeling I have been wanting for some time. And all of a sudden I want to listen to a song I had heard years ago,

“Allah megh de pani de chaya de re tui.
Asman hoilo toota toota jomin hoilo phata
Meghraja ghumaiya roichey megh dibo tor keda.”

(Allah give us clouds, give us water, give us shade,
The sky has broken into bits, the earth is cracked,
The kind of clouds is asleep, who will give you clouds?”)

The Cast Away

In this country we are hypocritical about many things. We pray to goddesses and ill treat our women, we donate golden palms to stones in temples and refuse to sign up for charity shows, we reap the fruits of a secular nation and praise Modi for enriching Gujarat’s wealth quotient, we crib constantly about the traffic in our cities and are the first to break the red lights and we learn, preach and feel unduly bloated with a superiority complex talking about how we respect, care for and love our senior citizens and yet ignore them completely in our society.

Last Saturday, I went to buy shoes for my mother who is 65, short sighted and has recently developed an unsteady gait due to age. I looked at five different shops, brands ranging from Bata to Liberty to Woodlands and finally Reebok and Adidas just to amuse her and found exactly four pairs of drab, black, flat heeled shoes. That’s all the choice you’ve got in this consumerist economy, a liberal-market-full-of-options-economy, if you want no stilettos, no high heels, soft, comfortable, good for your back and posture, affordable, steady, decent coloured footwear. The friendly guy at Bata suggests I get my mom to a cobbler since I won’t find what I am looking for, simple, nice looking, good quality shoes for an old slightly unsteady woman.

It struck me suddenly how our thousands-of-products-ready-at-your-doorstep retail has so little to offer the senior citizens. We still shudder at people who look for old age homes for their parents but when it comes to thinking, designing and selling products, we still cater to the young and the restless. It’s not just shoes, its clothes, bags, furniture, books, telecom, magazines, bars, restaurants, financial instruments – what have you. Even spectacle frames are fluorescent or shiny, ‘fashionable’ and glitzy, according to the smiling sales lady, “Young people are preferring this only, times have changed no?”

And why retail only, look at our auditoriums and film theatres? Except for Rangashankara in Bangalore I can’t take my old folks to any place where I am sure they wont have to rush in with the youthfully spirited lot to stumble over unlit stairs to reach their seats. Roads have no pavements where the elderly can walk quietly; jogging tracks are full of young health freaks taking their final dash to lose that extra inch; there are no special queues for them at service counters. Restaurants now come with “child-free” labels; soon they might want the elderly out of their bounds too. There are no special schemes for people my parent’s age from mobile phone companies or internet service providers, nor packages that might interest them from our Direct to Home television brands. And yet everyday I see and hear of schemes for young people, college students, mid career professionals and even children. On the roads we honk twice as much if we happen to get stuck behind a slower elderly man or woman at the wheels, our parking lots have no reservations for them either. We grudge the slightly extra time taken by an elderly person at a public restroom and often get on the hand phone to complain about these ‘oldies’ quite within their earshot. We might call them over to take care of our infants when they are born but pack them away right after their nanny jobs have been done. Even the Union Budget 2010, has washed their hands off after slightly increasing the tax exemption scale for senior citizens. The only guys, who seem to have some products available for the aged or rather the ageing, are wrinkle removing cream companies!

Basically, no matter what we say and how much we propound the philosophy of how much we Indians take care of our elderly we do nothing for them. If not for human decency, I wonder why we are blind to the market potential of the increasing well to do senior citizens. I also wonder what standards we are setting for a space where we will all get to be someday!

To Margaret and Manthara

(Just put up thoughts on facebook)

I heard a few of my friends chatting the other evening. They were sitting in one of those beautiful little green patches still found in East Bengaluru grumbling as usual about their husbands, children, vegetable vendors, jobs that some of them had and finally they came upon their favourite topic – domestic help.

“They don’t get made like they used to earlier, Tina”, Anu lamented, “these maids want to watch the TV all the time.”

“I remember our maid in Durgapur. She stayed with us for 27 years and did not once ask for a salary hike. She worked even when she was ill. She loved us so much. She cried when we left. God bless her soul, she did not even live too long after that,” Nidhi muttered in reminiscence.

