Black Coffee

Pink And Orange Flowers

2011-12-22T02:15:00.000-08:00

Drishti got off the bus as the roadside markets of South Delhi came into view. The malls that had mushroomed of late had left unscathed the famous Delhi open air markets because at the end of the day, Delhites liked their roadside gol gappa stalls, their small steamed momo stands and their roadside flower shops. Branded florists who had proper shops had to make do with turning themselves into gift stores and attracting only the selective clientele of the type that send out the driver to buy the tamarind chutney covered crisp papdi chat off the roadside vendor and eat it, reclining on the cushions of their Mercedes or Honda City cars while ordinary people have to stand on the sidewalks to do the same. Roadside florists who had no more than a cart and a fixed spot on the pavements of the market place held sway.

Drishti got off the bus to buy flowers for her ailing grand aunt.

“Not white flowers surely”, she thought on spying the elegant white gladioli lining the pavements behind the bus stop. Her grand aunt would say Drishti was acting as if she were already dead.

But somehow, the only flowers that looked fresh were the ones that were white. Somehow.

Drishti was not much of a flower buyer. She’d always thought that flowers were a waste of money. Earlier, on her sadly infrequent visits to her grand aunt, Drishti had taken her little treats –orange or apple juice as her grand aunt liked what she called ‘sherbet’, chocolates or maybe Bengali sweets from the famous sweet shop around the corner of the park opposite which her grand aunt lived. But most often, she bought what her grand aunt liked best- icecream.

Drishti had learnt to be careful about these gifts. They couldn’t be exotic or unusual because her grand aunt liked the familiar. Flavours like chocolate chip and butterscotch were out as they involved bits that one could choke on. It was best to buy plain vanilla. Chocolates were ok as long as they weren’t liquor chocolates and sweets were fine but had to be bought in tiny quantities or they would be heaped upon the next visitor who would find herself overwhelmed with more sweets than she could eat.

Drishti’s cousin had once bought their grand aunt some exotic fruit tea from her travels to the Nilgiris. This had been kindly passed on to Drishti with the complaint, “It tastes odd!”

“But Pishi Thakurma,” Drishti had explained, “This isn’t meant to be taken with milk!”

“So you’re telling me I can’t have milk anymore!”

Noneheless, it didn’t go to waste. Drishti had some nice, fruit flavoured tea to help her through her exams.

One couldn’t say that Drishti and her grand aunt were on the best of terms. For one thing, Drishti refused, most firmly, the privilege of actually staying with her grand aunt. Despite having relatives with homes in Delhi, she held on firmly to her hostel room, insisting on any possible excuse to stay away.

Drishti’s Pishi Thakurma had an active imagination. She had always had a couple of stories about a rude man who answered Drishti’s mobile phone and cautioned Drishti’s mother rather often about vague imagined men she suspected her grand niece of interacting with and even (Oh the shame!) of having affairs with.

Things became smoother when Drishti brought her calm and sober, steady boyfriend Arjo to meet her grand aunt. Pishi Thakurma was at her charming best and laid Arjo a fine, four course meal of dal and vegetables, fish and meat, cooked as if his mother would have cooked it. The spell broke as she popped the uncomfortable question, just as Arjo was digging his way through the tomato chutney and the jaggery infused ‘payesh’. “So when are you marrying our Drishti?”

To do Arjo credit, he didn’t exactly splutter or turn pale... but Drishti did.

Nonetheless, Drishti was always thoughtful about her visits and her gifts. When her grand aunt had her sofa upholstered, Drishti had scanned the upholstery shops and found cushion covers just the right shade of orange.

Mostly, her gifts were bribes –bribes to keep her usually cantankerous grand aunt happy and to keep her off her back and from intruding into her affairs.

Today, she wandered through the market looking for flowers because her grand aunt couldn’t eat sweets or ice cream any more. She was being force fed through a tube.

When the tube was first pushed in, Drishti had called Arjo up on her cell phone though not actually hysterical or in tears, “Baby, if I ever have to stop tasting, will you give me a lethal cocktail and let me go?” He’d made a joke about having to spend his old age in jail because of her and she’d felt much better.

Flowers it was.

The market was abuzz –even on the morning of a weekday. Students hung about, taking coffee breaks or pushing large golgappas into their mouths, tasting the sweet tamarind chutney and the texture of the square cut potato filling while the spicy, cold jaljeera dribbled down their chins. Wayfarers hung about, planning an evening trip to the liquor stall. Restaurants were being vacuumed but young people sat around tables on the pavements watching their cigarette smoke rise into the winter sunshine. The old, blind dog, stretched out in front of the cafe, its belly soaking in the sun. The tobacco seller sorted his pan leaves into an even heap. It was a lovely day.

The flower shop hadn’t much to offer. An anglicised old lady in a skirt and a matching blouse chatted to the vendor about how her house was so dark and empty and needed flowers to brighten it up. The vendor was sympathetic even though he probably slept on the streets, under his cart, every night. The lilies that the lady was buying were white again. The coloured flowers were wilting. Drishti settled on two orange gerberas to match the upholstery of her grand aunt’s sofa and threw in a pink one for good measure. She had to ask the vendor to wire them up to make them look sprightlier.

She felt self conscious as she stood, waiting for the next bus. A young woman with large, pink and orange flowers. Heads turned to see beauty added to youth and Drishti blushed as she stood there, smoothing out the gerbera petals. When the bus came, it was too crowded. The gerberas would get crushed. Drishti hailed an autorickshaw instead.

The news came as an SMS on her cell phone as she climbed in and started to bargain with the autorickshaw driver. She should have bought white flowers instead.

Tallinn diaries Part III

2011-12-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Readers of my blog will note that my last posts on Estonia were in September. My mood was euphoric in both and indeed, my Tallinn experience was all in all, a happy one. Yet, I admit I wasn’t always happy. I missed my family, my friends and I missed Soumyadip and wished he were there to share my excitement at finding myself in such a fresh, green, coniferous and peaceful, new land. I wanted to run and dance and hop, under the pines, scrunching cones and needles and silver birch twigs under my feet and doing my best not to slip on the mossy green undergrowth. It was hard to be so ecstatic and yet alone. Being alone when you’re miserable can be dealt with and is sometimes desirable but when you’re happy, you need someone to share it with.

Luckily for Skype.

Did you know that peer to peer sharing was invented in Tallinn?

Nonetheless, this blog post, ‘Tallinn Diaries Part III’ is a continuation of my Tallinn series but unlike the others, it is written in hindsight and is thus, retrospective rather than euphoric.

Now that I’m back in Delhi, sitting on my parents’ couch and mentally groaning while being lectured on the many things I still have to learn, I think back to what I used to call my ‘hospital bed room’ in the Academic Hostel at Akadeemia tee, Tallinn. I had never made much effort in trying to make it home unlike my Godavari Hostel room in JNU. I realise now that it was because I was sure, deep within, that it was “only three months” and I wasn’t there to stay. And that gets me wondering- how would I have behaved if I were?

I’d have gotten a job, earned a scanty wage, paid through my nose for essentials but guzzled cheap alcohol and wished I could have afforded to live in a Nordic country –much like how I live in Delhi except that here, I pay through my nose for alcohol as well.

How is Estonia as a place to live? It’s beautiful and serene. It’s a lovely place to think and work. But the pay is low, the unemployment is high and the government has never floated a single bond. I was shocked to see a white man foraging in a bin for food. It shouldn’t have surprised me as the poor in my own country are absolutely destitute. People die of cold in Delhi every winter without having the middle class person bat an eyelid. But this was the first time I had seen a white man reduced to this and I realised that poverty is demeaning and pathetic anywhere.

Nonetheless, the government never floats a single bond, frightened for its dear life of sovereign debt. Is this a price to pay for not turning into ‘another Greece’? When the crisis came, Estonia took advantage of its reduction in inflation to join the Eurozone. It seems odd for an outsider, but to an Estonian policy maker, this decision was taken long ago and this was simply a window of opportunity. So while other governments were following countercyclical policies, the Estonian government was quite happy with the cyclical change. (I should cite Darrell’s paper here.)

National pride is important to the Estonians. They would like to be a developed country. And joining the Eurozone was a very expensive membership to a very exclusive club. A fixed exchange rate peg couldn’t be maintained very long in the face of capital flows anyway. Not that capital flows were any easier to deal with once the euro came.

Being in the EU, hasn’t helped all that much. For one thing, Estonian manufacturing doesn’t have the level of competitiveness required in Europe and unable to devalue, Estonia has seen subtle but noticeable deindustrialisation. Unemployment has also been exacerbated by the rise of foreign owned retail chains which have wiped out the old, specialised little shops. Yes, Estonia has a lot to teach India in this regard.

Nevertheless, Estonia is the better off amongst the Baltic States. Riga in Latvia saw bank runs while I was in Tallinn. In fact the joke in Latvia was that in Riga, it is the banks that fall, in Tallinn, it is only the Christmas Tree. (The Tallinn Christmas Tree did fall over three times after it had been set up.) Beggars hung about outside one of Riga’s churches. The Latvian ‘lati’ is valued even higher than the euro, at a fixed exchange rate, and is in desperate need for a devaluation.

Yes, the Baltics were a pessimistic economist’s paradise. Nonetheless, for me, coming as I do from the Third World, any quiet place with stellar infrastructure is lovely and I wish India could have had the Estonian infrastructure –the trolleys, the libraries from which books could be found and issued in less than five minutes, bank accounts that took no more than fifteen minutes to operate, traffic that stopped for pedestrians (Oh! How wonderful!) More than anything else, I felt I was getting spoilt- three months of blissful peace with no honking cars and scooters. Better still, Estonians have a firm respect for privacy and prefer sending emails and texts to making calls even though calling in Estonia is pretty cheap. So no crazy phone ringing. Ah!

Until...

I began to miss the noise. The best thing about being abroad is that you realise how wonderful home is. You miss the drive, the energy, the passion, the way so many people fight cheerfully every day –if only to survive, the warmth, the small fact that things can be repaired –that one shouldn’t waste ...you miss home. Delhi’s a terrible city but at the end of the day, it’s mine. And I missed it dearly.

And when it comes to where you’re going, it helps to know where you’re from. When an (I must admit) awfully good looking but immensely stupid young man told me I was the prettiest girl at xyz party, I explained to him, rather civilly, that I’m brown and I’m different so ofcourse, he likes me. He remained unconvinced for a while and then he realised I had a point. Either that, or I bored him stiff -because I didn’t hear from him again.

European men are as bad as what Mrs. Datta calls the ‘cheapus indicus’ or ‘The Great Indian Cheapie’. Well, they don’t get harass-y unless it’s at a pub. Somehow, the cheapus internationale seem to think women go to pubs to get harassed. Nonetheless, walking alone on the dark, scary streets isn’t much fun. (You get fined 40 euro if you aren’t wearing a ‘reflector’ for one.) Yes, men and women aren’t that different elsewhere in the world. I found I was more prudish about accepting compliments from drunken strangers than some of my Estonian acquaintances but that’s ok because it kept me alive. I was also a lot less bothered about and somewhat more comfortable with my personal appearance than most Estonian and western girls I met. That could be the effects of the burgeoning sex industry and the pressure it puts on young girls to look like the girls in the magazines.

What else? I liked the lack of hierarchy and I liked being able to call everyone by name. But I had a hard time explaining to Riaz that I would rather call my supervisor “Ma’am” than “Jayati” because there’s an awful lot of affection and respect that I throw into the word “Ma’am” especially, when I’m using it for my supervisor. I was lucky to participate in study Group discussions even though it never kicked off as such and I was really lucky to meet all of the people I met, some of whom, I still say, are beyond brilliant. I love the way their minds work. Conversations with Riaz were particularly exciting (and somewhat exhausting) as I got to revise my dialectics.

I realised that a nice, useful way of looking at the world is to put Economics first. It works to think of technological change driving changes in production relations and then changes in institutions and in society. And I learnt how to see this in non Marxist terms as well. I learnt to appreciate the heterodox movement in Economics- the communion of Marxists, Keynesians, Schumpeterians and well, anyone opposed to neo liberalism –to stand up against austerity Economics and to stand up for the interests of ordinary people. You may kick and fight but it’s important to be generous and to give in order to take. There’s so much that we have to teach and learn from each other! We might as well start.

Yes, I learnt a lot at Tallinn. It was more energy saving than Oslo where thanks to cheap oil, it is cheaper to live in the suburbs. It was post Soviet, well planned and charmingly medieval. It would have liked to be Nordic but to be Nordic, you need to do more than to give pedestrians the right of the way. You have to make your policies for the common man.

Love

2011-11-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

I do not seek to change you,

But only to propel you.

I know that my love

Puts you on a throne

And makes you fidget

As it’s high and cold.

But for me,

You’re a leader of men,

While you’re still at university,

Chugging beer

And solving

Problem sets.

It bothers me that

I love you

This way.

But this is how

I know to love.

I should rebel

As I step out at night

While a rapist waits

At every turn.

I love like a woman

Who cannot get

Where a man can get.

Which is rubbish.

But centuries of loving

Have made me love this way.

And as I accept your quirks,

Do accept my love.

(Not that my love’s a quirk.)

The Beat on a First World Street

2011-11-07T05:01:00.000-08:00

I think of you

Playing a beat

Upon a First World street.

Why must you

Play your beat

Upon a First World Street?

Is there no job for you

Off the damn cold street?

Why must you

Play your beat

Upon a First World Street?

You beg for alms outside the Church,

I stare at you, confused

The times have changed so much for you,

It makes me feel confused.

Long, long ago,

You and I

Said we must unite.

Your boss is mine,

My boss is yours.

We said

We must unite.

But you got a job,

A homeland too,

Our boss gave you a deal.

You sold me out

Unto your boss

For such a lovely deal.

III

It was a fight,

I will agree

For getting

Such a deal.

You’ve made your world

What it is

With such a lovely deal.

You sent away your poverty

To a brighter, warmer place

I know dozens more like you

In a brighter, warmer place.

But your boss and I,

We too have dealt

And sent you to the street.

Make no mistake,

It screws me too

And keeps me in the street.

But we could try,

Once again,

To forget I’m black, you’re white

We could try

Once again,

To join hands and unite.

So let us hold hands my friend,

Join hands and unite.

We have only our hungry chains

Let's join hands and unite.

In Support Of The Harvard Students’ Walkout On EC 10.

2011-11-04T05:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, several students of EC 10, an undergraduate Economics course taught at Harvard University by the famous economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, walked out of class. In their “Open Letter to Gregory Mankiw”, they protested against the implicit bias in his course and how it trains students to think in a way that actually propagates the crisis rather than works to resolve it. I was thrilled. It is high time that atleast someone realises that the undergraduate Economics course (taught anywhere, in fact) tends to present views either completely irrelevant to policy or dangerous for it, particularly in view of crisis and even, development.

In this context, Jeremy Patashnik, student of EC 10 wrote his “In Defense of EC 10.” Patashnik insisted that the basis for the walkout was ill founded. He said that the protestors had completely missed the point of Economics –that it addresses positive rather than normative questions. It is not about “Should there be a minimum wage?” for example but about “What happens when there is a minimum wage?” In that way, Economics is a science. Patashnik however, forgets that it is not the positiveness or the normativity of the questions which is at issue but the choice of questions in the first place. For instance, we ask ‘what happens when there are minimum wage regulations’ and arrive at the conclusion that unemployment can be solved by means of ‘labour market flexibility’. We forget that falling wages may actually worsen cyclical unemployment as spending goes down. Since workers do not accumulate capital, they have a higher propensity to consume and if they are deprived of purchasing power, they stop spending which has further feedback effects on output and employment. This is the Keynesianism which the neoclassical synthesis forgets.

Having sticky prices (like the minimum wage) is in fact the very basis of capitalism. It allows for inelastic price expectations. In case of elastic price expectations, if prices rise, one expects them to rise further and if they fall, people expect them to fall further. There is no peg for prices to be centred on. Therefore, when prices fall, people expect them to fall even more and consume less which is why output doesn’t go up on its own in case of a crisis. It requires government intervention to push it up. It is ofcourse, possible to have a crisis even in case of inelastic price expectations but we will not go into that here.

Another scary thing- and this I recall from Mankiw’s ‘Principles of Economics’ textbook which was in fact written for EC 10 and which I have also read as a part of the Delhi University undergraduate syllabus- is that cash subsidies are better than subsidies that distort prices. In other words, instead of allowing for ration shops which give out food at less than market rates, governments should simply identify the poor and give them cash. That way, the poor have a choice as to whether to purchase non food items or to consume food and thus end up with a higher level of utility. (I haven’t presented this argument very well here. Do note that it has a lovely indifference curves related, formally demonstrated proof.) Mankiw forgets that it is the identification of who is poor and who is not that is the problem. In India, beneficiaries of government schemes are identified with the help of a ‘poverty line’. Currently, the Planning Commission has fixed it as Rs. 32. By Mankiw’s cash subsidies argument, only people who earn less than Rs. 32 a day are eligible for the cash subsidy. In case, one earns Rs. 33, bad luck. Moreover, imagine surviving on Rs. 32 a day! This kind of poverty line has a very dangerous Type II error. It leaves out so many people who survive on next to nothing from attaining very minimal standards of nutrition. If food is cheaper, at least they can attain some benefit- even if they don’t reach the highest indifference curve possible. Therefore, if policy makers took their textbook Economics seriously, they would actually create more destitution. Unfortunately, our Manmohan Singh and our Montek Ahluwalia are very good students of Economics.

Crisis wise, there is also the ‘rational expectations hypothesis’. This says that suppose there is a situation of unemployment. Demand and supply have converged at less than full employment output. There is a fiscal thrust to push up output and employment. Suppliers will then see that prices are expected to rise and increase supply. In case of adaptive expectations, supply will rise slowly in response to price expectations which depend on the prices of the previous year. In case of rational expectations however, rational suppliers will already know the full employment output and the price required for demand and supply to adjust at full employment equilibrium therefore they will adjust price is such a way that there is no crisis at all. Therefore, crisis is only due to a shortfall of rationality. The Ratex guys forget that crisis happens because it is systemic. It is not due to a lack of information. It happens simply because the entire system of finance and real capital is inherently unstable. Even if people are perfectly rational, it is theoretically inevitable for crises to happen. One can’t expect that they will simply sort themselves out in the long run when people become rational.

These are only three factors that I can remember from my own undergraduate Economics courses that do not present the entire story. I’m not saying don’t teach Ratex or the argument for cash subsidies. I am simply saying that do teach alternatives to Ratex that talk of crisis as systemic, teach real life reasons why cash subsidies haven’t become popular as opposed to food subsidies, teach us the shortfalls of not having a minimum wage. Isn’t it funny that when someone says something left wing-ish, she is treated as biased and unobjective while whatever the liberal right says, even if it doesn’t present the entire story, is the epitome of objectivity?

Tallinn diaries- Part II

2011-09-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

“The two roads that connect the Upper Town of Tallinn to the Lower Town are called the ‘Long Leg’ and ‘Short Leg’. Tallinn is the city that walks with a limp.”

So says Darrell, my friend and de facto tour guide around Tallinn. Odd to have an American for a tour guide but Darrell knows everything about everything (He’s travelled to South Korea and China, knows bits of German, has worked on a farm in East Germany and has studied in Sweden. His research is on Estonia’s transition to the Eurozone) so yes, he does nicely.

Today, after a long week of classes and research that didn’t really go anywhere (as is characteristic of research) I troubled Darrell to accompany me on yet another foray into the Old Town. It was the kind of day one fantasises about when one is stuck indoors, preparing for an exam or meeting a deadline. The sun was out, casting a warm glow upon the cold, windy day and everything was alright with the world. I wanted to dance.

Having already exhausted two months in the city, Darrell was fairly up to date with the ins and outs of the Town and he guided me effortlessly through the narrow stone pathways, past the medieval castle towers, the churches and the cafes to show me a thing or two. We entered past St. John’s Chapel which is fairly new -only 19^th century- but had needed post war restoration. It was a Lutheran Church. Turns out that for all the Russian effort in getting the Estonians to go Orthodox, it never really caught on and significantly more Estonians are Lutheran.

I showed Darrell St. Nicholas’ Church and felt proud as if it were my find and in return, Darrell led me to St. Olaf’s. In the medieval times, Estonians were mostly divided into the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Olaf. Both Churches commanded enormous power and the two proud steeples that dot the Tallinn landscape belong to these Churches. According to Darrell, the Church of St. Olaf was the highest building in the world but was struck by lightning numerous times and became shorter with every reconstruction. I stared at the steeple and smirked. When you have that high a metal steeple high up in the sky, you’re just asking to be struck by lightning.

We visited the Great Guild Hall which was the centre of power in the Lower Town. The merchants in the Great Guild decided who would practise what profession, what trade malpractices were and how they could be punished. It was the only guild Estonians could belong to as the Guild of St. Canute was only for Germans and the Guild of St. Olaf had ceased to exist somewhere in the 17^th century. Membership was selective and junior members had only partial voting rights. Unmarried merchants aimed to belong to the Brotherhood of the Black Heads as a launch pad for their entry into the Great Guild. The Hall of the Great Guild, well heated as it was via a furnace in the cellar, was often rented out for weddings and theatre performances. Merrymaking was common in the Guild Hall and the wine cellar was famous. In some of the years in which lightning had struck down the Church of St. Olaf, the precincts of the Great Guild Hall were also used for worship. As of today, the Guild Hall houses the Historical Museum of Estonia.

The Historical Museum is a modern, interactive exhibition extolling peace loving Estonia’s long history of sheer survival through different degrees of foreign occupation. It tells of Danish occupation, followed by the Swedish, the occupation of the knights of the Linovian Order, the Russians, of a brief period of independence and of life under Soviet occupation. Here and there, it has touch screens that give one little quizzes on Estonian history and the old wine cellar of the Guild Hall also houses a ‘time capsule’ in which you are asked to play the interchanging roles of the Danish forces, the Estonian peasants rebelling against the Linovian Order, the Swedes and so on. Estonia’s huge advance in information technology is evident even in the working of its Historical Museum. The lobby, possibly an old antechamber of the Great Guild Hall, shows a five screen film summing up Estonia’s long and painful history. With a prominent nationalist poet, the first head of a free Estonian government, a frog from old Estonian myths and a Swedish medieval educationist telling in turn (and often arguing among themselves) the story of Estonia’s survival, the lobby shows cartoons of Estonia in the ice age, the medieval times, scenes from the Bolshevik Revolution, scenes of Estonia’s initial, short period of independence, scenes under Soviet occupation and scenes from the jubilant ‘Singing Revolution’ that gave Estonia its independence.

While I was exiting one of the exhibitions in the first room of the Great Guild Hall, I found on display, a pink scarf very similar to one I have. It had batik work on pink silk. On reading the label, I realised that Indira Gandhi’s staff had given it to someone who had done her a service during her stay in Tallinn. The Historical Museum had set on display, her entry in its visitor’s book. Mrs Gandhi wished the people of Tallinn well and praised its cultural heritage, adding the classical Nehruvian disclaimer that one must always look forward. Gorbachev’s entry was displayed next to hers. He had spent his time at Tallinn visiting factories and collective farms. In the same exhibition was an old rug which had belonged to the Soviet leader Kalinin and had his face on it. Kalinin is said to have mentioned that in hard times, a rug can be sold.

Later, Darrell and I took the ‘Longer leg’ to Toompea or the Upper Town. Along us was a high stone wall interspersed with the kind of towers one imagines a dragon will trap a beautiful princess in- high cylindrical stone structures with red conical, tiled roofs. In Tallinn, the towers are cylindrical on the outside and flat on the inside. Darrell tells me that’s so that they take up less space on the interior and one can build against them. I find it rather disappointing to my fairytale imagination and I feel it spoils the symmetry. There is one completely cylindrical tower and that is on Toompea Hill. It is called the Virgin Tower.

As I noticed it was becoming increasingly difficult to climb and the pathway was getting steep, I realised that the Upper Town is actually ‘upper’. Earlier, like a good Marxist, I had thought it was because of class. The knights and the Baltic German nobility stayed in the Upper Town while the bourgeoisie i.e. the guild members and the poor stayed in the Lower Town. But it’s actually the elevation. Toompea is a nice, steep hill. (Ofcourse I don’t mean Himalayan steep but steep enough for any Estonian hill.)

Toompea is home to the vast, domed Orthodox Church that is so significant to the Tallinn skyline. This Church is far more ornate than the Lutheran Churches of St. Nicholas and St. Olaf. It has a high, quadrangle dome, painted light blue on the inside and dotted with stars and black and gold on the outside with the characteristic golden rooster. Its walls are white but on the inside, they are painted with floral motifs in gold. The altarpiece is a vast gold painted screen with scenes from the life of Christ. Heavy oils on canvas jut out from the high walls from heavy, gold painted frames. Also unlike, the Churches of St. Nicholas and St. Olaf, the Orthodox Church has real candles. The chandeliers that hang from the ceiling ofcourse, are electrified but the gigantic Church candle sticks are lit with real candles which have to be changed from time to time. The Church smells of love and ritual.

We took the Short Leg back to the Lower Town and made our way into Kompressor, a big cafe well frequented by the University crowd, which made us delicious Estonian pancakes. The sugar overdose made me crave coffee. Meanwhile, we ran into some of Darrell’s friends from Austria. Before we knew it, it was already nine o clock. We took the trolley bus back to Mustamae.

Yes, it was fun.

Tallinn Diaries, Part I

2011-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

In the distant land of myth and legend, from the icy waters of the Lake Ulemiste, an old man arises, water flowing down his robes, his eyebrows thick with frost. Yet again, he has a job to do. He steps forth, using his staff of solid ice to steady his weary walk past the thin layer of ice on the lake to the ice on the ground below and plods along to the frightened guard at the gates of the ancient trading centre on the shores of the cold and cruel Baltic sea.

“Is the city finished yet?” he roars.

The guard trembles but he has been instructed that such a day will come and his answer is ready, “No sir. There is a lot more work to be done.”

The old man heaves a sigh and returns to his lake. The guard mutters a prayer to the patron saint of his guild. Had he said the city was finished, the old man would have churned the waters of the lake and Tallinn would have been submerged, taking all with her.

Tallinn is the city that will never be finished. Situated on the coast of the Baltic Sea, its immense military and strategic importance as a port and a trading centre has caused it to be coveted and conquered, so much so that the Estonians hold the colour black on their proud tricolour as a testimony to the suffering of the Estonian people.

I arrived in this proud, cold and beautiful city on Friday, having observed that the Scandinavian buns that were made in my boarding school were far more delicious than the ones that Finnair had to offer as we were flying to Helsinki. The same Finnair flight had also introduced me to Finnish jazz accompanied by some very decent red wine. I was living it up even before I got here.

