[ This is Essay No. 38 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

All this hustle and bustle

by Usha

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As a nation we seem to have great tolerance for noise. It is silence that makes us uneasy. 25 years ago our neighbourhood was considered a suburban area and there were few houses and fewer vehicles. We saw a bus an hour. People who visited us from the heart of the city always commented on how quiet it was and they also said that it was a bit scary. Those were also the time when we could distinctly hear the rain fall, bird-cries and the rustle of leaves in the wind but they wanted man-made noises to feel comfortable.

We seem to need a minimum level of noise to feel secure. And if we want to celebrate, the noise levels go up. Any community celebration is flagged off with the arrival of the loud speaker and sound systems. Days before the festival the music begins to blare starting from the early hours of dawn well into midnight. It is the same with marriages too. The joy and celebration seem to be calibrated by the decibel levels at the occasion. As a nation we literally scream with joy.

We are so immune to noise levels that we don’t think it is rude to blare horns while driving or play loud music with the windows rolled down. I wonder if such people even consider it a public service – sharing their great music with fellow travelers on the road. I see people playing the radio on their mobile phones in trains and buses and even in parks while walking and no, they think it is too selfish to use the ear phones. In India we like to share everything – including our phone conversations – we shout into our phones in public places. Even hospitals are noisy here.

A French national on a visit to India developed some allergy and had to be hospitalised. She had to share the room with another lady who seemed in her sixties. I went to visit this girl during the visiting hours and was shocked at the level of activity in the room. The other lady had 3 visitors all of whom seemed to be speaking at the same time. The television was tuned to a serial and one of the visitors was updating the patient on the previous episode which she had missed. The French girl was in tears – she hadn’t been able to sleep at all which had made her allergy worse. So I went to the nurse’s station to request for a private room and the noise at the nurse’s station was unbelievable too.

And this was in one of the expensive private hospitals. One can imagine the state in government hospitals.

Personally I am not a great fan of crowds and high decibel levels and seek out places which are relatively quiet. Since we live in a big city out of economic necessity our choices are limited but then until a few years ago, it was always possible to find some noise-free hours - a few hours before dawn when there would be no vehicular traffic and people would still be in bed. Vehicular traffic would have thinned gradually around midnight and it would be some hours before the first travelers would hit the road. A five hour window to cleanse the system of the effects of the previous day’s noise-pollution and get it ready for another day’s assault. It was the only hours when light sleepers could hope to sleep without being rudely shaken awake by a horn of an auto or the loudspeaker from the temple nearby. A time when students could study undisturbed. A time when one could choose to quietly sit at the window and hear the wind on the trees or the birds announcing the arrival of dawn.

Of late I notice that this window is narrowing more and more and there is hardly an hour even in the night when the streets are noise-free. It doesn’t help that we live in an area that is a hub for call centers and IT companies. Round the clock vehicles ply ferrying employees in and out of call centers. And this is also the time trucks are allowed to pass through the city roads. With the shifting of the airport so far away, people with early flights start using the roads in the early hours. And these drivers have no hesitation about using the horns at any time of the night and an Indian driver has got to do what he’s got to do – honk.! Too bad if you can’t sleep. We are like this only.

I complained about the increase in noise levels in the city in recent years and my friend smiled and shrugged it off: “problem with all cities. Haven’t you heard the term ‘the hustle and bustle’ of city life?’ I have been in some of the large cities in other countries but their ‘hustle and bustle’ didn’t seem characterized by so much noise as here. It is just that our normal noise levels are so much higher than necessary that we seem to adapt easily to further increases in noise levels without complaining.

But there is a price to pay in terms of higher stress levels, increased blood pressure and loss of hearing. According to Wikipedia:

‘Noise health effects are both health and behavioural in nature. The unwanted sound is called noise. This unwanted sound can damage physiological and psychological health. Noise pollution can cause annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and other harmful effects.Furthermore, stress and hypertension are the leading causes to health problems, whereas tinnitus can lead to forgetfulness, severe depression and at times panic attacks.’

‘Chronic exposure to noise may cause noise-induced hearing loss. Older males exposed to significant occupational noise demonstrate significantly reduced hearing sensitivity than their non-exposed peers, though differences in hearing sensitivity decrease with time and the two groups are indistinguishable by age 79. A comparison of Maaban tribesmen who were insignificantly exposed to transportation or industrial noise, to a typical U.S. population showed that chronic exposure to moderately high levels of environmental noise contributes to hearing loss.’

‘High noise levels can contribute to cardiovascular effects and exposure to moderately high levels during a single eight hour period causes a statistical rise in blood pressure of five to ten points and an increase in stress and vasoconstriction leading to the increased blood pressure noted above as well as to increased incidence of coronary artery disease.’

WHO studies conclude that exposure for more than 8 hours to sound levels in excess of 85 dB is potentially hazardous to health. In most of the big cities in India the decibel levels are close to 90 and increasing. This is harmful not only for our hearing but the nervous and cardio-vascular systems too. Though we seem not to notice this, the effects are visible in the level of aggression, road rage , increased levels of stress and heart problems.

Apparently there are laws in this country too about the maximum levels of noise on the roads and use of loudspeakers. The trouble is that we have got so used to these noise levels that no one complains. All of us shout, all of us honk. It seems to have become a part of our cultural identity. Noisy Indians! My cousin tells me that this is how desis are viewed by the Americans – that we are too noisy. We are quite used to blaming ‘others’ for all our problems. Here is one issue where we can make a beginning by taking corrective steps – speak softly, have softer ringtones for our cellular phones or set them to vibration mode in public places, avoid using the horn more than necessary, reduce the volume of the television and radio even if it is inside our own houses, teach children not to scream. Have you noticed that when we lower our volume the others reduce theirs too?

I think it is also a good idea to teach ourselves and our children to appreciate the beauty and value of silence and quietness. Like the Bahai temple in New Delhi. You feel purified after a few minutes of silence inside the prayer hall. The pity is that most cities do not have areas still untouched by noise pollution. Perhaps the Himalayas? Like our ancestors, should we seek peace and silence in the Himalayas? But I would certainly not be surprised if we go all the way seeking silence and the first thing we hear is the loud ringtone of a few cellular phones! Haven’t you heard the threat:‘Wherever you go, our network follows.”

Let us stop turning a deaf ear ( pun intended) to all this unwanted noise that is adding stress to our lives. Or else we may one day end up being a nation of people with hearing defects.

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Usha blogs at Agelessbonding.

The Assam Agitation: A Subjective History

by Nitoo Das

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But then, I believe, all histories are subjective.

I was seven when the Assam Agitation started in 1979. I was ‘promoted’ to the next class without a final examination. I do not remember whether that made me happy or sad. Things at home seemed different. I would get very worried if I had to ask my parents for even the tiniest of new things. I managed with one pencil for weeks and when it eroded into a stump and became impossible to write with, I attached the dry, hollow body of an old pen to make it longer. I knew my parents had not received their salaries and they were struggling hard not to show the wrinkles in their small world.

My father’s youngest sister and a cousin who stayed with us joined the Agitation. Both were young and full of anger. They were constantly at meetings, mobilising people, picketing and sitting on dharnas and going for long, protest marches all over the city. I began to find it exciting. I did not know what they were fighting for. I only knew that Bangladeshi was a dirty word. Miyan was a dirty word.

I went with my aunt to early morning classes where we were taught to use lathis as weapons. I became quite adept at moving lathis in circular motions around my shoulders. As the youngest in the group, I received a lot of affection from my aunt’s friends. Most of them were students at Gauhati University and belonged to the AASU–the All Assam Students’ Union. Many had already dropped out of university. They created catchy slogans and painted posters after the lathi drill. We also sang songs. I think my father objected to my aunt taking me with her to such places and the 4 a.m. trips stopped as abruptly as they had started. I was heartbroken, but school soon reopened and I forgot about the intoxication of holding a lathi in my child-hands.

My aunt, whom I called Na-pehi, and my cousin, Anjan-da, became more and more embroiled in the movement. Whenever talk of unscheduled checking of houses took place, they frantically went around burning incriminating documents in the backyard. The flowers would be covered with bits of burnt-black paper for days afterward. Once, we ‘saved’ a young man who was running away from the CRPF by hiding him at our home. I was not allowed to see him. While escaping through the dry sandbanks of the Brahmaputra, Na-pehi was photographed by some intrepid photographer and her picture appeared on the front page of The Assam Tribune. I remember feeling proud.

The nightmares started quite early, though. The blackouts, the continuous fear of searches, the relentless patrolling by the CRPF, the lathi-charges, the protest marches, tales of torture inside jails, all this took a toll on me. My sleeping hours were peopled by demons, screams in the dark, cries of wolves from across the city, swollen corpses pulled from the river.

One night, I participated in a long, silent march. All of us were given torches to carry. I have no idea why I was taken, but I remember being with my father. I walked fearfully with my torch in my hands, uneasy about the lighted drops of kerosene falling from it. The silence, the faces radiant with sweat and reflected fire, the terror with which I walked–these are images that remain with me, memories intense with the scars of witnessing something beyond my grasp.

I did not know what was right and what was wrong. I did not understand the idea of a ‘pure’ Assam. I did not know why the Bangladeshi immigrants were targeted. I only saw them as fishermen selling fish by the river, sometimes as rickshaw-pullers. They were poor–people who could not speak ‘proper’ Assamese. Most of them were also Muslim. The fact that I was a child could easily be used to throttle guilt. I have used it, still use it.

When Nellie happened in February 1983, I was three months away from turning eleven. When news started trickling in to the city, the hush at home, in the streets was palpable. The silence throbbed with something unspeakable. I overheard a neighbour whisper, “They are cutting off the breasts of Bangladeshi women.” Even now, I wish I had never heard it. Besieged as I was by the panic caused by a body I could no longer recognise as mine, this statement reverberated within me. It has lived with me and grown with me through 1984, 1992, 2002. It stays with me like a canker that refuses to heal.

The Agitation, which had mostly remained peaceful through the years, had to come face to face with this aberration. Or was it an aberration? What if this was the natural outcome of a movement founded on intolerance? I think both Na-pehi and Anjan-da had to deal with this. Even if they did not, I would forever have to deal with it on their behalf.

Those mornings when I walked to Jurpukhuri Paar with a lathi in my hand and slogans on my lips–mornings sweet with birdsong and dew and the chatter of young men and women with a vision in their hearts–are forever tainted in my memories. Nothing will ever cleanse them. They will always droop like flowers heavy with the weight of burnt evidence.

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Nitoo Das blogs at river’s blue elephants.