“Those were the days. Mom did not have to do a thing for us. Our maid worked so hard at pleasing us. Never wanted leave. Never asked for extra money every time you asked her to do extra work. Never left also, no matter how much you scolded her. We also had a very young girl, who grew up in our house with me and my sister. My mother got her married off as well. Gave her one big gold chain when she left,” Anandi boasted.

“But what now? They want more money every year. They want leave to go for weddings, funerals, birth ceremonies. They want sick leave when they fall ill. They want bonus for Christmas. I have decided its better to do the work myself,” Tina gave the verdict.

Everybody nodded in agreement and left rather satisfied at having given vent to their domestic help related observations and problems.

Got me thinking that evening. I have often heard snatches of such conversation but never had the opportunity to actually eve’s drop into a meeting like this where the entire problem of “today’s maid servant” gets defined and discussed with such vivid examples. This of course is part of the series of discussions on the problems of “today’s ” mother-in-laws, husband, politicians, school teachers and many such morally degraded beings, I confess.

What got me thinking is the way people in general have changed over the years in India. My mom worked with one hospital for 35 years and my parents stayed in one city, with each other for more than 45. Most of my uncles worked with the government and joined and retired in the same offices. All my relatives have been married once and live with their respective spouses unless in some cases death took its toll. I have seen my mother go to the hospital even when she was ill, simply because she had promised patients she would be there and they would come from collieries far away from town. My dad kept sending money to his relatives even after many humiliations and insults just because they were family and they needed help. Most of my parent’s friends believed in hard work, never asked for a raise themselves from their employer and bought or constructed their first owned houses close to their retirement. My boss still believes in ignoring the short cuts to most things and works late hours so that each document we produce from the institution is a perfect piece of communication.

However, when I compare this picture to the picture created by me and my friends today the differences are many. We work for ourselves and not for organizations so we hop jobs every few years and trade our services to the highest bidder. We don’t go to office if we are ill, and if there is a surprise visitor at home, we request for that extra sick leave. We demand salary hikes at every opportunity and threaten to resign if we know we are good. We marry, we separate, we divorce and re-marry as many times as it takes for us to find the ‘right mix’. Our first apartments are bought in our 30s, upgraded in our 40s and sold for a profit in our 50s to go for a villa or a farm house. We change cars, mobile phones, computers and television sets regularly to keep up with the latest gadget guru talks. We change opinions, attentions, positions and attitudes depending on what suits the general scenario. We are the products of the neo capitalist India making the ‘most’ of our ‘opportunities’.

Loyalty, faithfulness, commitment and responsibility have somewhat lost their relevance.

However, we expect quite different things from our domestic help don’t we? We expect them to remain just as they were; untainted, unadulterated, unique antique pieces of a bygone era. They should have remained untouched by the seductions of opportunity, unclaimable by the greed of prosperity. While we call ourselves upwardly mobile and very proudly add that to marketing jargon in describing ourselves, they should remain stagnant where they are, satisfied with what we give them, unquestioning minions to serve our need.

I am glad domestic help today is more aware of their needs and rights. I am glad they try their best to enjoy what life has to offer, because in any case they have gotten a rather rotten deal compared to us. I am glad they don’t work on Sundays and won’t come to work when they are ill. I am glad they have the sense to get their daughters to school and don’t wait for some do-gooder memsaab to marry them off with a gold chain bestowed on them. I am glad that some of them hope to ‘retire’ when they are 60. The only thing I would actually like is for them to organise themselves into a union so they can demand for their rights and not request for what is due.

It really boils down to just one question. When we don’t want to be like our mothers and fathers why should our domestic help be any different?

Women who make a difference

(A talk at the CII Women Leader's Forum, 2009)

Last week a friend’s Facebook status quoted the title of the previous session, “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus”. I wondered what happened to Earth! Weren’t we meant to be from here – both men and women? Well, as you must have guessed, I don’t believe men and women are born different or have intrinsic virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses that belong solely to their biological identities.