Arriving at Tallinn with a kaput suitcase (Finnair also burst my locks), I was sufficient bother to Andreas, the international coordinator of the Technology Governance International students’ programme. Moreover, I made the mistake of standing at the left hand side of his vehicle until I realised that the passenger seat was on the right. Oops.

Nonetheless, as I had looked down from the plane, upon the sparkling (and I imagined, icy cold) waters of the Baltic Sea, I was already in love with the flat green landmass that met my eyes as the plane proceeded to land.

As I told Andreas, “It’s so green.” He laughed as he told me that most, really, most of Tallinn is forest. A capital city with so much forest cover? William Wordsworth would love it here.

Next day, after I had heaped the contents of my broken suitcase into a closet and showered to my fill, I took a walk along the many buildings that make up the Tallinn University of Technology in Mustamae. The trees in Tallinn are mostly coniferous. You see the occasional broad leafed deciduous tree (as in front of St. Nicholas’ cathedral) but even these don’t have very large leaves. Then there are bushes with small leaves, spikes and berries. In the coniferous glades through which the polar sun shines its soft, warm light, you notice that the ground is wet. Mustame is mostly a constructed wetland. Soft, carpet moss and interesting fronds of algae strew the winding and intriguing forest paths and occasionally break out into a sharp yellow flower with pointy petals or a daisy or two. It is a nature lover’s paradise. I caught a glimpse of an exceptionally hairy squirrel like animal scaling a pine tree. Even the dogs here are furrier than what I’m accustomed to.

Tired after my walk, I found myself in the cafeteria of the School of Economics and Business Administration, introducing myself to Borsch soup, a Russian beetroot based soup with chunks of beef and beans. An Estonian girl called Veronika who had been witness to most of my confusion counting euro and euro cent coins and trying hard to get the girl behind the counter to understand that English is the only language I CAN use, came up to me and introduced herself. Soon enough, she was doing me an essential service –teaching me the hows and whens of the trolley bus.

The trolley bus is much like the Delhi metro except that it operates on the road and runs on trolley cables, drawn up over the road. It’s fast and reliable and the easiest thing to ride. Tallinn has an excellent transport system with a frequent and well connected network of trolley buses, buses and trams. Better still, it’s cheap too. You can get a day ticket for one euro and you’re set!

The trolley bus took me to Kapamaja, the city centre. At first, it looked like no more than the same old collection of malls one sees all over Gurgaon and Navi Mumbai. Then, I began to walk in the direction of a green patch of land. Soon enough, I found myself face to face with a huge, contemplative stone sculpture of A.H, Tammsaare, an Estonian writer. Tammsaare Park has had an important role to play in the history of the Soviet Union. The Estonian Socialist parties –both Leninists and revisionists had joined hands to participate in the Russian General Strike against the increasingly unpopular Tsarist rule in 1905. The Tsarist armies opened fire on hundreds of peaceful protestors assembled in front of what is now the Estonian National Theatre. It was an act that had triggered massive outrage. I learnt that the Estonians have had a significant role to play in the Russian Revolution. A large fraction of the people the Tsar had had deported to Siberia for political activity and half of the people the Tsar had had executed, were Estonians and Latvians.

From there I made enquiries at the Estonian National Theatre and found that students can watch Estonian opera and ballet for no more than a euro. I was ecstatic. However, the lady behind the counter wouldn’t accept my Indian student id and told me to come back when I have an Estonian id.

Next day, I went behind the Estonian Theatre and found myself in the heart of the Old Town of Tallinn. Suddenly, there was no more concrete and the roads were paved in cobblestone on which the European women walked clip clop in high heeled boots. The walks were lined with wooden cafe tables and umbrellas marked ‘Saku’ and happy people sat around, wrapped in green flannel blankets drinking beer and eating the most delicious smelling foods from all over the world (I even spotted a Maharaja Indian Restaurant in the Town Hall Square). Flowers screamed out in a full blast of colour not only from the flower shops or the ‘lilipoods’ but also from rectangular pots of geraniums under every window. (How do their geraniums get so big? Mum tried hard with hers for years!) I’d been having fun in Tallinn all this while but at this moment, I was truly, truly happy. Suddenly I felt like a tourist in a movie, walking slowly and reverently through a full blast of life, savouring and memorising every face, every shop, every splash of colour and life... and song –Estonians are usually a silent people but in the Old Towne, every cafe screams with music and laughter.

I walked about in a trance, keeping away from the shops (impoverished student after all) and stumbled into St. Nicholas’ Church. There, I was privileged to see the last remaining fragment of the famous Danse Macabres by Bernt Notke. Notke had painted two Danse Macabres, one for Lubeck and one for St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn. The Lubeck Danse Macabres is now beyond restoration. However, copies of it show a long series of figures from the Pope to a Fool and a sleeping baby dancing with Death, depicted as a skeleton. The Tallinn piece extends from the Pope to a Cardinal and one can see a fragment of a bishop’s robe. Verses painted underneath the figures, as coming from the figure of a preacher sitting in a pulpit, read the eternal truth that no one from the rich to the poor, from the young to the old, from the politically powerful to the politically insignificant can evade Death. From the dates on the two paintings as painted on the side, on which there is some dispute, and from the pomegranate pattern on the dress of the figure of the Empress, it has been deduced that this painting was commissioned after the Black Death had just reached Lubeck.

Later, I stumbled into an old building with a forbidding, large door. It was the Tallinn City Museum. After some hesitation about whether it was open for visitors, I went in. Soon enough, I was catapulted into another world in which the Baltic German nobility from Toompea and the bourgeoisie from the Lower Town, lived in a perennial conflict under the nominal rule of the representatives of the King of Denmark and then the Tsar. The nobility found themselves wanting for serfs while serfs could become freemen and live freely and rather comfortably in the Lower Town and even belong to a Guild. Production was organised in guilds under the patronage of the Saints of the Parish. The young masters of guilds (before they were married) belonged to the Brotherhood of the Black Heads, named such because its patron saint, St Maurice, had dark hair. After they were married, they joined the guilds of St Nicholas, St Olaf or an exclusive and powerful guild only for those of German origin. Journeymen and apprentices were deprived of the power and protection of these guilds and one can guess from the extensive silver they owned and the beautiful oil paintings of rulers from Denmark, Sweden and Russia, how much power these guilds could exercise.

The museum also took me to Soviet era Tallinn and the personality cult of Stalin which many Estonians have recorded as the most dismal phase in their history. Artists and poets wrote paens to Stalin in order to maintain their position in the Writers’ and Artists’ Unions. As a result, Tallinn has a rich collection of Soviet art and poetry –most of it has rosy cheeked Estonian working class men and women in folk costume raising a hammer and holding it together- on posters, on tapestry, on china. Another common motif is the profile of Stalin with Lenin’s profile behind him. There is also a lovely Stalin tapestry. As I passed a bust of the man, I found myself saying, “Hello old friend. We meet again.” The Lenin era exhibition was far more balanced but Comrade Lenin has never needed a personality cult.

Interestingly, both museums accepted my JNU student id card and let me in, cheap.

Another interesting exhibition I stumbled upon was a sculpture and design exhibition by an Estonian sculptor who had found empty mine shells from the Soviet era in an island off the coast of Tallinn. He has now shaped these mine shells into perambulators, arm chairs, beds and even a water fountain.

Finally, tired and shoe bitten, I walked into an African pub and fulfilled an age old ambition of walking into a bar by myself and ordering a drink. This is something I’d have felt too intimidated to do in Delhi. Then, after some aimless wandering, I managed to take a tram to Kapamaja and the trolley back to Mustamae.

Till later.

Angst

2011-08-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to see you as a little boy, your hair standing on end like a cartoon boy’s, possibly even without the gel you so painstakingly apply now to achieve the same effect. I can hear you gabbling away as you do even now. Your young mother doesn’t watch you as she reads quietly. The big fish in the aquarium chase the little fish. You fidget as you drive your tricycle around the room, shrieking and hoping your mother will look up from her book. You stare into the aquarium. A big fish has caught hold of a little one. The bully! What’s happening there is unjust, unfair and you must make the big fish pay. You drive your tricycle into the aquarium and then, the world goes black.

Seconds later, you have glass shards in your hair. You’ve cut your little curled fingers and palms, blood trickles down your forehead and your mother clicks her tongue in pain and shock but also a little irritation.

It drives you mad that she’s so beautiful and that the boys in your class think she’s lovely too. They ask you her name and what she does, and one asks (impertinently) what she wears when she sleeps. You hit him and the teacher phones her to take you away. That afternoon, she slaps you for the very first and only time.

You’ve never known what to make of your father. He sits quietly at his desk, looking, I imagine, years older than your mother. She was his student, they say. He wears his glasses on his nose and works hard at grading papers. Papers you imagine, will be reread with pain and disappointment.

She gave you a notebook for your birthday when you grew up a little. The sun shone through her brown hair, as she leaned into your bed, shading away her sweet, kind face. “Perhaps, you will now write more and talk less,” she said.

You wrote to fill the emptiness inside you. You wrote of injustice and valour, of emptiness and routine, of mundane things like cigarette ash... and you wrote of death. She was horrified when she peeped in. Your soul was too black for your mother to take.

After school, you found a lovely lithe girl with brown hair and eyes. You never realised until later that she looked so much like Ma.

But no one else could be Ma.

You loved her nonetheless because that’s what you do. And in her own way, she loved you too. It never really broke, whatever you say now.

You came to a world where nice clothes and style ceased to matter. This was the world of your parents. The real world. And you are now a real person.

You feel a little silly when you think of the old times and sort out the new. Once again, you fill silences with your talk and your laughter. And though you don’t write about the soft, swirling cigarette smoke that you blow into rings, you think about it. Beauty still means brown hair and eyes and a fair, milky face. You surround yourself with laughing women, each beautiful in her unique way. They fill up the awkward moments... but only for a while.

Cleaning out this head.

2011-07-28T06:37:00.001-07:00

It’s a curse of the age.

For years after you qualify for your Bachelor’s degree, life is quiet and uneventful. You plonk yourself into the protected sphere of University life where all you do is read, eat and sleep and if you’re in JNU, a bit of political activism on the side. And then, voila. You qualify for your Master’s. Then all at once, you’re shoved into the middle age. Things start to tumble into a settling phase though in your head, all you feel is tumult. Your dearest friends get study calls to the USA, to Europe, to all those places that attract the best and the brightest and you’re left –feeling happy but confused, in a mess of organising last minute farewell parties, shopping trips, lunches, dinners, breakfasts. And in the middle of it all, comes your own life.

It’s so hard to sit down and chalk out what you really want. You always knew, heart of hearts that your dissertation would be your break. And you always knew that somehow, you’ve got to focus on what you need. The activism was never for you, much as you supported it with all your heart. You were always happiest, living off your tiny hostel room, book in hand, letting the world come to you through the newspapers and the internet.

And maybe, you’d write something, someday.

And now, X is off here and Y is off there and you’re sitting around waiting for something to come to you –a change of air, new ideas, new methods, new climates, new people.

And it’s all there –one visa away. The change you need. The break that will take you away and make all the difference to how you think and what you can create.

Then comes the difference. Your other friends are so sorted! They know why they are in the crazy place that’s JNU. They know they’re there to “study and struggle”. Meanwhile, all you do is struggle to study because for everything that angers and upsets you and makes you want to turn apple carts, there is the longer, slower student and intellectual movement. Time moves with irritating slowness. After a while, there’s just so much shouting you can do. There’s just so many people you can drag into the street. There’s just so much that can happen to upset and worry you. My dear, you can serve your time (and it is your duty to) but you cannot lose yourself. There’s that much of a tiny talent and you can use it well. Take your time. Make something of what you have.

Finally, there’s the phone that doesn’t ring. If it does, it’s not the love of your life but an old admirer. The kind that keeps coming back like a bad penny. Not even an ex boyfriend but an ex could-have-been who would have asked you to go steady with him had, you’ll never believe this, a fire cracker not fallen on his head at the opportune moment.

Life’s odd, isn’t it? Sometimes it doesn’t even make a good story. It makes no more than a soap opera, something stupid to laugh at over a weekend beer, something to tell the girls about... That’s why cheap literature sells. You’ll never believe this but it’s real.

Understanding Mamata

2011-05-22T01:31:00.000-07:00

With the fall of its thirty four year old regime and the silent slaughter of its local cadres that has sadly escaped media attention, the CPI(M) has withdrawn into an introspective mode. It is a humiliating defeat but it is a telling defeat.

Rajdeep Sardesai asked Brinda Karat if this defeat marks the redundancy of Left ideology and she coolly told him he was being very stupid. The capitalist crisis has shown us that bubbles are the modus operandi of growth in capitalism and that busts are systemic. Stark inequalities of income in India as in capitalist development everywhere, have reminded us that even if you put moral and ethical questions aside, trickle down doesn’t work –and what is the point of a growth that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer? The economy has grown on the backs of cheap and cheaper labour –contractualisation has ensured that 92% of the labour force gets less than the minimum wage and “hire and fire” means poor and dangerous work conditions that no one can even protest. Can Marxism be dead in times like these? Brinda Karat was right. Is was not a ‘redundancy’ of its ideology that led to the CPI(M)’s defeat.

Is it bad governance? It is difficult for a Left loyalist to admit this but after thirty four years, the people wanted a change of government. They wanted efficiency. When the mainstream media talks about the inefficiency of the Left, it forgets the achievements of the West Bengal government. The index of industrial output is surprisingly very high as is the index of agricultural productivity. West Bengal is one of the few States that had taken land reform seriously. And yet, when I had travelled into the West Bengal countryside, I had noticed that towns less than four hours away from Kolkata have no electricity. The people of West Bengal wanted a change. Mamata rode this desire for change with a call for ‘poriborton’. Meanwhile, college Leftists like me snorted. A change that would put Bengal on the same neoliberal growth trajectory as any other State is hardly a ‘Revolution’. But Mamata saw that the time was right and that as the people looked hard for an alternative, she rose to the task.

The real reason for the CPI(M)’s defeat was the presence of this alternative- Mamata.

But who is this Mamata? As the results of the polls poured in, a jubilant Barkha Dutt interviewed women coloured in green gulal. Dutt emphasised the point that Mamata Bannerjee’s supporters spanned across class and gender and she was right. What her report lacked, however, was an understanding of ‘how’.

When you think about it, it has hard to put the Trinamool Congress on a political spectrum.

Does it promote the interests of big business? Mamata once made a declaration that she will make Kolkata into London and Digah into Goa (or was it Singapore?) While the Central Government is happier making bigger grants in aid to West Bengal under Mamata rather than under the CPI(M), with the fiscal responsibility Act, it is unlikely that she will be able to undertake such wide-scale beautification projects without making it easier to attract investment. So Mamata may easily be pro big business.

Is she pro working class? The Trinamool Congress runs its fair share of trade unions but on and off, Mamata has made statements about how strikes are a bad idea. The Trinamool Congress may have a difficult time inviting private investment with the Bengalis’ reputation of being lazy workers and frequent strikers. I will not be surprised if Mamata bans strikes in the near future. So is she pro working class? She has definitely got large parts of the working class on her side but it is not likely that she will take issues of labour very seriously –especially, given her ‘poriborton’ plans.

One of the key factors in Mamata’s appeal amongst the more snobbish Bengali middle class is that she has often mentioned that student political organisations should be disbanded. Students should stick to their studies instead of going around making a nuisance of themselves. This attitude is an undemocratic attitude in that it denies students the democratic right to take political positions. It is characteristic of a view of education as a machine to create professionals to serve the system rather than to create intelligent, thinking people who are not afraid to challenge the system, to ask dangerous questions and to serve as organic intellectuals of the masses.

This is why people from all classes tend to support Mamata –the snobbish middle classes see that their children will focus on studies and on building safe careers, the working classes see an alternative to the CPI(M) which may prove more efficient and works in much the same way at least as far as labour unions go, the upper classes see a chance for more business friendly policies. All in all, Mamata reminds people that she is efficient.

The biggest chunk of Trinamool rhetoric is the restoration of Bengal to its former glory –a very good way to get the proud, parochial Bengalis to stand up to support the Trinamool Congress. A little before she became CM, Mamata renamed the Tollygunj station as ‘Mahanayak Uttam Kumar’ and another station as ‘Netaji’. This was a reminder to the Bengalis of their great land. This was the ‘mati’ in the ‘ma mati manush’.

Finally, what you see most starkly is that the pro Mamata vote is mostly an anti CPI(M) vote. Mamata herself, has rabidly concentrated all her energies on bringing down the Left bastion. She had even deflected from the Congress in the earlier part of her career, saying that the Congress was not serious enough about bringing down the CPI(M). As such, Mamata has no ideology of her own. Her focus is on holding up the CPI(M) cadre as the villains who stand in the path of Bengal’s glory. In fact she has even made an anti CPI(M) alliance with the CPI(Maoist) and famous Maoists have actively campaigned for the Trinamool. It is hard to see anything they could possible ally upon other than to bring the CPI(M) down.

What frightens me about the Trinamool is not the constant killing of CPI(M) cadre under the cover of dark though I fear for some who are close to my friends. It is the odd fact that the Trinamool reminds me of old history lessons on the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany. Mussolini was a dictator and a war monger but at the end of the day, he was efficient. While he was the dictator, the trains ran on time. Mamata has given us the Durronto and it is seldom late. She is efficient, very efficient. Hitler had managed to coax all possible classes to support his electoral victory. He had focussed on restoring the past glory of the Fatherland and had identified an enemy- the Jews- as standing in the path of achieving that glory. Similarly, Mamata has focussed her energy on restoring the glory of Bengal and has identified the CPI(M) cadre as standing in the path of the restoration of Bengal’s glory. Mamata’s kristalnacht however, is not one night of breaking glass and killing. It is a concerted and slow slaughter of every CPI(M) cadre the TMC supporters can catch hold of. Mamata is in power and she intends to stay.

Theoretically, if Mamata has a political ideology, it is an ideology of Fascism. It is an opportunistic rise to power on an anti incumbency wave, based on wooing each class on the idea of a common glory and on the identification of a common enemy. Though it is not communal Fascism like in the case of the BJP and of course, the Trinamool is closer to the UPA but all the same, it is reminiscent of the story of the early Nazi party and the rise of Mussolini.

Finally, there is the personality cult. Mamata herself, is the ‘ma’ in ‘ma mati manush’. She holds herself as a mother figure, a saviour of the people in the same way as Mussolini called himself ‘Il Duce’ and Hitler became known as the ‘Fuhrer’.

One may say I am sore about the Left’s defeat and am being unnecessarily dark and ominous but this is how I understand the phenomenon of Mamata,

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” –W.B. Yeats.

Another blog post

2011-04-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since I've written anything and so much has happened since I last put pen to paper! Our eccentric econometrics professor has declared himself most unimpressed with our best efforts, Kingshuk has started dating (at last) and I have received an acceptance letter for a three month research stint at Estonia.

Yes, I shall freeze!

Meanwhile, Anil Basu has messed up the CPI(M)'s situation in Bengal by making nasty, gendered statements about Mamata, 85% of Bengalis have turned up to vote where polls have happened and D Day has appeared upon the horizon, shrouded in mystery with the nasty promise of violence and pain.

The Hindu appears everyday at Soumyadip's door and I go without reading it, choosing instead to think more about study, about submissions, about the root canal I've been putting my incisor through and about Soumyadip.

Soumyadip is in Delhi. In a way, this is my best semester. Everything I've waited hopelessly for since the last two years is happening. Mostly, I'm grateful but by and large, I am surprised. It all feels so unreal to wake up in the apartment I've scoured Delhi for, next to the person I love so much! Sometimes, I feel as if someone should pinch me so that I wake up... but what if I wake up to find that I'm not going to Estonia and that Soumyadip is away in Bangalore?

No, I shall live this dream, ride out this wave of joy, hungrily awaiting the time I shall go home or the time that Soumyadip shall return from office and we shall walk the vast Delhi highways, the lights of Basant Continental bright and stark against the barren desert land dotted with shabby black tents and blue slum doors hand painted with flowers -the ordinary young couple against the brutal canvas of a beautiful, cruel world.

It's this thing about love. Together or apart, you feel alone, waiting, longing for that sudden brief moment of companionship that lasts forever...It's a beautiful feeling, a painful feeling, a moment of joy and a moment of sorrow.

And after all that, I run back to the centre and Soumyadip runs to work while my notebooks lie on our straw mats and the apartment awaits- hot but hospitable, wondering when we'll come back.

Then and Now

2011-03-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Flashes

And splashes

Of technicolour memory

(More vivid

Perhaps

Than they really were.)

White table

Basket chair

On which I sat,

Solving old

ISC sums

Algebra, what a pain it was!

But the sun shone

Through a prism drop

On a

Red Silk Cotton Tree

On white pebbles

That scrunched

Under foot

In spots of grey and black.

An orange hoopoe

On a lush green field,

Its tail

Striped

Black

On white

Ran on

And we jogged helplessly

To welcome the dawn

The frozen Dehradun dawn.

The ghost of math

It haunts me still.

And I can’t for the life of me,

Run.

Sometimes I feel I can do nothing

And it’s too much pain to dance.

Felt like it as a

Little girl,

Crying big tears,

Ungainly, gauche,

Who couldn’t run

Or play a sport.

Little girl,

Who thought

Big thoughts

And scrawled out

Lines and lines of verse

Which she later used

To clean her desk

And lap

Chocolate powder

On.

Never thought very well

Of who she was

But struggled hard,

Read every book,

And thought through

Every thought.

Was smarter than she thought she was.

She’d have to be

Because now she’ll do

Her PhD.

Poor little girl

Lugs a torn

Jhola

And claims to be

A communist.

Spends her dad’s dough

On half read books

And dreams she’ll change the world.

But gets depressed

Thinking she can’t

And never will make it there.

There’s too much

In her muddled brain-

Just far too many thoughts.

Got to sit and concentrate,

But hunger pangs

And chocolate pangs

And fast cooling cups of tea.

And there’s never

Enough

Time to dream

Those long dreamt childhood dreams.

Two Scary Isms

2011-02-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

What makes fascism so interesting is the very saleability of its ideology. It is, by nature, exclusivist and yet, it is targeted towards the aspirations and identity of a majority community, rather than a minority. Insisting upon factors as intrinsic to a person’s identity as religion or race causes the person to emerge as a subject of fascist politics –someone who is encumbered by a feeling that her identity is under threat. As the ABVP posters on the walls of JNU read out “Is it a crime to be a Hindu? Then why are the Hindus so disadvantaged in their own land?” It is rather interesting that a Hindu should feel under threat in India when the Sanchar Committee and the Rangarajan Committee reports so easily show that it is the Muslims who suffer from poorer access to asset ownership, public services, education and healthcare. So how does the Hindu Right get away with it?

The BJP is the astute, political wing of the RSS –popular for all the right reasons. (Pun intended.) It has pushed the neoliberal reforms, liberalised financial flows considerably, thrown open tax incentives to Foreign Direct and Institutional Investment and ushered in the ‘India shining’ years so much so that to the average, urban middle-upper middle class person who notices only the glittering malls and not the dark shadows of the squatter settlements underneath, India is not a Third World country at all. And if you think of the BJP out of the context of the RSS umbrella and the nefarious ABVP and Bajrang Dal elements, it is quite respectable and very easy to vote for.

To a BJP member, the BJP is far less communal than the Congress which adopts minority appeasement policies to cater to Muslim votebanks. As for the Left, the Left is simply anti national.

In contrast, the BJP is very nationalist and to most of us, brought up as we are, on a healthy dose of “Saare Jahaan Se Acha, Hindustan Hamara” and “Vande Mataram,” this is a very good thing. So when the BJP took its ‘Ekta March’ into Jammu and Kashmir, declaring “But isn’t Kashmir a part of India?” it got its due share of political mileage even though Omar Abdullah had the BJP activists detained almost immediately.

Legal eagles may explain the constitutional provisions of the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir because of the special circumstances of its annexation but this brand of nationalism that denies Kashmir its special status has been highly influential. As Siddharth Varadarajan often points out, constitutionally, the Jammu and Kashmir is to have its own flag and its Chief Minister is to be called its Prime Minister. Nonetheless, Kashmir is seen as any other State and the Indian army makes full use of AFSPA to drive home this point. Clearly, if Kashmir is to be a part of India, then an ‘Ekta March’ is not enough.

Incidentally, the BJP stands up for AFSPA.

The Hindu Right brand of nationalism is also very influential in the determination of the prevailing notion of what ‘Indian’ means. A friend of mine was rather aggrieved by my lax views on chastity. She declared that her Indian values are fundamental to her. I grinned and asked her whether the Khajuraho temples are not Indian, whether the Kamasutra is not Indian and more importantly, whether the lord, Krishna was not (if he ever was) Indian. She clarified that she meant family values and I leaped on to her line of argument immediately –are notions of ‘Indian’ akin to notions of ‘family’? Clearly, in that case, the idea of what is an ‘Indian’ is deeply affected by the social relations necessary to keep capitalism in place i.e. the family. This notion of nationalism then, is a very bourgeois notion.

The bourgeois concept of what is national and what is anti national has also criminalised dissent, especially dissent against the very political economy of Indian capitalism. Gandhi was jailed by the British colonisers, Mandela by the apartheid regime but Binayak Sen has been jailed by the world’s largest democracy. This is not to say that the UPA is fascist but to say that its own brand of nationalism is also bourgeois and has led it to be extremely undemocratic in its recent use of sedition laws.

And yet, trade unions run by the Hindu Right are even more popular than those run by the Left! This is mostly because of the false feeling of deprivation on the basis of one’s majoritarian religious identity. This is also a challenge for and so far, a political failure of the Left movement.

All in all, one has to give it to the Hindu Right for theoretical consistency. It is a bourgeois brand of nationalism and no wonder, the BJP pushes reforms while Hindu groups insist on family values. It is fascist in that it sees India as the country of the Hindus and imbues in its followers a sense of deprivation associated with being Hindu, because of which it supports AFSPA and insists on a whittling of Kashmir’s autonomy. It hasn’t a conclusion out of place except that its premises are condemnable.

In Response to All the Crazy Things That People Tend To Believe about Gender.

2011-02-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

1) Words like ‘penis’, ‘vagina’ and ‘sexual intercourse’ are not dirty words (as are ‘fuck’ or ‘screw’.)

2) Menstrual blood is not dirty blood.

3) Learning about birth control is not akin to reading pornography.

4) “Well behaved women seldom create history.”

5) Women’s issues are not less important than poverty, unemployment, and the environment.

6) You can be sexually harassed even by your boyfriend.

7) Trying to tell someone to use protection is not moral policing.

8) Homosexuality is natural.

9) Restrictions on usage of space and on mobility do not reduce crimes against women.

10) If you are content with hiding in safe, cloistered spaces in which men are not allowed, you’ll just have to be content when men make all your decisions.

