I Ask You….

I’ve a few questions, which manage to surface everyday. Perplexing and general as they are, maybe if you said something comforting, you might be helping me!

1. Why does Delhi seem so much more unfriendly than I remember it to be?
2. What is wrong with men? Why do most of them have to think with their Ps  instead of their brains?
3. How on earth is Mayawati getting away with such blatant atrocity? Is it guilt of the ‘unjust victor’, a la Israel, all over again?
4. Worse, what is wrong with us? How have we managed to crown her CM? And how did she ever engender dreams of being PM?
5. Why does Delhi seem in a constant state of flux?
6. Where do Hindi news channels find all their breaking news? How do they get away with insulting their viewership of such stupidity, parading shit as vitamin supplement?
7. Why is my brain stuck on the loop needle? Why can’t I forget people, places, moments, conversations? Why do they keep rising up all the time?
8. Why is the weather so horrible?
9. Where is the ‘reality’ in reality shows? Do they all ‘really’ want us to believe that their botoxed, sili-con-ed souls (not to mention much else) are worth the torture?
10. Where does the time go?! (literally n figuratively!)

Go Figure!

Online, in line

bits & bytes

Have you ever come across that online portal called Second Life? You get a chance to live a whole different life at minimal payment. It gives you a chance to live your dream, like you never could in the real world. If I had the money to spare for a second life, I’d probably be living on Sunset Boulevard, an established dancer, with 3 beautiful children, two adopted. (NOT psuedo-Angelina Jolie aspirations, may i clarify!) But, reality does not allow it, as all my spare money is destined to go to the apparel industry. sigh!

Anyway, meandering back to the point of this rumination, virtuality is becoming evermore reality by the hour. And a space, identity and existence in this parallel planet ( that, in my imagination, hovers above the real one like a cloud of ghostly mirrors ) has become fused, almost siamese-d, with the more tangible, if mundane, one.

And you don’t really need Second Life for this. Daily accessories like Facebook, Gtalk, Linkedin, Twitter and the entire blogosphere are big parts of mine. As they are of almost everybody i know. A day’s not complete without sharing pictures on FB, thoughts on Twitter, gossip on Gtalk and presses on blogsites.

My most memorable class at ACJ had to do with virtual identities. Our dragon of a New Media prof decides to have a virtual class, just to prove her point. So, we were all to log on to the Yahoo group created specifically for our class. Upon entering, we encountered our first assignment – to discuss how our online life is different from the realtime one and how the new identity makes a difference in our behaviour.

True enough, I felt waaayyy more comfortable putting my points across and asking questions in our online class than I’ve ever been in concrete ones. Maybe it was the anonymity that sitting in front of a laptop afforded, or maybe it was the fluidity of identities that the Web encourages, that made us all so vibrant. The shyness and hesitation evaporates, or maybe just gets hidden behind a veil.

And this goes beyond the class. I catch up with friends more often on FB than over coffee. I am more relaxed when Gchatting with friends than when I am in person. I find, and this is a no-holds barred confession, that I am a cooler person in my alternate online life. And the reason for such public display of private emptions is that I feel I am not alone in this perception.

And while some of us may always find ourselves just a step or two faltering, technologically speaking, building living rooms, personalities and conversations in net cafes instead of Nescafes, can’t be hard ever again, thanks to the Larry Pages and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. The downswing, then, can only be a Wall-E kind of eventuality, where big Macs, obesity and one spaceship company owner rule the world. Horrifying as that may be, we’re going to continue surviving, if only in ‘bits and bytes’,  eh!

A tribute to women’s magazines

in the 1950s..

We all have our little escapes, don’t we? The secret little worlds we build in our heads that become places of refuge when things are wrong, or just not that right. And those worlds get their expression and even engendered from objects and places around us…

The other day, not too long ago, Pree n I were passing a magazine stand. The new Marie Claire was out, and in an unnatural state of excitement, I picked it up. Pree bemusedly watched me through all this from outside the store, since she thought she’d catch up on her smoke, and later said to me: You know, I’ve only ever known one other woman who spends good money on these good for nothing, weirdly expensive magazines. And that one was such a weird ass, got married at the age of 18 and all she could ever talk about was clothes and sob about all the men who’d broken her heart and think that the tests that these mags have defined her. I’d never really have thought you were one of those!”

