He came into my life much after the others. I was acquainted with most of the popular English detectives fiction had created. I was familiar with the poet Dalgliesh, the politically correct Wexford and the inimitable Morse who listened to Wagner as soon as he got home after duty. Holmes and Miss Marple were like an old uncle and aunt I had visited numerous times as a child. I revisited them occasionally when nostalgia took a sudden somersault and made me reach out for an old dusty paperback lying forgotten on the bookshelf. I was not too fond of the cocky Belgian Hercule Poirot and empathised with his creator for having gotten fed up of him. But since the eccentric sleuth was always found in English company, I thought of him as British too.
Wallander was an unexpected delight. I chanced on him, a couple of years ago, after I had finished reading the millennium trilogy in one hungry week. Till such time I had delightedly devoured the adventures of the tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander, I didn’t know there were excellent crime fiction writers in Sweden. So when I discovered half a dozen Henning Mankells placed cheek by jowl to half a dozen Peter Jacksons in a bookshop, curiosity made me pick up one of them. That was it. I was hooked.
I had a curious sense of resonance with Inspector Wallander. He could have been a friend I had known in school. He suffered from diabetes, he drank too much and ate too much of junk food. He was overweight and although he wanted to exercise and lose weight, he could never bring himself to do it. He had a troubled relationship with his father, his ex-wife, his daughter and some of his colleagues. The early promise he had displayed as a detective had never been fully realized but he didn’t seem to care much about that. Happy to involve himself fully in whatever crime he was called to investigate.
There was nothing much to like about Wallander. Most of the works featuring him showcased a middle aged man transitioning into the autumn of his life, not very graciously. He wasn’t unduly bitter about that but seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of sadness. Yet there was nothing pitiable about him. His fears of growing old and redundant could very well have been mine. Maybe bringing friends into the picture was the kind of a red herring Wallander had to deal with in every case. Maybe I was afraid of acknowledging his life could very well be mine if I don’t learn to let go. By the time, Mankell wrote the last book in the series, Wallander was pushing 60. The mystery he was asked to solve had to do with a troubled man and the grumpy detective, playing the mirror image was also troubled by his failing memory. It’s only when I came to the end of the book, did I realize that it was the last case of Wallander that I would have the privilege of reading. It made me sad.
But as luck would have it, a friend lent me ‘The Pyramid.’ This one is a collection of short stories of Wallander’s early cases, starting with the first one that helped him turn into the enigmatic detective we met in other works. From the end, I went back to the beginning.
In one of my plays, one of the characters ruminates about life. She says “We live and we die. Everything that happens in between is incidental.” I relived that moment with ‘The Pyramid.’
Thank you Henning Mankell for elevating detective fiction to literary delight!
P.S. Fox Crime is currently airing the television serial on Wallander. If you are not acquainted with him, you can start with viewing them.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Get a life, you Morons
So now it is a woman’s fault if she gets raped or molested. It is all because of how they dress, according to a senior police official in Andhra Pradesh and a senior minister in Karnataka. I have forgotten their names because who bothers to remember the names of semi literate idiots and morons with medieval values.
Some half wit makes these public pronouncements and the press is only eager to lap them up. They always result in these silly debates about whether or not women contribute to their own harassment. When do we change the focus and talk about how sick and perverse men can be? Do we discriminate even when it comes to pettiness? We can throw sweeping generalizations at women but not at men?
A few years ago, a young law student, Priyadarshini Mattoo, was stalked to her house to be raped and murdered by the son of a senior police official. Was it because of the way she dressed? Ruchika Girhotra was all of fourteen when she was molested by another sick police officer who had a daughter as young as the victim. In both the cases, the system led by men did its best to shield the culprits. That they failed owed more to a public outcry than any change of heart in either the criminals or their supporters.
As a man I find these kinds of statements stupid. Because I am always hearing from the women in the family about the harassment they face. If my wife is driving on the roads, some bus or autorickshaw driver would try and bully her. If my niece is walking to her work, she would have that odd day when someone tries to molest her with a look or a touch. It’s not because of how they dress. It is because they are women...plain and simple. Apart from feeling helpless and angry there is little I can do when I hear these stories from them. So I can well imagine how furious women get when they hear such statements by the two faced moral brigade.
Besides what kind of logic is being advocated here? Are we saying men are no better than animals? That they can’t restraint themselves the moment they see an exposed body part of a woman? That they turn into canines who think it is raw meat for the taking? In that case, how do they restrain themselves at home with their mothers and sisters? After all, it is impossible for anyone, man or woman to be fully clad at all times. I wonder sometimes whether Rathore’s daughter was as much a victim of the perverted man as Ruchika was. Does that explain why the wife was so eager to defend the heinous crime? Who knows what other disgusting truth would come tumbling out if we dug further.
They are even trying to bring out a statistical correlation between harassment and inappropriate dressing. We are fine with that. Why don’t you compile the statistics of the women who have reported being raped and what they were wearing when they were abducted or attacked? I am sure they will stop talking about statistics after that.
I am not talking radical feminism here. I am as opposed to the concept of a slut walk as I am towards these demented men. I am traditional enough to not want the women in my family dress in skimpy clothes and go out. But I am also smart enough to see through what is being said and understand the real agenda behind it.
The fact is things are changing drastically in this country. Men are learning that they need women in whatever space they find themselves in. Women are competing with them in their work spaces, making their own decisions, earning their own money and spending it in whatever way they may deem fit. That is threatening. And so they thought of this indecently clad argument to put women in their place.