Joyriding In Kolkata

2011-01-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

Going to Kolkata was partly a search for a cultural identity. For those of my readers who do not know me personally (a small minority), I happen to be one of those Bengalis whose family had settled in Delhi straight after Partition and who has lived away from Bengal all her life. In fact, even my parents have lived away from Bengal. I am a third generation ‘prabashi’. Given this, when I introduce myself to people, I have to give a complicated little speech about how I happen to be a Bengali but my parents stay in Mumbai except that I am actually from Delhi, though I’m not from Delhi as such because I had spent my childhood in Dehradun.

After coming to JNU, I found myself getting ‘Benglicised’. Partly, this was because Arindam belted out a thunderous and disbelieving “Hmmm” when I gave him my introductory speech, partly because Kingshuk wouldn’t speak to me at length unless I spoke Bengali, partly because I’d just met Soumyadip who felt that speaking in English is horribly impersonal and mostly, because I’d rather speak Bengali than Hindi. After all, Bengali is still, in some way or the other, my language... and in fact, a national language.

And this is why I came to Bengal, the land of teeming crowds, fertile, blood red soil, tiny tea shops, Rabindranath Tagore and Indian communism. There were other reasons, reason number one being a complicated deal with Soumyadip which would allow him to spend time with both, his parents and with me in the same holiday and which would also give me a chance to meet the Roys and get their acceptance of my relationship with Soumyadip, reason number two being a chance to meet all my Kolkata friends in their own ‘habitat’.

Baba agreed to be my co-conspirator in this project, giving up not only on the airline fare but also on his much coveted chance of having me at home in Mumbai. Soumyadip picked me up at the airport in due regard to “Ami achi to!” (“I’m there for you”), his one line response to all of Baba’s worries. Soon enough, I was bundled into a big, yellow taxi and taken straight to Park Circus for Kolkata style biryani at Arsalan, stopping only at the City Centre mall to pick up Nabaneeta. Park Circus is a seven way crossing in case you thought four way crossings were confusing. Arsalan is a buzzing joint where you have to wrestle people out of the way and negotiate with guests and waiters in order to get a seat. Arsalan biryani, is however, a dream. It is rich, it is creamy. And the potato you get with it melts in your mouth. Combine it with Chicken ‘chap’ and there’s really nothing like it.

Nabaneeta plonked me into a taxi and took me to her very innovatively designed flat at tank No. 13, Salt Lake where every inch of furniture is calculated to fit as much into as little. It is much like Nabaneeta herself, compact, neat and yet, something or the other is always rebelling against her mother’s wishes to set everything straight.

Next on the agenda was the Coffee House with the JNU gang. We got to it by shuttle autos and finally walked most of the way though Kingshuk and I took a walk down College Street in search of an Airtel Recharge and an ATM. The Coffee House reminded me of the St. Stephen’s College Auditorium. It’s grand and large and the fans hang off the high ceiling from long, elegant pipes. Some gifted souls had put up oils of rural Bengal landscapes, abstract art centred on the chai-adda- cigarette theme and a photograph-potrait of Rabindranath Tagore as a young man. We drank ‘Infusion’ – a fancy name for black coffee –and chatted about Mamata Bannerjee, much like everyone else in the building. Kingshuk, as must be mentioned, ate up two large besan fried cauliflower pancakes in pin drop silence.

Sumit, Sangita and Arka accompanied me on the metro to Guriahat where Soumyadip, who had been busy with office work all this while, was to meet me. Kolkata has no more than one metro line but it is abuzz with activity. TV screens reverberated with the latest Bengali hit song, “Amake amar moton thakte dao” (Let me be) from ‘Autograph’ and for some odd reason, people looked happy. They cracked jokes at each other and discussed their day if they were in groups. Those who were not, looked like they were sure that they were going to get a good dinner. Perhaps, Dominique Lapierre was right. Kolkata is the city of joy.

Guria is just about as interesting as Janpath. It’s a long footpath with the usual nice, cotton nighties and heavy, junk jewellery on display but there’s one little corner with a CD shop that plays Rabindra Sangeet and contemporary Bengali rock and a very busy tea shop, producing clay cup after another of hot, piping tea. People squat on the footpaths, sipping and chatting about the CPI (M), regardless of whether they happen to be pseudo intellectual middleclass students or hawkers with wares to sell. Soumyadip took me on a brisk walk and introduced me, rather ceremoniously, to his school wall, his school gate, to his school flag and to the lights on the school gate. He repeated this little ceremony for both, the junior school as well as the senior school, after which, he called up his father, asking for suggestions for where to take me for dinner. After much deliberation, he settled on the Bollywood themed Mirch Masala where we demolished some mouth watering Tandoori Rawas and a marginally inferior garlic chicken and escorted me on the long shuttle taxi ride back to Salt Lake where he bumped his head on Nabaneeta’s door frame and narrowly missed the fan.

I woke up the next morning to an SMS cordially inviting me for lunch with the Roys. Nabaneeta put me on the bus at the Salt Lake bypass with her best wishes and the conductor addressed me in English when I spoke to him in Bengali. (I must really look like an alien.) Soumyadip met me at the Ruby Hospital at Kasba and walked me to his flat at the Abhudoy complex behind the Ruby Hospital. I can safely say I wasn’t the least bit nervous until I saw the neatly carved brass plate, ‘J.K. Roy’. Something reminded me of Soumyadip’s own meticulous signature ‘S Roy’ –something simple, compact and hardly meretricious. By now, my heart was in my throat and something told me, so was Soumyadip’s. The door opened out slowly and all I saw was a big, welcoming Soumyadip smile, except that it was on a tall lady. Two years of grinning back at that smile in JNU, in Bangalore, at airports and stations have conditioned me to respond. I smiled back and all three of us were at ease immediately.

Perhaps the most convenient thing about loving someone is that it becomes much easier to like his home and his family. Soumyadip’s mother shares his delight in the quiet and simple joys of life –standing on the balcony, enjoying the winter Kolkata sunshine and watching the people pass underneath. His father is grave and serious and matter of fact. Straight after Soumyadip’s mother had led me by the hand to meet his father, he sat me down and spoke to me about how he feels about Soumyadip’s career and asked me about my plans. Once again, I saw flashes of Soumyadip in his father –the frank, straight forwardness and the disinclination to stand on ceremony. And I glanced around the room to see pictures of Soumyadip and his sister as children -Soumyadip, tall for his age, even then. Moreover, I found out little things about Soumyadip I had never known – his favourite snacks, his favourite sweets. There were of course things I was familiar with –his way of balancing his laptop on his stomach while he cranes his neck to read the screen, his way of popping his head over the screen between the dining and living space to watch TV while he eats.

Lunch was killer. Ofcourse I was expected to eat and I ate well, a little too well ...though I drew the line at the second helping of fish and quietly gulped down my tomato chutney. I will confess to wondering whether I was being fattened up for slaughter. Soumyadip’s mum wouldn’t let me lift my plate, saying that I was still a guest just then so I busied myself editing Soumyadip’s Statement of Purpose for Rochester, after which Soumyadip logged off from work and accompanied me to New Alipore to meet Sreyashi.

Sreyashi’s home in New Alipore is an old, reasonably well maintained residence that has been in the rather eminent family for generations. It stood resplendent with high ceilings, high arches, antique furniture and Sreyashi’s own happy untidiness. She told me about her days at London, her papers, her internships and how she hopes to get a job soon. Then, Soumyadip and I took off to Park Street to meet Poulami at Oxford Bookstore. The three of us then took a long walk down to St. Xaviers’ College, past Oly pub (Soumyadip’s college hangout) and Peter Cat (Poulami’s). Kolkata was still in Christmas spirit so we had to settle for dinner at Tung Fong though it was admittedly, great fish and fantastic chicken starters.

Next day was Poulami day. I had spent the previous night with her doing all the girlie gossip that we couldn’t possibly do with Soumyadip or any other boy around. In the morning, we went off to visit the Indian Museum. In contrast to the Delhi National Museum, the Indian Museum at Kolkata attracts far more crowds, the main attraction being the Egyptian gallery and the mummy placed within it. Fathers rushed their children to the second floor yelling “Dak, dak, mommy, mommy” (Look, look, ‘mommy mommy’.) and Poulami and I followed with bemused expressions. Studiously, we went over the exhibits on the embalming rituals of which organ must be placed in which flask, each shaped like a fox, a man, a falcon and a jackal respectively. The mothers yelled out “Eita Egypt er shiyaal raja’ (This is the Fox King of Egypt!) and Poulami and I rolled our eyes. Next, we did the rounds of the Natural history galleries to see huge elephant tusks replete with graffiti, a blue whale and a pink whale skeleton and a giraffe skeleton clamped up with ugly iron bands around the neck. There were a whole lot of interesting shells but they were so badly labelled and kept that they failed to make an impression. We also went over the Rajput and Mughal paintings and the Buddhist sculptures. Particularly noteworthy were the ruins of the Hinnayan Buddhist Bharhut stupa from the Satna district of Madhya Pradesh which showed scenes from the Jataka tales and the Buddha’s previous lives. The Indian Museum also has a Mask Gallery which isn’t very convenient to get to. Most of the exhibits are from rural Bengal and made of paper mache, brass or clay. Some are used for jatras, others, for the Chou dance and the brass ones, for purposes of prayer rituals.

While in the Bharhut gallery, we heard someone excitedly pointing to the ‘chitkini’ or the tower bolt which latches the door from the top on the inside. Poulami and I were a little irritated that someone should point to a chitkini when wonders of 3^rd century BC art are on display, until we realised that the ‘chitkini’ was actually worth checking out –it was enormous! In fact, it was long enough for someone of Poulami’s height (which isn’t much) to lock a door the size of a medium giraffe. Soon enough, we realised that the building itself is a marvel of Raj architecture –tall, grandiose, with distinct British and Indian influences without really being either.

Nonetheless, we were tired and Poulami wanted to visit Flurry’s so off we went to consume big brownies and nutty, horseshoe shaped pastries, after which we headed to Priya cinema where Soumyadip and Arindam were awaiting us.

Cups of tea and biscuits later, the four of us went in to see the latest Bengali art film, ‘Arekti Prem er Golpo’. Arekti Prem er Golpo has Rituporno Ghosh playing a transvestite director as well as the first openly gay Bengali actor playing female roles, Chapal Bhadari. In fact the movie also had Chapal bhaduri, himself, giving bytes about his life and his career, including his intense love affair with a man played by Indranil, who also played the partner of the transvestite director. It followed a non linear story telling system, written like Dorris Lessing’s ‘Love Again’. It would be rather gushing to say it was a fantastic movie but yes, it was. It was bold, unapologetic, and it said what it had to, loud and clear.

Poulami had to meet her grandmother for some work afterwards so Soumyadip and I took a stroll around Deshopriyo park and the lakeside, after which he escorted me to Tollygunje, where Poulami and I watched ‘Shob charitra kalpanik’ on DVD –yet another Rituparna movie where Bipasha Basu plays the neglected wife of a misunderstood, gifted poet.

Soumyadip and I were to watch ‘Autograph’ next morning but that never happened. I took the bus to South City all the same, after figuring out the basic fact that the concept of a bus stand is alien to most of Kolkata and that if you want to catch a bus, you must stand a little way off a ‘mor’. The only way is to observe where buses stop, to take all possible helpful suggestions from passersby and to position yourself accordingly –and that is how I got to South City Mall to meet Mrs. Dayita Datta.

‘Doi’ was happy to see me and took me around to Starmark, a bookshop she likes, to Subway for lunch and then to her place. Poor Doi’s place is so heavily littered with books that she has no place to sleep. Even the beds are covered with volumes and notes and observations in her tiny cursive writing. She dropped me to Kasba, after having given me a sizeable reading list and many injunctions.

Soumyadip escorted me to Salt Lake to pick up my bag and then to Zico da’s flat in Ballygunje. The New Years’ Eve party was quiet and uneventful except that we left for Digah soon afterwards, taking the breath taking drive down Howrah bridge in the morning fog though apparently, they call it ‘Rabindra Sethu’ these days.

It was an impromptu decision to go to Digah and tickets were booked absolutely last minute. It just so turned out that the train was late so we got on nicely in time and made it to Digah only an hour late. Arka’s father’s contacts had booked us a room in Daffodil Inn but as we made our way to the beach, it was squalid and crowded and loafers kept calling out to the girls. The beach however, was wonderful –clear sky, long sandy stretch of soil and gently lapping waves leaving sea shells on the shore. Old Digah was even worse as far as crowds went but we found a quiet corner and observed the tide coming in as we ate date ‘chikkis’. Arka invited us to kanthi next day where his mother and sister served out the most wonderful meal. I had already eaten crab in Digah and now I was also eating the tastiest possible prawn. Then we all lazed around in the sun, telling stories and cracking bad jokes until Arka decided that no Digah trip is complete unless one visits Mandarmoni.

Travelling to Mandarmoni means taking a crazy bus with an identity problem. Poor thing thinks it’s a plane and insists on taking off at every bump and with each take off, Soumyadip hit his head on the ceiling and landed up hurting his shin. It also means taking a ‘rickshaw van’ or a bike engine in a scooter like contraption dragging a flat cart.

Mandarmoni surprised me because it has no electricity. Really! It surprises me that the CPI(M) could get away with such a big government failure. Most people use lanterns while resorts use generators. However, it has the loveliest beach and we ran around picking sea shells and letting the waves lap around our ankles. Some crazy person had driven his car into a sandy hole in the middle of the water covered shore and was desperately kicking the engine which just refused to start. The situation provided much amusement to the locals until someone finally drove the car out. The long trekker and then, bus ride to Digah was just as beautiful as we now found a secluded corner of the old Digah beach and a restaurant to serve us dry mutton masala and pompfret fish in mustard paste.

The next day, we had to return to Kolkata and we had to get Soumyadip two tickets –one for his legs. Deepa Aunty picked me up from the Esplanade bus stop to take me to her interesting old house where she brings in the pigeons with birdfeed, keeps fish and a voracious, hyperactive spitz. She dropped me to Kasba after lunch, where I met Soumyadip at his house again, after which he put me on a bus to Salt Lake. I left for Delhi the next morning.

It’s odd to end this story so abruptly but all good times come to an end. Nonetheless, thank you’s must be said –to my parents, to Soumyadip, to the Roys, to Nabaneeta and Poulami, to the Sarkars, to Doi, to Arka, in fact, to all who have been mentioned here. I can safely say I’ve had the time of my life, I can also say that Kolkata was the only city I sighed for as soon as I was back in the wide roads of Delhi on a vehicle to the haven that is JNU. The warm sunny winter I had left behind, seemed a distant, happy memory when seen against the biting cold fog that met me at Delhi airport and I looked down at my hands and found I was alone again and that I had work to do and another semester to see through. I rang home, then I rang Soumyadip.

Then I picked up my bags and carried on.

A Nicer Tess Of The d'Urbervilles

2011-01-05T05:39:00.001-08:00

A vain, silly girl

Bought a panty

Hose

And danced around

A Christmas tree.

The vain, silly girl

Sizzled sex and drugs,

Dancing around

A Christmas tree.

A whiskey went down

Another went too

And she sold her soul

To the Christmas tree.

Morning came,

The devil shook himself.

It was time to go to sleep.

Her poor shrivelled soul

Another star

On a spangled

Christmas tree.

The poor silly girl,

Woke up with a start

And a quicker pang of guilt.

It was time to get back her soul

From the soulful Christmas tree.

“How dare you, bitch”

The devil said

From his own Christmas tree.

“It wasn’t your fault, my dear”

Said the darling Christmas tree.

She walked up to him

Said

“What the hell?”

He said

“Forget it bitch.”

She writhed and ached

Plotted revenge

On the devil’s Christmas tree.

Her darling gave her head a pat

And laughed out at her sin

Said “Avoid him, dear,

It’ll be okay

Because I love you still.”

We Don't Need No Unique I.D.

2010-12-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identification Scheme bothers me.

Isn’t it interesting how modernity has meant the use of “technologies of governance” or ways for “power” to assert itself? (Trust Foucault to put it best.) And yet, this “governmentality” need not be bad. Censuses for example, are a very effective channel for power to influence all aspects of a subject or a body and yet, one can’t condemn a census. In fact a census is a good thing. So is the UID a good thing?

Nilekani argues it is. It can be used as effective security against terrorism. Oops! And here Nilekani shuts up and changes track –Umm, through the UID we solve the problem of fake ration cards so we can ensure that the food under the PDS goes to the BPL population only. Recruiters or universities can gather information about a student candidate immediately and the problem of fake degrees can be easily dealt with and what’s more –it’s not that Nilekani or the Government are forcing the UID down our throats. The scheme is demand driven. If you want a biometric I.D, a biometric I.D you get... but only if you want one.

Two questions present themselves almost immediately.

Firstly, why did the Government change the focus of the pitch for UID from issues of security to issues of development? It clearly indicates that somehow, somewhere, the government could not hold on to their national security argument for the UID amidst cries against intrusion. Long after Foucault wrote on governmentality, Giorgio Agamben thought fit to remind us –what if we end up in a ‘state of exception’? In other words, all democracies leave a little leeway for the declaration of an emergency or a ‘state of exception’ when basic civil rights are suspended and citizens become more like inmates than citizens. They are reduced to bare life. So censuses may be a good thing but a census in Nazi Germany can be used to figure out which are the Jews and which are the Gentiles so that the Jews can be singled out and sent into a ghetto or a camp. Similarly, a UID in a state of exception may be pretty dangerous. If you have a database on everyone it is easier to locate which is a Muslim’s house (in case the BJP is in power) or which is a political dissident’s house (I’m a little worried for Left cadre in a Trinamool Bengal next year) and to concertedly kill, loot or rape whoever hides inside. In other words, these very technologies of power can become very dangerous in a state of exception and as can be seen from the 1971 experience Indian democracy is very frail. Yes it has succeeded but it is frail.

The second question is simply the demand driven bit. If all universities and work places suddenly start demanding UIDs, it will be rare for students not to get an ID. Similarly, if ration shops start demanding a UID, you’ll have a long queue for one and what’s worse, getting a UID may be as difficult as getting a ration card so if the system for doling out UIDs is not efficient enough, people may die of starvation.

Nonetheless, we can now agree that Nilekani and the Government cannot safely claim not stuffing the UID down our throats.

The development arguments however, beg further questions.

Let us look at food security. Currently, the public distribution system is about giving free grain to the BPL population. The idea is to give the foodgrain free to the people who need it. The question however is, how do you decide who needs the foodgrain and who doesn’t? Now you say –ah ha! We have a poverty line.

This poverty line of ours is based on the minimum caloric requirement of 2400 calories in rural areas and 2100 calories in urban areas as of 1973-4 multiplied upwards by the appropriate consumer price index. This means that the poverty line in say, 2004 would be Rs. 13.8 a day in rural areas and Rs. 17 a day in urban areas on average according to the Tendulkar Committee Report which in turn means that anyone who spends Rs. 14 a day in rural areas or Rs. 18 a day in urban areas on average (Let me remind my readers that this covers food, clothing, rent and everything else) is not eligible for benefits under the public distribution system.

What is more, as pointed out by Professor Utsa Patnaik from NSSO figures, at least 86.7% of the rural population as of 2004 consumes less than 2400 calories a day and 64.5% of the urban population consumes less than 2100 calories. The official poverty ratios are 28.3% in rural areas and 25.7% in urban areas which means that only 28.3% of the rural population and only 25.7% of the urban population are eligible to benefits under the PDS. In other words, 58.4% of the rural population and 38.8% of the urban population fall out of the PDS net even though they consume less than the minimum nutritional intake that is considered to be subsistence consumption by the National Nutrition Monitoring Board.

And they say that the UID is an answer? What will the UID do? It will only make the PDS more targeted. To give food to the poor, one doesn’t need the UID, one needs to universalise the PDS. What is Nilekani thinking?

Similarly most Centrally Sponsored schemes are targeted in nature except the NREGA which is self selecting as it pays a bare subsistence wage even lower than the Minimum Wage. The UID will only make these more targeted instead of universal when there really isn’t much difference between someone just above poverty line and someone below it. In fact it may result in no more than marginal cash transfers to those just below poverty line to just above it to claim a stupendous fall in poverty ratios on the part of the ruling political party.

Now there are areas where the UID may help in streamlining bureaucratic processes. Say, instead of carrying a class 10 marksheet, a class 12 marksheet, a sheaf of degrees and University transcripts, all stamped and signed by a whole horde of government officials, you can claim admissions to universities and enter companies with no more than a UID and that way, no problem of fake degrees. However you will need to update your UID information –how else would your biometric information show your latest degree? And who said you can’t register a fake degree on your UID? And besides, getting a UID will also involve proper documentation, otherwise who would trust it? And that way, nothing much will really change.

So do we really need this UID?

Dirty Indians

2010-11-27T01:07:00.000-08:00

Dirty Indian men,
Sitting around,
Squatting on pavements
In wait
Since dawn
For the daily wage truck
To ship them away
To another quarry to dig
And another house to build.

Dirty Indian men
Smelling of sweat
Spitting out red
Sticky stuff
And coming
To paw your breasts.

Dirty Indian men
Shoving you down
Jostling for standing room
And hanging off
A crowded bus.

"Idiot! He'll die
You say."

Dirty Indian men
Who always run
And push and shove
And swear and spit.
Who fight till death
For work
For food
For a seat on the bus
And a spot under a bridge
To sleep.

Dirty Indian men
For whom
Dirty Indian women
Await,
Their hair matted
And overrun with lice,
Their shoulders stooped
From scraping dishes
To feed
Their dirty Indian kids.

I'm a dirty Indian girl, my friend.
I slouch about
Through crowded streets
Looking for
The cheapest thing to eat.
I hang about
From greasy hand holds
And stare into your car.

You too are a dirty little Indian my friend.
Face it dear,
You are not white.
You belong here
On the streets with me
Yelling your heart away.

Twenty Three

2010-11-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

I was sixteen and in love

In the Dehradun sun

I was so much in love

With the Dehradun sun

And the sky stretched blue

And the sweaters came out

And the spring birds flew

And the robin sang out.

Gold patches through

The red silk

Cotton branches,

And a crimson hot bird

In the bottle brushes.

Sitting out in the sun

For hours out

On end

An old novel

For hours out on end

My fresh young soul

Was happy right then

Bright, and I knew it-

I was happy just then.

Still glad,

I’ve had

Interesting

Life-

Drank four pegs

And found Mr. Right.

Been a pain,

Wrote my songs

Sang aloud

Out of breath,

Out of tune,

I still sing aloud.

With so much to do,

I dream of the sun,

Back on the porch,

In the Dehradun sun.

Grass in my sweater,

Grass in my hair,

The feel of the breeze

With something

On the way.

I dreamt of an airport

And felt very glad,

I could travel

The world

With so much to be had!

So much to do

And so much to learn,

Now I’m old enough

And I love to learn.

I’m so much in love,

With this maddening life,

The foggy gray dawn

Of Delhi rife

With its pain

And its hurt

And its opulence,

With its cars

And its rush

And its craziness.

With its lanes snaking through

The market place.

And dissent sitting firm

Behind Parliament.

I wonder if I need a break,

To roam around

And take a break.

Can only hope

To take a break

Step off my life

And take a break.

Whisper

2010-10-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

A useful thing

They came up with

But then they said

Whisper.

I’d like to scream

With joy and pain

But yet they said

Whisper.

All well to stay

Free, care free

But still they say

Whisper.

When they could sell

So much more

Why do they say

Whisper?

A fine young chap,

He made them cheap

And told them

Go to hell!

To the Government,

He said he’d sell

But they told him

Go to hell.

What! Should we talk!

They said in shock,

Such a private thing?

It isn’t right,

It’s bad manners-

Oh such a private thing!

III

She sits away

From the rest

And washes her

Linen.

She cannot work,

Or stay care free,

She cannot run

And laugh and dance.

It happens every month.

When she is mad,

Red hot with rage

And turned aside

So full of hate

Oh why should she whisper?

India

2010-10-24T00:53:00.001-07:00

Most of my friends, especially those who have gone off abroad, fail to understand why I have consistently chosen to stay put in India throughout my graduation, post graduation and even now. Ofcourse there have been times when I have raged at the Indian education system and desperately cried out for more intellectual freedom but when I did have a choice to study and live somewhere else, I chose to stick on.

As I often tell Ritwika (who listens rather sceptically), if you really want to really understand the world, India is the best place to start. Ofcourse my friends tell me that I’m like a frog in a well. India is cheap and comfortable and familiar. No wonder I like it. But quite frankly, this well of mine contains 1062 million people and counting. And almost none of these people have much in common. As Ramchandra Guha and other intellectuals put it, one of India’s greatest achievements has been to keep so many people of different linguistic origins, different religions, different castes and cultures together. The cynic in me often points out that a large chunk of this achievement is also due to the outright repression of separatist struggles by an almost draconian Indian army but then there’s much more to it than that.

One would say that Boston has a different culture from New York but at the end of the day, both, the resident of Boston and the resident of New York speak English and are descendents of European settlers. The resident of South India is a Dravidian who has historically been repressed by the North Indian Aryan*[i], the Dalit has been (and is being) repressed by the brahmanical upper classes and there are over twenty two official languages. Despite the hegemony of the Hindi heartland, a fairly large number of people (including me) simply refuse to speak Hindi.

So what keeps India together? It is not a shared language, it not a shared culture. India had myriad cultures that have been mutually antagonistic to each other. India never became a ‘Nation State’ in the strict definition of the term. It is however, a nation and a modern nation though its modernity is a like a bedspread over distinctly pre capitalist tendencies.

India’s nationhood comes from a history of having fought against imperialism. That is what makes India special. It represents a resistance of people of the Third World to the ‘export of unemployment’ as Professor Utsa Patnaik calls it, that made stable capitalist development in the First World possible and it represents an attempt to develop without exploiting anyone else.

For my non Left readers, these claims call for an explanation. Look at the development of the British. Mainstream Economic history credits the Industrial revolution to technological improvements but what made these improvements possible? Where was the social incentive to develop the spinning jenny, the Arkwright’s water wheel? Why was Lewis Paul’s invention, very similar to the water wheel, a failure? This was simply because it came too soon. Britain was not ready for it. Instead, when Arkwright’s water wheel came up, Britain had had one of the longest periods of protectionism in the history of trade. Calicos, silks and cotton textiles from India had either been banned or had met up against impossible tariff walls. After the water wheel, came British factory production. And who swallowed up the surplus production of textiles to keep British mills running and British employment at full? Indians, who found them nice and cheap with only 2.5% import duty. This is not because Indians were non enterprising and lacked technology. This is because public policy and poity were designed to make Britain grow at the cost of its colonies.