Now, I don’t know if that was a backhanded compliment or just a plain snide remark against those that read the ugh-so-lame mags, but later it got me thinking. Let alone the fact that I’d loathe to be classified as one of those females, there was something still in what pree had unwittingly (as always) said. Why do a certain class of uber cool women who are given to defining themselves and generally identified as intelligent, sort of denounce women’s or fashion mags as the dust on their prize bookcases, or even as a conspiracy against them?

And then I was reminded of myself circa 2003-04, when I’d look at my aunt’s ‘Grihshobha’ or my mother’s Femina, and go – eeeuuch! Ma, how can you read such rubbish? Don’t you have any self respect? She’d give me a puzzled look and say, what’s self-respect got to do with it? And for some reason, I could never really explain my ‘feminist’ anguish to her.

It was undoubtedly feminist because the associations we’ve come to make with these beautiful, big, glossy pages is another male conspiracy theory of yore that women rebelled against by burning bras: that of keeping the woman involved in her life, and defining this life as an involvement with homes and gardens, children, the husband and a woman’s office and temple all-in-one, the kitchen.

I got a forward from a friend that had a scanned clipping of one such magazine from the 1950s which was a list of directives on how to be the good wife. It included tricks of the trade in the line of ‘never sulk when your husband re-enters the house after a long day of work. Always look fresh, with perfume, lipstick and smile in place because he will be tired from work which he does to bring the bread in.’ and there was worse, believe you me.

In other words, subjugation. Structuring the place of the woman in the family as the dependent and the slavish. Of course this was masked under heavy jargon of feminine strength, dependability and the real driving force. After all, every successful man has a capable wife and all that jazz.

But really, being career-oriented, rebellious and wild wouldn’t necessarily make a woman stop from being slavishly devoted to a man, even a wrong one at that, and reading such mags might not make any woman a given walk-over or brainwashed enough to take the nonsense akin to that of six decades ago and live with it. Hell, we have pre-nups today!

My mother’s reason for reading femina then was that they used to have good recipes. She has a folder full of yumminess, scraps cut out, Xeroxed, even stolen from her sisters. She’s stopped reading the mag since then, simply because she can’t identify with it anymore. And to extend the point, she’s equally, no, maybe way more fond of Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell. And an excellent cook. My grandmother loves to read ‘Sarita’ because it gives her stories, real and fictional, of courage and happiness that she says she never saw in her on life.

I guess we need to get over our prejudice against this gloss, because unlike then, they don’t really come with an undercurrent of compulsion any more. If the arts professor at Wellesley college in ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ is agitated, she has reason in the proximity of those stormy events, and the possibility of a relapse. We urban women of the 21st century, on the other hand, do not really need to have our guard up so much.

Be cautious and own pepper spray, but not act militant against the innocent.

And me, I am a fan of Marie Claire simply because it is one of my escapes from the mundanity of daily life, ugliness of this world and what not. It does have some good features on social cultural positions of women, but mostly, it is the still beauty of places, ideas, being, existence and movement in their sprawling pictures that is my pull-factor. Nothing criminal about wanting to get away, I’m sure.

Rock the vote 2009

vote

It is that time again. When we get our hands dirty in the local running stream. Or on a electronic machine this time round.  For, being part of the world’s largest democracy, it is our fundamental right and duty to choose our governing body.

And unlike ideal definitions, we really only get to pick those who can impress us with their rhetoric, and then it is their deal from there on. or at least, so it would seem to us urban middle class X/Y generation people, which is why an overwhelming majority of us do not even bother with the voting.

We’d rather sit in comfortable campus/cafe type surroundings and talk of how totally gone beyond point of return this country is. and glory in what name the Mittals and Tatas earn for the country in international circles, and say: now THAT’s is how things should be done. And then totally take our hats off to globalisation and privatisation, and say that all this time that the government was in-charge, LOOK at how effortlessly they landed us in the ditches, but THANK GOD for 1991!