However men and women are both born into this world that has preconceived notions about them binding them to their pre-ascribed roles and destinies. The reasons for these ideas and beliefs are historical and are influenced by economics, psychology, politics and sociology and opening that Pandora’s box would keep us here till the next Women’s day! But it suffices to say, that even today, in most circumstances, a woman is born and grows up in an environment conditioned to see her as the second sex. Whether it is family, society, religion or nation, the eyes narrow at her every act of self assertion. And perhaps this rather powerless beginning makes her aware of the marginalized inside her. And thus, a woman develops an affinity for the marginalized in society and tends to understand the position of the powerless more acutely, more instinctively. Being constantly weighed and found wanting compared to men, the woman empathises with the persecuted and understands what it means to be voiceless. Often, her struggles for the oppressed in society are projections of her own struggle in the world, and her attainments therein, an embodiment of her own declaration of freedom and justice. Perhaps that’s why, women tend to make a difference.

In the last 8 years that I have been with the India Foundation for the Arts, I have traveled across the country to meet some really brave women who are making a difference. When Moina, in Birbhum, challenges her partner with her song “You can be the owner of my body but can you claim my mind”, or Rani Begum in Muzaffarpur says “Marriage destroys an artist”, in the film The Other Song about the lives and music of the tawaifs of Benaras, or Charusheela in Nasik, playing Aai in Sunil Shanbag’s production “Cotton 56, Polyster 89” holds together the lives of the men who have been locked out of their jute mills, or Vasudha in Ahmedabad sits with the girls who are victims of the Gujarat carnage helping them express their grief and anger on canvas – all these women are making a difference. They are making a difference with their utterances, with their stances, with their choices, expressions and assertions. There are stories I find everywhere I travel. But the one story I would like to share with you today, I came by long before I started working, while I was still a student.

Rehana bibi lived in a small town in West Bengal. I got to know her because she would be called home sometimes to make biriyani and kababs. She had a typical story - her husband was a house painter who had no fixed job and whatever little he earned would be washed off with his drink in the evening. Rehana got her regular dose of beatings and curses more so for having given birth to three daughters, worked in three or four houses and lived because that was the only way Rehana knew how to live. And that was how I left her in her small town.

I met her years later when I had gone back to sort out some family issues. This time I met a different Rehana. She had come home but not to cook biriyani. She was raising money for her school that she ran at her home. Rehana, the little woman who now looked visibly taller and stronger, laughed as I poured out the questions. Her story was simple, she said. She had had enough of her husband and daughters and their constant complaints and so a few years ago she ran away, she said, with a much younger man who promised her the ‘promised land’. He ditched her a year later when she refused to sleep with his friends for money but not before she was pregnant, a souvenir of his promised land. She came back to her husband because that’s the only place she could come back to only to realize that he had married again, probably sold off one of her daughters and reduced the other two to being slaves of his new wife. He had given her talaaq, he said.

Rehana took back her two daughters, started hunting for the third one, got an abortion, decided to fight it out for alimony in court and began working in a few houses again. The needs of court kacheri led her to night classes, she said, and soon she was not just able to read and write but started teaching her daughters at home. Then she realized she could earn much more if she started a little school for girls and said goodbye to smirking houseladies who had give her cleaning and washing jobs. The school was difficult to start, but she borrowed some money and in two years she had a running school with 14 students, all from her community, girls who had never been to school before. She coaxed the mothers telling them that while she taught them maths and urdu she would also teach them to cook biriyani.

But she realized that the myriad problems of muslim women like her lay in their lack of education, exposure and understanding of the ways of the world. She started training with an NGO to be a counselor. Very soon she was a mix of a family welfare counselor cum human rights activist cum fixer of family problems and the aunt everyone went to, to sort out teenage issues. All this with the court case slugging on and the school running with more students every year. Rehana narrated her story in a rather nonchalant manner while I gaped on, 23, still a student, living off my parents and Rehana not much older than that having lived through many lifetimes already. I was wondering how I should react? What should be my response? Empathy, awe, sympathy, amazement? And then she cleared it all saying, and I am translating here from Bengali, “Didi, good that fellow beat me every night. You have to heat the iron and beat it hard to make steel, no?” How could she understand so simply what we struggled with in the graduation classes of political science and sociology? How could she say it so unassumingly? Rehana is making a difference because she has felt the heat herself and seen her voicelessness projected in the women she goes out to help everyday. She has not found her other daughter nor is the court case over but the women in the mohalla adore her, respect her and love her. As do I. She took the donation and as she was leaving I ask her, So Rehana don’t you wear the burkha anymore?” Rehana shrugged, “Didi, they said it would protect me from harm. Look how far that has got me. So I threw it away.” Rehana is my hero.