When development happens, increasing volumes of mechanisation take place as capitalists compete to make their own output more and more competitive (read cheap). Theoretically, if you consider the value of a commodity as the amount of labour spent in its production, you find lesser and lesser usage of labour per unit. This is because the mechanisation has historically replaced labour. The displaced labour needs to be employed else it will not be able to consume and a capitalist crisis will ensue. Therefore, production has to increase further. But then, who will consume such a glut of goods? Ah ha! Hapless people of the Third World whose own competing or import substituting industries will have to be broken down by tariff walls.

No wonder, when Gandhi triggered off India’s first mass movements, he directed protests against foreign cloth. The idea was to hit imperialism at its base, at the point where it hurt the most.

Thus what has made India special is a history of fighting together against the development of one nation at the cost of another. What brings India together is the unity that only resistance brings.

However, with the Foreign Universities Bill that will allow ‘world class’ universities to set up campuses in India, the perspective that development can mean suppression and how one can develop independently without, say, the internal colonisation of repressing the tribals or developing by making labour laws flexible to attract capital- such a perspective will be lost. Those who laugh at my Left tendencies, tell me to be open minded. I am hard put to tell them that by not letting me air these views that make them uncomfortable, it is they who are not being open minded. Mainstream economic historians, development experts and social scientists rarely look at the mutually antagonistic features of development. It took an Amiya Bagchi, an Utsa Patnaik and an Irfan Habib to formulate a theory of Deindustrialisation. Even the Left within the First World could not formalise or theorise this perspective.

The Foreign Universities Bill, neoliberal policies of letting in volatile flows of capital even if they cause the rupee to appreciate and Indian exports to suffer and even if the danger of outflow means keeping fiscal deficits low and therefore development expenditure on health and education low, letting labour laws get laxer and laxer and increasing use of contracts to employ labour go against the spirit of India. The spirit of facing the world as a proud and independent people. The understanding that development is often made possible by suppressing the interests of labour, of labour in other countries, of ordinary people who need schools and hospitals more than they need stadiums and flyovers –this understanding is integral to India. It is what makes India unique. It is what keeps India together... because frankly, you won’t find it anywhere except in this teeming, crazy Third World where people have to compete for something as simple as a seat in a bus, where there is often no alternative than to sleep in a plastic tent under a bridge, where sometimes, you are forced to beg and where it all drives you so mad, that it compels you to ask why.

Disclaimer: This is not to romanticise poverty or to argue for a lower standard of living by throwing out ‘world class universities’ but an appeal to appreciate what our own universities have done- the very unique understanding that they have built. Thought it was important to clarify. Thank you.

[i] *(For details read stories of Mahabali (Dravidian King) and how the Gods (Aryans) had to send him underground.)

Reactions to The Ayodhya Verdict

2010-10-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

Writers of this blog have analysed the Ayodhya verdict admirably. Arghya has analysed the verdict in the language of law and Prashant has argued that the verdict was a breach of the Social Contract between the Indian State and the Indian Muslims which rested on the mutual understanding that India would always be a secular State. I am neither a lawyer nor a political analyst and am thus ill equipped to make sense of the verdict either way. I am however, a frequenter of tea and coffee stalls (and occasionally, the fancier cafes) all over Delhi and can, with some authority, discuss the reactions of my friends and acquaintances across shades of political opinion.

It was the 24th of October and the country was gearing up. Anish, who had been teaching at a village school in Rajasthan, partly as a Gandhi Peace fellow and partly out of pure idealism, had literally fled to JNU that day. I met him at the Chinese food joint, gorging and gormandising on honey chicken and chicken fried rice. The poor thing had been eating vegetarian meals all month.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The village elders were having a conversation about how they were looking forward to ‘cutting down’ the Muslims in the neighbouring village (translation- the original Hindi was starker: ‘Musale katenge’) as soon as the verdict was announced and asked me to join. I said I was not interested in cutting Muslims down. They replied, ‘No problem. We’ll teach you. If you can learn to cut bajra stems then you can learn to cut Muslim throats as well.’ (Guruji, aap bajra katna to seekh gaye, ab Musale katna bhi seekh jayenge.)”

Then the verdict was postponed to the 28th. My family rescheduled my mother’s flight from Gujarat and all other appointments so that we could stay put in our respective locations all day. But the judges couldn’t agree and the verdict was postponed again.

This time even the UPA had started to panic. Chidambaram made official statements about the deployment of police personnel and paramilitary forces everywhere possible. 1.9 lakh Central paramilitary troops were deployed in Uttar Pradesh itself.

And then it came.

The common rooms, the Baristas, the lounge bars –in fact any and every place with a TV set in town was jam packed and those who felt their scruffiness would have them thrown out, peeked in through the shop windows.

Later, my friend, Rishabh told me that the verdict was a riot control document. The more Hindu of the lot scratched their heads and said, “Yeah so they recognised that Ramji was born here then why have they even given this one-third to the Muslims?” Other Hindus like my classmate Adarsh, said, “Ah! The Muslims should be happy and not spread communal tension. Atleast they got one-third.” (Luckily I wasn’t there. My friend Krithi, a fellow Left sympathiser, blew her top.) Most people said – “Ah! One third-one third-one third! That’s fair! No riot!” And Kamna, sipping her tea in the Library canteen, was of the same opinion. According to her, I was being communal when I said that the verdict was not fair.

The Ultra Left in JNU –groups like the Progressive Students’ Union or the Maoist sympathetic Democratic Students’ Union (quite the misnomer) –went up in arms. They saw the verdict as a de facto justification for the Babri Masjid demolition and yelled out for rebuilding the Babri Masjid. I agreed with the de facto justification bit but the thought for fighting to rebuild a mosque didn’t seem all that secular to me.

My friend, Kavita was furious with the Ultra Left. “How can they talk of rebuilding the mosque? Don’t they think they are being disgustingly irresponsible? These factors must be settled by the law, by the Supreme Court. If the Sunni Waqf Board has a problem, it must go to the Supreme Court!” Krithi heard her out but disagreed. “The High Court has been pacifist to the point of being unjust. How do we know that the Supreme Court will not do the same? As the Left, we must put political pressure on the Supreme Court.”

Meanwhile, Sahmat, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust brought out a pamphlet signed by respected academicians from AMU, JNU, DU etcetera, discrediting the Ayodhya verdict saying that it was based on the “faith and belief” of the Hindus rather than fact and evidence. Historians like Romilla Thapar were particularly vehement against the ASI report, saying that archaeological evidence actually points to animal bones, “surkhi” and lime mortar which are characteristic of Muslim presence. The ASI report had pointed to the presence of pillar bases to claim that a temple had once existed where the Babri Masjid had stood but no pillars were found. In fact, said Sahmat, there is no proof that Hindu belief says that Ram was born right under the dome of the mosque even in recent times, leave alone ‘time immemorial’ and who knows if those who broke in (in 1949) to put Ram’s idols under the dome of the mosque, put them in their rightful place. In other words, it is simply the belief of the Hindus that has caused the High Court to cede to the Hindus, the most important part of the mosque. Sahmat is particularly disturbed by the legitimation that the verdict gives to violence and muscle power. After all, next time property is required or the manufacture of a dispute is required to gain the political support of the Hindu majority, another janmasthan or two can be sprung up from time to time.

The Sahmat report brought nods of encouragement from everyone but the ABVP. This one asked students to unite against ‘communist hoax cries’ and referred to the academicians who signed the Sahmat statement as intellectual prostitutes. Meanwhile, it had a spectacular Navratra puja with loud speakers and cry upon cry of “Jai Shri Ram” which was regrettably, very popular.

The CPI(M) Politburo reaffirmed that the peace after the verdict proves that the people find the settlement of such disputes through the judicial process acceptable. Then it went on to critique the verdict because the judgement was based on the faith and belief of the Hindus rather than fact and evidence after which, it suggested rather than insisted that the judgement could be seen as a justification of the Babri Masjid demolition which it requested, rather than demanded, of the Supreme Court to keep in mind.

To my friend, Amit, always a critic of the CPI(M), it was a major disappointment that the Party should advocate the mere use of the judicial process with no attempt to put political pressure on the Court. After the High Court verdict, the ability of the judiciary to resist appeasing the majority for the sake of peace is much in question and in its bid to avoid channelling the disappointment after the verdict into anger and in its bid to avoid retaliation from the sanghis, the CPI(M) is also, falling into a pacifist trap. Amit also questioned the insistence on fact and evidence. After all, in Somnath, the Shiv temple was, in fact, demolished to build a mosque. Should that be given off to the Hindu groups as well?

I had to agree with Amit on the CPI(M)’s fall into the pacifist trap. (I’m still chewing on the question about the Somnath temple.) It saddened me to think about how close the grip of Hindutva really is. Even when it seems universally condemnable, the most intellectually fashionable statements end up giving the Hindutva groups their way. And that, is the real danger of communalism.

The Politics Of Depoliticisation In Post Reform India

2010-09-27T03:39:00.000-07:00

Like every system, the economic base of neoliberalism needs a superstructure to keep it in place. What are the cultural mores that consolidate such an order, despite its many economic contradictions? These norms and mores are all within us, in our assumptions, in our outlook, in the way that we see the world. Neoliberalism is accompanied by liberal individualism – the understanding that participation in public life is not important – it is a matter of personal choice. While this concept seems all well and good and adheres to the notions of ‘freedom’ that neoliberalism claims to champion, on looking into it, it is really not all that simple.

Neoliberalism means economic freedom. The freedom of capital to move freely, across national boundaries, without hindrances. Neoliberalism means freedom – freedom to invest any and every where. Neoliberalism means freedom of choice of whether to participate in political activity or to develop a political understanding...But is this freedom? Neoliberalism does not mean the freedom not to be exploited, the freedom not to be displaced, the freedom to eat a square meal, to drink clean water, to safe living spaces and working conditions. (Think Bhopal.)

Sounds polemic? Yet, it is the need to attract foreign capital and the fear of capital flight that has caused neoliberal governments to put a cap on fiscal deficits which has led to a serious decline of public expenditure on education and healthcare across states in India. For the freedom of the rich to invest where they like, the poor must suffer from lack of schooling, poor health facilities and calorie intake. And why is that? Finance capital fears inflation because it undermines dividends earned on domestic bonds and leads to a dwindling of asset values. This is why finance capital fears government intervention and in fact politics altogether. The ideology of neoliberalism rests on the notion that governments are ineffective and ‘inefficient’ and that private players must have more economic freedom. (The fragility of this myth is apparent simply in the corruption and inefficiency of the Indian bourgeoisie. Contact your friendly, neighbourhood builder for details. When CWG footbridges et al collapse, be sure that the cement has been siphoned off by a private contractor. Still not convinced? Stand on a Delhi road. Nine out of ten times, the bus that runs you over will be a Blueline and not a DTC.)

While liberal individualism may be disguised as a freedom, it is also a cultural more that distrusts politics, that asks students to ‘concentrate on studies’ and refrain from speaking out for our own, very basic rights. In fact this view is particularly dangerous for women who, as it is, are already confined to private spaces by the numerous insecurities imposed upon them by patriarchy and are often shy of taking to the streets for issues that concern them.

This view also restricts the role of education to producing individuals who can be productive assets to the neoliberal system – who concentrate on their careers and refrain from thinking about wider social issues. It ignores the fact that the purpose of education in society is actually to build up sensitive people who can speak out for their own people, especially those who are poor and oppressed – in fact to develop as Antonio Gramsci puts it, the ‘organic intellectuals’ of the masses.

If politics decides your future, decide what your politics should be.

A Step By Step Guide To Student Politics In JNU

2010-08-25T03:46:00.000-07:00

Step 1: Come up with an issue that you think best represents the aspirations of the student community.
Step 2: Develop a 'principled position' on the issue in the Secretariat of your organisation.
Step 3: 'Explain' your position to your Executive Committee.
Step 4: Write a pamphlet.
Step 5: Write two pamphlets.
Step 6: Do an exhausting room to room campaign to assess the response to your pamphlet.

Step 7: Your opposition writes a pamphlet, criticising you for being 'sectarian' and trying to get political mileage.
Step 8: Write another pamphlet to defend yourself and invite your opposition on hop aboard and develop a consensus on the issue.
Step 9: Wait till your opposition responds.
Step 10: Your opposition responds with a pamphlet and takes up your principled position but criticises you for taking it up.
Step 11: The student community is confused.
Step 12: After pouring over your Opposition's pamphlet for the third time, realise that its position is different in term of specific nuances.
Step 13: Criticise the opposition's stance and introduce debate on the nuanced differences in the two arguments.
Step 14: The student community is more confused.
Step 15: Start a room to room campaign to explain the differences on the issue. Smile at those campaiging for the opposition.
Step 16: Your opposition prints out a pamphlet calling you rapists and murderers.
Step 17: You print out a pamphlet calling your opposition bloodthirsty guerillas.
Step 18: Accost people campaigning for the opposition and debate on some issue in rural Chattisgarh. Call each other names and frighten the students you were both campaigning to.
Step 19: Call a University General Body Meeting.
Step 20: Prepare a logical, articulate speech explaining in reasoned detail why your opposition is wrong.
Step 21: Deliver your speech to the grand gathering of 10 students. The rest arrive only after all speakers of your organisation have already spoken.
Step 22: Writhe in rage while your opposition pits polemics, rhetoric and logic to an ever increasing gathering.
Step 23: Shrug and drink tea till four in the morning until the JNUSU President starts to speak.
Step 24: Run to the hostels and hammer on doors to bring your target base to come and vote. The time is 4 o clock in the morning.
Step 25: You mobilse 600 students but oops, your opposition has mobilised 700.
Step 26: Criticise your opposition for cheating.
Step 27: Your opposition criticises you for cheating.
Step 28: Pretend to come to blows while relying on your friends to pull you back.
Step 29: Accept defeat gracefully and start over from the start.

Howl

2010-08-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

There are two very different kinds of people who read my blog. One section of people is students of social science and they see my views for what they are. They may be critical and they may not agree so they comment. I’m happy when they do because there’s nothing I like better than a good argument. It’s the other section of people who annoy me –people who read my blog to look into my conscience and figure me out. People who read my blog to wonder, “Does she think it’s cool to think like this? Is it like some sort of challenge to the world? Is she trying to prove that she’s very original? … I’m telling you, it must be her ever present insecurity!”

The reason why my pen has dried up for so long is this. I can’t write if I feel that people read my blog to sort me out and tell me how to think and live so that I become “viable”. Thank you to my well wishers but I don’t need no education.

Yes, my views are very critical of the way social systems work. Yes, I’m Left wing. Yes, I’m insecure and messed up in the head and I haven’t quite found myself. And you know what? I like it this way because it takes an insecure, rebellious young person to think outside the view that “sane, sensible people” must take to be “viable” and “productive”. My education has made me “productive”. I speak English as well as the British. I have two degrees and a set of internships. I can trudge the walk of the corporate sector and the malls. I can say that India is developing, you know.

But my innate pessimism creeps in. Even Bangalore has its hovels and Mumbai has Dharawi. When the train goes through Nizammuddin station, you see what makes Delhi “unsafe” and why. Sometimes I really wonder, how people can live in frustration and hunger for so long.

And policy talks of giving sops to private investment from tax cuts to the Commonwealth Games. Let’s face it, at the end of the day, policy makers don’t care all that much for encouragement to players, for national pride and for how India is viewed internationally. Maybe, it’s my economist- materialistic mind speaking but how India is viewed internationally matters only in so far that that investment comes in and it can be used to give people a better standard of living. That is what public policy is about. The rest is just rhetoric for the middle class media. Why is this view of development a poor option? Simply because you build stadiums and flyovers instead of schools and hospitals. Read the subversive graffiti under any flyover in Delhi! Watch the flies swivel and rest on the feet of the tired sleeper curled up under the flyover because a stadium has been built over her one room slum dwelling.

Galeano talks about how Western, and now Global Capitalism has even subsumed rebellion –I read it as their having put Che on a T Shirt and sold it in the branded ‘Metal’ showroom at Vasant Vihar, Priya- the super posh market where all the ‘cool’ people hang out. I wonder if all the rock listeners brandishing guitars really know what social purpose rock had been used to serve. Rock was rebellion –rebellion against war, rebellion against the commodification of bodies and their conversion into consumers of newer and newer beauty products, rebellion against the norms of capitalism that said that one should educate oneself to be “productive” and should then work hard and feed a “family” based on a sexual division of labour. But the hippies for all their ‘free love’ could not break capitalism or the family system and we read about them with a shard of regret for the rebellion we can never fight. Meanwhile, capitalism sells us T shirts and CDs and we make sure we’re “productive”; otherwise, we can’t afford to buy them. Piracy is an option, ofcourse but it’s not quite looked upon favorably within the system.

And we should take our lessons from the flower children without falling prey to becoming consumers and footsoldiers of global finance capital. We should create our own rebellion. We should view the system critically, to understand it, to call spades, spades and to always remember that we are a privileged section of a third world country and that while capitalism can be made to work for us as a class, it displaces more than it employs, it marginalizes more than it includes and let us find ways for an inclusive development.

A Sweet Sorrow

2010-07-14T23:16:00.001-07:00

Gargi stood on the platform, rain dripping off her umbrella, feeling like the heroine of a movie or a Thomas Hardy novel, in which the weather represents her mood. The dark clouds had gathered over the tin roofs of the platform and a harsh pattering resounded like a crash on the sloping roofs bringing a cascade down on the concrete, forming puddles of broken cement and grit. Her umbrella was an old one –it was large like Arjo, himself and had been owned by Arjo’s grandfather. Letting it go must have been a sacrifice –letting her go, was. And Gargi did not want to be sacrificed.

Gargi had bunked class to be on the platform that day and to someone like Gargi, a class was big sacrifice. Gargi’s nerdiness was actually, rather attractive. She was a blue stocking, a know-it-all, hiding behind the hair that covered her eyes and a thick book on something or the other. Yet, she came alive in the arguments that make students what they are. She scraped the Government’s policies on science, to find fault and judge. She examined what science means and what it’s for. It was one of these arguments that had given Gargi, Arjo and Arjo, Gargi. Arjo was the quieter kind. No one ever understood how he topped class as effortlessly while someone who read as much as Gargi nestled comfortably at average scores. Arjo could be lazier than laziness. He slept over eight hours a day, bunked class regularly and spent the rest of his time watching one movie after another. Arjo did not waste time arguing and debating except with Gargi. He looked after his own and aced exams without an inch of effort. When Gargi came back from class, tired and excited, he stroked her hair and undressed her lazily as they made love in his single bed.

And now they sat in the black and green Maruti van that Delhi’s taxis always were, to denote they were run on environment friendly gas. Gargi put out one small hand to touch Arjo’s –perhaps for one last time. Arjo snatched his hand away, pretending not to notice her wide-eyed, frightened face. “You know I don’t like public displays.”

“I just want to hold your hand!” Gargi’s voice was nearing panic. Arjo thought he could almost hear a “I could have been attending Organic Chem, you know...”

He smiled to himself and sighed. He wanted to do more than hold Gargi’s hand. That’s something she’d never know. But Arjo wasn’t the kind to kiss his girlfriend in public. He pulled his laptop backpack closer to his chest and looked out of the window. Gargi panicked and thought about the last night as they packed.

“But why won’t you do your PhD?”

“You know I don’t want to be here.”

“You want to work? You want to sell all we’ve studied for cash?”

Arjo hadn’t met her accusations. His face had told her she was a soppy romantic and had lost her mind.

“Go work in the Science Forums. Give your life up to the communists and earn nothing. You don’t need to support yourself. Your rich dad will do that. Mine won’t.”

Arjo had hated himself for the accusation. Gargi had been hurt. She’d sullenly finished his packing and had wanted to leave. He’d pulled her back into the bed and put his hands under her skirt. She’d moaned and tossed and he’d held her close.

“Protection?” she’d gasped.

Arjo let her go, “We’re not making love.”

“Why?”

“I don’t feel like.”

“It’s our last night.”

“No.”

Gargi swung her legs down and searched the floor for her panties. She’d put them on with the only dignity one can have while figuring out whether one has worn her panties the wrong way round in haste. She’s checked her face out in Arjo’s tiny mirror and put some of her hair in place. She’d left without another word. Arjo had continued to lie in his bed and to stare at his ceiling for one last time. This was it. He was going to miss the University but it wasn’t going to hold him back.

Gargi had come the next day, announcing that she’d like to see him off.

“Your class?”

“I can give you one class.”

“Are you sure?”

A cold, tear stained face met his, “Yes”.

And Arjo was glad. Leaving the University alone would have been hard. He’d had his best days. That’s why he hadn’t wanted to pack. How can you pack your best years into no more than three suitcases? His football shoes had gone in, his DVDs, his notebooks replete with Gargi’s doodles, old photographs of old friends, his first bottle of Royal Stag. So much to take along –so little to leave behind. He was glad Gargi was coming along. He had someone to be brave in front of.

The Rajdhani was at the platform when they reached. Thank goodness it was the Rajdhani. Lugging three suitcases and associated memories would have been hard on an inferior train. Arjo’s seat was a side lower berth. He hated those because it meant that he’d have to squash up his legs to fit into it. Nonetheless he shoved in his luggage which Gargi passed on to him. Then he sat on his berth while Gargi went down and brought coffee. She’d taken some time making her way in as the fellow passengers pushed their luggage through the narrow passageways.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” he heard her well-bred voice in occasional yelps of “Oh! I’m so sorry!”

Arjo had grinned. Gargi was going to spill half their coffee on his fellow passengers’ boxes and clothes.

She’d reached him panting and had pushed the hot Cafe Coffee Day paper cup into his hand, “How much time?”

“We have fifteen minutes, sit.”

She’s sat and stared at Arjo’s face, memorising the details of his Adam’s apple, fuzzy eyebrows, hooked nose and five o’ clock stubble. She crammed them into her memory as she would to complex proofs she couldn’t reproduce in an exam. He looked at her casually. Almost pitifully. He was letting her go. He was going to miss her. He should have stayed in Delhi for her, if only for her... But no, he had to go. And he’d come back. And he took in the familiar smell of her sweat and her eyes hastily done up with runny kajal. He took in those little things that only lovers take in- the upper lip down she’d forgotten to have threaded, the pimple scar she hadn’t quite managed to get rid of. He’d done what lovers do- loved her for her imperfections, not despite them but for.

The rain came down before the whistle.

“I’d better go,” Gargi had said.

“Wait you’ll get wet.”

It was his grandfather’s umbrella. It was old and large. It was his. So was Gargi. Gargi always broke her umbrellas and he’d never lent her his.

“Here.”

“No I couldn’t”

“Gargi take it.”

She took it and left.

He gave up on caring about the crowd and followed her to the compartment door, “I love you.”

She looked back gratefully and stepped down.

His umbrella went up amongst the swarming crowd of other umbrellas. He was glad she was warm and dry.

Who was he kidding? Ofcourse he would come back.

Delhi

2010-07-02T00:04:00.001-07:00

I have walked these streets

And made them my own

With too many ghosts

But ghosts, my own.

Each lamp post

Of soft yellow light

Has a thought

And one that’s mine.

This city is mine.

Each wide road

And unfriendly jeer

And bumpity bus

And diesel fume.

Each market place

Each cycle rick

Each clustered house

In cluttered lane

Is mine because

You sat with me

Ices in hand

Behind your wheel.

And you showed me

Tangerine sauce

On crisp fried dough in balls

Dribbling spice down chin

As we nestled behind

Blue garage door

As the shopboys played on the street.

And you gave me the song

Of the Sufi Saints

And the Azaan on

The Jama wake.

You gave me the tired scream

Of dissent

In the safety valve

Behind the parliament.

And we walked the dusty streets

Post one night in a cheap hotel

And held hands in the auto back

Thinking of the time we had

And the time we can still have.

The Most Regressive Mail I've Ever Read And My Very Mild Critique

2010-06-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

from	Manoj Padhi
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date		Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 10:28 PM
subject		National Forum \| Can you protest matrimonial ads showing the caste-wise origin of grooms and brides?
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hide details 10:28 PM (15 hours ago)

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Display images below - Always display images from manojpadhi@gmail.com

Caste is identified from Surname and Surname is nothing but family name in western countries.

You may note that our gods and kings used to have only first name and caste

Name: Ram Caste: Kshatriya

Name: Krishna Caste: Yadav

Name: Harischandra Caste:Kshatriya

Name: Parshuram Caste: Brahman

Name: Viswshamitra Caste: Kshatriya but became a Brahman by meditation (TAPASHYA)

Name: Yudhistir Caste: Kshatriya

Non of them had given surnames.

Viswshamitra tried to send a SC/ST Chandal Trishanku to heaven by spending his hard earned meditation power.

Brahmans were poor but respected by powerful Kings.

Do you know, why a middle name is given ?

e.g. if some one can find 100 'Manoj Padhi', he may find 10 'Manoj Kumar Padhi' - the idea is to choose a name that is less common.

So, some one/regime in Kaliyug had added surnames to a first name as per their caste or profession

when this last name was first introduced ..

Manoj , the pigtailed pundit became Manoj Padhi

Manoj, the soldier - became- Manoj Khandayat

Manoj, the sweeper became - Manoj Dash/Manoj Nayak

Manoj , the shopkeeper became - Manoj Patra

Manoj, the record keeper became - Manoj Patnaik

So, were they wrong, who added a last name to identify professions, which is popularly known as caste.

Absolutely not.

You tell me, when the last name was distributed, why Manoj Dash was sweeping..my best guess is he was illiterate and intellectually challenged. So he preferred to earn his bread and butter by sweeping the road. That was just a job and he enjoyed it.

I am not kidding and if you look at the living zone of Villages, you will find that:

Brahmans - lived in a separate zone
SC/ST people - lived in a separate zone
Businessman - lived in a separate zone

and this is from my own village living experience.

No one was ashamed of their profession but were respectful towards others. The Brahmans (say Manoj Padhi and his likes) were supposed to worship god after an early morning bath. Do you expect them to shake hands with a Manoj Nayak, who was cleaning road side No.2s ? Is this untouchablity or a necessity ?

But, if you will present the above scenario to our Human right activists and civil right activists, they would cry foul and say - Manoj Padhi discriminated Manoj Nayak by not shaking the hand. You may recall, in Kaliyug, that Kings were enforcing the social structure and not Brahmans.

We don't know the SC/ST discrimination until 17th century (correct me if I am wrong). All Hindus were slave to Muslim rulers and British people, including Brahmans. Muslims were first class citizens during Muslim rulers; Hindus paid Jizya tax.

So, the kind of discrimination, our modern day SC/ST activists have been shouting can be traced back to 200 years i.e. 2 or 3 generations back.

To me, it appears that the SC/ST people are unnecessary becoming paranoid that Brahmans are hating them. My parents never told me to hate and during my school career (30 years back), my best friends were SC/ST and I never felt any thing bad in touching them or eating with them.