And like those ’shiny people on TV telling us that enough is enough’, we also find ourselves slightly more driven this year to take matters into our own hands. not like DJ and Sukhi and Karan, no, we don’t want to shoot politicians and the corporate alliances, even if they’re like mai-baap to us, but yes, getting our hands dirty in the local stream this year seems like a bearable idea.  

And then if, because some corporate brings out an ad to ‘jagao’ us, and actually manages to hit a nerve, we do the right thing, visit their website, learn of all the myths surrounding our electoral process. register for Voter IDs online, but we’re soo afraid of bureaucractic red tape, and take it so much for granted, that it becomes yet another obstacle in our remedial road. sigh! kuch nahi ho sakta is desh ka. KYA KAREIN?

Live specimen of abovementioned helplessness:

Says a colleague, over dinner: “I am so disappointed that i won’t be able to vote because, KYA KAREIN, some screw up at the registering office has left me voter ID less and distraught. I KNOW my vote would count. And i nkow, it reflcts badly on a journalist not going to the polls, but really, kuch nahi ho sakta is desh ka. I even tried Jaago Re website, and they tell me that i’ll have to go to some office for signatures, and we all know how many hours in the sun that’ll take. Who’s going to bother? i really think they should make this easier for all of us, otherwise soo many people like me end up staying away despite really wanting to vote. what’s the use? It is just a terrible thing…”

And yet again, there is hope for this hopeless generation. In my circles, this year, i saw the highest voter turnout. so then, maybe, we’re not yet totally ditched. no?

Re-discovered Patriotism

Michael Wood in Amritsar

I recently laid hands on (or more like, was persuaded into getting hold of, by Shishir, and all thanks to him) this BBC  TV series by Michael Wood called The Story Of India. A six part documentary, shot over 18 months of extensive travelling across India and the extended subcontinent, he traces India’s roots, the circumstances of the birth of its diversity, the richness of a land that has seen civilisations old, new and constant and varied. So far, I’ve reached the point of entry of the East India Co, with the Mughal era just about descending into depravity, aka Chapter 6 in this fantastic story.

Considering the fact that history was not my favourite subject at school, since then, I was still dreaming of being an engineer/CA/big shot corporate honcho at some MNC, it comes as a pleasant surprise that a lot of what the man talks of in his travels still rings a bell in distant dusty cabinets of the mind. And then again, a whole other list of things he talks about are completely new.

Like the fact that king Kanishka’s empire included Afghanistan and a sizeable part of Central Asia.

And that Ayodhya was not a precise location till Chandragupta Vikramaditya II decided to use that myth as a guiding force of governance and good living.

And then some even more astonishing revelations: India has, over the past 2,500 years or so, been under the rule of almost every dominant existing religion in the world today.

That the so-called hatred between Hindus and Muslims isn’t a product of Partition, but has been an ebbing and flowing undercurrent that has existed since Muhammad Ghazni’s invasion, but which came to a significant rest during Akbar’s reign.

What Michael Wood, the historian, does is build up an enormous tale of various warriors, religions, holy men, gods, kings, peoples, philosophies, events and look at how all the many traditions the land has hosted and what they left behind for this soil. Effectively, the point he’s trying to make, it seems to me, is that India’s richest attribute is its multiculturalism. There is such a depth behind what has happened here, when time and space have coincided, over and over again, to generate myths, legends and reality still more fabulous.

What Michael Wood, the presenter has done, is to stand in a busy Mathura street and chat with a party of 9 female pilgrims, sit down to lunch with a Tamil agricultural family, watch Krishna kill Kansa and rid Mathura of it’s evil king in one of our local stage performances, talk to professors, play holi and basically get wholly enamoured and embossed into the colours of the land. And he speaks with such awe, love, amazement, enthusiasm and what not, that you are intoxicated, not only with him and his unending warmth and readiness to embrace, but also by what our own country has to offer us.

After all, we do live in a country where there are maybe 3 million gods ( “Or is it 3,30 million gods?!” he muses many a time), where the monsoons have revealed the treasure trove that this land is to the West, where some of the greatest discoveries and inventions, and religions, it is important to add, have not faced the kind of stigma and trauma that Galileo was forced to undergo, whose GDP was the largest at more than one point of time in AD history and whose people know the art of adjustment and happiness, at least from a macro, Western point of view.