Is this really a ‘reform’?

by T.A.Abinandanan

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Hemali Chhapia reports that the hub-and-spoke system of colleges being affiliated to universities may come to an end soon, at least in some Indian states. Under this move, universities will not have colleges affiliated to them; those colleges will now be affiliated to ‘undergraduate boards’.

1. Is it good for the universities?The argument appears to be that this move will “liberate overburdened universities from the grunt work and tedium of a college overseer”; they can now concentrate on post-graduate teaching and research.

But let’s face it: our universities don’t do undergraduate teaching; they do only undergraduate examinations. I’m sure a lot of administrative effort goes into this stuff; but does it also consume a lot of a university professor’s time?

But, look at the potential cost: exams may be a burden, but it is this burden that brings some money to the universities — both grants from the government and exam fees from the students. Even more important, it seems to me, is that the affiliation system gave faculty in our universities some power over the colleges — in curriculum development, examinations, quality assessment, etc. If you take away both this money and this power, it’s not clear to me that the universities are better off.

2. Is it good for the colleges?My initial assessment is that this is a negative for our colleges. Instead of an affiliation with a university, they will now be affiliated to an ‘undergraduate board’ much like our schools belonging to an ‘education board’. Doesn’t sound nice, does it?

The ToI report doesn’t say much about what will happen to the ‘autonomous’ colleges — colleges that enjoyed a lot of autonomy in academic matters in the present system. Will they continue to enjoy this autonomy?

3. Is it good for our students?A criticism of our current system is that it separates UG teaching (which happens predominantly in colleges) and active research (which happens in universities). One may quibble with the details, but that’s a fair description of our current state. This ‘reform’ — at least the version reported by ToI — doesn’t do anything to address this problem.

The dismantling of the system of affiliation would make sense if (a) our universities are asked to develop and teach undergraduate programs and courses, and (b) our colleges — at least those with enlightened managements — are given incentives and a roadmap for transforming themselves into mini-universities with a teaching-research mix of their choice.

4. Is it progress if we replace 10-15 universities in a big state like Tamil Nadu with one ‘undergraduate board’? All said and done, there’s something to be said about diversity — in programs, in curricula, in approaches to knowledge. What are the chances that an undergraduate board will encourage innovation in education?

5. Finally, what good is this move if it encourages creation of more colleges — tiny, non-autonomous, offering programs in narrow disciplines? What good is this move if it doesn’t do anything to create and nurture Real Universities — universities that combine research with large-scale UG teaching, offer programs in many, many fields, and encourage interdisciplinary thinking?

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T.A.Abinandanan blogs at Nanopolitan and Materialia Indica.

The Big School Admission Travails

by The Mad Momma

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Three and a half years ago when I moved to Delhi, I had people asking me which school I planned to put the 6 month old Brat into. I was a little surprised because I was still trying to work out how to start him on solids and whether baby poop should be green.

I later on learnt to ignore it because well, there were the more important matters of teething, walking, speaking and generally, enjoying all the things that come with motherhood. Time flew by and before we realised it was time to put the Brat into school. Big school, with a uniform and a school bus. I went through my period of mommy angst, not wanting to send him and whining to the OA about how my son would become just another brick in the wall, blah blah. Yes, of course I’m over that now!

In all this, the OA and I had some err… heated discussions. My stand is simple, yes, school is useful for a degree but after a point the school is a bit of an equalizer. And what really matters is your home atmosphere and upbringing. I grew up with my grandfather teaching us chess (he was a national level badminton and football player in the good old days) and he taught my brother all the finer points of the game (I wasn’t interested!), my grandmother taught us all she knew about art – she was a good artist and we grew up poring over her books and learning to recognise Renoir and appreciate Van Gogh. The house was full of nudes painted by her and I had many a school mate come over and die of shock when they realised that the nudes on display were done by the little, grey lady. And even before I could read she was reading Jane Austen to us and reading us Reader’s Digest abridged editions. My dad spent hours playing games with us in a huge Reader’s Digest atlas and that is how we learnt our geography and my aunt who was a geography student would spend hours helping us. My uncle who was a math whiz taught us simple tricks to solve sums.

No, not all parents have that kind of time but the point I was making to the OA was that since the two of us do have a lot of time for our children, we don’t need to panic. We do take them out a lot and they do get many experiences. And once I can trust them to be silent, we can start with the museums and galleries that I so love and miss. We have our club memberships and take them swimming etc – so why should we panic? Let them get into a nice middle class school without the fancy school mates in big cars and we’ll be better off.

His logic? His family wasn’t really into art or literature and didn’t have much time and so he went to one of the best schools in town and he owes the school a lot. Fair enough. But that doesn’t mean our kids need it because we do have a lot of time for them. All I want is a school close to the house so that the kids don’t spend the day travelling.

So while a good school would be nice, it’s not a matter of life and death for us. As I often point out to the OA  – he from his best school in a big city and I from my regular school in a little town ended up working for the same big organisation which is where we met and he still found in me something that made him want to marry me. So it’s okay. No need to panic.

Which is easier said than done when you see people around you going into overdrive. Putting aside money to buy that 13 lakh seat at the infamous but much in demand school in CP. Yes, The Boy is going to kill me for this one!

The OA had two colleagues last year whose kids didn’t get into ANY school. That’s right – not a single school and so he was paranoid. I mean its a basic assumption that your kids will go to school. That they will get an education. Right? Also – everything depends on the Brat. He gets into a good school this year and drags the Bean in along with him.

Wrong. And so it was that the OA filled EIGHTEEN forms for the Brat across November and December. Yes, you can pick your jaw up off the floor. Eighteen schools. And it’s not a joke. Picking up the forms. Standing in queues. Adding in information about vaccinations and birth and phone bills and rent receipts.

And boy what a nightmare it was. You had to write about your hopes for the child, your expectations from the school – and wait for it, this one’s the killer – the child’s achievements. Excuse me? The child should be anything between 2.5 and 3.5  – what achievements are we looking for. It was 2 am. We were tired of forms and I was wild eyed and hysterical. I grabbed the pen from the OA and said, that’s it. I’m going to write he can pee in the toilet bowl without sprinkling.

The OA looked at me in horror. What?? What achievements is a 3 years old kid supposed to have, for chrissake??

And so it went on. Finally I made a word document, aptly labelled ‘Bullshit’ and mailed it to the OA. And there I waxed eloquent on what we wanted from the schools and what we hoped for our child. The OA just kept changing the school name and bunging the quotes in. And finally after days of form filling, attesting documents, getting pictures taken (schools want all sorts of combinations – a couple of them wanted a passport size picture of the entire family in it – why?! Do they think we’re faking this?!), medical certificates it was done. It all seems easy – but try fitting this in with your regular day at office. EIGHTEEN forms to be deposited between 10 am and 11.30 am. On a working day. Thats taking the morning off almost every day for half the month! But we managed somehow and then awaited the calls with bated breath.

And they began. And they wanted both parents – which is something we were more than willing to do. Friends and family made encouraging sounds -’You’re just what the schools want’, ‘young professional couple’, ‘modern’, ‘educated’, blah blah.. ’speak well’

Right. Whatever. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the morning of the first interview my stomach made peculiar sounds and I felt slightly nervous. This year the Delhi government has banned interviewing the kids so it was all up to us. We were going to be grilled and if we fared well our son would get into a good school. As I got dressed that morning I subconsciously picked up the aged old maroon raw silk saree that belonged to my grandmother. It made me feel safer and it was a classic. Most of all, it reminded me of how proud I used to feel when my parents came to PTA meetings, looking well put together. The OA dressed in a conservative grey suit.

And so we reached the first school. We were grilled. Boy, were we grilled. On our parenting, our policies, our principles, our vision for our child. And in the midst of all this they’d slip in a question on whether we lived in rented accomodation. Err… excuse me? How is that relevant to my child’s admission?

Day after day we went to schools and at times we weren’t interviewed. We just had to submit forms that proved that we lived in a certain area, what we paid as rent, income tax returns and much more. By the end of it, my bum knee was aching, I was rushed between home, office and school interviews, the timings clashed with everything and I was just exhausted. I’d walk into work in a saree and colleagues would look up and say – ‘Ah – another interview? How bad was today?’

Some weren’t too bad. One of the principals chatted with the OA about the recession and funds investing in India in a knowledgeable way and asked me pertinent questions about my job. She told the OA and me outright that our son was through and that she wanted children of parents like us – whatever that might be!

The OA and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We had nothing going for us. The Delhi Govt ruling says the schools must give points and so the schools gave points – for the area you live in, to girl children, to second children, to children of single parents, to children of alumni and to poor children.

So our firstborn, male child with parents who weren’t from Delhi and by some sad quirk of fate were still much in love and together – got barely any points. The only quota I didn’t grudge was the economically weaker class because I totally support their kids getting a chance.

The thing with schooling in Delhi at this point is that there’s no point looking for a school whose philosophy matches yours. Simply because there’s no guarantee you’ll get through. So all you do is apply to the schools in your area and hope for the best. Acting fussy will get you nowhere because this year 1 lakh 75 thousand kids didnt get admission into any school in Delhi. Yes.

So you see, by the time you hear this bit of news you’re no longer acting pricey – you’re willing to take any school you get. The whole term ‘best school’ too takes on a new meaning. What is the best school for you, may not be the best school for me. And in the last few months of speaking to older parents, our views have changed too.

For instance, there are a few schools in Delhi that are more lenient and follow a more modern philosophy of never writing a negative remark in the report card like ‘Talks in class and disrupts.’ A remark I got year after year in my card. In theory that sounded good to us.

Until we met many parents who sent their kids there and said the kids were turning out rude, lazy and indisciplined. They believed that this system wasn’t really working for the average teenager in Delhi. It works wonders with the younger children but the older they get, the more insolent, spoilt and disruptive. One father who sent his kids to a school that gained popularity after Priyanka Gandhi sent her kids there, said he was very happy until his kids reached the senior classes because of the school philisophy. I quote – ‘Teenagers everywhere are unmanageable, they’re worse if they’re rich and the worst is if they’re rich teenagers in Delhi.’

Right.

It doesn’t help that the moment a school begins to give a good education, the rich can pay their way in. And there is always a clerk or a principal who learns that ethics are nice, but there is a price at which they’re willing to lose them. So invariably all the good schools soon have rich kids and long waiting lists and longer cars waiting at the gate. Thirteen lakhs for a seat in a popular school and annual fees for most of them are close to 2 lakhs a year.