When we lived in village, SC/ST service providers (washer-man/woman, backyard cleaners) wouldn't pick up the money from our hands out of respect and in stead they used to keep their hand below (parallel to) our hand and would ask us to drop the money in their hand. This was about 30 years back. I guess, that was the protocol and they were hesitating to pick up the note from the hand of a Brahman, either out of respect or social enforcement. I didn't find any thing unusual then but when I moved to a town, I didn't see those village protocols.

In Jagannath Puri, the rice based Prasadam 'Abhaada' is being shared across castes.

Now, if modern day SC/STs don't want to respect Brahmans, that is fine. Respect is earned and was never demanded. We Brahmans also changed profession (downgraded) from serving god to Engineer (Brahman->Vaishya), Soldier (Brahman->Kshatriya) based on Science/Technological education and that also without any reservation.

Now, who is stopping SC/STs to change their profession;now they are even given reservation. If some one is upset with cleaning the tables in USA, let me know; I will send the videos from America - how good looking Americans (better looking than Hindi film heros and Heroins) are both managing teller accounts and lifting plates from table, without feeling ashamed.

The Mexicans, who do the cleaning only jobs are doing happily because they were not educated enough to do other jobs. Educated Mexicans are doing better jobs.

There is a notion that the Brahman community is the villain in India specifically by SC/ST activists (not by SC/STs) , which is outrageous.

Now, coming to this specific case of marriage - where Mr. Santosh Kumar, who apparently is ashamed (my guess) of his family name - (Santosh Kumar ......?) is proposing a dharana - "no news papers should carry matrimonial ads showing the caste-wise origin of grooms and brides".

Now, let us assume, a Brahman ends up marrying a SC/ST by reading such an advt. to prove his seriousness about caste less society.

And, the next day his life becomes a hell because of compatibility issue. Who is responsible ?

Gentlemen, Caste is included in matrimonial advertisements as a preference mostly because of compatibility reasons (only on arranged marriages) and that also includes - "satisfying parents aspirations". In addition to caste, we also look whether the girl is from our own home town - added compatibility. We also look at, whether the girl is from a known family circle ?

In Hindu tradition, a girl is not merely a wife. She was also taught how to respect elders and adjust in a joint family. i.e. A Brahman girl and SC/ST girl may be equally good looking and qualified, but because of upbringing environments, they may have different family values, which is also important for surviving and adjusting in a joint family. Many families are broken and relations strained because of such non-adjusting girls, who comes with incompatible family values.

The way 'Ghor Kaliyug' is influencing Indian marriages and live-in relationships are legalized by our Supreme Court, with in coming 50 years, the caste system would go away automatically. Please have patience.

The SC/STs shouldn't demand respect. They have to explore their self-respect and change their mindset regarding their service/jobs - "no job is inferior". If some one ill-treats a SC/ST because of his appearance or profession/caste, just ignore and move on. Accept that as a challenge and prove yourself and become something better than the arrogant upper caste. You can't change a century old mindset of a few but, you can re-invent yourself.

Remember again, our Gods never wanted this discrimination and they didn't have even surnames. So, this modern day discrimination are man made and would vaporize in couple of generations. Don't link it to marriages as a bad marriage would be a living hell, as far as a Hindu is concerned. A divorce is not easy and revenge-seeking girls can put the boys in jail by dowry law.

-Manoj Padhi

from	Ruchira Sen
to		national-forum-of-india@yahoogroups.co.in
date		Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 1:37 PM
subject		Re: National Forum \| Can you protest matrimonial ads showing the caste-wise origin of grooms and brides?
mailed-by		gmail.com

hide details 1:37 PM (48 minutes ago)

Dear Manoj Padhi,

I'm afraid your analysis is highly contradictory. First you say that Dalits should step up and prove themselves and by your implicit faith in this, I gather that you assume that nothing holds them back. But in your own analysis, you show that being deprived of education and the means of production leaves someone with no alternative but to sweep etc. You ofcourse, assume that the person who sweeps, enjoys it. Mr. Padhi, I would like to define exploitation for you. I suppose it might strike you as unjust that one section of society performs all the chores that no one would like to do professionally -serving as domestic help, being part of the construction team in the most hazardous projects, working in the crematoriums and most infamously, dry sanitation. Now you may say times are changing -that manual scavenging has been banned, we have electric crematoriums, vacuum cleaners and those motorised sweeping machines in malls and airports but Mr. Padhi, you will recall that vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dishwashers may have made life easier for housewives but they haven't eliminated patriarchy at all.

Now please do not tell me that those who are forced (well if you have a problem with understanding this word, allow me to define it as 'left with no alternative than to') perform these tasks that no one would like to do professionally, enjoy it. Yes, a sweeper may take pride in a cleanly swept floor as a job well done but at the end of day, she is just dealing with her lot. We humans are very good at being resigned to our fates. Perhaps she thinks that she can do it for a while and save her money to send her son for IIT coaching. Perhaps her son may make it as an engineer. But that's not the point. The point is that this person has been left with no alternative but to sweep a floor that the shop owner himself, would not want to do, perhaps because it's dirty, perhaps because it is menial or boring and perhaps because he has other things to do.

Now you may have justified untouchability on cleanliness grounds but I am sorry to say what may be sacrilegious to you, cleanliness or not, our upper caste ancestors were guilty of discrimination. First, they left one section of society with no alternative but to do all those things that they themselves wouldn't want to do (which is how I define exploitation in this context) by hegemonising education and opinion and depriving the dalits of access to education. Then they went on to say "Oh we can't touch them because they do all these unclean things." Gandhi may have challenged this with his dignity of labour rhetoric but frankly, his method did not give the dalits their rights to education or land or nutrition or any of the things that would, in fact, enable them to 'prove' themselves. It was only a way of integrating dalits into the national movement without quite challenging the established order or working towards building a just nation.

Now about your analysis of caste names and patriarchy issues. Firstly, arranged marriages are distasteful by themselves. Two people who barely know each other are forced to get along and to live together, before finding out whether they are really 'compatible'. How do you make friends Mr. Padhi? You did remark having lots of SC/ST friends. Marriage is about having a best friend of the opposite sex therefore what you should look for is whether you connect and many couples have shown that this can be irrespective of caste and even religion. Now comes the family bit. Why must the girl always adjust Mr. Padhi? Why is it so difficult for families to be accepting of someone their own son/brother is happy with? Frankly, families are based on the gender division of labour and marriage is the accepted way of starting a family. The whole institution is, by itself, patriarchal.

Yes, stopping newspapers from publishing caste will be of no use. It just removes an external manifestation of caste. Yet, your analysis fails.

Ruchira

‘I Am Not Beautiful’ Syndrome

2010-06-14T14:49:00.001-07:00

It’s strange how important looks are for a girl’s perception of herself and it’s not just because it matters in a sexual relationship. Better looking girls often get jobs more easily and more often than not, make friends more easily. Most of the time they are envied so much that girls flock to be friends with them to bask in the umbrella of envy cocooning them like some sort of science fiction force field. More so, there is an ideology that exerts the importance of looks. It starts with the godforsaken Barbie doll. Mum and I went to the mall one day and found a giant float in the atrium of the mall. The float was a bubble gum pink and printed with pictures of Barbie dolls in various outfits and hairdos. A queue of little girls awaited their turn in front of the float to get their hair done and to be allowed to change into an outfit of their choice, after which they were to walk a makeshift bubble gum pink ramp. Once young girls start wanting to be Barbie dolls, there is no stopping them. Good bye self esteem, hello anorexia, paranoia, depression and hysteria.

As a child, I felt very large and awkward. I was taller than average and hopelessly garrulous. I felt I was composed entirely of elbows and knees that were constantly bumping into things. I wanted to be pretty. Instead, I was blessed with an enormous nose, a headful of uncombable hair and a layer of thick, pus filled acne.

Almost all of Terry Pratchett’s characters are a mark of his genius though I give special credit to the young female characters –Magrat and Agnes. Neither of the two is good looking which means that both suffer from rank inferiority complex, frustration, pessimism and self aversion. They get around these by trying to emphasise their talents. Magrat looks at the world through some sort of faraway, loopy kindness and concentrates on making medicine. Agnes changes her name to Perditta X (to appear mysterious) and sings in the Opera –unfortunately the prettier girl Christine gets the credit for her singing as you can’t have a fat and ugly prima donna.

I was a little of both. Because I wasn’t pretty, I worked hard on being intelligent. I was a good student, I developed a passion for literature, social science and the arts. I learnt how to appreciate and perform Bharatnatyam, the beauty of which lies in its power to transform the ordinary dancer into a Radha or a Krishna or a Shiva or a Parvati. It is beauty transcending sex, beauty transcending the very body.

Now when I look at it, would I give up my industriousness or sincerity or all that I have learnt to have been beautiful? Maybe not... But sometimes, I think it’s unfair that more beautiful girls can be as well read or accomplished. Nonetheless if I had been beautiful, I wouldn’t have worked this hard to have learnt the skill of dhaba adda and this ability to make well informed and interesting conversation. (I do this only in college by the way. I’m pretty stupid and gauche in family gatherings and even when I meet school friends.)

Later when I grew old enough to date, my boyfriends inevitably got stuck in the unenviable conundrum of their friends telling them, “But why must you date her? Couldn’t you get anyone better?” Some of them even flung the fact back in my face during a fight.

But somehow men like me. Perhaps it’s because I’m more open to being taken out for drinks and coffees (I insist on splitting the tab), perhaps it’s because I’m pretty outgoing when I’m in a flirtatious mood. Maybe it’s because I can be nice to talk to and maybe it’s a little novel to be lectured on gender and left politics while on a date without getting bored. Most men like to take me out because they like thinking than they must be the only people who can appreciate a girl who is outgoing and not pretty.

But when in company of other men, yes I’m bad arm candy.

I say this to Soumyadip and he reacts with anger, “How can you say you are bad arm candy? How can you be bad anything? I think you’re great arm candy.”

He is interrupted by my peals of helpless laughter.

“What? Have I said something wrong? ... Oh being arm candy is not a good thing, right? Sorry. I just can’t take it when you say you can’t do or can’t be something. You can do anything.”

I stop laughing.

Good old Soumyadip!

Eduardo Galeano

2010-06-14T09:59:00.001-07:00

I envy Eduardo Galeano. He got to make a story out of everything. He wrote that he met a woman, pale and lovely and that they sat in a Chinese restaurant eating stir fried vegetables with noodles and drinking beer (infinitely preferable to cheap wine) and when they made love, her thinness was an illusion but she shrieked saying a cat had bit her and that she was to die of rabies. He wrote that a little boy stood paralysed by something fascinating, a pigeon eating or someone playing in the balustrade and that he offered a peanut to an old man who wouldn’t eat it because he is allergic. Who published him? Were there better publishers those days?

Oh why! Why did Galeano have such luxury –to write as I want to read with my hungry, devouring eyes drinking in each tale of love and war –of the man who cannot take leave to write because doctors don’t give leave because you are sad, of the girl who saw her best friend shot, of all those things that really matter –life and love, loyalty and hope, and the ageless frustrating resistance that created silent heroes in pools of blood and silent disappearances.

Oh Eduardo, you lived and loved and walked the beaches and narrowly avoided dying a number of times. You walked the cafes, thin and weak with malaria and you drank vast quantities of beer. You talked of the old man who killed himself by inches, making the demons in him dizzy with wine and smoke. You talked of friends who sat cramped in prison cells and couldn’t even get up to urinate. You talked of a fight- dangerous, difficult, grimy and yet so wonderful! You talked of your friends, roaring with laughter as they fell to their deaths.

Oh Eduardo! You and your friends were so unpolluted by the power that subsumes truth. You know you were resisting - you knew who you were resisting. It was plain, opaque, in-your-face. Oh Eduardo! You knew why you lived.

The JNU Life

2010-06-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

Lately, I ran into a set of comics called PhD Comics about the lives of American grad students. I couldn't help thinking that Indian grad students have much tougher lives. So here's an Indian version called The JNU Life. Please click on the comics to view them. Posting these is a pain!

Getting Along With My Parents

2010-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Soumyadip: So any chance of being able to make it to Bangalore?

Me: I don’t think so. My parents will probably not like it or so it seems.

Soumyadip: (Lapsing into our usual baje boka-talking pure and consummate nonsense) Parents and children have a mutually antagonistic relationship. You see there is an unequal distribution. Parents have the means of production.

Me: You mean the means of nutrition, education and health?

Soumyadip: Ya but you know, they produce the children see, so the means....

Me: SOUMYADIP!

I belong to a more formal type of Bengali family. For starters, my parents use the more respectful ‘tumi’ for us than the familiar ‘tui’ usually reserved for younger people. This accounts for my tendency to address everyone as ‘tumi’ regardless of how young or old they are. Lately however, my parents have adopted the affectionate ‘tui’. Suddenly, the more respectful atmosphere has become more affectionate. Perhaps it’s because my parents have begun to get along far better. After twenty eight years of a tempestuous marriage, I guess you tend to settle down into a comfortable affection. But I wonder how they’ve gotten about it. Once at a party, they were given a prize for being the most ill matched couple. They like different things. They’ve been brought up in different ways. On and off, one has made life very difficult for the other. But now they have finally managed to get on to the path towards the famous ‘getting along’.

Nonetheless, it is now my turn to start getting along with them. Most parents are conservative but mine are very liberal. Mom is more than open to my having a life and she helps me with it as much as possible, without any interference. Baba panics. However, in some distant corner of his mind, he is somewhat resigned to the fact that I won’t be a little kid forever and after all, if he wants me to grow up enough to appreciate the wonders of logic and real analysis, I’ll also be old enough to drink, go out, have a boyfriend and so on... Yet, like most parents, my parents have concerns. And these concerns express themselves as follows:

Baba: So you are going out?

Me: Yes I am going out.

Baba: When will you go out?

Me: I will go out in half an hour.

Baba: Why are you going out?

Me: Uh...

Baba: And how will you go?

Me: I’ll walk, thanks.

Baba: But how will you cross the road?

I must be the only twenty three year old who is not expected to be able to cross roads.

Another concern is to ensure they haven’t created a monster who uses them so I shouldn’t “treat the house as a hotel” –this is one of their biggest hang-ups. So yes, when I’m home, they are top priority. If I go out, I have to be back within a sizeable margin of my going out, unless ofcourse, I go with them. If I go out while I’m in Delhi, they don’t really mind how late I am as long as I’m back before it becomes dangerous for a woman out alone on a Delhi road.

They don’t really mind hints of my activism or political inclinations and they’re cool with me believing what I want to. Yes, it’s horribly difficult to convince my father about anything whatsoever so explaining Left politics makes me want to put my head inside the freezer. It’s tougher to try to explain to Baba that though I haven’t done great things yet, I may be a late achiever so pushing me into a safe IAS job is not an option. He just goes into a little, thoughtful shell and stops responding to what I’m saying and makes me feel like I’m talking to a wall. The worst yet is talking about Soumyadip. Baba wants to know everything about his career, his parents, his extended family but after each question, he pretends that he is immersed in watching TV and isn’t listening to the answer at all.

But for someone who spends such concentrated amounts of time with her parents, when she does spend it, I like hanging out with them. Unlike most parents, they don’t mind if I wake up at ten in the morning and groggily make my way towards the kitchen in search of coffee, knocking things over and tripping over the carpet. It’s nice to watch Kurosawa movies every Sunday and to wait in anticipation for the ‘mishti-man’ to come around with his wares. He always makes a grand sale at our flat. And it’s fun to make tea for Mom and for me in the evenings and to spend hours drinking it and discussing my Mom’s favourite topic, emotional intelligence. And it’s almost a ritual to go out for brisk walks round and round an empty plot, all in a single file because Baba is so paranoid about traffic.

And now that I’m older, at least I don’t have to be in bed by nine.

Of Bras and Shorts

2010-06-10T02:21:00.001-07:00

Those who have seen my JNU hostel, Koyna would agree that it has been designed exceptionally badly. For one thing it overlooks a very busy thoroughfare and the noise does tend to get on a few frayed nerves. JNU takes the security of women students, teachers and workers very, very seriously. Its policy against sexual harassment is one of zero tolerance. However some ground floor residents soon began to feel that people are peering into their rooms. Others saw the benefit of such an arrangement and took full advantage of the luxury of hanging out with their friends while still sitting in their own verandahs. Meanwhile, second floor residents started to complain about the noise. Then one student decided to take matters into her own hands. She summoned the guard and had all the visitors thrown out of the thoroughfare. Then she took the matter up with the hostel warden. For those who have suffered at the hands of Koyna wardens, it was an inadvertent surprise when the warden immediately took up her case and banned the entry of visitors in the thoroughfare outside the hostel.

At that time, I had only just looked at the warden’s office order and I remember wondering about the wardens’ sudden concern for the girls’ privacy and security. When we were all getting sick, bathing in freezing cold water in the harsh Delhi winter, the wardens hadn’t batted an eyelid. When mess food was only becoming worse and worse and girls had to resort to eating out so they could get a somewhat balanced diet, the wardens had turned a deaf ear. However, when one girl complained about the noise, they immediately responded with restrictions.

Late into that night, my phone started to ring. It was Suchismita who wanted me to come down to a meeting to discuss the office order. A bunch of girls had gathered downstairs and they were angrily discussing how it is inevitably the case that when a woman has a privacy and a security problem, the administration orders a ban. I agreed with them. Privacy and security is what justifies curfews and even the burkha. If you want to keep women safe, you just clamp down upon their freedom by telling them what not to wear, what not to do and where not to go. Or you shut them into their comfort zones.

Besides, shutting down the public thoroughfare was only likely to be harmful to residents. Under the new arrangements, the milk van had to honk outside the gate at two every morning in wait for the guard to walk the long stretch from his post to the end of the thoroughfare to draw open the big, iron gates. Even taxis and ambulances had to wait outside until the guard woke up and sleepily made his way to the gate. Someone could miss her train in that interval, someone could even die.

Most importantly, what right had the guards and the wardens to shut down a public thoroughfare used by everyone in the University? Besides, telling a guard to get other people not to talk outside her room is undemocratic. After all, whoever is having a conversation outside her room has the right to be having that conversation as much as the girl who has a problem with it has the right to silence. Such problems are sorted out through dialogue and not through the deployment of authority or power.

The oddest was the justification that that girl and all her friends had to give.

“How will I walk out in my bra and my shorts to go and tell these people not to make noise?”

I said, “Either you dress and go out or just go out as you are.”

The reply was predictable, “I wasn’t brought up that way. I am not comfortable with people looking at me. You might be because that’s what they must have taught you in your Stephen’s College.”

Never mind the Stephen’s college bit because St. Stephen’s is not particularly nice to its women students anyway but isn’t it strange that being comfortable with your body is associated with being elite while patriarchy is very much a part of the superstructure of capitalism? Nonetheless, elite or not, I don’t pretend to dress like a good girl out of doors while dressing in my underwear indoors. I go out as I am –in my jeans or in my nightie. Who’s there to look? And even if someone looks, it’s that person’s fault, not mine. I didn’t ask to have boobs and hips. Sorry folks but I refuse to subscribe to the hypocrisy of a girl’s existence. I don’t let my state of dress or undress keep me from my midnight icecream study break. I have a right to all the cups of tea and the icecream in the world and I intend to exercise it.

The funny bit is that I am perfectly sure they don’t let my worthy opponent prance about in her bra and her shorts at her home either. I never get why it is that slipping into something comfortable always implies slipping into something revealing. Nonetheless, people may dress as they like but it clearly impedes them in their functions. They have to dress to go out each and every time they want a cup of tea and they simply deal with this by not stepping out for cups of tea and falling asleep over their books instead.

Nonetheless, a private space is something that is paid for. A hostel room is not private space. It is a facility provided by the University. One can’t throw one’s roommate out because one doesn’t like her. Similarly, one can’t demand to have things her own way all the time in that sphere.

Also, women tend to let themselves loose only in their private spheres. This is understandable because outside, there are always sexual predators wanting to devour them. However, the private sphere is society’s way of saying –look here, I will give you a space free of these demons -and the woman simply responds by staying inside that space as much as possible. She does not go out to negotiate silence to allow her to study, she does not go out to get a cup of tea, she does not go out to protest for her rights to basic facilities like hot water during the winter. (Only 40 out of 500 Koyna residents had agreed to come out of the hostel to go to the administration block to demand hot water to bathe in.)

The private space is the best possible cage to put women in and worse, they have learnt to love their chains. After all, one can only dress in one’s bra and one’s shorts inside.

Rashomon and The Ideology Of Rape

2010-05-30T03:58:00.001-07:00

If you love Ray you’ll love Kurosawa. They come together in the way their cameras move through the forest, the leaves flying past the lens to the accompaniment of soaring, portentous music, in their quick pans and expressions in their close ups, and in their use of landscape and weather to express a mood. None of this is very fancy. Their plots are simple, there are no special effects, and their cameras do no more than move up and down.

And yet they say so much!

Rashomon made me long to look at it from a feminist angle. (My more wearied friends say I look at everything from a feminist angle. )

Rashomon is really quite simple. An infamous dacoit kills a samurai and rapes his wife. However, all three tell different stories, the samurai’s as told through a medium. Each story puts the teller in a light that he or she would like to see herself in.

The dacoit makes himself look like the notorious hero he would like to be. He indicates that he longed to “possess” or “have” (I hate these words but I presume they mean “make love to” or “rape” or most simply, “penetrate”) the woman and so he ambushed her husband and tied him up. The woman fought him fiercely but she was forced to yield. On being released, she begged him that either he or her husband should be allowed to live because she could not “belong” to both. (Apparently if you have ever been penetrated by someone, you belong to him. It’s like cattle who belong to the person whose initials are stamped on them.) The dacoit then tells of a heroic fight between him and the samurai after which the samurai is killed. The woman runs away. The dacoit makes himself look like a hero and the samurai as a worthy opponent hard to defeat. He looks at the woman as no more than a desirable object, eventually not really worth possessing.

The woman makes herself look docile and pathetic and declares that the dacoit raped her and left, upon which her husband looked at her with cold loathing –after all, she had lost her “virtue” (Another of those despicable words.) She freed her husband who killed himself. All along she makes herself look helpless and pitiful and keeps crying and fainting and asking her husband to beat her or kill her.

The samurai declares that his wife ordered the dacoit to kill him as she could not go with him if her husband were alive. The dacoit asked him for permission to kill his wife and as he tried to kill her, she ran away. He makes himself look betrayed and wronged. His testimony bears loathing towards his wife and a certain understanding of and kinship with the dacoit despite his crime.

There is also an eyewitness account by the woodcutter who explains that the samurai refused to fight for his wife’s ‘honour’ as she had lost her ‘character’ and was of no value to him. He told the dacoit that he could take her. Meanwhile the dacoit begged her for forgiveness and asked her to marry him. As she started crying and fainting and was sternly told by her husband that it was not going to work under the circumstances, she leapt out at the men, calling them weak and dishonourable –the notorious dacoit for raping her without killing her husband and her husband for disowning her and asking her rapist to marry her.

Either way, all three were shown to be weak, dishonourable liars. This dark cynicism that was the main point that Kurosawa was trying to put across did not affect me as much as the woman’s own view of herself. She would have been willing to marry her rapist if he had only killed her husband first or she would prefer her husband to be enraged by her rape and kill her rapist. She thinks of herself as property –something valuable that must be won by the sword. She also behaves in the way that she thinks is correct for a woman to behave. When the dacoit starts begging her to marry him, she says that as a woman, she cannot make a decision and releases her husband. She denies the fierceness that the dacoit mentions she possesses and makes herself look vulnerable and helpless as if she has no agency in the whole matter. Most dangerously, she believes she can only “belong” to one of the men and has to be fought for. She is property. Penetrating her is an act of possession.

Kurosawa is not a sexist. He makes no comment on the situation –he only expresses that humans are flawed and dishonourable and yet, capable of compassion which he depicts through the woodcutter who condemns stealing but had, in fact, stolen the woman’s pearl inlaid dagger. This dishonest woodcutter, despite his dishonesty, adopts a child abandoned by her parents at the temple in Rashomon where the woodcutter, a priest and another man are taking shelter in the storm. However, it is important to see how what Professor Nivedita Menon calls ‘the ideology of rape’ operates. This ideology declares that being raped is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. Having been with two men is a reason for her to kill herself. This factor is coldly expressed by the woman’s husband as he refuses to fight for her ‘honour’. And this is why the woman cannot let her ‘shame’ be seen by more than one man as the dacoit puts it. This is why she must be fought for by the sword and not be ‘had’ by simple penetration. And this is relevant not only in Meiji Japan or Japan of the Shogunate but also in India of today. From roadside paperback novels, I gather that this applies even in the West. A very significant fraction of women who have been raped try to kill themselves, or at any rate, get separated from their husbands. “Belonging” to more than one man is inconceivable.

While rape is a crime because it is violent, it is far more important to erase its social implications. The fear of being raped keeps women indoors in a private sphere and denies them the freedom to enter public spheres, fight for their rights and make their decisions. The ideology of rape comes from the fact that women produce themselves as property –valuable property albeit but property all the same. It is used to ‘punish’ outspoken women like Bhanwari devi and it is used to ‘dishonour’ a community or to force it to follow certain norms. It is an act of ‘possession’ and it is an exercise of power.

Such is the ideology of rape.

The Gorforsaken Neoliberalism Debate

2010-05-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

Justin hates having the neoliberalism debate with me. He says he learns nothing from it. I agree. I hate the neoliberalism debate altogether and mostly because people who talk on it have already made up their minds. People talk to me on the reforms mostly to tell me that the Left is completely impractical and that the USSR collapsed and that Bengal is in smithereens.

It’s no use telling them that by arguing for neoliberalism, they are not arguing against communism but against the pattern of development that was, in fact, followed by very successful capitalist countries –Germany, France and most of continental Europe. How does one manage to get into the conversation to say, “One second –protectionism does not involve reinventing the wheel as far as technology is concerned. Indian policy was always about shopping around the world to get the most suitable technology (which was not always the best.)”? How does one say, “Hold it! India in the 1960’s hit upon a supply constraint –not because its way of development was irrational but because it was capital intensive and encouraged monopolies? The rich weren’t taxed enough and indulged in import intensive consumption which resulted in a balance of payments constraint. Also there wasn’t enough demand for consumer goods as the purchasing power of the poor was not improving. This caused a wage goods constraint later on as production of wage goods was hopelessly underway. Monopolies were a necessary result of pre-emptive licensing and meant inadequate scales of production for consumer goods and basic wage goods.” Otherwise, all India sought to do by means of protectionism was what Germany, France and even USA and Britain did –protect domestic industry, develop industrial capacity for manufactures and only then, open up for trade.