The man is proud of himself for having discovered this beauty. It would be travesty not feel proud of actually being part of it.

…And more in the name of wishing Mr Muthalik’s health in pink!

a small, inspired moment of very naughty inspiration, and here we are today, garnering support from even the BBC. here’s a second opinion piece on the biggest movement of the year…

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Subverse/The_power_of_pink/articleshow/4107798.cms

bloom(er) on!

Lights, (Bombs), Camera, Action!

it'll never end

So, Preetha, Arpita, Sarah and I were standing outside our office building, on our daily one-person smoke ritual. And we’re chit-chatting, the usual twinkie stuff – shoes, clothes, arpita’s bro’s wedding, etc et al. Then two burly looking guys (one of which was cute for sure) came and stood not three feet away, and the non-cute one had a ‘fanny pack’ or something of the sort slung around his waist. Now these fellas were not Indian. They just stood there, smoking, and waiting for i do not know what. First thought that goes blinking in my head: What if they’re terrorists?!

And I’m not paranoid by nature, just a little neurotic. But it must’ve been something in the air that sent that shockwave of a thought through. A moment later, the horror of the thought sunk in: I, like every other tom, dick and harry (or ram, shyam and radheyshyam) in this country, was under the spell of that irrational suspicion that has whole gods and their believers raging bloody wars the whole world around…

My friend Lisa tells me that she’s been taking the bus from ITO to Gurgaon every evening after work since she heard of auto bombs. She also tells me of her three year old niece, who felt really ill when she saw a documentary on the 9/11 WTO extravaganza.

Sarah says her friend Kainaz, now posted as floor manager in Taj Westend, Bangalore, lost a whole bunch of her friends at Taj, Mumbai, staff whom she’d been working and laughing with uptil 3 weeks ago.

A certain public relations lady from Mumbai i was in touch with for a story, has not been in touch about the fate of her efforts. I don’t know for sure, but it seems uncannily coincidental that she’s just contracted insomnia in this day and hour.

A peaceful march down MG Road by NDTV to commemorate the loss of one of the armed forces, replete with candles, solemn expressions and slogans, had one lady encouraging bystanders to come and join. In the background, a certain undesirable element yelled “India Murdabad, Pakistan Zindabad”. Certain gentlemen tried to push him away, but he was quite uproarious, to say the least. Later, when it had all passed, I saw him high-fiving one of his auto-driver buddies, and still later, he was walking around muttering to himself about something that sounded very much like “Saale TV waale…”

A recent India Today edition carried “Inside the Mind of The Bombers” as their cover story. The boys held responsible for the Delhi bombings in July are exclusively interviewed by one of India Today’s ranks. What he finds out, if not sensational fiction of his own mind, is truly horrific. One of them wouldn’t mind bombing a market where his mother is shopping, because that’ll only send her closer to Allah. The other two, although not so convinced, or certainly showing signs of disillusionment, at this stage, still parroted the “Its all jihad, it’s a war for Allah”. They’ll probably hang to their death at the age of 23.

Barkha Dutt feels ”a sense of Deja Vu” through all this, and portfolios get juggled at the centre. Certain Tamil writers/journalists criticise TV channels for their elitist coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks, while ignoring the shoot out at VT station, and concentrating on the Taj, as THAT is the icon of India’s progress and hospitality. The markets quiver, but experts say that this will not have too much of an effect, the global meltdown, and the fact that US is now officially in recession, are still more important determinants. Terror, Riots, Arson clauses get added to life insurance policies. In a perfect parallel world, this would be hugely funny.