But it is so laughable and idiotic that even men are not buying it.
Some half wit makes these public pronouncements and the press is only eager to lap them up. They always result in these silly debates about whether or not women contribute to their own harassment. When do we change the focus and talk about how sick and perverse men can be? Do we discriminate even when it comes to pettiness? We can throw sweeping generalizations at women but not at men?
A few years ago, a young law student, Priyadarshini Mattoo, was stalked to her house to be raped and murdered by the son of a senior police official. Was it because of the way she dressed? Ruchika Girhotra was all of fourteen when she was molested by another sick police officer who had a daughter as young as the victim. In both the cases, the system led by men did its best to shield the culprits. That they failed owed more to a public outcry than any change of heart in either the criminals or their supporters.
As a man I find these kinds of statements stupid. Because I am always hearing from the women in the family about the harassment they face. If my wife is driving on the roads, some bus or autorickshaw driver would try and bully her. If my niece is walking to her work, she would have that odd day when someone tries to molest her with a look or a touch. It’s not because of how they dress. It is because they are women...plain and simple. Apart from feeling helpless and angry there is little I can do when I hear these stories from them. So I can well imagine how furious women get when they hear such statements by the two faced moral brigade.
Besides what kind of logic is being advocated here? Are we saying men are no better than animals? That they can’t restraint themselves the moment they see an exposed body part of a woman? That they turn into canines who think it is raw meat for the taking? In that case, how do they restrain themselves at home with their mothers and sisters? After all, it is impossible for anyone, man or woman to be fully clad at all times. I wonder sometimes whether Rathore’s daughter was as much a victim of the perverted man as Ruchika was. Does that explain why the wife was so eager to defend the heinous crime? Who knows what other disgusting truth would come tumbling out if we dug further.
They are even trying to bring out a statistical correlation between harassment and inappropriate dressing. We are fine with that. Why don’t you compile the statistics of the women who have reported being raped and what they were wearing when they were abducted or attacked? I am sure they will stop talking about statistics after that.
I am not talking radical feminism here. I am as opposed to the concept of a slut walk as I am towards these demented men. I am traditional enough to not want the women in my family dress in skimpy clothes and go out. But I am also smart enough to see through what is being said and understand the real agenda behind it.
The fact is things are changing drastically in this country. Men are learning that they need women in whatever space they find themselves in. Women are competing with them in their work spaces, making their own decisions, earning their own money and spending it in whatever way they may deem fit. That is threatening. And so they thought of this indecently clad argument to put women in their place.
But it is so laughable and idiotic that even men are not buying it.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Goodbye 2011
Hindsight is a good thing. It helps you look back and smile at all the golden dust you raised in your journey. And what a whirlwind journey it has been. There is a small bit that I will carry for the rest of my life labelled 2011. I am going to fish that one out every time I am down in the dumps just so that I can feel the sun on my face when everything else appears to be cold and barren.
A lot of good things happened professionally. Books and book deals, theatre, teaching, coaching, Fulbright...it was all there for the taking. But much more than any of these what matters is all those who were present in my life to make 2011 that much more special.
So let me just grab this opportunity to thank all those who helped me mellow into ripe middle age in a year that had more delights and less disappointments.
Thank you students of Valley School, especially the Koels, Bulbuls, Mainas and my favourite Class XII. Vibhu, Malli, Arnav, Shaan, Richa, Poorvi, Ishani,Shruthi,Sree,Shanky, Maitrey, Mallika, Aish, Neel, Sanjana and the rest...thank you for all the support during the trek. Kunal, Kari, Shreem, Nikhil and Ajit- I hope you know the most meaningful thing I have done in all the volunteering last year is spend time with you guys. Thanks to all five of you I knew once again what it was to be 17 and 18.
Thank you Mahesh for mentoring me for all these years and being around whenever I approach you for any help.
Anita, Palash, Kavery, Vijay, Shinie, Abhijit, Jhanavi, Rupa, Minal, Manjul, Reema and Abhishek- Thank you for including me in the identity all of you carry. Because each one of you is a friend, I feel all the more special being a writer.
Nandita and Thomas- Thank you for all your support before and during and after the book launch.
Kausalya and Chapal- Thank you for all the good things you have had to say about my writing. Please keep them coming. Writers are greedy and I am greedier than most.
Rohin, Alka, Nina, Shatadip for your consistent support to the bile I spew on my blog. Your support has been as heartening as it has been baffling.
Thank you Sudha for reminding me creative folks can never get redundant.
Thank you Nirav and Harish for giving me my best interview ever.
Thank you Madhukar, Guru, Abhaya, Nikhil and Rishon for giving me the privilege to coach you...and all the others who have been participants in the creative writing workshop only to teach me a thing or two about writing.
I know. I know. This is so much like one of those ‘acceptance’ speeches with Mother Teresa featuring in them prominently and I didn’t win a thing last year. But rest assured when I do, I will have all of you featuring in that speech too.
Except that one will start with Dhruv and Dipti for sure because the two of you define the reason I exist. Not just for one year. But for all the years to come...
A lot of good things happened professionally. Books and book deals, theatre, teaching, coaching, Fulbright...it was all there for the taking. But much more than any of these what matters is all those who were present in my life to make 2011 that much more special.
So let me just grab this opportunity to thank all those who helped me mellow into ripe middle age in a year that had more delights and less disappointments.