Which leaves us with nice, subdued middle class schools with old fashioned methods of discipline and fewer facilities. Suits me fine. I don’t need my son learning horse riding and pottery in school. I want him to learn math and some discipline. The rest can be organised outside of school. I don’t want him to have this sense of entitlement.

So the results came out and the Brat got through four decent, middle class, old fashioned schools. Most of his class hadn’t got through anywhere because they’d applied to the top three schools in the city that the whole world had applied to. There were two schools I had badly wanted that he didn’t get into and I was so mad when I realised that all the richest kids in his  class had got through despite living further away from the school than we did. Obviously the income tax returns helped.

The OA and I breathed a sigh of relief and picked one, paid up the fees and relaxed over a cup of tea. The Brat was thrilled when we went for the orientation and called it a ‘beautiful school.’ We’re duly grateful to get his stamp of approval.

The orientation began and as we settled in and saw the crowd around us, some richer, some poorer … some just like us- it was rather reassuring.  The show started with a simple Saraswati Vandana sung beautifully by the standard 3 girls. 

And then – oh horror – six 8-year olds came on stage to dance to some disco number in skimpy outfits. The little girls’ outfits were clingy and obscenely transparent and rather sad considering the little girls were just at that stage where they were developing.

I looked at the OA in horror. We looked around the hall to notice most of the parents looking rather pleased and clapping. Just a few other faces mirrored our horror.

The lady doing the introductory talk couldn’t string together a sentence in English and I wished she’d just stuck to Hindi. Whats wrong with speaking Hindi if you can’t speak English? And proceeded to tell us how the display was to show that the school believed in Indian culture and well as Western modernity. Err… alright.

As we left, I groaned to the OA that I would have to spend my day making the Brat unlearn the mispronounciations he was taught in school, and then teaching him the correct pronunciation.

The OA grinned and said I was a typical mother… Nothing was good enough for my child.

Hmm… maybe he’s right!

Sigh – why didn’t anyone tell me how traumatic getting your child into school in Delhi is? Oh wait – they did try. I just wasn’t listening!!

PS: The Brat starts school tomorrow. Pray for him and wish him a happy 14 years ahead.

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The Mad Momma blogs here.

Physical structures– Mothers and Others

By Anu

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I have started to feel physical spaces change, ever since I became a mother a few years back. They appear changed in response to my changed status. Not in their form, function or appearance but in their behavior towards me, some though have remained the same (I don’t feel them). This is sometimes funny, disconcerting and strange, but mostly has made me feel very sensitized to physical structures. I now attribute attitude to them. They may be kind or rude to me, may include, exclude, discriminate or embrace me warmly.

Changes during travel

One of the earliest memories associated with motherhood and the changed physical space was the first overnight train trip, after delivery. My growing apprehension of the trip in my favorite mode of transport, was how am I going to nurse the barely two months old infant?

Advice given: In our country it is acceptable to nurse in public, just look around.
Ok.

What about me? Knowing that other women do it did not mean that I was ready and comfortable about it. Anyway, this and subsequent trips saw a steady decrease in my love for travel by train. I somehow managed to learn the nursing part with the dupata draped just right without smothering the baby. This involved a pretty intricate set of movements in the limited seat space during the day; with co-passengers all around you, being mindful of their space, it was a game of anticipating and coordinating everything before the baby decides to let all know that he was being starved by his mother. (Note: formula food was not affordable on my fellowship, if it was, I may or may not have used that option. Hence, this post is not an argument for or against nursing.)

Soon another structure within the train started to harass me -the narrow berth! Being of average height and build, this space worked fine for me before. But now, with baby steadily growing with each trip, the berth started to be a different thing.  All my life I had seen mothers sleep in this narrow space with their children, but to actually experience it was plain uncomfortable. Seeing future trips spent commuting in this cramped fashion, I started to desperately ask, when can the baby have his own seat? Answer: when he turns five!! This is unnatural, mother and child are to morph into one being in the nights, because the train seats, a paid for physical space does not recognize them as two people?

All this left me with ‘before and after’ memories of train trips. The toilets, the food, the smells they were all the same, but the train now made me intensely conscious and announced to the world my well hidden shyness. The berth, however, was blind to my changed status. Believe me, they did not do this before. I had never felt their meanness or blindness. They just got me where I wanted to go, let make new friends, dream endlessly, read and stare outside. Now, they were almost hostile and mute to reason. They wouldn’t talk. That is one thing they seem to have cleverly left out while transforming into live monsters. These creatures could be ignored. They were not part of my everyday life and there was a choice of not being in that space.

At the workspace

Unfortunately for me, old familiar structures at the workspace started to take on aforementioned attitudes of the train. Ignoring and avoiding these spaces was not going help. My work was within laboratory buildings, with 24hour access to conduct experiments. I returned here after maternity leave, prepared for many changes including constraints on time. Anticipated changes were manageable, and the higher levels of energy combined with guilt at leaving the baby at a daycare translated into brisk efficiency. Everything was streamlined, nevertheless some experiments would not fit within daycare schedules. Unanticipated space constraints became a challenge. Before the motherhood, I would not think twice about going in the middle of the night to do follow up work, and if the mood took me, do more work. Now, extraordinary effort went into plans to reduce the number and length of such visits, leaving scope for just the essential monitoring, switch on/off kind of stuff. This too, did not work. Tried taking the nuclear family to the lab, while I tinkered rapidly. This, however, got me pulled by the authorities “how would we explain the presence of a baby should something go wrong in the building?” This was not a high security, radiation-spewing kind of lab, just a regular plant and harmless microbe research one. Yet, they had a point, and I agreed.

This kind of transition to work pattern was difficult. I also started to observe and talk to other mothers handling this transition; some had stopped working on the longer experiments, some had learned to delegate, while others moved to administrative kind of work. These were smart decisions at the individual levels to adapt but to me all of this screamed compromise. Most mothers had some support in the form of spouse or friends, who were willing to hold the baby for the short periods of time, when we worked during non-office hours. So what was stopping us? The building? The non-availability of a little space marked out for such times was the only hindrance (not lobbies, stuff happens with babies and many of these buildings don’t even have lobbies). Really, it is just a little a space; a chair, a makeshift screen would do.

I then started to work on what I convinced myself were more elegant experiments, ones that could be left behind at the end of the day. But at heart I knew, and missed the hands-on, getting fingers dirty, elbows scratched kind of work that really allowed the ‘finding a way’ rather than following a way.  The natural intensity and passion towards work was being replaced with cool efficiency. The spontaneity was leaving the mothers. And the race was happening without me.

As working women in Science, we were aware of the challenges that such careers presented and regularly discussed their impact, but ‘space’ as a significant factor was never articulated and hence left me quite unprepared to deal with it. The stony refusal of the buildings to accommodate the changing needs of some of its workforce, added to all other known factors, in a hidden manner. The rigidity of the physical space could not be blamed on anybody or anything we just learn to live with it. Because, it was we who had changed, I thought.

Workspace in a different land

Two years later, space in the form of an unknown alien land became my destination, landed in a small university town in the US. The laboratories, however, are the same anywhere, but I had no fear of non-existent spaces, for the baby was just weaned. I launched into work with the complete intent of regaining lost ground.

In a meeting with an external committee, evaluating the department, I found myself with a bunch of others (lower echelons) being asked about our levels of satisfaction in this place (If as a group we were figuratively tossed back to the countries of origin we would fall in almost all the different continents). Everybody said that the move here was good, a mother of two, however, had an issue. She said this building, did not provide her space where she could pump breast milk for her infant. I observed everybody, each came from a culture that had a different take on breastfeeding in public in their home countries, but here they had probably adapted to the local practice. The younger males probably had wives with the same issues as this woman, the older committee members with hazy memories of parenting days may have had daughters who were nursing. Their expressions were not readable my own feelings were of envy and fellow feeling. Envy, because she had circumvented the prolonged guilt that troubled me when the baby was in daycare and the tiring consequences; nursing through the night, sleepless nights, worry about infant tooth caries etc. The practice of pumping breast milk released women from this trauma, however, this mother was faced with another obstacle: the process required space for short periods and the 11- storied building did not and would not cater to that.

Physical space built around one

The answer to these dilemmas propped up during an all-women meeting, trying to understand why their career graphs looked squiggly and the strain it took to keep it straight. This naturally involves talk about motherhood impacting careers and invariably gets everybody upset and bothered. One member said “you know, Universities were built for a man in the forties, with a wife at home, and the spaces reflect that”. A sardonic reply, “actually for a medieval man.” Much needed tension releasing laughter followed this remark. But in this conversation was the answer that I had been seeking.

As always answers to problems that vex me are usually the simplest, obvious and general: Spaces are built for a certain type of individual with certain types of need and functions, and since it is concrete, it remains that way. And all other different individuals will have to adapt around it or stay out of it.

Imagining physical space for ‘the other’

What does different mean with respect to a building space? It could be specific to age, gender, class, professions and so on. Anybody who does not fit the original ‘form’ around which it was designed is different, requiring adjustment of that individual to the physical structure. One could become different for short periods and be impacted significantly (pregnancy, broken limbs, illness etc).

Does this mean, if the original design of the structure right from the design boards were drawn and executed to include different individuals they would serve a wider spectrum of people?  How do we do this? Can we imagine the ‘different’ and anticipate their needs with the physical space?

Let me attempt this while talking about one physical structure that embraced mother and child: the handicap access route -a slope made of wood, concrete or steel.

As a mother with a toddler in a new country, our access with a stroller to most public and private buildings was made simple and easy via the handicap access routes.  Not for me the Empire State or other iconic buildings, instead it is this simple structure that gets my maximum appreciation.

This small town’s total number of handicapped persons would not exceed the numbers in a couple of Bangalore neighborhoods. Yet, one can feel their presence all around in these thoughtful physical structures, including public transport vehicles.

Each time I hit a handicap access sign, my thoughts went to my friends and neighbors in the Paraplegic Rehab Centre housing wounded Ex servicemen in Khadki, Pune.  The residents were from far away places in India; many were war veterans, and some who were injured at work. These men were very important in the city’s collective consciousness. They reminded us of the horrors of War, and disrupted lives and mostly symbolized a human spirit that was best expressed by their slogan “Please, no pity” while they exhibited paintings done with foot and mouth.

Down the road from this centre was the University with libraries and public meeting venues. Across from it were two popular temples hosting many cultural events. I had never seen them participating in meetings and events within these buildings and never wondered about it. For, I did know that a small concrete slant could have been used and that it was missing.