And yet, through grieving for friends, relatives, Leopold’s, the end of peace, the heralding of another holocaust, blah blah, we’d thank god for yet another day, yet another meal, just one job, cheaper petrol, simple joys of microcosmic, individual trajectories of life…

Popcorn Channel

Have you seen Tata Tea’s latest ad? The one with that irritating looking guy attempting to wake everybody up, outside a cinema hall, and then the delivery of the killer line, with a killer look of condescension – “Agar aap election ke din, vote nahi kar rahe ho, toh aap so rahe ho“. It’s quite an ad, and it doesn’t take much to figure out that we’re all wincing in our couches simultaneously with the movie going woman, who earlier tried to put him in his place. And it is quite an effort, where Tata Tea and Janagrahaa, the Bangalore based NGO which is committed to increasing citizen participation in local government and whose initiative this is, are concerned. It is credible that Tata’s CSR wing is taking itself seriously and thinking out of the box, and that an institution like Janagraha is getting much-required exposure out of it.

But shame on us – we need a corporate with a strategy and specially formed institutions to remind us that it is our fundamental duty to enlist for our voters’ card, and that it is fundamental duty, as citizens of a democracy to exercise our fundamental right to vote.

And while we’re on the topic of the telly’s offerings of the day, i’m sure you’ve seen, or at least heard, of MTV’s blockbuster of last season – Splitsville.  a house full of ‘twinkies’, all fighting their way to winning the hearts of two losers on previous editions of MTV Roadies. And then, the chance of becoming a VJ, oh the ultimate thing EVER in this universe! A whole nation of urban-homed kids across economic classes might be sitting up and watching this shit, and learning what? How To Be Bitchier Than Thou, How To Be Conniving And Eel-like, How To Land The Man That Everyone Else is Eyeing, How To Excel In Degrees Of Shallowness. Actually, the last one isn’t what they teach, it’s what gets inculcated by the undercurrent running through all that these women, and Ranvijay (OOOH He’s so HOT!), say. To think, most of us would find the shock of such a show being conceptualised, shot and actually aired, without Raj Thackeray and ideological clones swooping down on them, too much to take. And the trivialisation of a whole generation of Indian youth to this level would not go down well. But, surprise surprise!, it has not only been masala-d and digested, it was also quite the talk of the town.

Where are we heading, my lovelies? Janagraha has a lot of work to do, before it will manage to even scratch the crust of these zombies’ souls. and Tata Tea might have to knock on other doors, like ‘lets go green’, to show some positive social responsibility outcomes.

Dawning Realisations

It’s dawn. And I am wide awake. Not because i have suddenly turned into a morning bird, but because i haven’t slept at all. Beside me is also wide-awake Preetha. For some reason, both women are in a deep meditative/contemplative/insomniac/talkative mode this day. You may want to attribute this to watching two admittedly chick flicks, but which are also soul-stirring: 50 First Dates and A Walk to Remember (Come visit Venus sometime!).

Watching Shane West turn into a miracle and Drew Barrymore battle with the reality of her life every single day can have its sobering effect on you (Yes it is possible!). And so, the contemplative mood goes in search of something to roost upon, and ends up with Chapter 420 – ‘Repression in this country!’ Not just in the sense of “O we can’t be open about boyfriends we can’t be open about sexuality we can’t wear revealing clothes like these American kids………..” strain. That got left behind with the ‘Hip Hip Hurray’ (remember the ’super-cool!’ series on Zee that was about a bunch of high school kids in short skirts and even shorter flings)stage passing by after creating mucho-flutter, at least in certain public schools in urban India.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines repression, in terms of Psychology, as: ‘The unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind’. It also means ‘forceful subjugation’, and involves a defence mechanism somwhere down the line. A wee bit of analysis should get us thinking. keeping in mind the ‘colonial hangover’ that we’re all still striving to get over, the secularism that we’re still trying to imbibe, despite having proclaimed it half a century ago, but still fighting like grumpy children over nothings, still invariably finding something to step on and dominate in all respects – children, women, farmers, the less fortunate, the plants, trees and animals – despite also proclaiming the ideal of equality, i’d say it is surprising they don’t adopt repression, in the above stated senses of the word, as another clause of the noble constitution, since it is practiced freely, by all elements of the government and the civil society as well.     

tears for fears

Wouldn’t you agree that it is repression that rules the roost in our much coveted 61 year old nation? repression-oppression-suppression of PDA, ideals, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, sexualities, emotions, euphoria, feelings, women, children, ‘the other’, temperatures, what-you-really-think, desires….it can go on forever. When whole lives revolve around, and are directed by, the mighty ’society’, repression becomes the unnecessary but natural offspring of “what will the neighbours say?!” and “this is not allowed in this country, even if it IS in the West!”