Thank you students of Valley School, especially the Koels, Bulbuls, Mainas and my favourite Class XII. Vibhu, Malli, Arnav, Shaan, Richa, Poorvi, Ishani,Shruthi,Sree,Shanky, Maitrey, Mallika, Aish, Neel, Sanjana and the rest...thank you for all the support during the trek. Kunal, Kari, Shreem, Nikhil and Ajit- I hope you know the most meaningful thing I have done in all the volunteering last year is spend time with you guys. Thanks to all five of you I knew once again what it was to be 17 and 18.
Thank you Mahesh for mentoring me for all these years and being around whenever I approach you for any help.
Anita, Palash, Kavery, Vijay, Shinie, Abhijit, Jhanavi, Rupa, Minal, Manjul, Reema and Abhishek- Thank you for including me in the identity all of you carry. Because each one of you is a friend, I feel all the more special being a writer.
Nandita and Thomas- Thank you for all your support before and during and after the book launch.
Kausalya and Chapal- Thank you for all the good things you have had to say about my writing. Please keep them coming. Writers are greedy and I am greedier than most.
Rohin, Alka, Nina, Shatadip for your consistent support to the bile I spew on my blog. Your support has been as heartening as it has been baffling.
Thank you Sudha for reminding me creative folks can never get redundant.
Thank you Nirav and Harish for giving me my best interview ever.
Thank you Madhukar, Guru, Abhaya, Nikhil and Rishon for giving me the privilege to coach you...and all the others who have been participants in the creative writing workshop only to teach me a thing or two about writing.
I know. I know. This is so much like one of those ‘acceptance’ speeches with Mother Teresa featuring in them prominently and I didn’t win a thing last year. But rest assured when I do, I will have all of you featuring in that speech too.
Except that one will start with Dhruv and Dipti for sure because the two of you define the reason I exist. Not just for one year. But for all the years to come...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Riveting Rockstar
I watch a lot of movies. From the ones I like, I segregate three or four and air my views on them in the same post. I am making an exception in the case of Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar because it is an exceptional film and deserves to be analysed at length. There are multiple strands running through this film, each more delicately nuanced than the other. And for any cinema literate viewer to relish the work, it becomes important to hold on to all of them.
The first and the most obvious among them is that Rockstar is a modern day retelling of the epic love story, ‘Heer Ranjha.’ From the names of its lead protagonists to their family backgrounds, faithful tributes are paid to the original. And that the boy plays the guitar instead of the flute is only fitting in this modern adaptation, given the milieu of the film. There is also a clever subversion by the writer and director here. He knows his female protagonist pining for her lover even after being married to another man may offend the purists, so he evokes the legendary Heer through the name. We are constantly reminded that the woman from the fable who acquired sainthood because of her love for Ranjha was also married and it did nothing to dim her ardour for her lover. If our traditional society can accept her, they jolly well respect her modern day avatar.
The film also vests this love fable with a subtext that the original did not have. Why did the rich and aristocratic Heer lose her heart to a poor and uncouth Ranjha? Ali decides to debunk all that nonsense about spiritual love that is woven into immortal love stories to make them respectable. Instead his female protagonist is driven by an unusual desire, hitherto unexplored in Hindi cinema. She falls for the rustic because he makes her feel dirty. For someone who has grown up in a clean and antiseptic environment, that isn’t an unusual motivation. The need to experience sleaze first hand. The desire to explore the underbelly of existence. And yet his heroine has a strange dignity even when she is giggling and watching ‘Junglee Jawani’ in a stinking theatre or wanting to touch hookers. There is something curiously feminist about her.
As for her Rockstar lover, his ‘rites of passage’ gets beautifully documented in the film. In a particularly poignant scene, he asks his inspiration ‘Meine pehle bhi kiss kiya. Fuck kiya. Lekin ye ehsaas pehle kabhi nahin hua.’ She tells him to stop as it would only spoil things. He sums it up succulently, ‘Ab mushkil hai.’ The tragedy of the lovers in the film doesn’t have to do with societal pressures. They know even as they embark in the perilous journey of love and passion, that they are going to eventually destroy each other and Ali nails that bit brilliantly. Helped in no mean measure by his two lead actors. Both give scintillating performances.
There is something about Ranbir Kapoor, maybe just his genes, that makes him give himself unconditionally to the camera and it repays him back by making him do very little to capture our attention and imagination. In this respect he is like Kajol. The new girl, Nargis Fakhri, has been criticized a lot but she too is a natural. And looks like a million bucks. What more do you want in a Bollywood aspirant who wants to make a career in commercial cinema?
Not content with weaving a compelling love story, Ali decides to chronicle the protest of an artist who starts by reacting to the injustice done to him and soon learns to integrate greater causes into his rage. It’s a pity that the censors have been so eager not to offend China and cut out all the Tibet bits. Otherwise this strand wouldn’t have come across as being puzzling sometimes.
And finally Ali mounts his work against the backdrop of an extended rock concert. The all nighters of the college festivals we all grew up on. The backdrop and the corresponding music evocatively set to tune by A R Rahman, angry and protest driven, only highlights the vision of the film. Besides being a brilliant design, it also explains why the film is getting to be so popular with the youngsters. It has all the makings of a cult classic.
Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Imtiaz Ali have redefined the grammar of Hindi cinema. That Ali has done this while remaining faithful to the song and dance cliché is a tribute to his genius.
I loved the film.