I am not sure if they articulated, but I know we did not imagine that need. This absent physical space restricted them to just watch the cultural events from the entrance of rehab centre, seated in wheelchairs. This is a 5year old memory and I really hope it has changed and these structures have appeared, at least in the University buildings and temples.

This is not a solution for all the handicapped in India, every design will have to be rethought, footpaths, elevators, schools, colleges, offices, and other public buildings in villages, towns and cities. A long overhaul surely, but by not thinking about it, we are not just unimaginative, we are indulging in callousness.

Then, there are others who are different in social status and society accords scant respect for their needs, not by lack of imagination but by deliberate omission. Look at any construction site employing few to large numbers of laborers, do we wonder about the lack of onsite restrooms for them? Structures that we demand for ourselves in any place that we would spend more than a couple of hours. And, there are other vivid memories of women in the neighborhoods throwing tantrums “should the housemaid ask to use the bathroom!” That is a human attitude. And I have no wish to dissect that now.

No, I am not making a case for just a sloped concrete structure or a wider berth, but a case to imagine and implement physical structures that can serve more than just the ideal individual.

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Anu blogs at Time and Us.

By Sam

Another Valentine’s Day is here. A day to honour love and lovers. A day when many couples exchange flowers, romantic notes, gifts and cards to each other. A day when many lucky ones go out and celebrate their love. It’s a nice feeling to love and be loved, to feel that you mean everything for someone, to feel that you can count on this one person to share your innermost feelings. And there are many of us who are still hanging on to that “single” – tag, waiting for love to happen or just enjoying being single. But even then no one can deny the fact, Valentine’s Day is that day of the year when love overshadows any other sentiment.

But this year’s Valentine’s Day is not just about love alone. Many of us are surprised and angered to hear from a bunch of narrow-minded goons that spending time with our lover in open places and celebrating Valentine’s Day is wrong, that it is against our “culture”. Many of us are raising questions about who are these people to decide on what we should or should not do and what right they have to interfere in our personal lives. It is so ridiculous for someone to dictate that we will not be allowed to celebrate our love on a Valentines Day! This all seems so absurd, right?

Now just think about a small percentage of population who always has felt this unfairness that you are all feeling right now, every single day! Yes I’m talking about gays. For us gays, we could never think of celebrating Valentine’s Day with our special person in open places because we never felt secure to express our love. There is this fear always echoing in our minds (and not on Valentine’s Day alone) about what others would think and react if they see us holding hands or sitting across a table looking into each others eyes or giving a peck on the cheeks. It is not a good feel to always search for a secluded place to exchange such small tokens of love.

What is it that makes gay love be considered second class by many? Why does it face so much scorn? Why do some feel the need to preach hate and pass judgments? Many of us enter into gay relationships knowing the bitter truth that this could be ephemeral because sooner or later, we will be forced to marry someone whom our folks have searched and found “suitable”. And that true love yields to parental and societal pressures. Many gays prefer one night stands because they know gay relationships do not stand a chance in our country. Why does it have to happen this way? Why do we have to forfeit our happiness for the sake of gratifying a society who by the way, doesn’t care a hoot about us?

I say it is high time to realize that the love between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman is equally sublime as the love between a man and a woman. Because we too nurture that concept of growing old together. We too dream of waking up beside our lover. We too enjoy walking on beaches and parks holding hands. We too desire on introducing our sweetheart to friends and families. But this all can happen only if you accept us; if you accept us in the same way we are accepting you. Love is not something that should be forced to hide. It deserves to be respected and acknowledged. And we should be able to express our love with no fear or shame because it is after all an emotion we feel for that special person whom our heart beats for.

Image source: Internet.

Sam, or Crazy Sam as he calls himself, blogs at The Straight-Friendly Gay Blog.

[Check out more articles from our Spotlight Series]

Every photograph comes with a story

By Neha Viswanathan

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It’s a ritual with my mother. When I was younger, I used to cringe when she brought out old family albums. As an adolescent, I found nothing precious in those photographs. To me, many of them were a testimony to bad fashion for children. The frilly frocks, the hair tied up in a ponytail right on top of one’s head, looking somewhat like a fountain. At some point my mother even had collages made out of them. It wasn’t till I was in my twenties that I could look at these photographs without squinting. And what a world it opened.

We forget everyday. We forget the precise flavour of the raw mangoes that we feasted over the summer vacations. We forget the colour of the skirt that was bought after much pleading. We forget how small and incomprehensibly tiny our joys were. Our memory becomes more and more selective. But with old photographs, I attempt to patch my memory. At some point I started scanning these photographs, which is a little harder than it sounds.

For one thing many of them were glued into the albums. This was before the plastic ones flooded the market. The older ones had thick black sheets on which you pasted the photographs with unforgiving glue. They were bound and thick. If you tried yanking them out, the photographs would tear. Since my mother threatened me with physical harm if that was to happen, I had to sit and patiently take these photographs off the black paper, little by little. When you spend that much time just taking one photograph out of the album, stories start to tumble. And I couldn’t help but ask. Where was this photograph taken? Do you still have that saree? Was my little sister really that cute? And were you so beautiful?

And then I scanned them. One by one. It’s at that very moment that I realized that these weren’t exactly my memories either. They were the sum of my parents’ memories over the years. This is how we must have appeared through the lens of the camera. The gaze of a parent is very strong. We didn’t pose for most of these photographs. In the days of film, you had to put great thought before you actually clicked. You had no idea how it would turn out. Each photograph had to do justice to that moment and place.

I dug further back, and found photographs of my parents in their younger years. Before they met each other. When they were still studying in school. Of course I knew that my mother had a childhood. And yes, she had told me stories. But nothing quite prepares you for the visuals of their early years. You cannot stop gasping at their youth. Even more wonderful were the photographs of my grandparents. These people who we know only as our parents or grandparents, they have these entirely different identities before we came in on the scene. Scanning these photographs, I didn’t just stumble upon things that I had forgotten, but things that I had never known. Every photograph comes with a story.

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Neha Viswanathan (aka nehavish) is an avid blogger and blogs at http://withinandwithout.com. She lives and works in London, and is an amateur poet and photographer.

[ This is Essay No. 31 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

The Shampoo Sheikh

By Fëanor

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During the height of the Regency, it was the very thing to betake oneself to Brighton, there to enjoy the sea, dance with the best people, flirt with dashing Army officers, be introduced to the Princes Royal, and play genteel parlour games [Picture credit: The Republic of Pemberly]. And when all the whirling and swirling was done and one was exhausted, the place to go to recover and refresh was Mahomed’s.

To miss going to Mahomed’s is like going to town and forgetting to take a peep at St Paul’s… ¹

Inside an imposing building on King’s Road in Brighton, a man in Mughal court dress welcomed the gentry. He offered a luxurious establishment at the height of ton, and a series of medicated vapour baths. The specialty of the house was a massage with medicated oils. Customers sweated their poisons out in a hot aromatic bath, and then moved into a tent with flannel sleeves. Here, an unseen masseur would pummel them invigoratingly, with his arms through the cloth walls. This last, the man said, was the Indian art of the Shampoo, and it would cure all ills.

[The Baths are] daily thronged, not only with the ailing but the hale … their powerful efficacy … have brought foreigners to him from all quarters of the world …

What was this Shampoo? And how did this word become English? The tale is a curious one, intercontinental in its reach, transcending origins, race and class.

It begins in 1759 in Patna where was born a scion of the Nabobs of Murshidabad. A noble lineage is one thing; the reality of life is another. The Nabobs were a shadow of their former selves after the disaster at Plassey, and Din Mohammed’s father, having set aside all pride, was a minor soldier in the East India Company’s Bengal Army. When Din was eleven years old, his father was killed, his elder brother took on the parental commission, and despite his mother’s vigilance – she knew Din was already smitten by the glamour of soldiery – he ran away from home to become a camp follower. Soon, he was in the service of a Captain Baker, under whose watchful eye he bloomed into a well-read man, widely travelled and keenly observant.

There is scarcely any disease to which the human frame is liable which may not be relieved by the use of these baths.

In 1784, Baker returned to Ireland, taking Din with him. Din perfected his English in Cork, and, after Baker died two years later, married a young Irishwoman, Mary Daly. They spent the next 25 years in Ireland, where Din’s charm and intelligence endeared him to the Irish upper class [Picture credit: Brighton Ourstory].

A popular genre of books at the time was the epistolary travelogue, and Din jumped into the business with panache. The Irish gentry² paid 2 shillings 6 pence for “The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a series of Letters to a Friend.” It was a charming read, in turns poetically descriptive and hair-raisingly adventurous. Interspersed in true intellectual style with quotations from Seneca and Goldsmith, among others, he wrote of the Company’s conquest of India, the gracious Mughals and the elegance of the Company’s Calcutta; he waxed eloquently on the riches of Dacca, and the terrors of being hunted by peasants, wrathful at Din’s tax-collection, baying for his blood.

This unlikely tome turned out to be the first book in English written by an Indian, and it brought to its readers a particular sensibility – an appreciation for victorious England and her East India Company, but also an unapologetic love for the grandeur of India that Din missed so sorely.

You will here behold a generous soil crowned with plenty; the garden beautifully diversified by the gayest flowers diffusing their fragrance into the bosom of the air; and the very bowels of the earth enriched with inestimable mines of gold and diamonds. ³

In 1807, Din and his family moved to London, where he opened an Indian restaurant. The Hindustanee Coffee House in the Portman Estate [Picture credit: BBC News] was the first ever in a series of Indianised British eateries that has continued to this day. While his intention had been to attract the Indian gentry, they tended to look down upon his establishment as one fit only for ignorant Londoners. The British loved it.

Here the gentry may enjoy the Hooakha, with real Chilm tobacco, and Indian dishes in the highest perfection, and allowed by the greatest epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England.⁴

Simultaneously, in the service of a Basil Cochrane, he was providing a full body massage service at steam baths opened in Portman Square. Din could easily counter imitators, stating that his was the only genuine massage; only an Indian native could provide a treatment superior to all others; only he, equipped with the correct medicinal herbs, could cure illnesses. In a time of burgeoning excess and a thirst for the exotic, Din was able to provide each in luxuriant quantities.

But setting a trend to be followed by most curry houses after him, Din’s outgoings overwhelmed his income, and he declared bankruptcy in 1812. He let it be known that he was ready for employ as a butler or a valet, with no objection to town or country, and this advertisement brought him to Brighton’s bath houses.

Brighton was the Nonesuch town of the Regency, its wealth and fashion attracting the finest artists and bon viveurs in the land. The Prince Regent’s fanciful Royal Pavilion was then being constructed. The demand for Oriental chic and exotica continued unabated. Din began to purvey esoteric Indian medicines, aromatic herbs and oils, treatments, and promoted steam baths and Shampooing.

shampoo (v.)