Liberalisation scuttled the protectionism and opened up the country to free flows of foreign exchange. A sudden inflow can lead to appreciation of the rupee which can cause a fall in the demand for exports and automatic deindustrialisation. And a sudden outflow can... horror of horrors... cause recession, inflation and unemployment. Moreover to keep international finance happy and to stop it from running out of the country, we’re stuck with a 3% limit on budget deficits which means less development spending. It means more tax breaks for the rich. It means a relaxation in labour laws and a swelling in the ranks of the unorganised labour force.

Economics aside, it means that conditions of work can be as terrible as possible and workers can’t protest because they have no job security. Most workers in India (other than the 8% employed in the organised sector) work over eight hours a day and earn less than the minimum wage. Children run around the most dangerous work sites thanks to the lack of crèches and beg for food. And no one can protest or make a noise because workers simply lose their jobs if someone does.

If before the reforms, India ran up against supply constraints, post reforms, it is permanently demand constrained. Even if there is excess capacity in the economy, we can’t have a fiscal stimulus aimed to improve schools and hospitals for instance, because institutional investors will get worried about inflation and sell their securities and scoot, causing depreciation, and subsequent cost push inflation.

In other words, thanks to the reforms, we have lost our ability to reduce unemployment or poverty or to improve human capabilities. And whatever we say there isn’t much of a comparison between the two periods. We may have got more access to more goods and opportunities but we’ve paid a very steep price which we don’t realise because we aren’t the ones paying it –the poor are.

Excerpts from ‘Days And Nights Of Love And War’ by Eduardo Galeano

2010-05-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

“Eduardo, I love your books because you write like a woman” –Sandra Cisneros

“When oil is involved,” Villar writes, “accidental deaths don’t occur.”

“The death penalty was incorporated into the Penal Code in mid 1976 but each day people are killed in this country with benefit of neither trials nor sentences. The majority are deaths without bodies. The Chilean dictatorship has wasted no time in imitating this successful procedure. A single execution can unleash an international scandal: for thousands of disappeared people, there is always the benefit of doubt.”

Dreams

“Our entwined bodies change position while we sleep, shifting this way and that. Your head on my chest, my thigh on your belly, and as our bodies turn, the bed turns and the room and the world turn. “No, No,” you explain, thinking you are awake. “We are no longer there. We moved to another country while we slept.”

The System

“that the computer program that alarms the banker who alerts the ambassador who dines with the general who summons the president who intimidates the minister who threatens the director general who humiliates the manager who yells at the boss who insults the employee who scorns the worker who mistreats his wife who beats the child who kicks the dog.”

“I thought I knew some good stories to tell other people, and i discovered or confirmed, that I had to write. I had often been convinced that this solitary trade wasn’t worthwhile if you compared it with political activism or adventure. I had written and published a lot, but I hadn’t had the guts to dig down inside and open up and give of myself. Writing was dangerous, like making love the way you should.”

JNU

2010-05-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

Nowadays I feel watched. It’s probably the media hype of JNU students’ supposed celebration of the Dantewada massacre. I dismiss it as I know the politics is usually non violent and I know that those groups who oppose the presence of the CRPF men in tribal areas aren’t necessarily Maoist sympathisers and needn’t, therefore, be taken somewhere for questioning but somehow, the normalcy of campus is no longer as normal, even though the JNU definition of normalcy is stretched pretty thin.

I still walk the pathways, the cool, early morning breeze in my face, watching the pebbles dislodge themselves as I trip because I always trip in that passage to Koyna. Even the bougainvillea grows wild despite the gardener’s fervent efforts and no amount of prizes for the best public garden etcetera can make the manicured spots look as beautiful as the jungles that have defied the JNU gardeners and woodcutters for years.

The media makes it look like a university of dangerous anti national sentiment and a hotbed of unrest. Is it? It’s a University that gives you that freedom to ask ‘why’, to question the State, to even question what nationalism or patriotism or merit is. All people do ‘good’. JNU lets you ponder on the implications of good –of orderliness and discipline and the accumulation of wealth. JNU lets you see the fear behind it all and even the fear behind the alternatives.

And that is why I feel watched though I’m only a very unimportant student who according to the media and the ideology of the times, should be worrying about getting good grades and building a career.

Sometimes though I prefer not to believe in destiny, I wonder if events brought me here because this is where I was born to come. It’s almost like the rolls of JNU had my name prewritten. It’s almost as if I knew I was coming here even though I didn’t even know where it was. Now I feel as if despite my efforts, events and destiny are going to keep me here.

It was made for me –the walks, the quiet spaces, the dhabas, the freedom I’ve always craved, the ideas and most importantly, simply being around people who no longer end in themselves. It was a place of transition. A crazy place, a maverick place.

For a girl who needs something to fight for, for a girl who needs the space to think and breathe and feel, for a girl who studies for the love of it –for those rogue ideas washing over her open mind, influencing, shaping and screaming for attention, JNU is more than a place of joy and comfort. JNU is the home I’ve always wanted.

Some people just need to stay at home.

An Ode to My Red Felt Pen

2010-05-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

My beautiful red felt pen that writes

So bold and bright

My angry heart

Raping white paper,

Write on cold,

Indifference –closed

And locked away in rooms

Who wouldn’t smash

Their windows out

Happy in their rooms.

Oh write to those

Who wouldn’t read

Even if they could!

Write and shake

And madden quite

Bring tumult

Into their minds

As you and I

Have brought to mine

Just do not let

Them kiss and lie

In bed with injustice.

Summer Insomnia

2010-04-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

My friends, they spend their last few days,
The little dogs, they fornicate.

Cool at last
Post stinging heat

This fevered heat

I need
More sleep.
I die
For sleep
For love of sleep-

I feel so damn alone.

The Garden Of Me

2010-04-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

(Ratna commissioned this post so most of this is JNU specific but I couldn't resist putting in my closest school and college friends.)

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”

Sometimes I feel that through large chunks of my life, I’ve been condemned to the role of the eternal gardener, ploughing and hoeing and toying with very unromantic things like manure and dirt under gnarled and weakened fingernails. It takes effort to create beauty, to cement relationships, to be there for your friends –and I’m not always successful. On and off, a treasured flower withers away and dies.

Sure, silver bells and cockle shells do take up some amount of adornment space in the garden of my life but pretty maids are a no no. I’m sure all maids, matrons and crones have better things to do than to sit around in neat rows adorning my whimsical garden.

Yet silver bells and cockle shells aren’t all. Every garden needs vegetation and I’m frightfully proud of my evergreen pine tree. It’s old and gnarled in interesting patterns. It’s been with me over twelve years, needing very little water except when lightning strikes. Lightning doesn’t beat it quite though it’s tried several times. Each time, the pine rises higher towards the sky, counting the stars and estimating the number of hidden dimensions. I call it Dax because there isn’t much of a Ruchira without a Dax. The pine attracts a cover of weeds but a whimsical old palm sways madly in the breeze-he’s whimsical and moody and disconcertingly brilliant- he sways more often than not in an attempt to shield the pine from lightning, taking it on himself. The pine being proud, will have nothing to do with it. They fight. I call the palm Bhaskar.

A stubborn touch-me-not swoops and explores the wind wondering how to get through her day, finishing all she wants to- reading, lab, research, a new poem –though ready to curl up into defensive balls of quickly closing leaves at the slightest, interested touch. That’s Yasha. Trisha is the squat, comfortable cabbage that selectively chooses to either flower or shrivel up. Niyati is the critical, ruminating caterpillar and Esra is the conspicuous dahlia, demanding a full share of quality attention. Simran needs care so she gets to be something delicate like a rose –thorny, so fully capable of holding out but likely to sprout up in odd directions and rather expensive in terms of manure.

Puneet is adventurous and wildly colourful. Though he cares nought for fashion, like every brilliant man he is slightly vain. He paints wild dreams with nectar. Every garden needs a butterfly.

My garden’s rather full of birds. There’s a pretty pigeon who doesn’t hesitate to bump her head against the shed each and every time. Meet Jo. There’s the old, wise cockerel clucking away in the shed. That’s Menon. MS is the inquisitive hoopoe that’s rather fond of her dressy orange plumage and black and white wings and tail. Jeena is the cackling crow, cawing away at the cockerel at some way off private joke. Priya is my mother hen.
Shriddha however, is a red silk cotton tree –only comfortable about handing out shade to all who’ll take it, frightened to admit that she too, needs shade and that when winter comes, her leaves will fall, letting her flowers out in the open, vulnerable to the breeze.

A hedge separates this part of my garden from the rest. It’s the wing towards the left. This part of my garden is even wilder and more often than not, more forlorn. Blacks bucks saunter across it without fear of being hunted down. Some say it’s unreal and no more than a figment of my crazed imagination. Some say it’s paradise.

There’s a violet by the mossy stone. She’s a wildflower and I don’t really know how she sprouted and where she’s likely to sprout next. I don’t know if she’s mine or whether she belongs to no one but herself. This is Ratna. She’s rather fond of the squat, prickly cactus that sits beside the moss only to soak up more sap to store. I love this cactus. She has pink flowers on the top of her prickly head and if you’re careful, you can stroke the petals, but only with her permission. Meet Polls. If you observe her carefully, you’ll spot a frightened hedge hog peeping out. This one’s Shreya. Don’t try bullying her unless you want one of Poulami’s spikes in your bum, not to mention that I may also throw you out. Try not to disturb the dreamy hollyhock. She’s a philosopher and belongs to some magic, faraway place. She’s Shaina.

R Hat is the handsome young, delicate spaniel with large, soppy, melancholy eyes that can make your heart melt. He belonged to my eccentric neighbours who refer to me as his adopted aunt. They left town some years ago and aunt adopted her dear, large headed, drooling, long eared nephew, completely unaware that nephew’s ears would need hours of combing and that he’d run away at the thought of a bath and that his ears would drip wax and that he’d give the vet a frantic headache. He’d also bark, especially if anything approached his territory or his hidden stash of bones. Somehow, his territory always includes the violet and he guards it with a viciousness you wouldn’t suspect him of. He’s a romantic one. You can use his pictures for Valentine’s Day Greeting cards.

Anwin is the aged cat that R Hat has a deep fondness for. Anwin forages in dustbins for fish and holds discourse among street cats as he shares his wisdom amongst all, especially when R Hat laces his milk bowl with faint lines of alcohol. “Have you got what I’m saying?” he asks his fellow cats and then proceeds to ask them how old they are. Before he can take an age census of the garden, the well trained R hat chases him up a tree.

Another hopeless romantic is the sunbird, Kingshuk. Someone should explain to him that hovering around the chrysanthemum was a frightful idea. Chrysanthemums need care and love. They need sunshine. They’re delicate and beautiful but they need sun and air and rivers full of watery soil. Amongst other things, though they like attention, they don’t need hummingbirds. I won’t name my chrysanthemum.

At the far end is Arindam. Arindam is the jolly banyan tree. His trunk is strong and when his trunk won’t hold, an extra root does the trick. He asks for no water, no sun. He holds on with no more than his own strength with his large chest puffed out. When he starts to sag, I lace the soil under his roots with his favourite cheap whiskey.

A squirrel runs in on occasion and starts to play pranks. He plucks petals off the violet, wreaks havoc on the grass, bounces up and down on the spaniel’s head and had even belled the cat. He gets in my way while I struggle with the water hose. But there’s far more to him than mischief. This one’s Amit. The razor sharp owl who remains unperturbed by him is the one he loves the most. That’s Krithi.

More often than not, tending the garden is far too much work. My assistant, unfortunately, is a perfectionist. He isn’t happy if the water off the hose hasn’t fallen exactly into the plant’s roots. He takes hours to painstakingly ensure that the roses are pruned just right and that the top of the hedge is absolutely flat. Meet Arka.

There’s still someone missing and that’s Soumyadip. Soumyadip is the grassy ground beneath my feet. Without him, I collapse.

Not So Meritorious

2010-04-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

Prabhat Patnaik tells us this story, adding a disclaimer that he’s only heard it second hand from Joan Robinson.

It seems that E.M.S. Nambooripad was once asked how it is that China had managed a revolution and India has not. E.M.S. had smiled tad helplessly, and said only one word, “caste”.

Caste.

Caste has done much more than prevent a Communist revolution though. It has made India inextricably difficult to define as a nation. What is this ‘India’ of ours? With 13 different languages and God alone knows how many more dialects, unlike European nationalism, Indian nationalism cannot possibly be linguistic. Given how bad the communal situation has always been, it can’t be religious either. So what is it that keeps these twenty nine different States and nine Union Territories (At the end of the British era, it was eleven Provinces and a range of Princely States) together? Is it that we were all once under the British and ruled as one big, subject nation? Was this nationality always there? Or was it brought about by the British rule? Perhaps, as Periyar had acknowledged after his disillusionment with the Congress, there were good things to the British rule. For one thing, the oppressed classes or the Shudras or ‘Dalits’ found hope of winning their age old struggle against brahmin and upper caste exploitation.

Nationalism was created. It was (and is still) created every day by songs, speeches, films, newspapers and television to cause people to produce themselves as citizens of a nation –by propagating the idea among those whose families had stayed in the subcontinent for years that thinking of yourself as a citizen of this vast, diverse country is the only normal thing to do. It was created by balancing between all multifarious religious and caste identities. It was about connecting the Hindu to the Muslim, the landlord to the peasant, the brahmin to the dalit, all struggling against each other also, all the while, in the hope that tomorrow would bring an inclusive freedom from oppression for all.

But there’s never expression or freedom for all. To create a national identity, to keep some groups together, one inevitably ends up pushing some groups apart. The call to return the Caliph to his throne in Turkey brought the Muslims into the Non Cooperation Movement. However, this was a return to the old feudal order –opposed vehemently by the lower caste Muslims. (Even after conversion, the caste system never dies- ask my Christian Malayali friends.)

Nationalist movements like any other movement, have a tendency to get hegemonised –in this case, it was hegemonised by the upper castes who saw the need to get the Dalits into the movement but were likely to be patronising about it.

E.M.S. Nambooripad had also said that Indian history should be viewed as a series of superimpositions on an essentially pre capitalist mindset. Even if Indian scientists send out a rocket for a space expedition, they must have an elaborate puja for its success first. To me, the best example of such an India is the character of Mrs. Iyer in Aparna Sen’s film, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Iyer’ who, despite having an MSc in Physics, considers water drunk by a Muslim as unclean. India now has flyovers, industries, malls, IT- at least bits of it does... but India still has caste oppression.
Ofcourse the nature of this oppression has changed. Earlier it was untouchability, being denied education and being looked upon as unclean as a consequence of the caste division of labour. Now it is merit. Oppression works in insidious ways. It prevents inter caste marriages, denies education to one’s forefathers and then declares that all are equal and one must compete on the basis of merit. What is this merit, this talent, this intelligence? Today, I can hold my head up and say that I am intelligent and my merit can take me anywhere. I can speak well, write well and I can handle basic math. This is not because I have worked harder on these things than anyone else but because my parents have post graduate degrees. My mother’s father was also a post graduate and had in fact, topped both, BSc as well as MSc. My father’s father was a BA and he couldn’t have gone that far if his uncle hadn’t been in the academic profession. Both my grandfathers worked and struggled hard against phenomenal odds but though they weren’t Brahmin, they did not belong to backward castes. Ofcourse, there are first generation literates who do get into higher education and learn to speak and write well but they are more the exception than the norm. Most people who get to do their MAs, leave alone their MPhils and PhDs, are people like me –children of educated parents. Don’t believe me? Check out the econometric models set by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze in India: Development and Participation. The number of years of formal education of the mother have a positive, significant effect on that of the child. This is not just an empirical result but an intuitive argument. Having educated parents means that education means something in your family. No one will expect you to drop out of school and college to work. Also, educated parents can help you with homework, sympathise and work out ameliorative measures when you fail an exam and support and advise you on how to get ahead- something economists tend to ignore as the emotional side of the story.

Thus, this ‘merit argument’ is eyewash. A system has denied education and what Nivedita Menon calls ‘cultural capital’ to a family over generations. Then the same system insists that it has changed and caste discrimination has been banned so the child is expected to compete with children who come from families that have been educated for generations. Thanks to history, there is a natural system of reservations for the upper caste. Reservations actually democratise society.
Going by the prime assumption within the merit argument itself –that there are no social differences between people –why are there so many Dalit construction workers, shoemakers, crematorium workers, cobblers and washermen and such few Dalit teachers, professors, experts or corporate sector employees? Is it that the Dalits do not have merit? Is that not a casteist conclusion?

Talking to people on reservations is generally frustrating. For one thing, they give you arguments like –“But you know, you wouldn’t want to be in a college or filling a post through a quota. You’d like to do it yourself. A quota is an insult. It implies you can’t do it on your own. Quotas are casteist.” This argument usually frustrates me so much that I am usually left agape, striving hard to pick up my scattered wits. At first it is important to establish that no one does anything on her own. I got into St. Stephen’s College because I am competent but I would not be competent if I did not have educated parents (who in turn, are educated because their parents were educated). Therefore, I too am not doing my MA in JNU solely because of my merit (I do however, get 5 deprivation points for being a woman), I have taken full advantage of the fact that education has run in my family for generations –something a Dalit student is denied, despite being the citizen of a country that promises equality of opportunity to all.

A cogent argument that often proves to be hard to refute is that reservations should not be given at the level of higher education –that a Dalit graduate is akin to any other graduate. But no one quite understands how very important it is to have more Dalits in teaching posts. It can break the Brahmin hegemony in education! It can even break the all powerful notion that Dalits are not meritorious. More Dalits in professors' posts will go to show that levelling the playing field can put a Dalit where a Brahmin considers it her natural right to be. More Dalits in influential posts can help lobby against 'merit'-based arguments and ensure reservations elsewhere aren't scuttled. They can also make policy recommendations to ensure social justice more effectively -redistribution of land, reservations in primary schools and can politically engage with and beat the merit argument. It is also psychological. For all the Dalits who are afraid to chase their dreams, they can be told, "Looks at XYZ. He's a Dalit like us." As a woman, I feel that way about our few women professors. Whether they are feminists or not, seeing them there gives me hope.

Yes, creamy layer problems are there but even a rich Dalit tends to have trouble getting an education. Even upper caste students from educationally backward States like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan tend to be taken lightly by their teachers. A rich Dalit student still lacks ‘cultural capital’ or those factors that affect one’s ability because of the way one’s family has evolved over generations. Also caste discrimination is still a reality. One of my friends was kicked out of school because he had been engaged in a fight by an upper caste student using casteist provocations. He would not have managed to get past school and into college without reservations and this is no comment on his abilities, which I believe are as true and good as gold.

Ofcourse I do not believe that reservations are a panacea. You need much more- redistribution of land, reservations in primary schools –even in private schools, more and better government schools. It’s not enough to create seats but also to nurture people in order to give more and more people the qualifications to fill up those seats.

Lastly, reservations are a right. No one has the right to look down on someone who has got a post or a seat via reservation. She is only exercising her democratic right.

The Saga Of Wasted Time

2010-03-03T05:02:00.001-08:00

I've been sitting on my desk for the past four days, actively looking for distractions. In fact I've been so ill, I haven't even had to look. Reaching out for tissue and cough syrup and the phone (to talk to worried parents, friends and boyfriend) has largely taken up most of these crucial, pre-exam days.

I have however, watched Pillow Talk and loved it- so like a Mills and Boon -easy on the emotion. Girl (independent, successful etc etc) meets guy (self made, successful, tall, dark and handsome etc etc) and hates him because he's a playboy, a prejudice he soon clears her of. Tra la la- happy ending.

The Devil wears Prada, I couldn't finish. I've been through three break ups but I just can't sit through an on-screen break up, even though it's happy-ever-after in the end. I just pressed down the fast forward button till the end and spared myself the pain. Voila!

Meanwhile, I've managed to finish Financial Structure And Economic Development by Gurley and Shaw. Can't help wondering why pro Soviet, Left intellectuals ignore the fact that workers are exploited even in socialist regimes. I refer to the recourse to administered prices and induced inflation to generate forced savings in the economy and shift the distribution of income away from consumption into investment- read, reduce the real wage. Ofcourse, this can be justifiable because it'll (supposedly) lead to greater consumption once the surplus has been transferred from consumer to capital goods. After all, that's what development is about... But really, is there no painless development?

Now it's time to study Globalisation- something I've been only 'trying' to do all day and I've only read a page. Well, parents came and we had a nice Afghani chicken lunch at Mezbann (I love eating out when it's good and cheap). Since then, I've been sitting on my desk with these awkward musings.

Last awkward musing is ofcourse on marriage. Funny, my more ambitious friends insist that marriage should be avoided at all costs lest it ruins one's career plans. I simply ask- isn't it possible to have both? Must be a struggle but I'm sure it can be done. I argue against arranged marriage. Mom says that both come to the same thing, really. I don't really know. I wouldn't want to give up too much for someone I barely know if there is a risk of giving things up. I'd give anything up for Soumyadip... (Umm, he'd better not ask me not to do my PhD. Wait, Can I make exceptions? Nah, anything! I'm sure he won't ask me to do anything I don't want to or not to do something I want.)

Blah! Globalisation! Only a day left... Aargh!

My Mandatory Pre Exam Panic

2010-02-21T05:32:00.001-08:00

This unwilling body,
Slothful mind
That faithful
Slaves have always been
Now rebel
And refuse
Caffeine fuel
And demand their right to sleep.

Crane

2010-02-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

JNU's UGBMs or Because My Blood Boils

2010-02-06T03:38:00.000-08:00

UGBMs or JNU's University General Body Meetings have a tendency to drive me mad. A UGBM is a forum in which people (usually political organisations) put up resolutions and vote on them.

Sounds goods? It is. It's the most democratic decision making forum imaginable. All the same, UGBMs drive me to the point of clutching my hair and tearing it out.

For one thing, winning a UGBM is not about convincing people about the merit of your position on the floor but about weeks of leg work, going from room to room, from hostel to hostel, meeting people and getting them to agree with you. It then involves, waking people up at three in the morning and dragging them across the campus to come and vote for your position. Voting takes place early in the morning because it is only then that the debates finish up.

Worse, most of the time, winning a UGBM is also about "floor management" where the JNU Students' Union president has an advantage. For one thing, he has the last word on most positions. For another, he has no time limit so he can talk for hours while his activists mobilise people to support the position he believes in. Some people vote for various organisations, purely out of fear. Students in some academic centre tend to vote one way or the other because they're scared of going against their seniors and peers and now and then, the same holds for communities. Very often victories in UGBMs are more organisational than political.

UGBMs annoy me because they almost always shake me into new conceptions of reality, causing me to question what I hold dear (like the economics students' belief that everyone is rational) and more often than not, they catch me saying things I wouldn't say otherwise. (Browbeating the opposition -something I never like doing.) More so, they force me to wonder, whether the organisation I work for, hasn't the history of doing the same.

Most importantly, the people I manage to get most fired up before the UGBM, refuse to open their doors when I come to wake them up for the voting. Can't even blame them because it does happen at three in the morning! Though if it had been me, I'd have turned up anyway -simply because I can't expect other people to fight for my causes just because they are political activists and that is their job while mine is to do my own thing.

Worse, I hate it even more when people I have coaxed and cajoled and even convinced, vote the other way or abstain because they've been swayed either by rhetoric or arguments that drive me so mad that I can't argue them out rationally (like the belief that sexual harassment should not be 'politicised' i.e. discussed publicly. That is such an underhand way to continue gender atrocities -the man next door beats his wife and I shouldn't interfere because that is a personal matter!)

Sometimes I wonder whether other people don't feel their blood boil when they hear of injustice. I suppose, they have another conception of justice, or at any rate, no faith in political positions for or against injustice. 'Politics is selfish' (Arguments like "They don't really care -they're just doing it for political mileage") implies 'politics is bad'. If the whole world were left to philanthropists, I doubt there would be any guarantee of anything being done. More so, the usual argument against this is that if it isn't in xyz organisation's political interest to carry forth an issue, they won't. Well, then another political organisation would! That's the system. Ofcourse, without stakes, an NGO may keep fighting for an issue but who can guarantee that such an NGO would exist? It's a systemic question. Also, apolitical institutions are more often than not, right wing. Saying, I don't want to have anything to do with politics, is a liberal individualist position - a position against intervention -a position saying, do what you want, I have better things to do than to fight. If you have better things to do than to fight then you either have something to gain from the unjust system in question or you're free-riding on political activists, regardless of how much you hate them.

Rust on The Fountainhead- Video

2010-01-26T11:32:00.000-08:00

Rust on The Fountainhead

2010-01-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Did not deserve his art,
Roark,
Not quite just desert.
Did not possess his art,
Roark,
Not quite just desert.

A chance,
Roark,
His class,
Roark
It’s not just desert.

Lifting bricks,
He too has art
But he’s not
Howard Roark.
How would you know
His art,
Roark?
Himself,
He doesn’t know.

It is his work
That is his own
It is your work
That is your own.

Taken from you
And sold.

But you can earn
Your bricks and art
Because you are
Howard Roark

And he
Is
A bricklayer
Roark

Not quite just desert.

Why I Don't Think Highly Of Charity

2010-01-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

As an alumnus of an elite boarding school, it is imperative for me to get excited about alumni meets, especially when the proceeds go to charity. Unfortunately, I’m always more excited about meeting old friends than about giving proceeds to charity, not that I am an uncharitable person (I pride myself on some sort of level of social consciousness) or that I doubt that the proceeds will actually go to charitable institutions but that I think I understand the role of charity in capitalism, and that I consider it hypocritical.

After all, most charitable institutions are funded by capitalists. The petit bourgeoisie or the middle class is usually too busy making ends meet. Now how do capitalists get rich? They have the monopoly over the means of production! Their class has historically given them the advantages of greater access to education and nurture and most importantly, the capital to invest and innovate with. Therefore they become captains of industry and have the right to surplus value. How does surplus value arise? Because labour contracts mean a stipulated minimum number of working hours, in those, workers not only reproduce the value of their labour power (the labour hours equal to the number of labour hours required to produce enough wage goods to sustain them in the level of well being they are accustomed to) but also produce more labour hours, which are a surplus. This surplus is appropriated by the capitalists.

Capitalists are not rich because they are more enterprising but because of the labour of the poor. Charity therefore, is like taking away Rs. 10 from someone and returning Rs. 5 in a holier-than-thou, condescending sort of way. It is an addition of insult to injury.

Most people who shrug off charity say, “Ah! Businessmen undertake charity/Corporate Social Responsibility only to evade taxes.” I’d rather give capitalists the benefit of the doubt there though I do think that they should not get tax rebates if they have been charitable. Taxing property incomes any less means that the government may have to resort to deficit financing to meet its developmental and non plan expenditures. Deficit financing more often than not, means inflation, which shifts the distribution of income against wage or fixed-income earners (read, poor and middle class) and towards capitalists. Therefore charity may make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer. Oops!