The first and the most obvious among them is that Rockstar is a modern day retelling of the epic love story, ‘Heer Ranjha.’ From the names of its lead protagonists to their family backgrounds, faithful tributes are paid to the original. And that the boy plays the guitar instead of the flute is only fitting in this modern adaptation, given the milieu of the film. There is also a clever subversion by the writer and director here. He knows his female protagonist pining for her lover even after being married to another man may offend the purists, so he evokes the legendary Heer through the name. We are constantly reminded that the woman from the fable who acquired sainthood because of her love for Ranjha was also married and it did nothing to dim her ardour for her lover. If our traditional society can accept her, they jolly well respect her modern day avatar.
The film also vests this love fable with a subtext that the original did not have. Why did the rich and aristocratic Heer lose her heart to a poor and uncouth Ranjha? Ali decides to debunk all that nonsense about spiritual love that is woven into immortal love stories to make them respectable. Instead his female protagonist is driven by an unusual desire, hitherto unexplored in Hindi cinema. She falls for the rustic because he makes her feel dirty. For someone who has grown up in a clean and antiseptic environment, that isn’t an unusual motivation. The need to experience sleaze first hand. The desire to explore the underbelly of existence. And yet his heroine has a strange dignity even when she is giggling and watching ‘Junglee Jawani’ in a stinking theatre or wanting to touch hookers. There is something curiously feminist about her.
As for her Rockstar lover, his ‘rites of passage’ gets beautifully documented in the film. In a particularly poignant scene, he asks his inspiration ‘Meine pehle bhi kiss kiya. Fuck kiya. Lekin ye ehsaas pehle kabhi nahin hua.’ She tells him to stop as it would only spoil things. He sums it up succulently, ‘Ab mushkil hai.’ The tragedy of the lovers in the film doesn’t have to do with societal pressures. They know even as they embark in the perilous journey of love and passion, that they are going to eventually destroy each other and Ali nails that bit brilliantly. Helped in no mean measure by his two lead actors. Both give scintillating performances.
There is something about Ranbir Kapoor, maybe just his genes, that makes him give himself unconditionally to the camera and it repays him back by making him do very little to capture our attention and imagination. In this respect he is like Kajol. The new girl, Nargis Fakhri, has been criticized a lot but she too is a natural. And looks like a million bucks. What more do you want in a Bollywood aspirant who wants to make a career in commercial cinema?
Not content with weaving a compelling love story, Ali decides to chronicle the protest of an artist who starts by reacting to the injustice done to him and soon learns to integrate greater causes into his rage. It’s a pity that the censors have been so eager not to offend China and cut out all the Tibet bits. Otherwise this strand wouldn’t have come across as being puzzling sometimes.
And finally Ali mounts his work against the backdrop of an extended rock concert. The all nighters of the college festivals we all grew up on. The backdrop and the corresponding music evocatively set to tune by A R Rahman, angry and protest driven, only highlights the vision of the film. Besides being a brilliant design, it also explains why the film is getting to be so popular with the youngsters. It has all the makings of a cult classic.
Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Imtiaz Ali have redefined the grammar of Hindi cinema. That Ali has done this while remaining faithful to the song and dance cliché is a tribute to his genius.
I loved the film.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
I Too Hate Eve Teasers and Murderers
I rarely feel the need to defend anything I have put down in writing. But I think my last post has confused some readers. They have read it as a defence of the Mumbai eve teasers and murderers. How and why I have no idea. Because I don’t condone the crime and the criminals in any way in my post. I merely try to explore social and psychological processes that contribute to crimes like these.
I don’t think sexual harassment is a malaise that breeds only in slums and economically deprived neighbourhoods. It is classless. The only difference I observe is while these poor and uneducated goons will stand in street corners and harass women, the affluent aggressor will go a step further to carjack a victim and rape her in his vehicle or shoot a female bartender in the head for not serving him a drink.
I believe if crimes against women have to stop, women will have to rise and take stances when they see other women being harassed or violated be it within their own family or outside. There is no point in talking about feminist texts and how they point out to the inherently manipulative nature of a patriarchal system that forces women to co-opt in anti women processes. Those of us with basic intelligence know that. What next? Surely you don’t expect the same men who are powerful, who are beneficiaries of this rotten system to turn against the same system that gives them privileges to harass, to rape, to molest. In every war, every riot, women become one more of the wages. They are raped, they are turned into sex slaves. All kinds of things are done to them. Obviously men enjoy doing these things. Otherwise why should they have done it from the time wars were waged to more modern ones? Men are beyond hope. Women need to step in and ensure things change.
But as long as women condone men and more importantly women for acting against women, there is no hope. I refuse to join in the frenzy against the Mumbai eve teasers not because I have any sympathy for them. But they are behind bars now and will be there because they aren’t Manu Sharma or the Yadav brothers to ensure the Chief Minister or ‘senior authorities’ get them out from the back door.
In a strange way I do understand these murderers and why they did what they did. They are from backgrounds where their fathers beat their mothers daily. What respect will they have for women? One of the outraged comments to my post was respect for women is not about affordability. It is about how you are raised. That is precisely my point. How are these goons raised? What in their backgrounds can make them respect women? And sister, don’t tell me they should direct their anger and frustrations against their own lot. What do you think happens to girls and women in slums who have these goons as their neighbours?