1762, “to massage,” from Anglo-Indian shampoo, from Hindi champo, imperative of champna “to press, knead the muscles” ⁴

The last two became immensely popular; the Prince of Wales invited Din to supervise the construction of an aromatic steam bath in the Pavilion. Din so impressed the Prince that he was anointed Royal Shampoo Surgeon. The gentry poured into his establishment, allowing him to expand, build the elegant Mahomed’s Baths [Picture credit: Victorian Turkish Baths] overlooking the sea, and create new branches in London.

Meanwhile, Din worked on his magnum opus, “Shampooing, or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath,” a book of testimonials from satisfied clients, dealing with the putative medical benefits of massages, aromatic oil therapy and sea-water baths, claiming to cure rheumatism, fix problems of the muscles, and restore ailing joints. His book was a bestseller, going into further editions in 1826 and 1838, adumbrated with fulsome praise from a fawning clientele.

The greatest blessing that we know,
In health is said to be;
That blessing, under God I owe,
Oh Mahomed! to thee;
My lips the gratitude shall show,
That in my heart doth glow,
For ah! I feel too well assured,
(Let all deride, and laugh who will,)
That had I never try’d thy skill,
I never had been cured!!’ ⁶

The royal warrant by George IV was the final imprimatur on his social eminence, but his financial situation was precarious, dependent as he was on his sleeping partner, Thomas Brown, for funding. Brown died in 1841, and Din was unable to raise the capital required to win the auction of his baths. He offered to manage the property on behalf of the higher bidder, but unfortunately, his services were no longer required, and he had to relocate to a small property on Black Lion Street. He tried to compete with his old establishment, continuing to advertise his services till 1845. He became more and more impecunious in the ensuing years, and in 1851, this extraordinary Renaissance man died.

References:

1. Victorian Turkish Baths, Malcolm Shifrin.
2. Sake Dean Mahomet: Traveller and Shampooing Surgeon, Niaz Zaman.
3. The Travels of Dean Mahomet, Michael Fisher.
4. An Indian with a triple first, William Dalrymple, The Spectator, Jan 3, 1998
5. shampoo. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved May 14, 2008, from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shampoo
6. Shampooing, Sake Dean Mahomed..

The Hand That Wields the Pen

By Anindita Sengupta

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Civilisations are judged and remembered not by their most successful businessmen but by the art they leave behind.
~ Kwame Kwei-Armah

That art is important for a civilization is undeniable. That it oils its rusty wheels, provides beauty, meaning and sanguinity, and keeps us from becoming animals or machines—both of which we threaten with unfailing regularity—is obvious to many. But it remains an undernourished market; few people or organisations are willing to spend money on it. It is seldom part of corporate social responsibility programs and in a country where poverty looms wall-high, it is difficult for art to command a share of the charity pie. It is neither as urgent nor as poignant, and its contribution to life is often, to quote Margaret Atwood, ‘as unnoticed and as necessary’ as the air we breathe. If art in general is underfunded and under-prioritized, the case for specific subcategories such as women’s writing is even weaker.

On the battle lines drawn between art and activism, there are heated arguments about ‘protectionism’ towards women’s writing or other gender-based categories. Artists will often spurn such categories for their ‘limited’ notion, and they do have a point. It is difficult for art to flourish within laxman rekhas of any kind, even those drawn with the best intentions. Art can benefit from political and social awareness but there are enough propagandists trying to pass of pamphlets as poetry. Anthologies of women’s writing inevitably spawn a host of terrible pieces that are painstakingly (and painfully) ‘woman-oriented’. There are those who argue that there is little justification for categories such as women’s writing. The questions they raise are these: why should art be judged on any other basis other than its own merit? And why should politically defined writing be privileged in any way?

For feminist publishing houses like Zubaan and Kali for Women, the question seems to have a clear answer. Urvashi Butalia has talked about the logic behind setting up Zubaan here, pointing out clearly their goal of “reflecting the debates within the women’s movement, and disseminating them as far as possible.” She looks at feminist publishing “centrally as a developmental activity – for social change, developing certain skills, developing certain strains of thought.” But the question of women’s writing or art that is not categorically ‘feminist’ is more problematic because it cannot be defended as ‘developmental’ activity. Or can it?

If one goes back to the original premise – that a civilization is remembered for its art, then it is clear that each work of art has a value that transcends its immediate, individual aesthetic or artistic value. It has larger cultural and historical importance. In which case, it would be wrong and dangerous for a civilization’s art to not reflect the lives and thoughts of its women. Yet, this particular sort of silence has plagued literature for centuries. Reasons range from girl’s illiteracy to harsher censorship of women’s writing. This article talks about the number of problems women writers have to face. At the most fundamental level, girls lag behind in education. (In nine of India’s 35 states and territories, illiteracy rates among women are 50 percent or higher, according to figures from the 2001 India census. In contrast, no state or territory has an illiteracy rate of 50 percent or higher among males.) Then, very few women can manage the time to pursue artistic proclivities. Even parents who encourage daughters to work are more likely to understand a desire to work in a bank than to paint or write seriously (as opposed to as a hobby). Familial resistance and the ‘good girl syndrome’ clamp down on women’s thoughts. Religious fundamentalism browbeats them. Male critics and editors often dismiss their writing as ‘recreational and decorative’. They face social censure and censorship when they write about things that don’t fit within rigid constructs of morality—and these rules are much stricter for women than for men.

Only a handful of women surmount these hurdles to become artists at all.

I’m reluctant to sign my name to essentialist theories; I’ve known women as different from each other as bicycles and fish. Yet, it is undeniable that there are certain experiences common to women: menstruation, labour, childbirth, menopause, female orgasm. Biological, social and political constructs also affect most of us in similar ways, influencing the ways we inhabit spaces, negotiate relationships, manage the little things.

When Tharu and Lalita wrote Women Writing in India in 1993, they said in their introduction that they had tried to…

“create a context in which women’s writings can be read, not as new monuments to existing institutions and cultures (classics, are by definition, monuments) but as documents that display what is at stake in the embattled practices of self and agency and in the making of a habitable world, at the margins of patriarchies reconstituted by the emerging bourgeoisies of empire and nation.”

I find this distinction between monuments and documents important. Art created by women may not always be monuments or classics; but it serves to document the lives and histories of women living at a particular time. Unless an atmosphere is provided for it to flourish, these histories will be lost. It is to prevent this loss that women’s art must receive a certain amount of protection and encouragement, some nudges to help it along.

As reported by Elizabeth Yuan in ‘For a girl in rural India, education is a difficult pursuit’ in CNN.com, 23 March 2007

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Anindita is a poet, writer and journalist in Bangalore, India. Her poetry has appeared in Muse India, Talking Poetry, Kritya, Asian Cha, and In Other Voices (an anthology by Delhi Poetree). She was the winner of the Toto Awards for Creative Writing in 2008. When not penning verse, she works at the India Foundation of Arts (IFA) and is a consultant with Iconoculture and Fida. Deeply committed to gender issues, she is founder and editor of Ultra Violet, India ’s first online community of feminists.

She can be contacted at: anu[dot] sengupta[at]gmail.com

‘The Mourning Forest’, an exposition of grief and rebirth

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Batul Mukhtiar

Most of us come out of the closing film of MAMI 2008, ‘The Mourning Forest‘ silent. A long film at the end of a long day. Outside Imax, an actor friend says, “You can’t see it as a film, the film maker wants you to experience something, it’s like meditation.” I say, “Yes, like meditation, it makes you restless, the mind wanders.”

Later in the car, a cinematographer friend says, “The hand-held camera was so bad. Terrible.” I say, “Yes, it was almost as if the cameraman did hand-held because he couldn’t be bothered to set up a tripod.” Another cameraman said, “Why did the girl (Machiko, a staff worker in the retirement home) go off for a trip with a patient who was disturbed? Was she mad?” echoing the first thought that struck me when I was watching the film. In a way that sometimes happens when 4-5 people are together, we started laughing about the film. We couldn’t understand how it had won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2007. Though, a director friend did say, “The shots of the wind in the trees were beautiful.”

At night though, I wondered about the film. Sometimes, you can’t see a film very logically, or approach it through the narrative. The story telling is abbreviated; it only evokes sensations. When the old man, Shigeki, senile, locked up in his grief, asks the Buddhist monk, “Am I alive?” the monk replies, “You are alive because you eat. You are alive when you feel sensations.”

And the film in fact, is an awakening of the sensations that both the old man and the girl, trapped in their grief, have stopped feeling. Through their journey with each other, they rediscover playfulness, heat, danger, cold, hunger, thirst, and life itself, as they move through the forest.

They rediscover touch. At a family picnic, a couple of years ago, my mother teased her friend, “Oh all our legs are aching, but you can go back home and ask your husband to massage your legs.” And I looked at my mother, and thought, “Yes, this is what she misses about Daddy. Howlonely it must be, not to have that touch.”

When the girl strips to hold the old man, and save him from the cold, it’s not a sexual touch, but basic human warmth which she gives him, which has slowly drained out of him in the 33 years he has mourned his wife.

So often, even when we care for the old people in our midst, give them food, clothing, shelter, we forget that they need too, laughter and touch. Perhaps that is why, grandparents love grandchildren so much, because when their own children forget to touch them, the children clamber all over, with little regard for distance or dignity.

The old man carries his memories with him in a heavy backpack, which he won’t let anyone touch. At the beginning of the film, he attacks the girl for moving the bag while cleaning his room. By the end, when she asks him to hand over the bag because it is so heavy, he does so without even looking back at her, because he has learnt to trust her. And when he finally empties the bag, at his wife’s tomb, a tree, how meager those memories are, a bunch of diaries, letters he has written to his wife all these years, a music box.

Relieved finally of the burden of his memories and grief, he cuddles deep into the earth, saying he must sleep on it. I thought at first, that his sleeping on the earth signified his death. But realized later, that in fact, it signified his rebirth, his re-entry into life. The sound of helicopters above give a sense of how close the world actually is to them, even though they have gone so deep into the forest, perhaps even lost themselves. The girl holds the music box to the sky, setting free the grief they have both held within themselves for so long, setting free the memories, perhaps hoping to reach the world outside.

Earlier in the film, just after the old man has attacked the girl, there is an exchange between her and a senior colleague. The young girl apologizes for the incident, the older one tells her that no one is to blame, she says, “There are no formal rules, you know.” This is in direct contradiction to what she says earlier, when Machiko first joins work, that there are formal rules to be followed in the working of the institute. Both the girls repeat the line several times and laugh over it. This line, an encouragement to look at things in a different way, perhaps prompts the girl to make the journey to complete her mourning.