The reason I share this story is not just because it inspires me so, but also because sometimes I am filled with a sense of foreboding when I think of the future that lies in front of us, women.

There is a phrase in Bangla “Je jai Lonkai shei hoi Rabon” which loosely translated means “Whoever sits on the throne of Lanka becomes another Ravan”.

I sometimes wonder at the swiftly shifting power balance between men and women today. The economics and politics are changing the social fabric at an accelerating rate and with it the lives of millions of men and women bringing them closer to each other in terms of financial equality, social standing and individual freedom. Will this rapidly closing gap between the power structures of men and women change the essential marginalized nature of women and with it change their perspectives? When the powerless become powerful do they become worse oppressors? One will have to scrutinise the examples of Condoleezza Rice in the Bush administration, India Gandhi during Emergency and the recent travesties of Mayawati. I am reminded of Jane Addams who said “I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done, but then we must also remember that we have not had the chance. “

Could it then be quite this way – that it is not really about men and women but about the masculinity and femininity that is there is each one of us men or women? Masculinity being the aggressive, power loving contoller and femininity being the nurturing cohabiter. This is what has happened over time. Women have found their definition of success and fulfillment in either performing the roles of traditional femininity, where the nurturer has remained at home as the mother and wife, thus living up to its patriarchal roles. Or as she has stepped out of her home she has chucked her femininity deeming it useless in the big bad world and taken on her masculinity to define her role outside of her home as head of organisations and nations. Thereby the modern working woman has adopted the very definitions and manifestations of power which were identified with her oppressors.

Will we not be able to define a future for ourselves outside this paradigm, where femininity and its values will construct for us the roles of leaders and change-makers? Will we, for example, be able to define success as cohabitation and not victory over another, or triumph - a tool for forgiveness and not for revenge or power as a facilitating force and not a dominating one? Will we, who have lived with boundaries all our lives and know how loathsome they are, be able to erase political borders drawn by the opportunists and connect nations and people who actually belong together? Sounds, I know, a bit like John Lennon, but I am not the only one dreaming here. I have the aspirations of millions of my sisters with me and I believe if Rehana could do it, so can we. And if we can, then I think women will continue to make a difference.

Wither Chanakya?

(Published in the 1st Anniversary Issue of FHM in India, 2009)

In a country that has produced political geniuses like Chanakya and Gandhi there remains much to be desired today from the Indian ‘Man in Politics’. While you find them in all sizes and shapes and shades of colour (even the reds come in shades from the very pale pink to the darkest blood red, competing with the latest Asian paints shade card!) the characteristics they portray are sometimes hilarious and often shameful. However, whether these peculiarities are intrinsic to their Indian-ness, their manhood or a requirement of being in politics is a debate that could raise storms in many cocktail glasses.

One of the first things I had noticed about young men involved with politics in colleges in Kolkata (where almost everyone is college ‘does politics’ one way or the other) was the ‘female consort syndrome’. Every man who held some political view, or was part of some student political body, or held some post in the college union expected every woman in the college to a) agree with their point of view b) worship them and finally c) join the group they professed they belonged to. Some tribes calculate the man’s worth counting the number of cows they have and here a man’s worth was calculated by the number of women he could initiate into his political group. It used to get extremely funny since there would often be shows of rather distressing competitiveness among men in college politics over the ownership of the new women who joined the college and many union rooms are silent witnesses to these skirmishes. I guess this streak in men continue and grow as they graduate from college politics to state, regional and national ones. And by then their being in positions of control wields a certain power over the worlds they inhabit which I guess a lot of women find attractive. (Power in any form, be in academic, financial, religious or political has always been what youngsters these days would loosely call ‘chick-magnet’ic!)