Many years ago, when we lived in Kolkata, our domestic help used to come with her ten year old daughter to work in our house. We grew fond of the little girl. Three years later, our help told us she is getting her daughter married. My wife and I were outraged. We started giving long lectures to our help about how she shouldn’t spoil her daughter’s life. Every day we used to try and dissuade her. One day she had enough. She turned to us and told us it is all very well for you to talk like this but where I live boys have started hovering around my house. They get my husband drunk. One boy has already told my daughter, he will marry her and take her to Bombay. Do you want my daughter to be sold to a brothel? That was that little girl’s career choice. Either get married to a potentially abusive, much older man or be confined to a life of sexual slavery. We assuaged our conscience by giving her some money for the wedding. This is what these boys learn in their own context. That they can bully women into the kinds of lives they want them to have. It’s not as if these guys are nice to girls in their own neighbourhood and eve tease women from outside. Can’t you see that? Unless they are in a context where they can respect women, they will carry the same hate and aggression with them to the streets.
And yes my anger is far more against a Manu Sharma and Sheila Dixit than these Mumbai eve teasers. Dixit organizes parole for Manu Sharma because she says she was moved by his mother’s plight. Wow! And he comes out, goes to another pub and gets into another scuffle. Thankfully, there were no women around. Otherwise they would be dead too. And the whole issue fizzles out within a day. Dixit should have been made to resign over this issue and women in India should have forced her to do so. But instead we are supposed to understand Dixit’s compulsions. We are expected to buy into Manu Sharma’s mother’s grief. What nonsense is this? Why didn’t we have the same outrage then?
Also, what has happened to the Ruchika Girhotra case? Why is the media so silent on that? Why aren’t they hounding this sick man and his equally depraved wife who was defending her husband for molesting a girl as young as her daughter and driving her to suicide? Why did our feminists let her off so easily? Because of her compulsions? If this hideous couple, especially the wife, deserve our understanding, then surely the mothers of these Mumbai eve teasers and murderers do too.
If you want to get entangled in compulsions, don’t espouse causes. It’s as simple as that.
I don’t think sexual harassment is a malaise that breeds only in slums and economically deprived neighbourhoods. It is classless. The only difference I observe is while these poor and uneducated goons will stand in street corners and harass women, the affluent aggressor will go a step further to carjack a victim and rape her in his vehicle or shoot a female bartender in the head for not serving him a drink.
I believe if crimes against women have to stop, women will have to rise and take stances when they see other women being harassed or violated be it within their own family or outside. There is no point in talking about feminist texts and how they point out to the inherently manipulative nature of a patriarchal system that forces women to co-opt in anti women processes. Those of us with basic intelligence know that. What next? Surely you don’t expect the same men who are powerful, who are beneficiaries of this rotten system to turn against the same system that gives them privileges to harass, to rape, to molest. In every war, every riot, women become one more of the wages. They are raped, they are turned into sex slaves. All kinds of things are done to them. Obviously men enjoy doing these things. Otherwise why should they have done it from the time wars were waged to more modern ones? Men are beyond hope. Women need to step in and ensure things change.
But as long as women condone men and more importantly women for acting against women, there is no hope. I refuse to join in the frenzy against the Mumbai eve teasers not because I have any sympathy for them. But they are behind bars now and will be there because they aren’t Manu Sharma or the Yadav brothers to ensure the Chief Minister or ‘senior authorities’ get them out from the back door.
In a strange way I do understand these murderers and why they did what they did. They are from backgrounds where their fathers beat their mothers daily. What respect will they have for women? One of the outraged comments to my post was respect for women is not about affordability. It is about how you are raised. That is precisely my point. How are these goons raised? What in their backgrounds can make them respect women? And sister, don’t tell me they should direct their anger and frustrations against their own lot. What do you think happens to girls and women in slums who have these goons as their neighbours?
Many years ago, when we lived in Kolkata, our domestic help used to come with her ten year old daughter to work in our house. We grew fond of the little girl. Three years later, our help told us she is getting her daughter married. My wife and I were outraged. We started giving long lectures to our help about how she shouldn’t spoil her daughter’s life. Every day we used to try and dissuade her. One day she had enough. She turned to us and told us it is all very well for you to talk like this but where I live boys have started hovering around my house. They get my husband drunk. One boy has already told my daughter, he will marry her and take her to Bombay. Do you want my daughter to be sold to a brothel? That was that little girl’s career choice. Either get married to a potentially abusive, much older man or be confined to a life of sexual slavery. We assuaged our conscience by giving her some money for the wedding. This is what these boys learn in their own context. That they can bully women into the kinds of lives they want them to have. It’s not as if these guys are nice to girls in their own neighbourhood and eve tease women from outside. Can’t you see that? Unless they are in a context where they can respect women, they will carry the same hate and aggression with them to the streets.
And yes my anger is far more against a Manu Sharma and Sheila Dixit than these Mumbai eve teasers. Dixit organizes parole for Manu Sharma because she says she was moved by his mother’s plight. Wow! And he comes out, goes to another pub and gets into another scuffle. Thankfully, there were no women around. Otherwise they would be dead too. And the whole issue fizzles out within a day. Dixit should have been made to resign over this issue and women in India should have forced her to do so. But instead we are supposed to understand Dixit’s compulsions. We are expected to buy into Manu Sharma’s mother’s grief. What nonsense is this? Why didn’t we have the same outrage then?
Also, what has happened to the Ruchika Girhotra case? Why is the media so silent on that? Why aren’t they hounding this sick man and his equally depraved wife who was defending her husband for molesting a girl as young as her daughter and driving her to suicide? Why did our feminists let her off so easily? Because of her compulsions? If this hideous couple, especially the wife, deserve our understanding, then surely the mothers of these Mumbai eve teasers and murderers do too.