I expect brickbats for my views on this issue but as Dom Helder Camara had put it, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

I’d rather be a communist than a saint.

A Winter Morning

2010-01-16T23:25:00.001-08:00

It was one of those cold wintry mornings when a veteran leader was fast slipping away into realms he would, by virtue of being an atheist, not believe in. It was in the year after the Left Front had been thrashed in the Indian General Election and even the West Bengal by election and the year before Trinamool was expected to win control over West Bengal- the year in which more pessimistic communists expected to be taken out on the roads and shot.

It was one of those mornings when one wondered about the point of anything –a world view, a philosophy, study, even love, when one wondered how to drop one’s pretensions about the inevitable human need to feel superior to one’s peers and one accepted that communists feel superior sometimes simply by virtue of being communist.

Contradictions made the world go round. They always did.

Still do,

And always will.

Not that anything of moment happened that morning. It was simply a non momentous day in a momentous time. A day to sit and wait for the seconds, hours and minutes to tick. A day to read up on Rawlsian Justice, attend meetings and raise one’s voice in confused agreement, a day to surf the internet, see who’s up to what on facebook, bathe, think, miss one’s boyfriend... just an ordinary day.

An ordinary day in an extraordinary time, a time when prophesies and warnings would swivel off dhaba debates into the amphitheatre of the country, when suddenly individuals and their ideas and hopes would matter less than the days and weeks and months of waiting and watching for terror to strike.

The Politics Of Depoliticisation

2010-01-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

What is the role of the opposition in a democracy? At the risk of preaching elementary civics or political science, we’d like to reiterate that an opposition is expected to keep the organization in power in check. Whether it should do this for “cheap political mileage” or not, is immaterial. This is its role as the opposition. This is what it is supposed to do.

In the recent UGBM in which we asked the JNUSU to apologise for using the JNUSU platform to shield a sexual harasser and demanded the launch of a struggle to have the out-of-bounds order against the woman complainant revoked, we found it absolutely incredible that certain ultra Left organizations and various individuals had accused the SFI of ‘politicising’ the issue.

When a political organization in the opposition sees injustice staring it in the face, is it not its job to take the JNUSU to task?

We would like to ask these individuals and organizations, who would have supported us wholeheartedly had the SFI been some apolitical NGO, for instance, as to which aspect of their lives is not political? The toothpaste they use is political. It is a product of monopoly capital. The stock market they invest in, is political. It is almost wholly controlled by fluctuating movements of international finance capital. The education that has been imparted to them throughout their lives has been political. Their mess bills are political, their mobile phones are political, their entire lives are political – politics has existed as long as people have.

Is gender apolitical? Can you handle gender problems through apolitical bodies like NGOs, support groups and committees alone? Most of these committees and organizations deal with individual issues – they only advocate superstructural change. They forget that patriarchy is tied to much more. It is tied to the regime. Patriarchy stems from private property. Why do you think adultery in women could once be punished by stoning? One wouldn’t want someone else’s son to inherit his hard earned wealth. This is why women are kept confined to the private sphere, rather than the public. This is why women are thought of as property or as repositories of ‘honour’, ‘dignity’ and other grandiose terms. This is also why virginity is considered to be so important. The fact that patriarchy stems from private property is also an explanation for rape. Rape can be an assertion of power – a claim over a woman’s body as she is the property or the future property of a particular man.

Can an apolitical body come up with such an explanation? No, such an explanation is ideology based. Such an explanation is political. Can an apolitical body struggle against patriarchy? Can it reject patriarchy, given that it is tied to private property? But ah! Such a stance is political. The women’s movement is tied to the movement against capitalism and private property. The women’s movement is political.

Also, about the individuals who have been accusing political organizations of conducting a public trial and disregarding the sentiments of the complainant in the Ganga Sahay Meena case, where was the public trial? The GSCASH had already come out with its verdict on the case. No one in the UGBM said a word about the complainant or about Ganga Sahay Meena. Only the JNUSU was attacked for shielding the accused.

Would these individuals prefer it if issues as sensitive as gender were not talked about at all?

As per a certain organization that agreed that the JNUSU should be condemned for misusing its power to shield the accused but opposed the public apology, what could the logic behind its stance possibly be? Why this retraction? Quite clearly, they were opposed to it simply because the SFI was proposing it. Is this organisation’s politics about no more than opposing SFI?

They declared that the SFI had no right to claim to be gender sensitive in light of incidents related to some of CPI(M)’s activities in West Bengal. By their argument, SFI should not attempt to talk about gender at all. In that case, would this organization have raised this issue in the UGBM? Would its few members have gone from room to room, from hostel to hostel explaining its stand? If it is this concerned about gender, given that it has the right to do so, why had it not raised the issue of the revocation of the out-of-bounds order in August when it had been issued? The SFI, we would like to mention, had done so.

Also, to independent Leftists who completely disregard political organizations, if such organisations do not take up campus issues, who will? Will these independent Leftists throw up time and energy raising awareness and sensitizing students about such issues?

Friends, do wake up and smell the coffee. Support issues that make sense and don’t hide away from what is so very prevalent in your own lives. Make your political decisions your own. We are all guilty of ‘dirty politics’ even when we’re hiding from it. There’s blood in our Coca Cola, sweat in our canvas shoes and debate in our reference books. We cannot afford to hide.

Mathematics in Economics

2010-01-08T04:47:00.000-08:00

Opposite me, Arindam makes a loud, guttural noise. His rosy cheeks flush pink with a new observation. I brace myself.

‘Hmm...” he says (Arindam must always say “Hmmm” before anything else), “You have no idea of the level of mathematics to which neo-classical economics has evolved.”

I give him that helpless, askance look I always wear when anyone mentions the use of math in econ. Clearly he had been speaking to his friends at Penn State. To my surprise, Sumit who has been studying neo classical economics at the more right-leaning JNU centre for economics, also wears that look. The perennially gifted Akash of St. Stephen’s, who sails through math exams without a shudder had, before that incident, announced that he is sick of academics and is setting himself up for hire in the market for economics post graduates.

Coming back to Sumit, he throws up his bony arms and decries the fact that math has made him forget economics, that he cannot understand intuition any more. I give him a smirk, “But Sumit, what you study IS economics; what we study is casually dismissed as ‘sociology’ in the more snobbish of economics circles.”
Now we are all nonplussed. What when you love economic theory but prefer to explain yourself in words and intuition? I suppose that the idea behind the Math is to explain the intuition. The problem is that it all becomes so abstruse that for most people, even economics professionals, the whole concept is lost in translation.
Ofcourse, the snootier of academicians argue that life is a filtration process –that the math only filters out the incapable. I sometimes worry about merit based arguments. I mean, marks don’t judge people adequately; exams are really, quite useless. Also, merit is neither necessary nor sufficient to be guaranteed a publication in a leading economics journal. Anyway, who said that people who don’t like math or don’t express themselves in algebra, are incapable?

I’m absolutely certain that abstruseness doesn’t popularise an idea. Simple elucidation does and at the end of the day, the math was instituted for that.
Incidentally, radical feminists say that obsession with abstract logic and mathematics is a male construct to create a male dominated society as women are not good with it. An interesting proponent of this is Granny Weatherwax of Terry Pratchett novels. She believes that women’s magic comes from the earth and not from the sky like that of men (read abstract logic). I don’t believe this theory. For one thing, the Game Theory topper in my class is a girl, both Madame Curies were female etcetera etcetera. And at least as far as theorisation goes, the exceptions disprove the rule.

Unfortunately, I happen to be one of the women who do however fall in the ambit of this belief. I can tinker with math but it’s generally known that I’d rather express myself in words. At maximum, I use logic for arguments and statistical regression to prove empirical statements. I do believe that everyone is rational, except I like to see rationality broadly. For one, I won’t say terrorists or naxalites are irrational. Terrorism and martyrdom are a way of expression. They may generate a cycle of violence but the idea is to speak out... and when one has been suppressed or discriminated against, however subtly, one’s utility function (so as to speak) is defined in such a way that speaking out (however violently) generates maximum utility. I don’t justify acts of terrorism. I’m as horrified by them as everyone. I simply believe that instead of falling into the cycle of violence and war an act of terrorism implies, one should understand the roots of terror. There would be no Hamas if Israel had not occupied Palestine, there would be no LTTE if there were no apartheid. Ofcourse I admit that LTTE might have done what it did for power but where did it get its support? The common Tamil who needed a vent. Roshan’s response to this argument was that it’s like saying that without the recession, there would have been no Hitler. Well, Hitler’s rationality needs to be seen very, very broadly if at all but it’s more important to see the rationality of the people who voted him to power. It was an expression of their frustration with the recession and their hope for change. They were rational, perfectly rational.

This is where someone who is better at intuition than at abstract reasoning can contribute to Political Economy and Social Science. Intuition is magic off the earth –the ability to understand power, love, frustration, anger –and knit it all into something as bland as utility, either marginal or total. It’s also about understanding human history and how it moves or evolves and what drives its evolution. It’s about knitting together human feeling, human history and circumstances of class and sex that cause either experts or drawing room conversationalists to draw the conclusions they draw. It’s about understanding opinions and how they are formed.

The idea behind formal training is simply to express intuition in terms of bland, sterilized concepts so that they appear ‘academic’ and ofcourse... abstruse.

The Season To Be Jolly

2010-01-02T01:30:00.000-08:00

Midnight mass and the excited crowd around Sacred Heart Cathedral, beef biryani at Batla House in the middle of the UGC NET exam, and chicken shawarma at Al Bake to follow it up, home at last, cake and brownies, getting trashed at Sanya’s place, my best family trip to Victoria terminus –it really has been the season to be jolly.

Sometimes, you just sit back and think how wonderful your life is. Sometimes, it just can’t get better. True, you may worry about your fallen grades and you may wish your boyfriend were there to share all that joy with but all in all, you know you’ve had the time of your life. I have.

The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, The Bicycle Thief, Modern Times...

Fried prawns, Pot rice.

James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and the indefatigable Terry Prattchett.

I think that my best memories will be those of food, books and cinema and all the people I’ve shared them with.

True, I’d have preferred it if the midnight mass were held inside the Church instead of in the tents erected outside it. And I may have wished to hear carols in English or Latin instead of Hindi or Malayalam. I did, however, concede that people should celebrate Christmas their own way instead of the traditional Eurocentric way though Anomitro sagely remarked that it would be good for Christianity but not for us, anglophiles who like to hear European Christmas hymns.

I also wish that I hadn’t followed up scotch, wine, a gulp of beer, a sip of absinthe and yucky Jell-O with Baileys at Sanya’s New Year’s Eve house party –no wonder I passed out flat. High time I cut down on my drinking.

As per my 3 Idiots experience... I loved the Mumbai Regal. The Delhi Regal looks like it specialises in pornography but the Mumbai Regal looks like what it is –a tribute to generations of great cinema. 3 Idiots, the movie, was witty and intelligent. It was a huge improvement on Chetan Bhagat’s novel –particularly because the heroine was presented as a girl with a mind of her own, rather than a sex crazed, suppressed victim. Unfortunately, it failed to escape the clichés of Bollywood; possibly, it hadn’t even tried.

Now, I shall go and watch Avatar. Let’s see what the world of 3D animation has to offer.

Debate Fallen

2009-12-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

For you
It’s only logistics,
For me,
Morality,
Ethics.
Agree
When we do,
Disagree
An intellectual
Cavity
A drunken
Depravity.
While you and I
We run the youth
Take stands
And air our views,
But you and I
We can’t debate
Let’s just forget and copulate.

P.S: What this poem means- It was mostly written out of a sense of frustration with what the Bengalis call 'atlamo'-a very intense conversation about world politics etcetera etcetera, mostly to make a point, to win an argument and sometimes for getting an 'antel' woman into bed. Don't get me wrong. I love atlamo. It's just that it's so very pointless at times.

Secret Travels

2009-12-08T04:59:00.001-08:00

Whoever said
You don’t have pine
In Tamil Nadu,
You do.
The oil of the smooth, white tree
I rub
Upon your smooth bare back
I kiss
The blood, red soil we tread
Beneath
The blue mountains
Of tea.

Crane

2009-11-20T23:20:00.001-08:00

Big, squeaky, creaking,
Yellow beast,
Pushing at rocks
Like a monstrous dog,
With his long, big snout,
And soft, wet nose.

The back of his large, iron claw,
Rolling a boulder,
Scooping hard
In perfect time
Before it rolls.

The yellow dog,
He scoops and creaks,
Over whole forests,
He scoops and creaks,
Changing times,
Building regimes

In his mind, only his master.

A Violation Of Acyclicity

2009-11-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

I am a Dorris Lessing heroine –a specialist in bearing pain.
In girding up loins after failed loves, in hindsight, bound to fail.
Rationalising, analysing, in the end, to forgive
While writing words
On abstract logic,
To many an intellect’s friend.

I should be glad,
Though I wake today
With an ache like physical pain,
That Obama recognises Su Kyi’s right.
That it is a brand new day.

At the end,
I can’t kill myself,
Through fatigue and neglect,
Of vocal women, very few
And fewer Left women

So I wake and bathe,
And read a line,
I drink my tea
And dry
These tears
For another man I’ve loved...

Woman I am
Invincible
And frankly dear,
Tired.

The Unsung Cadre Song

2009-11-11T01:09:00.000-08:00

Oh Comrade,
Buddhadeb
What pray
Have you
Done?
How will I show
My face again
After what you've done?

The Ultra Left
Will shoot me down
Over again,
Their guns and words
Will mow me down
Over again.

The Worst is
This soul of mine
Wondering what
I've done
Right or wrong
Or wrong or right
Over again.

Damnation
For no fault of mine
Save Left Democratic route,
Surrender
To Capital
And your
Alleged loot.

Oh Comrade
Buddhadeb
Do please
Oh stop
And do not let the armies mop

The hills with tribal blood
Battling guns with guns.

Oh great State
What will you do?
Shoot
Foresters down?
From the air
And through the trees,
Shoot foresters down.

Comrade
Buddhadeb,
What pray have you done?
How will I show,
My face again,
After what you've done?

Exams again

2009-11-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

I feel sick. It's this nervous breakdown again. The usual pre end semester exam nightmare -a time for introspection, shock, fear and of having to face all the facts you were hiding from yourself... And the stressful sight of your roommate studying, not to mention that your boyfriend's playing daddy as usual and showering you with advice. Doesn't help that he had an aggregate of 6.5 while you're wavering below at 6.3 and threatening to go downwards. Also, doesn't help that your friends are happily drinking to fight off the same feeling.

Like everything else from politics to relationships, academics has to be dealt with.

Ratna's Treasure Hunt

2009-10-27T00:11:00.000-07:00

Funny, it must be the onset of winter but I feel so lousy every morning, these days. The good part is that finally, after giving SFI 15 hours and more of painful listening and many more hours of introspection and resentment, I had a birthday party to attend. I like birthday parties, they mean more to me than community festivals like Diwali and Holi of which the religious overtone and the mass madness generally freak me out. Unlike Soumyadip and perhaps other, better leftists, I can't quite "walk with kings, nor lose the common touch". In fact I can do neither. I'm awfully middle class.

But back to birthday parties, I like them and this birthday party was Ratna's.

Here, I find it essential to note that poor Rishabh earned himself a lot of enemies in the birthday planning process. I was strongly considering strangling him after he woke me up at 2:39 am one day before Ratna's b'day, especially after I'd had a tough day of surveying domestic workers for my labour eco paper, attending an EC meeting and watching three very intense hours of Deep In The Valley, a Japanese film about the interplay of the past and the present in the tiny town of Yanaka.

But let's get the spotlight back on dear old, handsome Rishabh. I looked at my phone and the digits screamed out 2:39 am but after that persistent ringing came the voice of true love,
"Sen come down, it's Ratna's birthday tomorrow and we have to plan."
"Can't we do this tomorrow?" I muttered groggily.
"No listen Sen, we won't have time."
"I was SLEEPING," a groggy protest, but a protest all the same.
"I'm standing outside your hostel."

An image of poor, lovelorn Rishabh shivering in the bitter cold, Classic Mild in hand and Ratna in head, swam before me. I'm a romantic at heart. I staggered out of bed. One sweatshirt, one shawl, my own curls to serve as a cap and my phone. (Should have picked up my wallet.)

It was FREEZING outside.
"Rishabh, let's have some tea."
"I didn't get my wallet."
"Shoot, nor did I, wait, I'll get it."
"No, we have to plan."

Ugh!

Well, I was thinking it would be a two minute affair with a cake (the age-old Slice of Italy versus Supreme Bakery debate) and balloons (Who shall we appoint to take the responsibility of procuring them?) but Rishabh had been burning Classic Mild after Classic Mild, thinking. He had in mind, a treasure hunt. We were going to have poor Ratna running all over campus searching for clues. Planting them was simple. One on my door, one with the guard, one with the Sabarmati hostel chai wallah, one behind the phone booth, one on a wall and one hanging off a sign that said 'STOP, LOOK, GO'. The last one would lead her to her birthday cake and to us.

It was the one on the wall that generated maximum controversy. The clue I was designing went like this, "A wall outside a school where the rivers of the West combine." West would mean Paschimabad. All she had to do was to look for a signboard with the names of all West JNU hostels which are ofcourse, named after rivers. This was outside Kendriya Vidyalaya, which is, of course, a school. Rishabh insisted that she might get lost and check out every JNU school (like the School of Social Sciences)or the nursery school outside KC. I told him that he wasn't crediting her with any common sense. Rishabh opined what we all have had to get to know - that Ratna's sense is uncommon sense. So we very boringly spelt it out - guard cabin, outside the KV (Kendriya Vidyalaya) grounds, next to a signboard- The clue is behind the wall. Guess what Ratna did! She read KC instead of KV and went totally off track. Rishabh freaked and yelled at me, saying that it was my poetry that did it. I once again, wanted to kill him.

Meanwhile, everyone else wanted to hit him as well. He had started freaking out at 8:30 and yelling at all of us to gather around on time. Poulami of course would have none of that nonsense and she refused to be hurried along to Godavari and then to Mamu's dhaba. In fact she was considering answering Rishabh's umpteenth phone call to tell him that she was still in her hostel instead of two minutes away from where Rishabh wanted her to be. She reconsidered doing so after the realisation that the party would have to be cancelled if Rishabh decided to give himself a heart attack. Garima happily disappeared. On finding out, Rishabh did, in fact, get a heart attack.

As per Amit, Rishabh and Amit tailed Ratna, stalking her where she wandered to ensure she got the clues and got to the party destination at all. They hid behind bushes and on top of hills like Maoists, their only rifle, a badly packed bouquet of flowers from Ber Sarai, which Rishabh had been waving around as a baton to bully us all this while. As Poulami snootily protested, Ratna managed to get lost despite their efforts.

Somehow, she did in fact wander down to Mamu's dhaba where her cake, candles and balloons awaited her. (Later, we discovered that she'd done so after missing the first two clues entirely.) We all wore party hats since she happens to like them. Poor thing was rather overwhelmed.

Rishabh and I forgave each other. He's such a romantic fifteen-year-old, he makes me feel like a soppy, sentimental, elderly maiden aunt. Well, how long can we be angry with our nephews? Especially on best friends' birthdays.

Happy birthday Rats.

Stuff And Nonsense

2009-10-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

I have that same weird feeling I always had at College - oh why is it another day? Why am I awake? Oh when oh when will I get any time to myself? I have a huge lump of laundry to do and a reasonably large sleep deficit. My face looks like a ghost's.

And how did I get to this state? Well, SFI made me EC member. I suddenly wish I'd never touched politics. I enjoy the debates and discussions and I enjoy making my point but I absolutely despise campaigning. I also need some time alone, just to read and think. Plus I have tons to read that I still haven't managed to get through.

The good part is that I can now actually change a lot of things about SFI that continue to frustrate me. It's more responsibility but it's also more power and a platform I can use to incite more politicisation on campus and to air my views.

So yes, I'm restless but I'm being made to waste my energy on answering useless calls and uselessly knocking on doors.

The trouble with me is that I can never just think, I need to do things. I take myself too seriously and I have very little faith in the 'nobility' of people so I automatically find myself distrusting charitable organisations and NGOs. Organisations or individuals cannot change systems. Systems change on their own -one or two workers' struggles never clinch anything, it's long, bloody, violent... but systems change when production relations change, when production forces change. I have faith in no more than the transition of systems. Everything we do is just another contribution and most importantly, just an expression of understanding.

Why do I protest? Why do I campaign? Why do I waste so much time when I don't even want a future in politics?

I don't believe in God. This is the only praying I do.

Vandana ke in swaro mein, ek swar mera mila lo

Statement of Purpose - Must say, it's rather naive

2009-10-22T02:12:00.000-07:00

A lot of people concern themselves with a problem or a question. For some, it is whether and how the universe expands, for others, it is to find a cheap and effective cure for cancer, for me, it is to develop an understanding of society and its people. What is a system? How do systems evolve? What does it mean when we say we want to ‘change’ society?

Social science is complex and exciting, mostly because experiments in social science cannot be made in controlled conditions. The only laboratory is human history and even there, debates arise as to whether initial conditions or ‘assumptions’ were fulfilled. This is also particularly dangerous because sometimes, one finds the results of a theory being fulfilled at some point in human history but very often it is because the assumptions were not satisfied at all. The faulty application of the theory of comparative advantage to colonial and in fact, all North-South trade clearly illustrates this.

At the beginning of my introduction to Economics as a young girl just out of school, I found myself agreeing to almost all results of neoclassical Economics because I was so awed by its elegant mathematics and the logical consistency of its arguments. I’d question the basic premises but I was told that in Economics, to understand a model or an abstraction of reality, I’d have to simplify reality. In the process of simplifying reality however, I found that I had forgotten about it altogether. Another problem that I faced in my undergraduate years was that it was expected that if I concern myself solely with Micro, Macro and Econometric theory with a spattering of Mathematical Methods in Economics, I’d find myself a good economist. The faculty was actually considering not offering the optional course on Comparative Economic Development which looked at the history of development of five, very different countries- Britain, the United States, USSR, Germany and Japan. They conceded after I argued with them at a class meeting. To my disappointment, only six students apart from me took that course. Moreover, in the story of Britain’s development for instance, our course completely ignored the role that Britain’s colonies had to play, making it seem that the developed countries attained their current standards of living solely because their people worked hard, while the people of developing countries were uncivilised and lazy. It was Aesop’s ‘The Ant and The Grasshopper’ argument without its having been stated clearly enough to invoke an opposition.

By the time, I left college (St. Stephen’s College, Delhi), humbly clutching my B.A. Honours degree, I found that I was terribly confused and disappointed. Perhaps it is the result of being the bookworm in a girls’ boarding school (Welham Girls’ School, Dehradun), preferring to hide behind a shelf in the library, reading fiction to running around the sports field with the other girls, perhaps it is the fact that my teachers at school had spoiled me by encouraging me to ask as many questions in class as I liked but I’ve always been inquisitive and I’ve never been able to accept the dominant or the authoritative opinion on a subject very easily.

I was introduced to Marx’s theory of Dialectical Materialism in my third year as an undergraduate. (The course was offered by my college only because Delhi University saw it as compulsory- which still doesn’t stop the University from excluding portions like the Dobb-Sweezy debate.) Political Economy gave me the one thing I was looking for –a framework to see the world and to understand human history. However, the modern student of Economics studies very little Political Economy and I longed to be introduced to more. Perhaps I was very lucky to find myself at the Centre of Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University for my Masters in Economics. Here, I found myself particularly excited about Charles Kindleberger’s idea about the role of a ‘world leader’ in keeping alive a particular international economic order, the destabilising nature of free flows of international finance capital, Marghlin’s notion about how institutional change is not only for greater technological efficiency but because it is in the interests of a particular class, arguments for and against import substituting industrialisation versus trade as an engine of growth and in Professor Prabhat Patnaik’s construction of what he calls the Marx-Keynes-Kalecki framework.

What inspired me most, however, was just simply the notion that rich countries became rich, also by exploiting poor countries and that poor countries stay poor because the international economic system keeps them poor. Erik Reinert’s book, ‘How Rich Countries Became Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor’ was an eye-opener in this regard. Therefore I plan to study the commodity composition of exports and imports of developing economies which have been open to free trade since the 1990’s and compare it to that of the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century- generally regarded as the Golden Age of Free Trade, to see whether there is evidence of neo-colonialism in the 1990’s. This I think of as an MPhil dissertation. For my PhD, I plan to develop an argument as to whether Free Trade is an instrument of Imperialism, document a history of how it has been used as such and to investigate whether we as citizens of developing countries should be wary of the term ‘free trade’ in our policy documents. I also hope to build a mechanism to explain how neo-colonialism works.

Notebook

2009-10-05T01:21:00.001-07:00

An old notebook rediscovered –some of its handmade paper left blank –so much more beautiful than textbooks, large and pulsating with figures. My old notebook -the worst of my desires, the frankest of my opinions, the most sordid of my imagination –yet mine. Notebooks –refuge of the highly self centred. Oh you Notebook of mine!

Friends, lovers, admirers, critics and perhaps a few forgotten enemies. Life measured in three rupee cups of tea and biscuits chewed to pulp. My old desk, my bad doodles –me.

Now, a new life minus a boyfriend of a year. Singledom though not quite –loyalty, jealousy and a fierce, all consuming love. Whichever way life takes us, I wonder. At the end is there ‘us’?

Trees, old stagnant air, crickets, sounds, bad headaches –mostly imagined and blasts from the past of a life I’ve tried hard to forget.

Much gone and much to go, swirling and whirling into a novel too hard to read and even harder to write.

Slightly ambitious for an old notebook with only some of its pages left blank.

A Brand New Set Of Beliefs

2009-09-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

1) Communism is not an alternative system to capitalism. It follows capitalism.

2) There should be no interviews to undergraduate courses and even basic postgraduate courses like the M.A. programme, else those who get picked up are those who are comfortable with English and fit in well with the upper-middle class bourgeois. Ofcourse some of those who can't, are also taken in but it is doubly difficult for them -they have to have what it takes to 'dazzle'. Also various members of the urban middle class bourgeois do not make it but then, it's still easier for them to make it elsewhere.

3) Being poor is not a poor person's fault. The Ant and the Grasshopper story is flawed.

4) It's time to shake away the pain I feel each time I revisit school or college and even school or college friends I had envied or wanted to be like. I'm an ok sort of person with views and ideas of my own. And it's time I get over how hurt I'd been each time a lecturer had picked on me. Forgiving doesn't mean justifying an action. It means removing its power to hurt you.

5) It's time I stop justifying why I love JNU.

6) I know that my career and education are more important than my relationship but at the end of the day, I believe that all of us can have everything. "All it takes is just a little patience"... Not to mention a whole lot of love.