Having grown up in an environment of immense political consciousness in Bengal fed regularly with radical left ideas (Naxalbari and its aftermath was still raw in every Bengali home and literary page) one was rather disillusioned seeing the men in politics so far away from anything remotely recognizable as ideology. The man of politics is a man-opportunistic. He interchanges words like ‘strategy’ and ‘tactic’ often enough in his oratory brilliance to make the most of the options he has. He uses, abuses and then refuses to accept blame for anything.

Like the mythical Cerberus, a man in politics has many faces which he uses to deceive and manipulate the media and his constituency. An entire lifetime goes by without really knowing what the man is actually about. He probably never uses a mirror. Like a chameleon he morphs into the colour of the background that suits him. And like a chameleon it is often difficult to pin him down. He changes his stances so often and so promptly that it becomes a riddle whether he shifts his principles for his party or the party for his principles. As the political merry go round heightens post every election with auctions placed for the highest bidder, the media screams hoarse about making pre-election tie ups mandatory and the voters sigh at the inevitable.

A man in politics is also an acclaimed performer. He beats Bollywood actors hands down on his pretences of empathy, sympathy and compassion for his electorate. No wonder sons of politicians choose filmdom as their natural habitat. He uses everything in the book and some cleverly innovated ones to make sure we are entertained, or at least engaged in the black humour drama he unfolds. Like a showbiz star a man in politics in India seizes to be a man and assumes supermanhood. He is exempt from scrutiny, criticism, judgement and punishment. He is also exempt from standing in queues at any counters be it airport or the nearest shop, traffic lights when they turn red on our roads and income tax raids. His priviledges include first rows in auditoriums which he does not pay for, arriving late for his speeches and making the audience wait, making obnoxious remarks which he is never sorry for and generally giving the nation a long haul course in the merits of patience. A man in politics will certainly win the Golden Raspberry Award if introduced in India with a ‘professions’ category.

During the last elections there was a huge hue and cry about citizens wanting ‘real change’ in our political systems and processes. Independents stood and lost, English language national dailies ran campaigns to find the ‘leader’ among the masses, tea companies encouraged us to wake up and technology reigned across polling booths and central controls. Politics saw the arrival of the metro-sexual man adequately dimpled, gel haired and designer kurta-ed spewing profusely the goodness of wholesome Indian values. Princes spent nights at huts of the landless as Rolex watches dazzled against kulhars of chai sipped at roadside dhabas. Everybody kept their promises significantly vague and ‘youngistan’ sounded utterly devoted, proclaiming (as if they had discovered the words), “India needs change”. Media assumed that true democracy had arrived or at least, they said, is about to, right down the upcoming turn on the road. It’s been a while now. The new wine has settled itself in old bottles and nothing really has changed. A liquor brand got it right, Men will be men.

If the reader by now is thinking I have something against men in politics, well I certainly do. Not very different from what would show up in google as the top reasons why women find men unworthy. Breaking promises, not cleaning up after them and not asking for directions when they are obviously on the wrong track. However, mind you, this is all about ‘the man in politics’ and not about ‘the political man’ who I believe India produces by the hundreds. I admire the men who are writers, artists, film makers, not for profit professionals and activists who are influencing with their politics, the combined consciousness of this nation. With their utterances, positions, stances and actions they are making a difference. One has witnessed many a Gandhi in their midst. And probably many a Chanakya too! How I wish one could interchange their places with the career politicians. How I wish the editor asked me to write about them instead.

Love Charm

“‘‘Ek shahenshah ne banakar haseen Taj Mahal / Udaya hai hum garibon ka mazak’’, Sahir Ludhianvi lamented many years ago. I had always suspicions (and a bit of smug condescendence, to be honest) about an emperor’s post mortem ‘love’ for his wife who died creating progenies for him year after year, immortalized in marble bought with funds raised from poor taxpayer’s built by craftsmen whose names have been forgotten as soon as their work got done. However, our national euphoria over the Taj Mahal with frequent mentions in love poems, love notes, love songs and very recently, love sms’s refused to let me give up on it altogether. Only last night, a rather inspiring story finally cured me of India’s national ‘love’ monument completely.