If you want to get entangled in compulsions, don’t espouse causes. It’s as simple as that.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Metro Ride, The Story That Must Not Be Told, Mumbai Eve Teasers and Manmohan Singh
Yesterday I spent the day in the city, running chores, meeting a friend and taking a ride in the Metro for the first time. In all the loafing I was doing, I also read an excellent article by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen on how the India story of the past decade is both a glowing success and a resounding failure when it comes to growth and development . Success because the growth rate we have been seeing is truly spectacular and failure because it has just meant more deprivations for the poor.
On another note, a writer friend Kavery Nambisan wrote a brilliant novel that was published more than a year ago and recently got its due by being shortlisted for the prize in Jaipur literary festival. The book is called ‘The story that must not be told’ and Kavery wrote this book because having worked with the poor and underprivileged as a doctor in rural as well as urban areas, she is convinced that millions of poor Indians are not going to take it for too long. We drive in swanky cars, shop in swankier malls and haggle with our maids and drivers when it comes to giving them a 500 bucks raise. The dam will burst one day and we won’t have a place to hide when they come after us with knives and chains. I agree with her. And that’s the reason why I have not commented on the Mumbai tragedy that the media is playing up as an ‘Eve Teasing’ story.
I am convinced that one is not an open and shut case about harassment of women, however much it may anger feminist friends of mine. And before I get on to explaining my stance, let me make one thing clear. As a man, I try very hard to be in a space where women are truly equal. I am saying I try, because I think it is next to impossible for an Indian man however liberated he may claim to be, to truly endorse gender equality. On an odd day, we will enter the kitchen to cook in order to help the spouse. But the cleaning afterwards is always left to the women. And often women more often than not contribute to this process of inequality.
In my own family, my mother whenever she has stayed with us after I got married has been unable to accept my entering the kitchen to make a cup of coffee for my wife. She would turn sullen about something as basic as that. This despite the fact for most part of my professional life, I have worked from home as a consultant, theatre person and writer and my wife has always had a 9-5 job. I have a sister who’s always held a high pressure career and my mother always encouraged her to be independent. But not just with my wife, but with her other daughters-in-law as well, she has had different standards. I think this story plays out in most Indian middle class families.
I have a friend who walked out on her husband because he was being unfaithful to her. It doesn’t take too much for my friend to launch into tirades against men. She has a brother who got divorced a month after he got married and has never had a partner or spouse after that. The story she gave all her friends including me was that within a month the couple discovered they were incompatible and that led to the break-up of the marriage. We believed her because that’s the friendship code.
You accept your friend and what she says unconditionally. However a few months ago I met the girl through a friend in another city. I got to know from her that her first marriage with my friend’s brother broke up because he was impotent. Not only did he want her to conceal this fact but also expected her to stay with him for the rest of her life as according to him ‘sex is not the most important thing in this world.’ More than her ex husband she was bitter with my friend for conniving with her brother and trying to talk her into not walking out.
When I started doing theatre in Bangalore one of the first friends I made was this tall, well built hulk with a frail beautiful wife, the daughter of a leading politician of Karnataka. I learnt later this guy used to beat his wife. She would take it lying down and from the accounts of those who worked with her in theatre, land up for rehearsals with bruises on her body. Later they got divorced and he got married to someone else. He would beat her up also. You may ask why did the women in his life put up with the violence? His mother had killed herself and he was the person in the family to discover her body. So everyone thought he was seriously messed up and it was ok for him to bash the women in his life. As far as I know he never went behind bars for his crimes.
I have another acquaintance in Bangalore with whom I have shared the same professional space for many years. He belongs to an industrialist family. A mutual friend of ours was invited to his house for a festival feast. She was shocked to find all the women in the family standing and serving the men and their guests as that was the rule in the house. The women in the family aren’t allowed to eat until the men and their guests have finished eating. Now this guy’s wife is educated and comes from a wealthy family herself. There is no reason for her to put up with this nonsense but she does.
I was in a retreat with other writers and this lady was waxing eloquent on how she is a feminist to the core. The whole thing made me angry not because she wants to be a feminist but because two years back she had shared with me a story when a young man from her family, a NRI, had duped an Indian girl into an arranged marriage and told her afterwards he was already in a committed relationship with another girl back in the US. He confessed to the new bride he had married her because he couldn’t withstand pressure from his mother. He wanted out within a month of their marriage and left. A year later he got back again and told this girl ‘Now I am ready to accept you.’ She told him to fuck off and according to the same feminist the girl was being too rigid by not agreeing. After all he was so handsome and well educated.
The point I am trying to make here is when men and women from our own educated and enlightened context are unable to treat women as equals, why expect it from a bunch of uneducated impoverished lot who are nursing a thousand grievances against the affluent. We engage in conspicuous consumption right in front of them when they are unable to afford basic necessities. Much as I admire the two young lads from Bombay who lost their lives, I can’t help feeling after the initial scuffle, they should have left the spot, instead of waiting for another attack to happen.
Instead of four, it may have been 40 who came back with weapons and more than two lives would have been lost. For the dispossessed, women are one more possessions of the haves that they are entitled to and unless we deal with the issue of inequality between genders in our own small worlds, precious little can be done to curb shameful incidents like these.