The Japanese understand the relevance of seasons, of cycles that must be lived through, and completed before moving on to the new stage, and the significance of ceremonies that help you to complete those cycles. The film takes you through one cycle, the cycle of grief, through the mysticism of nature, through compassion, through sharing. A watermelon, a touch, a journey.

At the Yamagata festival in 2003, I had seen another film by Naomi Kawase, ‘Letters from a yellow cherry blossom‘ a documentary on one of Japan’s leading photography critics, Nishii Kazuo. Nishii had only a few months to live, and he invited Naomi to film him. The exchange between the two while he dies, both clicking each other, is moving in its emotional restraint, and also an intellectual exchange on what art actually means, how it works to make sense of our lives and deaths, and everything else in between.

Isn’t that why we go to watch films, 7 days of MAMI, 7 long treks through Mumbai traffic to Imax, putting aside child, home, work? Kawase’s work reminds me of Ozu’s in its gentleness. It leads me to wonder why so many of our own films that qualify as meaningful cinema are either cruel, or gloomy, or violent, scorning redemption.

Harjit Sodhi’s story

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Hari Balasubramanian

I was a student at Arizona State University in the Phoenix metro area when 9/11 happened. The days after were quite tense. On Saturday, the 15th, there were rumors among Indian students that a gang in a car was firing at people who looked Middle-Eastern, and that they were on their way to Tempe, the suburb the university was in.

The rumor wasn’t true but it wasn’t entirely false either. That afternoon, Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian immigrant who owned a gas station store had been shot dead. Balbir was the first victim of a dozen or so hate crimes involving South Asians and Middle-Easterners that happened in the aftermath of 9/11 all over the country. Balbir was Sikh and his turban had given the shooter the impression he was Muslim. The shooter, Frank Roque – who had apparently declared at a local restaurant that he was going to target some “towel-heads” – was arrested and is now serving a life sentence.

Balbir’s death was a terrible tragedy, but, as I learned recently, it wasn’t the complete story. The complete story had to do the Sodhi family’s immigration to the United States. In a strange kind of twist, that immigration had been spurred in the first place by the sectarian conflict in India involving Sikhs, just less than two decades before 9/11.

Harjit Singh Sodhi, Balbir’s brother and the first member of the family to have left India, talked of his experiences recently on Dick Gordon’s radio show The Story, on National Public Radio. I’ve pieced together most of this story from that interview (look in the archives for the show on Thursday, March 6th, 2008).

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As clashes between Sikhs and the Indian government escalated in the early 1980s, Harjit, who had seen death from the conflict first hand, felt he and family would never be safe in India, and decided to leave for the United States. Why the United States? Because he had read in schoolbooks that it was a wonderful place, a “heaven” of sorts; that had made a strong impression on him. He left alone leaving his wife and children behind. But since he only had a forged passport, no contacts and little money, the process wasn’t easy: he was knocked back and forth across the world; in his quest to reach the US, he had to travel to Mexico, Cuba, Thailand, Jordan, Moscow, and back to Mexico. Finally, Harjit walked from Mexico, crossed the US border and illegally entered the United States. He first went to Los Angeles, and then did odd jobs – pruning grape vines in Fresno, working at a 7-11 store – before moving to Phoenix and starting an Indian restaurant.

The Reagan administration granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had worked in agriculture, and Harjit, who had done that, got his green card. He was able to bring his wife and children. He was successful; he was living the American Dream. Harjit found that the United States was indeed the heaven he had envisioned it to be: safe and friendly, a place he could begin a new life. He embraced his adopted country whole-heartedly and was proud of it.

Harjit also succeeded in encouraging his other brothers to move to the United States, with the promise that they too would have the same life, comforts and safety that he had. Balbir was one of these brothers, and in April 2001, they decided to open a gas station store together in Phoenix. It was outside this store, five months later, while discussing plans with landscape architects, that Balbir was shot.

But that was not all. In August next year, while driving from Delhi to his village in India, Harjit got an urgent message, one he could scarcely believe, that another of his brothers, Sukhpal, a cab driver, had been shot in his cab in San Francisco. Although, it has not been established, this too might have been a hate crime. Nearly three thousand people were waiting in his village, having got the news earlier, with questions about why Sikhs – and especially the Sodhi brothers – were getting targeted in America.

Overcome with grief, Harjit broke down and momentarily contemplated returning to India. But his wife insisted that they stay in the US since they could expect justice there. Balbir’s killer, she pointed out, had been apprehended and sentenced, something she felt they could not expect back in India. Besides there were practical matters: the restaurant could not just be left behind; they had stayed in the US for over twenty years. In India they would have to start from scratch.

Almost six years hence, Harjit continues to live in the United States; two of his other brothers have stayed on as well. On occasions, he gets taunted because of his turban – he is called Bin Laden – yet brushes such insults aside. His children, born in the US, wear the turban too. Instead of assimilating, he appears to have retained Sikh and Indian aspects, and sees no contradiction in being staunchly American. Just how much he believes in the United States is clear in his response to a question by a Japanese reporter during a press conference that followed Balbir’s shooting in Phoenix. The reporter had asked:

“Mr. Sodhi, your brother was killed by an American. What do you think of the American?”

The question was pointless. But Harjit was deeply offended for a different reason. He responded emotionally: “What are you asking me? You should be apologizing. You think I am not American, my children are not Americans? Americans have a different color or culture?”

Something in the way Harjit talked about this in the interview (and from his other comments as well) suggested he still feels strongly about being American. But I wonder: How, in his most private, contemplative moments, does he reconcile his belief in the United States with the two tragedies that must have shaken it to the core? A distrust of India brought him to the US, but there are good reasons for him not to trust the United States as well. Yet he does not seem to feel any rancor for his adopted country – at least he betrays none in the interview. Perhaps it has something to do with the magnitude of effort it took him to reach a position of relative security: the long journey alone with the forged passport; entering illegally and taking up odd jobs; the slow climb to prosperity. Perhaps he does not want to disclaim all that he has painstakingly earned and the country that allowed him to do so.

Harjit’s respect for an immigrant’s willingness to persevere despite adversities is reflected in his position about others like him, of whom there are plenty. He feels a strong empathy for the tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants, who – as he had done more than two decades ago – trek daily from Mexico, risking death by dehydration and harassment by armed gangs, across the arid landscape south of the United States, and eventually to the cities and towns of California and the southwestern states (and even beyond) where they find low-paying jobs in farms, construction sites, car washes, restaurants.

Harjit’s restaurant, like all other Indian restaurants, hired illegal immigrants. But now, as a business owner and a legal resident of the United States, he is being pressured by lawmakers to crackdown on illegal immigrants. He himself benefited from the porous borders and lax laws that allowed him to settle in the country. Not unsurprisingly, he disagrees with recently passed new laws that are tough on undocumented workers:

“You think this is a just law? I’ve heard 12 million people live illegally in the United States. They want to send all these people back? Even those who live peacefully and work hard, try to feed their families and lead a better life? I too was an illegal once.”

Immigration, of course, isn’t a simple issue: it isn’t about freely allowing entry, neither is it about erecting supposedly impenetrable fences (an actual fence) is currently being constructed along the US border). Just about every region in the world faces this problem; even within countries, the movement of people poses problems and creates tensions. The answers aren’t simple, but stories like Harjit’s – what events his adult life has straddled and what searching questions he’s been asked! – give us much needed glimpses into the travails and successes that accompany such journeys.

Calling Into Question

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Swar Thounaojam

“In the old days, they didn’t even know they were Kurds. And it was that way through the Ottoman period: None of the people who chose to stay went around beating their chests and crying, ‘We are the Ottomans!’. The Turkmens, the Posof Laz, the Germans who had been exiled here by the czar – we had them all, but none took any pride in proclaiming themselves different. It was the Communists and their Tiflis Radio who spread tribal pride, and they did it because they wanted to divide and destroy Turkey. Now everyone is prouder – and poorer”.

My mind has been recycling this quote for the past few years. I like to think it is a very important summary of what’s happening around me. It is also crucial because if I substitute the self-inflicted sectionalisation with an imposed one, it becomes the gist of what has happened to me.

Let me start with an unusual source that has made it easier to identify the category I belong to. Sepia Mutiny. Whenever a mutineer posts a length touching on the immigrant position of Indians in America, hundreds of pronounced comments flood that blog. It is an outspoken rostrum, built and surrounded by an articulate immigrant group. The opinions, digressions and emotions that fill its comment space come very close to the ones North East Indians negotiate daily, living in mainland India. The only major difference is that North East Indians have never been sufficiently articulate. The resentment that each of us harbour at our quasi-immigrant status in India has never been adequately transmuted into a critical dialogue with the rest of the country. This is a shameful failure for both sides.

I am done with the introductory officialese. It’s time to get personal.

When Sridala asked me for an essay that can purposefully cast a perspective on the North-East, she added another question on assimilation. It is in connection with a comment that I have left on a blog post on identity. I am assuming it is the one by Meena Kandasamy to which I have left this comment:

“I think you have to be very conscious of your background, of where your roots lie.”

- After a period of being conscious of my background and roots, I have almost become rootless and anonymous. Its been a conscious decision. Why? It just happened – I got tired of people prefixing my name. Rootlessness has become my new form of freedom. People still peg me for their own understanding but me, myself – its a different story.

Yes, there was a time when I was extremely conscious of my background. It was the time when I was vulnerable to imposed sectionalisation. I was too young to dismiss the collective, disgruntled cry “You are from the North East”. I was told I was different and poorer than the rest in taste, morals and overall judgements. Men in cars considered it right to throw bottles at me because I was too tired to respond to their racial insults on my way to college. Women in friends’ houses saw nothing wrong in refusing to sit next to me because I supposedly came from the hills where dogs were eaten. My face, the slits I have for eyes, the clothes I wore, the food I ate and even the parents I have were up for general vilification. Of course, a small circle of loyal friends and college teachers were available to cushion me against the abuse orgy but it was not enough to stem the resentment from growing deeper.

Mine is not a unique story. Each of us from the North-East has a similar or perhaps a bitterer story buried inside. It sucks. It sucks to belong to a country where the police of the national capital think it right to publish a manual on how people from the North East should live, dress and eat in the metro. It sucks to belong to a country whose army can barge into my parent’s house at the crack of dawn, line up my half-naked male relatives in the courtyard, rummage through our personal properties and shoot any one of us with no qualms because they, not us, are protected by the nation. I do not see assimilation here nor do I feel one. Before, there used to be a form of anger inside me. I had walked in rallies, been tear gassed and lathi-charged by the authorities. I had protested.