My Epistemology

2009-09-21T04:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get terribly angry with my own writing. Israt Jehan’s death turned out to be yet another fake encounter –an attempt to show that terrorism is being dealt with, perhaps or may be a result of all that ‘terrorism’ panic that has manifested itself into some new kind of racism against Asians and Muslims, including African Muslims. Aishvarya Agarwal, a student of the School of Information Technology in JNU may not have died of his asthma attack had JNU had a 24/7 Health Centre or at least an equipped ambulance. Gaza is still Gaza, Ulster, still Ulster and the Delhi Government plans to banish all beggars and hide all slums behind bamboo fences in an attempt to spruce up for the Commonwealth Games.

Hypocrisy, thy name is reality.

Meanwhile, all I end up writing about is yet another exam, a new acne rash and perhaps the temperamental Delhi weather.

The same fate that gave me my liberal parents and expensive education (the college part of it largely paid for by Indian taxpayers) gave me my only talent –my ability to fit words into each other, liked by some, disliked by others and very handy for teatime conversations and getting dates.

And it is my duty, thanks to this fate, to use my words to make sense of the chaos that is the world –why the Hutus butchered the Tutsis while the West threw up its hands, why the West was oh-so-happy to intervene in Iraq, bypassing even the U.N., why the Hindus butchered the Muslims in Gujarat, horror stories of the conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamil Eelams (The one about how Prabhakaran’s child was tortured in front of his eyes is particularly shocking.)... There’s also much that is quieter yet still unfair –never enough food or education for girl children, the fact that being of a particular community makes it either easy or difficult to get a job, depending on which job and who the boss is, good-old unfair free trade and the basic fact that TRIPS kills. Really, we’d still be selling cheap drugs to AIDS hit African countries if we still had process patents. Now that we can’t, AIDS patients are stuck, trying to purchase American drugs they can’t afford. Yes, TRIPS kills. Neocolonialism kills.

The message behind capitalism is simple. It’s a free society –no slaves, no feudal lords. It’s just that you find yourself compelled to do things you wouldn’t do otherwise for money and all it brings –food, shelter, clothes and less dramatically, economic independence, a better social life, status –you name it! For this, you throw away your dreams for a nine to five job entering data into an Excel sheet, something that insults your intelligence and education. And this is what you, an upper middle class person, do. What about those who haven’t the choice, those who have families to feed, ailing relatives, single parent homes? Anyhow, you’re still well off. You are a white collar employee, a specialist. Others work the assembly line, drilling one hole, screwing one bolt, day after day and even overtime.

And then they ask, why labour unrest, why kill our managers. I don’t justify terrorising CEOs and managers like my own father and uncle just as I don’t justify terrorism. All I say is, do more than rout out youngsters and shoot them, do more than hire assassins to kill union leaders –understand why it happens and do something about the system.

Ah! The System! You may be able to get the better out of the capitalist system. You may become something great if you work really hard and kudos for working hard, but do remember that hard work wasn’t all that got you this far –the basic fact that your parents managed to send you to school, the fact that the State had you pay no more than a tuition fee of Rs. 17 in college, the fact that you could afford all that coaching for IAS/GRE/IIT, the fact that you were even able to buy study material –these also had a role to play. Remember that there are those who don’t have all of this. There is a girl in my class who has to study twice as hard as I do to get a marginally higher grade. Why? No, it’s not that she isn’t intelligent or capable. (She is after all, a topper.) It’s just that no one taught her enough English to breeze through academic papers or to read as voraciously as I do. If she were born in a house with as many books, who knows? Now, you will say “Ah but she is a topper and because of her own hard work.” but do remember that she’s in JNU –one place that understands inequalities, one place that cares. I doubt she’d have done as well if she were in DU. Also, even now, being the topper, if she walks into a job interview, there’s a very high chance she’d be rejected in favour of someone more glamorous and less diligent. The self-made man is a myth.

This is why I don’t buy the Ant and The Grasshopper argument. The Grasshoppers in India are not poor because they do not work. They are poor because they aren’t lucky enough.
We, the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy, carry with us the burden of just so many lost souls. For every little thing we buy, someone sweats it out in a sweat shop, not only reproducing the value of her own labour but also a surplus value that a capitalist pockets as profit. Of course without us making her employer’s profit or without the capitalists employing her, she wouldn’t even get that sufficiency wage and the rent of the hovel she lives in. She’d rather we keep buying and she keeps screwing bolts, one after the other, all day. How much choice does this system eulogising ‘freedom of choice’ have?

Then how do you build an alternative framework to see the world. Dialectic Materialism won’t explain everything. Nothing alternate has really explained everything... and neoclassical Economics to some sort of extent, has though short sightedly. This system that assumes away demand constraints and the existence of inequalities, class and caste, this system that can be conveniently used to argue against a public health and education system, this system is the best we have. And all we can do is to yell about how the wage = marginal product of labour theoretical base doesn’t really hold much ground.

Someone has some serious work to do. I don’t think I’m up to it. I may be able to investigate neo-colonialism a little and build up a mechanism by which it happens. (This, by the way, is what I plan to do.) But I can’t build an alternative theoretical framework for Economics related Social Science. Can you?

Exam Induced Random Thoughts

2009-09-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

The Koyna Hostel authorities will not allow me the godforsaken internet. They claim that the wires will affect the beauty of the hostel. Koyna, to be fair, is beautiful only because of its colourful array of curtains -mostly bought cheap from Sarojini Nagar. (Ratna claims they give Koyna girls a cut for encouraging their friends to buy crtains - well, what would you do if you lived opposite a boys' hostel as notorious as Mahi Mandavi?)

Nonetheless, this is why I haven't blogged in so long. Thoughts come sprinting into my head and then wash themselves away like rain off a steep Himalayan slope. My laptop (a beautiful new Dell which has had the honour of replacing my old 'dinosaur') is packed away in my cupboard so that its large movie collection and ever handy Calvin and Hobbes do not get in the way of now hectic, academic pursuits. All the same, I can't write much when 'Introductory Econometrics' by Wooldridge reminds me that I should be getting on with Chapter 7.

Exams are a time of creative stagnation. My Art is back to what it was when I was in Nursery and my writing feels even worse. Perhaps the increasing number of rejection emails and phone calls that poor 'Summerhouse' has occasioned, has something to do with it. But they say every writer goes through this.

I shall use my writer's block to read the unread books on my shelf and watch the unwatched movies on my hard disk. As of now, it's been Pink Floyd's The Wall which has left me shaken and Munich which has left me thinking that the pro Israeli arguments were oversentimental and slightly lame. Qurratulain Hyder's Fireflies in the Mist, I enjoyed very much. A Hindu-Muslim love story set in a background of the Sunderbans, contemporary Marxist discourse and the loss of idealism. Rather cynical, they say but like most cynicism, perhaps, true. Read Cynthia Heimel columns next. I enjoyed them immensely but in hindsight, I think they were no more than just good writing. I believe writing should be so much more than that.

My much beloved Soumyadip has gone off to Kolkata. He has put his enormous size 11 feet up and is alternating between Feluda, the home desktop, the TV and his good ol' laptop. Meanwhile, he has been reunited with his fantastic speakers. I miss him immensely and am doing all I can not to brood. Nonetheless, I'm still in Delhi with the friends and the Economics I love. I can live without him ... but sometimes, I'd rather brood.

"Urban Chic"

2009-08-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Deepika

2009-08-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

To My Gifted Friends

2009-08-22T01:41:00.001-07:00

Oh you with your outlandish dreams,
Wild contemplations
And biased efforts,
Oh you with your effortless minds,
Breaking equations to concise thought
And you with your boundless energy
Travelling the world
And sorting out
The days and ways
Of why things are the way they are
And what they can be.

So unequal the world,
So very unfair,
For those who work twice as hard
And do only half as well
It is for them I sing.

I settle down in desk comfort
Wiping my Delhi sweat,
An expensive education
And eloquence in hand,
To reach all where they go.

A Jar of Glass

2009-08-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, Ronojoy couldn’t tell whether Nalini was just pretending to be stupid to provoke a response from him or just being stupid in general. It was a shame because she was actually quite intelligent, though Ronojoy had started to doubt it of late. A year was over and their exciting relationship was falling apart.
Ronojoy rebelled towards his singledom –evenings with the boys, watching those lovely women he would never dare to approach go by, afternoons by himself without listening to Nalini complain about him, her next test, her looks, her menstrual cramps –everything.
Besides, there were more important things to worry about –his career for instance, but that he was too worried about to talk about.
Nalini wouldn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk. Or why he would talk to everyone but her, though still hiding beneath a mask of cold indifference. She knew she’d understand if she tried but somehow she didn’t really want to try. Even if there was a God, the same God that had given her a set of logical inconsistencies and mood swings, had given her an absurd tendency to love –more than reason, more than passion, sometimes even more than pride. Despite her expensive education, and having been someone everywhere she had gone, Nalini just needed to be loved in return.
It was a tempest of tears and recriminations, a flood of dangling conversations and lumps in Nalini’s throat, a storm of dreams falling apart –the ruins of a passion destroyed. And Nalini slowly picked the pieces up and put them into a glass jar. Then she flung them at Ronojoy one by one in her anger and her pain. And fury clashed with fury though Ronojoy was sensible enough to know that they couldn’t both be angry or the glass jar would crack.
Somehow he didn’t really want it to crack. Perhaps he was worried about what it would do to her, perhaps he’d miss her, perhaps, just perhaps, he still loved her.
So Nalini cried herself to sleep and thought of chocolate. Ronojoy tried not to think at all.
Oddly enough, the fragile glass jar held on.

My Room

2009-08-22T01:32:00.001-07:00

Now that I have one...

Life Portrait - Diddn't know I could do it.

2009-08-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

Baje Boka

2009-08-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

Those who pass the acid test for being Bengali far better than I do, have an indescribable talent. They call it baje boka, a poor English translation of which renders "talking nonsense".

Meet my friend Akash (the carefree student alter ego (name changed) of a passionate Left activist). One evening, Krithi and I were drinking wine at Yamuna and Akash came around to spend the rest of his evening with Krithi. Seeing that I was also hovering around, Akash and Krithi decided to walk me back to Chandrabhaga (I was still staying in my dorm then). Soon enough, I discovered that Akash had fallen behind the general company so I turned around to find him stooping behind me, pretending to hold something off the ground. I asked him (in my poor Bangla) what he was up to and Krithi frowned at me to revert to English. Akash mumbled something about how I was too drunk to worry about my tail and I was letting it trail behind me and getting it all muddy and dusty. Well, no one enjoys being told she has a tail. I attempted sarcasm. "That's right. I have a tail. I suppose it's pink and has green spots." Akash, for all his genius, has never understood sarcasm. Soon enough, everyone in class wanted to know about my pink tail with green spots.

Months later, when I was getting bored and frustrated at Ruritannian Industry Publishing and Akash was collecting relief for cyclone victims in some remote village of North Bengal, my phone beeped out two SMSes. The first asked me to contribute towards cyclone relief and the second claimed that this tail of mine comes out at night and keeps the mosquitoes away. It is also useful when it comes to hanging off branches. The SMS concluded that it is a good thing to have a tail. Moreover, tails should be washed regularly.

Soumyadip is as bad. For one thing, he insists that I should feed my ineffective mobile phone to a Neelgai. I presume he has a secret desire to have me arrested as a poacher.

They say the female of the species is deadlier than the male but Bengali girls are mostly harmless. The men are the ones imbued with the legendary Bengali laziness and the sense of humour that makes this laziness bearable. Poor K hurt his lumbar region and his friends threatened to send his X ray off for his prospective bride to view. One of Soumyadip's friends decided to choose a restaurant because it has a good crowd and the other declared that one can't eat crowds. When my uncle was asked if he'd like some 'sweetdish', he said he prefers danish (They pronounce it as 'Swedish', you know!). When he asks me if I'd like dessert, he says, "Scandinavian, kichu khabi?"

Bengali men, stay away!

The Onset Of The Monsoon (Semester)

2009-07-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

Luckily for the dehydrated kharif crops and the starving population of the drought ridden Uttar Pradesh, the rain gods finally let flow. Bit of a coincidence perhaps but Delhi's longest and hardest rainfall was on the day that the JNU Monsoon Semester began. Perhaps the gods had timed it accordingly and we thereby take a minute to wonder whether the gods exist.

Even if the gods do exist, they are highly sadistic. For one thing, rain more often than not, only makes Delhi hotter, more humid and highly uncomfortable. Tempers are quick and conversation is more often than not, simply absent. Most of us slouch our way around campus and fall asleep the second our rear ends hit a chair -whether in class or in the library.

In addition to tackling a further shortening of my very limited attention span, I also find myself breaking down into tears over small things like missing water bottles. (They happen to have an odd way of vanishing from my ever handy jhola.) Also I have dark circles under my eyes and weird black marks all over my forehead and neck. I can't seem to do a damn thing about them.

The JNU bureaucracy further exacerbates matters. Any new student filing for admission after suffering the rigours of various entrance tests and starting to celebrate an end to all that stress, will get absolutely frightened by the admission formalities -especially this year when they've decided to give only two days to admitting BA and MA students and seven days to the MPhil, PhD lot. Talk about bad planning!

Nonetheless, a brief description of the JNU admission process. First you get off the auto or bus at JNU Administration Block. A huge rush of student activists descend upon you and drag you to their camp. You are made to fill out a slip which I call a 'fee slip' and Soumyadip calls 'the first slip'. Then you fill it up and get a signature from Room No. 28. If you have a scrawly handwriting, they may just tear the slip and make you fill out another one. This, you take to the fee counter and pay Rs. 263. Then you go back to room number 28 with what I call a 'receipt' and Soumyadip calls a 'fee slip'. Some mechanical face behind a counter hands you a sheaf of cards which ask for the same information again and again and yet again. You then paste over twelve passport sized pictures of yourself all over those cards. Then you arrange your documents and send out for verification. Room No. 28 is overloaded by this time so they give you a token number and tell you to go to the nearest dhaba and chill for five to six hours. Then you go around to various parts of campus depositing folios and attempting to get yourself an I.D. card and a Library card. Don't forget to apply for the hostel. The Dean of Students' Welfare will be very happy if you don't.

Needless to say, we get some strange Frequently Asked Questions:

Parent: Which are the good hostels?
Student Activist and Office Bearer: Sabarmati, Sir. Chandrabhaga, Koyna, umm...
Parent: Which of these has a garden?
Student Office Bearer: Chandrabhaga Sir, but why?
Parent: Won't my daughter get a hostel with a garden attached?
Arindam (aside): We can get her a garden if you like but the hostel may pose some trouble.

Parent: How much money do you need per month?
Student Activist 1: 2000 rupees Sir. 1000 for the mess bill and 1000 for other purposes.
Student Activist 2: It's best to be slightly liberal. Rs. 3000 is a good figure.
Strudent Activist 3: Rs. 5000
Parent: But why 5000?
Student Activist 3: Well, your daughter may smoke, your daughter may drink. And drugs can get expensive, you know.
Parent: (dismayed) But why should my daughter drink or smoke or do...drugs?
Student Activist 3: Well she might and you shouldn't be so kanjoos!

So here's to the Monsoon Semester! We're already killing each other, fighting for library books and photocopies. The parties and the groupism and various celebration plans continue. And the heat, it kills us all.

Yesterday in Dharamshala

2009-07-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

In Delhi, it is hot and humid. It rained but only briefly. A tiny little shower and that was all. Hardly how poured yesterday, in Dharamshala.

In Dharamshala, there was a torrential downpour threatening to sweep us down into the valley and carry us away with the flow. It poured so we could feel the chill and ran to the nearest café for a hot, digestive Tibetan Tripa Tea. It spattered on the ground with such violence that it splashed my jeans in dirt up to the knees. It rained so hard that we fought for umbrella space.

Ah for yesterday in Dharamshala!

There are a million reasons why you might want to visit Dharamshala. For one thing, the view of the Dhauladhar range is a dream –whether by twilight when the mountains grow towards you in different shades of blue, whether by noon when the cloud drifts into your face, blurring your vision of the lush coniferous evergreen valley or whether by the cold, rainy dawn. For another thing, it is the centre of the Free Tibet movement, the struggle of a fiercely independent culture to maintain its art, music, religion and most importantly, its national identity. Thangka murals line not only the Kalachakra shrine of the Namgyal monastery but also (in a less grand style) the cafes and the cut faces of mountain sides, Buddhist chants murmur down the roads lined with stalls selling Tibetan, Himachali and Kashmiri handicrafts and every face wears a defiant ‘Free Tibet’.

The Tibet Museum at the Namgyal monastery tells us of the subjugation of this ingenious culture. Documentaries tell us of murals and monasteries destroyed by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, of protestors (usually monks and nuns) tortured, sometimes by being hanged naked upside down with electric batons inserted into their private parts and cigarette stubs onto their bodies and of the horrors of fleeing over the mountains into India as refugees, hiding from Chinese patrols and losing toes to frostbite. Martin Sorcese’s ‘Kunlun’, a movie about the life of the Dalai Lama, had made me realise that the Chinese excuse for its takeover of Tibet was that it was saving its neighbour from its feudal culture and the imperialism of the West. Funnily, taking over a country by force is also imperialism and in a more direct and dangerous form. Soumyadip and I have often remarked about how in JNU, the Left is always silent on Tibet while the ABVP is rather vocal about it as it shows the Communists in an imperialist light. Yet, the Hindus in Gujarat have turned on the Muslims too. Nobody ever tells me to stop being Hindu on that accord. Predictably enough, the ABVP with its strong anti terror stance, is silent on Palestine.

The Namgyal Temple is of course the biggest tourist attraction in Dharamshala. It has gold painted prayer drums, a beautiful gold leafed statue of the compassionate Avalokiteshwar, the patron deity of Tibet, a statue of an Indian tantrik sage who helped destroy the enemies of the Dhamma in Tibet and a statue of Kalachakra and Viswamata in divine communion.

There is another interesting aspect of Dharamshala –an Osho ashram, almost imperceptibly hidden away on a hill. We were sitting in a ramshackle dhaba outside the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts when we found that the dhaba owner had a European accent and was lecturing a French man and a woman on Indian spirituality in French!

The Church of St. John in the Wilderness is also worth a visit for its Gothic architecture, stained glass panels of St. John and the Baptism of the Christ and the (rather grotesque though grand) memorial of Lord Elgin, Governor General and Viceroy of India, who died in Dharamshala. There are also other plaques for lesser known British officials, among them Charles Mc Leod after whom Mc Leod Ganj is named.

Daksha had pointed out the constrained hostility between the Himachalis and the Tibetans to me. I noticed however, that it is a symbiotic relationship. The Himachalis probably do not like the fact that the Tibetans have more or less made Mc Leod Ganj their own yet they need the Dalai Lama for all the tourism he attracts. A page in a bar menu elucidates this very clearly, “We thank His Holiness, the Dalai Lama for his presence in Mc Leod Ganj which has not only helped us economically, but also spiritually” as if the Dalai Lama’s intentions were purely economic and that spirituality was just a by product. Perhaps the bar had thought of putting it the other way round but had decided that it would have been too blatant.

Perhaps more than anything else, you should just visit Dharamshala for the fantastic Tibetan food and the many, many cafes, selling coffee, salty Tibetan butter tea and cakes. I think we frequented every one.

But about the rain. It rained so hard that Soumyadip went and bought (and sulked until he bought) an enormous umbrella with rainbow coloured stripes, an umbrella so enormous that even six-feet-four-footed Soumyadip can use it as a walking stick. I did the polka dance around it on a deserted road. Also, with our usual penchant for abbreviations (now that all of JNU has caught Soumyadip abbreviation bug), Dharamshala became Dh, Delhi became D and the Dalai Lama became DL. The man with the fear of heights (Tall man Soumyadip again) also insisted that falling off the cliff would be a cheaper way to return from Dh to D. He claims I’m afraid of anything that walks, flies or crawls but I still insist that being scared of snakes, traffic and bulls is far better than being scared of your own height.

It was an absolutely beautiful trip. I couldn’t have had better.

Another day

2009-07-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

Another day has gone away,
Slowly, steadily,
Languidly passing on the way,
In hot humidity.

Helpless as the ancient man,
Sprawled on the road to die,
The traffic won’t halt and the
Quarrelling couple
Sprint by.

I wait for hours, seconds
To tick,
Thinking of nothing

Cigarette stubs
And coffee mugs,
Click and flick to see

Boys out of school
Running around
With hot handles of tea.

Any use to understand,
Why all seek to lose
And sluggishly chug along
To do all they’re meant to do?

The Thicket

2009-07-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

Behind the thicket,
Narnia inside

What haven’t we done?
You say

The thrill, it soars
The debates rage
To the right of left
And the left of right

In a little hole
Where all makes sense
Is our thicket

The raging politics
Surpassing logic
The escape
The wit
The perspective…

And here they tell me not to crib,
Life can be
So fine,
They say.

Twenty Two.

2009-07-06T03:52:00.000-07:00

Odd to begin with the moral of the story but here it is. When cooking chicken cafreal, which involves lovingly plastering a chicken's body with freshly ground chilly garlic paste, wear gloves.

Soumyadip and I learnt this to our great inconvenience yesterday. First, Arindam, Daksha, Soumyadip and I went off to buy seven kilos of chicken. Then Daksha insisted that she had suddenly turned vegetarian. Oops. Well,she was always a closet vegetarian... Luckily, veg dishes are easy to make. All you have to do is to boil a pressure cooker full of brocolli, mushrooms, beans, carrots and onions and then cook them in white sauce. Then it's time for chicken. Chicken I'm afraid, is a problem.

First you ask Arindam to peel garlic which he claims is something only his mother can do uncomplainingly. Then you ask Soumyadip to cut and crush chillis and mix them with garlic paste. Meanwhile you devotedly sprinkle lemon juice on each piece of chicken until you drop and Arindam makes fun of you. Daksha says "Yuck", makes a face and goes running out of the room, demanding a bed to sleep in.

Now you plaster each lemon juice covered chicken with Soumyadip's handiwork, ignoring him purposely when he complains that his skin burns. Then you put away all the marination into the fridge and realise only once it's all done that your skin tingles, aches, itches and screams. So you start to cry like a baby and force Soumyadip, who's suffering from the same problem to calm you down. It is now five o' clock in the morning and the pain is not letting you sleep so you're both jumping up and down and washing your hands and aggravating the problem. Finally, Soumyadip the ingenious one, hits upon a solution. He pops out of the refridgerator room, carrying two chilled cans of beer from the freezer. The chill calms the itchy palm skin. When I was a child, I slept with a small stuffed toy clutched in my hands. I never thought I'd be clutching a chilled beer can to sleep once I reached twenty two.

Then it's morning and it's time to fry. Unfortunately, you're out of time so Jeena rescues you with a pressure cooker. Efficient as ever, she even finds time to make pudding. The party rages on till nine in the evening and beer is drunk like water. Who would have thought?

Boroline is procured for hosts with burning hands. Birthday girl passes out mid sentence.

Who would have thought that I'd actually like partying and crowds and good times and abundance? The girl who slunk around at parties, feeling miserable, how much has she changed between 21 and 22?

If the old me saw myself, she'd say, "Yuck! So frivolous..." Yet none of the people in that party were frivolous. My greatest wealth is the people I've met. And having them under one roof, it wsa my best birthday ever.

Avoiding Pretence

2009-07-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

Hiding in a shell
Called JNU
From all I’ve left behind
Not quite
But hide
From having to be
What I cannot be
Which hurts
Like a yucky
Old rash.

While Sleeping On The Job

2009-06-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

With this blog post, my series on Ruritannia Industry becomes introspective.

Once silly jokes and pantry gossip have lost their sheen, I'm left to deal with nothing but my own incompetence and inefficiency to ponder upon. My sister says that it's in my head. I only pretend to be completely unable to do the things I don't feel like doing (like counting substations, looking for the generation capacities of countries and worrying about whether Maximum Load should be referred to in Giga Watts or Giga Watt hours.) - Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not an electronic engineer -and being professional is way beyond someone with an emotional quotient of less than minus three.

Yes, I'll admit it. I'm absolutely useless here and that's simply because I hate it. Also I strongly suspect that the company avoids mass attrition only by way of its large and regular paychecks.

Yet I'm grateful because I know at last that I never want to touch corporate research again, not even with the far side of a barge pole, and no matter how much I'm paid.

Ofcourse if Ruritannia Industry is a rational agent, it'll never hire me again.

The Frizzy Haired Intern

More Ruritannia Industry chronicles

2009-06-21T22:21:00.001-07:00

The best part about interning at Ruritannia Industry Publishing is that there is no place to put up a bunch of interns. Giving up on the logistics of it, the Draconian Lady sent the CEO off on vacation and gave his cabin (the only one in the office) to the noisy interns who were more than happy to chill unsupervised and liberally strew the CEO's beloved carpet with biscuit crumbs.

Quite predictably, the CEO was uninformed of the Great Intern Takeover so he called one day expecting his Efficient Secretary's cool crisp "Good morning, Mr. CEO's office." Instead he got a grand "Hello! This is the desk of the Dedicated Intern." Mr. CEO was flummoxed.
"But where is Efficient?"
"At her desk, Sir. May I know who's speaking?"

Ofcourse Mr. CEO swallowed it all... except for the second time when he realised he was up against the Excel Expert and Efficient was no where to be found.

"But what am I to do!" exclaimed Efficient, "Half of the time, it's dear old Maritime for the Dedicated Intern. Can't quite give the routine "Good morning, Mr. CEO's office" to good old Maritime!"

The interns consoled her. At least Mr. CEO never got the special "heillllllewwww" that the Frizzy Haired Intern reserves for people she likes -like Maritime who is the most frequent caller to the interns' cabin.

2009-06-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

I miss Soumyadip. I've never missed someone this much before. I feel like some part of me has been taken away.

States of Mind

2009-06-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

Lenin Kumar came up to the ATM with a bunch of fliers and a large bottle of glue. Poster protests again!

"Come for the protest demo." He said.
"What about?"

It was Lalgarh by the looks of it. 9 CPI(M) cadres had just been killed and the CPI(M) office torched.

"I will. I hope you get a good mobilisation." I said.

But then I knew better. The protest is in the back alley of Jantar Mantar - what Amit calls the safety valve of Indian politics- the one place to let off steam without obstructing traffic and without ofcourse, being heard.

I love the way Naxals work. They just slip into the local population without the least sign of having condescended to do so. And if the state machinery does catch one, it'll never be able to prove that she's more dangerous than an ordinary tribal person, who of course, has every right to be there.

Understandably, the state machinery is going slow about regaining control over the area, especially after what happened in Nandigram.

Lets see what happens. What with the election results and now this armed struggle, I'm actually praying for the revival of the moderate Left.