There’s no point in blaming the cops either. I believe the ratio of policemen to citizens in India is 17: 10000. The population is rising, there are less and less law enforcers on the road and the anger and resentment of the deprived classes is hitting the roof. Add to that the fucked up mind set of us Indians who are quick to point fingers at others but will resist one small change in their own context by not protesting against the injustice they see around them. Indians are mute spectators not only when they are on the roads and witnessing the violation of strangers, they put up with all kinds of nonsense within the four walls of their own homes.
Outside our homes we have this shockingly inept Prime Minister with his lopsided view of growth that has made our nation a smoking cauldron of hate and violence. Much as I hate the BJP, I can’t wait for Singh and his cohorts to be consigned to the dustbins of history after the next elections, for doing this to us.
It’s thanks to them that our streets are more unsafe than they have ever been.
On another note, a writer friend Kavery Nambisan wrote a brilliant novel that was published more than a year ago and recently got its due by being shortlisted for the prize in Jaipur literary festival. The book is called ‘The story that must not be told’ and Kavery wrote this book because having worked with the poor and underprivileged as a doctor in rural as well as urban areas, she is convinced that millions of poor Indians are not going to take it for too long. We drive in swanky cars, shop in swankier malls and haggle with our maids and drivers when it comes to giving them a 500 bucks raise. The dam will burst one day and we won’t have a place to hide when they come after us with knives and chains. I agree with her. And that’s the reason why I have not commented on the Mumbai tragedy that the media is playing up as an ‘Eve Teasing’ story.
I am convinced that one is not an open and shut case about harassment of women, however much it may anger feminist friends of mine. And before I get on to explaining my stance, let me make one thing clear. As a man, I try very hard to be in a space where women are truly equal. I am saying I try, because I think it is next to impossible for an Indian man however liberated he may claim to be, to truly endorse gender equality. On an odd day, we will enter the kitchen to cook in order to help the spouse. But the cleaning afterwards is always left to the women. And often women more often than not contribute to this process of inequality.
In my own family, my mother whenever she has stayed with us after I got married has been unable to accept my entering the kitchen to make a cup of coffee for my wife. She would turn sullen about something as basic as that. This despite the fact for most part of my professional life, I have worked from home as a consultant, theatre person and writer and my wife has always had a 9-5 job. I have a sister who’s always held a high pressure career and my mother always encouraged her to be independent. But not just with my wife, but with her other daughters-in-law as well, she has had different standards. I think this story plays out in most Indian middle class families.
I have a friend who walked out on her husband because he was being unfaithful to her. It doesn’t take too much for my friend to launch into tirades against men. She has a brother who got divorced a month after he got married and has never had a partner or spouse after that. The story she gave all her friends including me was that within a month the couple discovered they were incompatible and that led to the break-up of the marriage. We believed her because that’s the friendship code.
You accept your friend and what she says unconditionally. However a few months ago I met the girl through a friend in another city. I got to know from her that her first marriage with my friend’s brother broke up because he was impotent. Not only did he want her to conceal this fact but also expected her to stay with him for the rest of her life as according to him ‘sex is not the most important thing in this world.’ More than her ex husband she was bitter with my friend for conniving with her brother and trying to talk her into not walking out.
When I started doing theatre in Bangalore one of the first friends I made was this tall, well built hulk with a frail beautiful wife, the daughter of a leading politician of Karnataka. I learnt later this guy used to beat his wife. She would take it lying down and from the accounts of those who worked with her in theatre, land up for rehearsals with bruises on her body. Later they got divorced and he got married to someone else. He would beat her up also. You may ask why did the women in his life put up with the violence? His mother had killed herself and he was the person in the family to discover her body. So everyone thought he was seriously messed up and it was ok for him to bash the women in his life. As far as I know he never went behind bars for his crimes.
I have another acquaintance in Bangalore with whom I have shared the same professional space for many years. He belongs to an industrialist family. A mutual friend of ours was invited to his house for a festival feast. She was shocked to find all the women in the family standing and serving the men and their guests as that was the rule in the house. The women in the family aren’t allowed to eat until the men and their guests have finished eating. Now this guy’s wife is educated and comes from a wealthy family herself. There is no reason for her to put up with this nonsense but she does.
I was in a retreat with other writers and this lady was waxing eloquent on how she is a feminist to the core. The whole thing made me angry not because she wants to be a feminist but because two years back she had shared with me a story when a young man from her family, a NRI, had duped an Indian girl into an arranged marriage and told her afterwards he was already in a committed relationship with another girl back in the US. He confessed to the new bride he had married her because he couldn’t withstand pressure from his mother. He wanted out within a month of their marriage and left. A year later he got back again and told this girl ‘Now I am ready to accept you.’ She told him to fuck off and according to the same feminist the girl was being too rigid by not agreeing. After all he was so handsome and well educated.
The point I am trying to make here is when men and women from our own educated and enlightened context are unable to treat women as equals, why expect it from a bunch of uneducated impoverished lot who are nursing a thousand grievances against the affluent. We engage in conspicuous consumption right in front of them when they are unable to afford basic necessities. Much as I admire the two young lads from Bombay who lost their lives, I can’t help feeling after the initial scuffle, they should have left the spot, instead of waiting for another attack to happen.
Instead of four, it may have been 40 who came back with weapons and more than two lives would have been lost. For the dispossessed, women are one more possessions of the haves that they are entitled to and unless we deal with the issue of inequality between genders in our own small worlds, precious little can be done to curb shameful incidents like these.