This is about a man who lived with his wife in a little village over the hills in Jharkhand. One day his wife fell very ill and the nearest doctor or hospital miles away over the hill. It would take him a few days to cross the hill and so, though he tried, he lost his wife due to delay in medical care. He was sad at her leaving him, a wife he loved and cared for, so he decided to do something to remember her by. He picked up his hammer and axe and went to the base of the hill that separated his village from the local medical centre and started to carve out what seemed like the beginnings of a crude pathway. He was an old man but everyday he woke up religiously and went to the hill and worked with his simple tools to make this path. Soon people got to know and they first enquired about the truth of the story and when they found out about it they laughed at him. At his stubbornness, and his simplicity, at what he probably said was love for his wife. He said he did not want another man to lose his wife due to lack of medical attention and they laughed even louder at his dream project. Build a road through this hill? Didn’t he know what machines it required to do that/ how much money, government people, permissions, contractors, labourers? Soon this became the joke of the village but the man continued unflinchingly with his hammer and axe, everyday, picking his way through the woods, reach the hill and bludgeon away at the rocks.

That started 22 years ago. Today he has finished. There is a road now, 6 ft wide, 300 feet long through that hill connecting more than 60 villages to the medical centre on the other side of the hill.

Shahjehan – go take a break – I have found what I will swear by if I ever swear my love to someone.

Musings...

(Published in the Alumni magazine for the Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad in 2008)

‘First’s are always complex experiences – first day in school, first love, first loss, first fight, first interview, first job – there are conflicting emotions of deep anxiety and delirious exhilaration, of romantic adventure and a sense of foreboding, of immense hope and equal amounts of doubt. ‘First of the MICANs’ experienced no less. It wasn’t just the fact that most of us had left home for the first time, were in a post graduate course for the first time, had to live in a hostel for the first time - we were also in an institute that had just started up – with no past glory to speak of, no lineage to fall back upon, no old boys network that would get us the jobs, just a determination to make a difference in an industry full of MBA grads. With so many firsts to deal with all at one go, the forty-two chosen ones just decided that ‘what will be will be’.

Looking back at the past eleven years one would have to agree, we haven’t done that badly at all J There are thousands of MICANs doing brilliantly well in life and work across the world, the institute is hugely prosperous with the best of faculty and facilities, there are international collaborations in place to expose students to the global paradigm and lucrative jobs at the end of their tenure here – not so bad when I think of the meeting we had just before the campus recruitment for the first batch. It was held on the staircase outside the oldest hostel block – some twenty of us, depressed and angry with ourselves for having chosen MICA – the experiment, instead of a few other more conventional options we had. The only agenda for discussion seemed to be - what if no company came to claim our souls for a package they would offer, what if no one thought we were good enough. While some tried livening our moods saying Mudra would surely come the others sneered at their naivety. It seems funny today, when MICANs face an embarrassment of riches when they choose the companies they want to work for at the end of their term.

I stepped back into the campus again after almost nine years and this time to organize an arts based course for MICANs. Walking through the campus at night I met some familiar ghosts who came out of the shadows – fights unresolved, loves lost, promises made and some undone, presentations prepared on chart-papers with rough brushes and paint, and festivals celebrated in rather high spirits. Two years and millions of moments. Only one thought haunted me – ‘I wish I could share this with the rest of my batch’. A sudden yearning to know who is where, who is doing what, what have their lives become, an almost unbearable desire to connect with a bunch of people who shared a certain very important phase of life. They say it’s a sign of reaching middle age and I humbly accept J

I am delighted to use this opportunity to announce a nostalgic project some of us have just undertaken – we want to meet again this year sometime – yes, the whole batch after eleven years and hopefully at MICA. It will be beautiful if we can, and probably heart wrenching too with all the hair loss and extra weight. But somewhere I feel it would be wonderful to continue a conversation we began here many years ago. Something inside us will always connect in a rather MICAN way.