Then, what happened? Did I give up?

I gave up the anger. The anger limited my responses and furthermore, I inevitably saw that I was not at the bottom of the food chain. My own people were imposing divisions onto more vulnerable groups, sadly confirming the classic vicious cycle of human oppression. This must have been the period when I started questioning roots and identity. It is not an easy process because many can righteously accuse me of being in denial. I also ask myself these questions regularly. What is home? What do I leave and lose if I suspend myself? Does my being become inferior if I am indifferent to my birth and roots? These are not rhetorical questions. At this phase of my life, they are the most valid ones. For many like me who have gotten past the anger arc, we are trying to make sense of our vagabond selves. This is the perspective I can give right now.

I am not sure what purpose this ‘essay’ will serve. I only like to think that a dialogue has to begin somewhere and perhaps, this is my contribution.

I live in München now. I am anonymous in the UBahn. I do not attract stares or comments here. This anonymity is liberating.

In search of Ramrajya [Continued from here - First part, Second part]

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V Ramaswamy

(7)

A tolerant society must be built through large-scale, effective public action by citizens and civic organizations. This must build upon past and existing initiatives. A peace / conflict-resolution orientation needs to be infused into to the building of communal amity in India. Large numbers of people across the country must work to inculcate harmony in the new generation. A vital part of this has to be action-education, of children, students and youth, to be able citizens of a democratic and pluralist society.

Education in post-independent India has failed in this task. Negative and bigoted socialization has continued to distort minds and hearts. Education and curriculum emerge as key requirements. Teachers and trainers assume a profound role.

Notwithstanding good intention and enthusiasm for positive change, especially among youth, direction is lacking. Critical social awareness, strategic thinking and action in the public domain – are weak, and are not normal outcomes of the social process. Voluntary action and social movement have decayed considerably over the last decade. A generational change is taking place in society, with weak bridges between the old and new. A ‘culture’ and practice, of aware, strategic social action has to be renewed.

A beginning has to be made, towards catalyzing a wider people’s movement. We have to frontally address the Hindu-Muslim conflict and define the vital and imperative work of peace-building in India. This would catalyze initiatives towards peace, and thus help to generate a people’s movement that begins to transform the situation. ‘Civil society’- in the sense of non-state formations for the public weal – must be built. And a key issues in a civic agenda is harmony.

Harmonious relations between Hindus and Muslims in India are closely linked to realizing enduring peace in south Asia. And peace in the subcontinent, could be a vital force for peace in Middle East as well as in the world at large.

Intolerance also resides outside the reach of the state – within individuals, in families, in community groups. Intolerance results from negative socialization, but also stems from an un-well psyche. It is vital to create means for closer communication and mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims from all walks of life. But it is also vital to effectively and creatively address the underlying psycho-social factors of bigotry, for instance as a vital part of the education of children to live as citizens of a pluralist, democratic society.

(8)

The great thinker and poet Mohammad Iqbal wrote the song “Sarey jahaan sey achha Hindustan hamara” (Better than the whole world, our India). But he is also considered to be one of the founding fathers of Pakistan, which was born as a separate homeland for India’s Muslims. Iqbal wrote “Shikwa aur Jawaab-e-Shikwa” (Complaint to God, and God’s answer), about the miserable plight of Muslims. After I started working in Priya Manna Basti, and began to understand the power of Urdu poetry, I wrote a song “PM Basti ke ham sab sachhey mussalmaan hain” (We are all true Muslims of PM Basti). I wrote my own “Gratitude, and God’s Acceptance”, to express my feelings for the blessing of India’s plural heritage. I wrote my version of Faiz’s “Yahaan sey sheher ko dekho“, celebrating the love and harmony I found working with the women and children in Priya Manna Basti. And I also wrote my version of “City of Light”, celebrating the transcendence of conflict.

In 1946, leading up to the Direct Action Day, of 16 August, the slogan “haath mein bidi muh mein paan, ladkey lengey Pakistan” (bidi in hand, paan in mouth, we shall fight and take Pakistan) had spread like wildfire in Calcutta. In 1997, in my song Hariyali, I wrote:

Hari aur Ali galey miley jab,
mulkh mey aayi Hariyaali tab
Barsey baadal, dharti shyaamal,
Hari aur Ali jab pakdengey hal

In my translation:

When Hari and Ali embrace
The nation is blessed with verdant grace
Rain showers, earth blooms now
When Hari and Ali together plough

The song continues:

Liye haath mein lathi muh mein Ram
Lana hai woh paak sthaan
Sangh hai saathi hoga hi kaam
Layengey woh paak sthaan

In translation:

Staff in hand, the Lord’s name we sing
This sacred land must we bring
Companions are with us, the work shall be done
This sacred land must be won.

The sacred land being the land of harmony, where Hindu and Muslim children walk and grow together.

Thanks to my association with people like Dr MKA Siddiqui, I have learnt that this is what jihad (in Islam) means: unremitting struggle for personal virtue in the face of the blinding and crippling circumstances of life; and unremitting struggle for justice for the oppressed.

A conscientious human being, and an activist with the disposition of working with and for the victims of injustice – is a jihadi; one who struggles for justice is a mujahid, and the term to describe the activism of such people would literally translate to Harkat-ul Mujahideen.

Out of his kindly and affectionate disposition, Dr Siddiqui had once told me that I was a true jihadi. No compliment could ever be sweeter and richer for me.

[Ends]

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V Ramaswamy is a Calcutta-based business executive, social planner, grassroots organiser, teacher and writer. Address for correspondence: hpp@vsnl.com.

In search of Ramrajya [Continued from here]

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V Ramaswamy

(4)

In his poem Yahaan Sey Sheher Ko Dekho, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great Urdu poet of the subcontinent, talks about the ugly underbelly of the city, of exploitation, suffering, injustice. He says that once you’ve seen that, all the charms and beauties of the city do not appear so charming and beautiful any more, instead they take on an ugly hue.

Here are Faiz’s lines in Agha Shahid Ali’s translation:

There are flames dancing in the farthest corners,
throwing their shadows on a group of mourners.
Or are they lighting up a feast of poetry and wine?
From here you cannot tell, as you cannot tell
whether the colour clinging to those distant doors and walls
is that of roses or of blood.

My work in the bastis of Howrah – forever changed my perception, and alienated me completely from the society I had so far been a part of. I wait for a series of articles, in Urdu, titled Yahaan Sey Sheher Ko Dekho, which look at the situation in metropolitan Calcutta’s Muslim slums.

The educated Hindu typically really believes that Muslims are a backward and troublesome group, having only themselves to blame for their plight, which they also see as fundamentally stemming from their faith, which makes them very different – irrational, belligerent and extremist. They detest politicians for practicing vote-bank politics and appeasing Muslims. And they are ever ready to emphasise that most criminals in the land are Muslims.

The overwhelming number of the poor – are not engaged in crime. (That a large part of their life is lived outside the law – for instance in matters of obtaining water, or electricity – is another matter; this is how “governance” operates at the grassroots, in the absence of basic services.) Yes, poverty leads to crime. But that is at an advanced stage in the life of a community, when there is utter hopelessness and all-round stagnation. And the criminal activities are also closely linked to external crime lords, political parties as well as the police.

Second, the fact is that in many parts of India – in Mumbai, in Gujarat, in Calcutta and West Bengal, in Kashmir – Muslims are routinely picked up, taken into custody, tortured, their families harassed. Several people simply disappear. All Muslims are seen as terrorists – whether by the police, or the middle class Hindu society. For any crime in a neighbourhood, the police will break into the homes of poor Muslim slumdwellers in the dead of night, beat people up, pick up youths and put them into lock-up. Lacking any assistance, some would then find themselves serving a jail sentence, with hardened criminals. This is also a way of pushing youths into crime.

Hindu “nationalists’” principle of “equality” is more important to them than the real experience of inequality and deep-rooted discrimination faced by the average Muslim (and Dalit and Adivasi as well). Of course, all of their views are also typically not based on any real intercourse with Muslims. Many educated Hindus in urban India might well live out their whole lives without any substantive interaction or engagement with Muslims or Islam.

Every kind of indignity, closure, discrimination has to be faced by the average Muslim in every sphere of life. But to mention “Muslim” as a specific entity to focus on in development efforts and benefits – is called “communal”. But clearly the non-communal, purely “human” definitions and directions have not worked as far as Muslims are concerned. So why are Muslims dropped from “human”? Obviously for the same reason that a pogrom against Muslims was unleashed in Gujarat: to eliminate and crush them.

The very mention of “Muslim” – conjures up for them someone about whom all kind of stereotypical notions are emphatically believed. And what is the source of the person’s beliefs or knowledge? Simply received wisdom, gossip, socialisation, hateful bigotry. Very few go through the experience of observing their own habitual embrace of various notions; or examining honestly and systematically the extent to which these believed notions are true. They do not see anything wrong about harbouring negative views about a vast section of fellow Indians.

The average Hindu, upper caste, educated, middle or upper class person – those who have enjoyed in full measure the fruits of India’s development – would typically not know a single Muslim in any intimate fashion. Though Muslims are all around him, he chooses not to see the reality of the acute poverty and deprivation suffered by Muslims. The Muslim areas – outside which they are not allowed to live in Hindu India – are not places where the “respectable” ever go to. But he doesn’t think that this disqualifies him from holding forth on the peculiarities, idiocies, irrationalities, obscurantisms, cussedness of Muslims / Islam.

The media has of course played a demonic role in this regard. The education system too has failed. More fundamentally, India has failed to even consider the questions of how to be a plural nation; how to educate children to live in peace and partnership with other communities; how to co-exist and thrive amidst diversity.

Pluralism allows communities to see themselves through one another’s eyes. And thus grow in stature.

Do we want to be a plural nation? Do we want dignity and justice for all?

Gandhi’s Ramrajya was to be a land of compassion and justice. In order to defeat Ravana, Rama took the assistance of monkeys and bears. When the bridge to Lanka was being built, even a squirrel’s contribution was not spurned. But my India is no Ramrajya, when it turns its back to its own, where the Muslim minority languishes, is reviled, manipulated and used, and their dreams and dignity crushed under the prejudice and apathy of my countrymen.
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Awesome advances have been achieved by India too. But the Muslims of India have been left behind. All the achievements of India are rendered hollow for that.