There’s no point in blaming the cops either. I believe the ratio of policemen to citizens in India is 17: 10000. The population is rising, there are less and less law enforcers on the road and the anger and resentment of the deprived classes is hitting the roof. Add to that the fucked up mind set of us Indians who are quick to point fingers at others but will resist one small change in their own context by not protesting against the injustice they see around them. Indians are mute spectators not only when they are on the roads and witnessing the violation of strangers, they put up with all kinds of nonsense within the four walls of their own homes.
Outside our homes we have this shockingly inept Prime Minister with his lopsided view of growth that has made our nation a smoking cauldron of hate and violence. Much as I hate the BJP, I can’t wait for Singh and his cohorts to be consigned to the dustbins of history after the next elections, for doing this to us.
It’s thanks to them that our streets are more unsafe than they have ever been.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Diwali
As I am growing older, festivals are not so much about looking forward to something as they are about looking back. Being nostalgic and turning into an uncle who’s always remembering the past. Last month I was invited to inaugurate a Durga Puja. The organizers asked me to speak a few lines. They must have been expecting me to talk about the future. All I did with that mike in my hand was to dwell on the past. I talked about how Durga Puja was the grandest festival in the town of my childhood, Jamshedpur.
Today I went shopping for crackers because my son changed his mind at the last moment and decided he will burst a few. He didn’t want to and he tried very hard to stick to his resolution. But when you are 12 and all your friends in the building are excited about the phatakas, you can’t remain moralistic unless you want to grow up to be Anna Hazare. I am glad he is showing no such sign.
As I was shopping, I suddenly found myself being overwhelmed by nostalgia. The crackers of childhood came back to haunt me. Back then, there was something called ‘taal phataka’, a cracker wrapped in dried palm leaf with a tail. You were meant to burst that one in your hand, holding it away from your face. By the time you were ten years old you had to prove to your peers that your gender was masculine by accomplishing this feat. Of course girls too soon caught on to the ritual and they too would burst it in their hands so it was even worse for someone like me who was mortally scared of fire ever since as a four year old I fell on a chulha with a pot of boiling water and burnt my arm pit.
I could hear echoes of my older brothers’ friends telling them ‘Kya yeh pataka bhi nahin phod sakta. Woh Meena saat saal ki hai aur woh bhi haath mein phodti hai.’ Something that used to freeze me in those years with a mixture of shame and humiliation brought a smile to my lips today. I asked the Kannadiga shop keeper whether he had taal phatakas’ and he looked clueless. I also looked for Krishna Double Sound bombs and they too were missing. Just as well, because I ended up buying the noise less anaars, chakris, phooljadis and those strings that shoot up to the sky and light it up in different colours.
We went down for the fireworks and the rains came. While we were getting back with the bag of crackers in my hand, I remembered my father, now dead for over twenty one years. He would get his bonus before Durga Puga and between buying all five of us, six if you count mother, new clothes for the four days of the Puja and the pocket money he would give us for pandal hopping, he used to be broke by the time Diwali came. Being the youngest and the most pampered, I used to always kick up a fuss about him not buying me enough crackers. He was a patient man and at the last moment he would gather whatever little money he had left and indulge me. Thinking about all that made me sad but that despondence also had a tinge of happiness. I was lucky to have a father like mine.
We should have festivals. They take us back to spaces we think we left behind long ago.
Today I went shopping for crackers because my son changed his mind at the last moment and decided he will burst a few. He didn’t want to and he tried very hard to stick to his resolution. But when you are 12 and all your friends in the building are excited about the phatakas, you can’t remain moralistic unless you want to grow up to be Anna Hazare. I am glad he is showing no such sign.
As I was shopping, I suddenly found myself being overwhelmed by nostalgia. The crackers of childhood came back to haunt me. Back then, there was something called ‘taal phataka’, a cracker wrapped in dried palm leaf with a tail. You were meant to burst that one in your hand, holding it away from your face. By the time you were ten years old you had to prove to your peers that your gender was masculine by accomplishing this feat. Of course girls too soon caught on to the ritual and they too would burst it in their hands so it was even worse for someone like me who was mortally scared of fire ever since as a four year old I fell on a chulha with a pot of boiling water and burnt my arm pit.
I could hear echoes of my older brothers’ friends telling them ‘Kya yeh pataka bhi nahin phod sakta. Woh Meena saat saal ki hai aur woh bhi haath mein phodti hai.’ Something that used to freeze me in those years with a mixture of shame and humiliation brought a smile to my lips today. I asked the Kannadiga shop keeper whether he had taal phatakas’ and he looked clueless. I also looked for Krishna Double Sound bombs and they too were missing. Just as well, because I ended up buying the noise less anaars, chakris, phooljadis and those strings that shoot up to the sky and light it up in different colours.
We went down for the fireworks and the rains came. While we were getting back with the bag of crackers in my hand, I remembered my father, now dead for over twenty one years. He would get his bonus before Durga Puga and between buying all five of us, six if you count mother, new clothes for the four days of the Puja and the pocket money he would give us for pandal hopping, he used to be broke by the time Diwali came. Being the youngest and the most pampered, I used to always kick up a fuss about him not buying me enough crackers. He was a patient man and at the last moment he would gather whatever little money he had left and indulge me. Thinking about all that made me sad but that despondence also had a tinge of happiness. I was lucky to have a father like mine.
We should have festivals. They take us back to spaces we think we left behind long ago.
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