When living by rules, by perceptions and by God are just three examples of the shackles that we entwine ourselves in, when microcosms of envy, jealousy and greed become the governing monsters of our disbelief in each other and when the super-structures that we create in our mind, and unleash on (arguably) empty vessels of unresenting acceptance, it is a repressed organism that breathes through nasal septal perforations.

But then, in a place which calls the cow as its mother, but also feeds on its flesh in dark stinking alleys, it’s not metaphor or allegory that you need to give reality/truth a face. “We have too many religious textbooks here,” says sage Preetha, resting under her tree of knowledge. True. The multiple interpretations of which add still more spice to this saga of pushing the roots of change back underground. Then again, is it fair to blame the sacred pothas to this extent? they written with good intentions, by possibly good men, after all.

Why is it that we follow the Quran, the Geetha, the Bible more than our Constitution? If it is all about governing man to lead a better life, and if the end-product is happiness and all around growth of mankind, what stops us? Not that the costitution is infallible. Hypocrisy comes as a side salad there too. But anything that is unattempted remains impossible. Is it impossible to conceive of an open, liberated, truly secular India?

I don’t know. There is despair. They jail teenagers for ’coochie-cooing’ in parks, they beat up nuns for forcing ‘conversion’, they bomb market areas to make a rebellious statement about Islam, they protest against the Tatas’ project because the capitalists take away their lands, they don’t send their daughters to school but she is going to be someone’s ‘ghar ki lakshmi’ by bringing in all the dowry, they ……………

I guess when we begin to accept that it is ‘we’ and not ‘they’ that make it all happen, even as just a collective wilfulness, that ‘we’ might be able to move beyond it.

it’s another kind of double life – being victims and perpetrators –  that we live. or maybe its just cyclic. like the destructive chakravyuha.

‘beg’ your pardon, world.

here’s a dilemma.

What do you do when you walk down a pavement with an iced eskimo in your hand, and see a woman sitting there, emaciated beyond belief, with her newborn child in her arms, her clothes in rags, her hair a congealed mess framing her dirt streaked face, asking you to help her out by giving her some money? or in other words, begging?

What do you do when you want to be a law abiding citizen but also thoroughly believe that you really need to help out underprivileged beings, and specially such women?

I saw her when i walked past her this afternoon, but the sight didn’t even really hit me until a moment later, when i had already gone 5 steps ahead. Not until i turned around to see my friend preetha asking for tenners, did i notice her baby lying on newspaper in front of her. She looked at us and smiled, pointed to her baby, which i guess is what made preetha give her 10 rupees. The sight of the poor little naked thing, when i did notice him, was disturbing.

But the disturbance lasted precisely 10 minutes. And there would not even have been any ripple in the conscience if the woman hadn’t called out – “ma!”

So who’s at fault here? The woman, for being at odds with her fate? The baby, for coming into a world that isn’t prepared to give it an easy life? Me, for obeying the law, for not listening to the short lived soul-stir? Preetha, for letting her heart rule, and not ‘discouraging the practice of begging’? the government, for not attempting to actually do something more about this situation, which is a terriblee mess of over-population, extreme poverty, lack of opportunities, unless you count the ones thato pen up for people who wish to exploit them? or do we blame it on dear God, who just doesn’t seem to work his magic and wipe out the troubles of the world?!

there have to be loopholes, and big glaring black holes, in this dilemma. it will take a little more dedication to actually see it, even though it might be socking us between the eyes.

what we need is more of a heart, which not only cries, but bleeds when it witnesses the suffering of others. that might drive us selfish souls into pro-action. and there do exist such hearts. like the one that my friend riddhi sharma posseses. she, at least, felt enough to do her bit for a handful of scruffy children in our college, belonging to the contracted labour employed in building construction. if nothing else, basic education, literacy, gives them a better shot at at moving up in life than their parents might have had.

what we need, is more souls like her. or better yet, an institution that attempts to bring such souls together. What we need is to DO something. And take that ‘all heart’ level, one step further.