If Gandhi had been with us today (aged 137), he would not have needed the Sachar Committee report to tell him what the plight of Muslims was, or have to read about atrocities against Dalits. He would have seen for himself. And he would have been in an ongoing freedom movement, to bring real freedom to the bereft.

(5)

Today, the ruling party in West Bengal is completely alienated from the Muslims. While they have ensured that communal riots do not take place – nonetheless, the peace here is the peace of the graveyard, as the socio-economic and human development status of Muslims in West Bengal worsens rapidly.

While paying lip-service to secularism – the reality is that the party is completely blind and insensitive to the real concerns and aspirations of Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are poor, low-income, lacking in education. Non-Muslim party members – tend to be communal and bigoted in their make-up, mirroring the communal and bigoted mindset of the Bengali Hindu society. Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta are completely segregated, and for the educated, middle-class Hindus, Muslims might as well be non-existent.

And in this context, any effort to articulate the problems of Muslims – is labelled communal.

I have had occasion to look, very closely – in Priya Manna Basti – at micro-domain politics, corruption, crime and criminality; as well as how things have changed over time. It would not be incorrect to say that the CPI(M) has been responsible for destroying the organic community leadership and spirit for self-improvement in a historically disenfranchised migrant labouring community. In its place there is today an enfeebled, disempowered community, living in a severely criminalised environment, entirely dependent upon the token patronage of the party.

Calcutta is also of course the city that witnessed the Great Killing which began on 16 August 1946, in which thousands of people were killed in riots. That event put the seal on the Partition of India.

Bastis were the centre of major riots during 1945-47, and again in 1950. Post-riot analyses dwelt upon the degraded conditions prevailing in the bastis, which may be seen as contributing to the build-up of rage that erupts in riots.

Langston Hughes’ poem comes to mind:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

In December 1992, some Muslim slum areas of Calcutta were rocked by communal riots following the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. Looking from within a basti, it is possible to begin to understanding how and why riots actually take place, in the context of the politician-criminal nexus that thrives on deprivation and disempowerment.

The 1992 riots brought to light the criminalisation of the city and the political system. Poverty; lack of any hope from institutions; reliance on hoodlums to deliver anything; political patronage to the hoodlums to ensure the party’s dominance and to deliver the votes from a passive vote-bank; eventual autonomy of the hoodlums, who utilise opportunities to settle scores, engage in looting, make a point for bargaining with patrons – who takes responsibility for what is happening in the city? Many people know how things happen, but that has come to be accepted as the norm. The so-called protectors of law and order are themselves complicit in this.

Priya Manna Basti has a valuable story to narrate. A large community of migrant, labouring people, who were historically disenfranchised and unlettered, arrived in search of livelihood and settled in Howrah. They lived for decades in a degraded and unhealthy environment. They transformed into a community of people through long years of co-existence under adversity. In the 1930s, a school was started by community leaders, which ran for about a decade. Notwithstanding the disruption of communal riots and partition, during the 1950’s this community witnessed a profound new beginning, in the self-help efforts towards formal education of a historically deprived and exploited section of the population. They generated community leaders comprising of people who having obtained some education themselves, and having reached a good station in life, saw education as a key means to social advancement of the wider community. They set up local schools which generated large numbers of educated men, several of whom went on to acquire respectable and remunerative jobs. Having begun to realise the importance of schooling and education for women, they set up girls’ schools giving rise to educated women, who in turn sent their girls to school and university.

The community in Priya Manna Basti is a microcosm of the situation of north Indian Muslims. Their self-help efforts flourished notwithstanding the cloud of suspicion and discrimination looming over north Indian Muslims in post-independence India. But sixty years on, we have a situation where, even though school-going has become the rule and thousands upon thousands of boys and girls have successfully defied all the challenges arising in trying to obtain education, the pathetic state of the Urdu medium education system plays a cruel joke on students, by taking them up the path to nowhere.

It is this story that has been played out during the economic blight over the last four decades, and the political blight over the last three decades. To the extent that, today, it is very difficult to discern any positive currents, and one has to uncover the earlier story of the community to know just how significant the local sensibility towards education is, and how important it is to revive it. This community initiative, aspiration and spirit, which also meant activists and trade unionists in the community who contributed to the growing support for the communist party – has been utterly uprooted. The community has been reduced to utter dependence for even the most basic things on the crumbs that the party may throw their way, and they have become criminalised in the process. The grandsons of once revered community-based party leaders are today party affiliated crooks and fixers, among whom the elderly from earlier generations are a sad anachronism, and objects of ridicule.

This transformation is what the CPI(M) has wrought in its three decades of power within the state government.

Once again, in the words of Faiz (from the poem “City of Lights”):

O city of lights,
Who can say on which side lies
The road to your lights?
All directions stand in darkness
The lonely city seeks refuge.
Tired, everywhere
The army of aspiration retreats.

(6)

I too deeply value the fragile but unique and rich, pluralist, multicultural heritage of India. Anti-Muslim prejudice, expressed in myriad, trivial, everyday ways – I cannot, will not and do not tolerate it.

Nevertheless, my experience also made me a part of a new society: my Muslim activist colleagues from the Shibpur bastis, and elders and activists in Calcutta. My concerns and efforts led me to becoming acquainted and intimate with all of them.

There is a huge gulf separating Muslims (the overwhelming majority of whom are poor, barely educated, and self-employed) and educated Hindus in India. Its a question of perception and cognition. Very few even bother to recognise that such a gulf exists, or seriously probe into why this is so, let alone act, individually and collectively, to improve matters.

Prejudice and discrimination is very real. I am reminded of an article called “Palestinian like me” by an Israeli journalist, who assumed the identity of a Palestinian and explored the meaning of being a Palestinian. I wait for a Hindu journalist to assume a Muslim identity, and investigate first-hand what being Muslim in Calcutta or West Bengal entails, and thus write “Muslim like me” for the education of his co-religionists.

The vision of an India that gives equal and fair treatment to its minorities is a vision for a secular democratic India.

The Sachar Committee report has collated a lot of the existing information on the socio-economic and educational status of Muslims in India. Speaking of West Bengal and Calcutta, while those working on the ground know the situation all too well, reliable socio-economic data is conspicuous by its absence. In such a vacuum, the continuing work of anthropologist, MKA Siddiqui, stands out. He has studied and written about the social, ethnic and occupational composition of Calcutta’s Muslims. He has also undertaken serious studies on the socio-economic and educational aspects of slum-dwellers in Calcutta. Dr Siddiqui’s work, read together with Nirmal Kumar Bose’s Calcutta: A Social Survey, helps the interested enquirer to understand the tale and travails of Calcutta’s Muslims. Economist Zakir Husain has studied the demand for primary education among Muslim slumdwellers in Calcutta. And recently, geographer Sohel Firdaus has looked at the educational status of Muslims in a large slum in Howrah.

Education is the arena where the apartheid system of India can be seen to be most effectively in operation. With the complete failure of the Indian state to ensure uniform universal compulsory school education; the market catering only to those who can afford to pay; and NGOs still touching only a tiny part of the deprived Indian masses – the Muslim madrasas emerge as a significant provider of some form of education to the poor. In the absence of these madrasas, even this little education would not be available.

In the context of the failure of substantive civil society intervention towards education for all, this community-based initiative is the only one of significance.

Rather than direct one’s ire against the madrasas for the kind of education they are providing, ire should be directed towards the failure of the state to fulfil its duty of providing sound education to all, and thus progressively eliminating the enormous socio-economic disparities afflicting the country. Ire should also be directed towards the failure of civil society to engage with the question of education for all.

Grassroots experience reveals real barriers at every level that confront poor Muslims in their quest for a better life. Muslim citizens suffer acute socio-economic deprivation and disempowerment – as the Sachar Committee Report has documented. The conditions in Muslim slums in metropolitan Calcutta are a manifestation and outcome of the underlying, deep institutional and attitudinal barriers faced by Muslim citizens in India to integration with the socio-economic mainstream, and advancement. Apathy is widespread in the social mainstream. Unless the overall environment of social attitudes and practice is improved, grassroots efforts are severely impeded in their impact. There are also subtle links between anti-Muslim prejudice and attitudes to the Dalits.

In 2000, following my acquaintance with Dr Siddiqui, I became interested in the issue of slum-based manufacturing in Calcutta, a subject on which he has done considerable work, and also made a video documentary on. In 2006, we developed a proposal for a strategic research and planning intervention, aimed at structural upgrading of the blighted trades which employ a large number of workers, and whose future is very bleak. But we were unable to get any acceptance or support for this. Several years earlier, I had also initiated a proposal for comprehensive renewal of the blighted canal-side area of Beliaghata in Calcutta. That vision too did not see the light of day.

But the crossing of the river, and going to Howrah – transformed my life, something I could never have even imagined just before that. It provided a real human dimension to the spiritualisation that I was undergoing. Yet this was only something residing deep within me, ever since the riots of 1992, the plaintive plea of my soul, that the Almighty entrust a poor Muslim child to me, to love and nurture.

Howrah Pilot Project’s experience since 1997 – has been a long, unending experience of denial and disregard from institutions that the poor slumdwellers habitually face. The ordeal of institutional disregard has been an apprenticeship and a harsh trial. Working in a poor, degraded slum in Howrah, controlled by criminalised political cadre – patience, adaptation, and swallowing of pain is taught continuously.

An honest, selfless, idealistic, sincere social interventionist – is an aberration and a caricature in such an area of darkness. Poverty, conflict, social and environmental injustice – all degrade the human fibre, revealing man’s ugliest facets.

But the work of HPP through its centre in Priya Manna Basti continues. Talimi Haq School, a non-formal school for poor and working children, was started in 1998 and this continues. The whole programme is managed by trained community-based volunteers. A few slum youth, boys and girls, have gone through an intensive process of skill and leadership development and grown and matured as human beings. A number of volunteers from Calcutta have worked for varying periods and had a rich, transformative educational experience. A lot of goodwill has been created. The work has inspired similar grassroots efforts in other slum localities of Calcutta and Howrah.

The whole experience has been rich in learning for those involved. HPP is a live laboratory, to yield strategic, experience-based action knowledge on poverty and slum community development.

Amidst poverty can also be found simplicity, trust, beautiful dreams and aspirations, and goodness, a fertile soil to plant and nurture a small sapling of conviction and responsibility. HPP is a small, quiet, cheerful island of hope in PM Basti.
[To be continued...]

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V Ramaswamy is a Calcutta-based business executive, social planner, grassroots organiser, teacher and writer. Address for correspondence: hpp@vsnl.com.