The fall saved me. Again. It happened this morning. Reminded me of the last time. In a slumberous stupor, I found myself on my knees, my blanket somewhere beneath me. I did not fathom where I was; I must have fallen asleep after the fall from the bed and woken up to find myself in this strange position.
I managed to get up and back into bed. The clock showed 4.40 am. Was that a significant time? Should I record it for future reference? The morning would bring the same old things -- this time with a sharper jab. Trying to get a mug of tea, I could not believe I was not hurting. Had I become so immune to pain? I kept thinking about it and by noon my knees were sore and my butt ached. I did not need any medication; perhaps some ointment would do the trick. But, why did I need that too? I just rubbed my hand over the parts that hurt, in touch with myself.
You know something? Due to this ache I forgot that before that fall I was on the brink of losing myself. The past few days had brought up several moments that would show me just how awful I was at faking it. How often I had tried to fake happiness hoping that in the surreal world of falsehood I could make-believe in its potency.
Optimism can often be a curse. It prevents you from facing facts. I may sometimes come across as being morbid, but that is not so. Not when I am facing the world and telling them that I know exactly what my next step is going to be. They believe me; I exude confidence. And so they and I form this strange behemoth of dishonesty. If I knew there was no hope, I would at least not while away my time and energy on watching stars. If the roof began to leak, I would not think of it as pleasant showers. I would not see romance in plastic flowers by saying they never wither.
I can believe in almost anything. Which is why I was slowly giving way; incidents were happening, words were being exchanged, thoughts made their webs in my mind. Did I have a right to think that I was at par with gentleness when I have never pretended to be? Did I have to believe in my importance only because I was told that being a notch above certain others, I had to be saved from things? And then I was alone. Safe. The morale booster. The moral booster.
I found that those who had placed me on a pedestal were foraging in the garbage below for something. Such deceit! I laughed like a maniac and because I could not talk and got breathless, I continued laughing. I did not know of any other way in which to prevent tears. Darkness turned to uncomfortable light. The laughter continued. I had to keep up the pretence. Yes, the curtains need to be changed, yes, I have to pick up so many things, I don’t know where to keep things.
I smile. I believe. And then, thump, thud, zapaatttt…do you know of anyone who stands and admires doors, can anyone sit beneath it, would anyone want to touch it, run their hands over its filigree and feel its warmth in the sunlight and its cold touch in winters and its wetness when monsoon showers fall in torrents? The door is what lets you in and out of your world while letting it believe that it is the door’s world. And you notice it only when it falls.
It also notices itself when it falls. I am thinking about that stance. It is unusual to fall that way. What did it convey -- an animal? A person sitting in prayer? A person beseeching? I think it was just the cliched realisation that you have to fall to be able to get up.
Had that not happened, I know where I would be headed. I understand my psychological signals well (even if I choose to ignore them). I know I have immense reserves of strength and am aware that many in my place would have done a lot worse to themselves. I have not. But sometimes, we cannot control ourselves. Like that one other time. That too had to happen. And I remember one sentence I was told, "You still believe in fairytales."
I thought that was such a sweet thing, except that I was being given the ultimatum to wake up. That Life was not a dream. It isn’t? The only choice seems to be monotony in slow motion; I don’t like the thought of it, much less its reality. I’d rather settle for nightmares.
Or even another fall.
30.10.06
Now Shabana rides on the veil bandwagon
Last evening I watched a panel discussion on TV on the veil. It has become a hot subject again. The headlines scream, “Islamic clerics criticise Shabana stand on veils”. If you read the full report, you will see something not so radically rabid. But Mohtarma Shabana Azmi has found another ‘Muslim’ topic she can bank her secularism on.
In the audience and among the speakers there were women wearing either a hijaab or a full veil; there was Mr. Owaisi, and there was a model (not a prominent one, I might add) who said she was half Muslim but identified with Islam. She was in the studio wearing a dress with a rather gross-looking décolletage. (I do have problems with people who do not know how to dress when.)
I will emphasise only two points that were made:
1. Ms. Azmi said that if someone asked her to wear a veil here she would never do so, but if Jack Straw asked her to not wear a veil in England, then she would wear three veils. Of course, it was the taaliyaan kind of statement that got the applause. I have yet to hear of such a simplistic analysis. This is the sort of knee-jerk rebellion that teenagers are given to. Is this even half an ideological position? I think some of these people really like riding on the wave of such storms in teacups. Because the reality (as the report will make clear) is different. And there are prominent Muslim women who have stated this time and again, including Dr. Zeenat Shaukat Ali and Saeeda Hamid.
2. Someone said that if Ms. Azmi decided to wear a veil she would be out of business. This the lady took as a “personal attack”. It wasn’t. I watched the whole programme. It was with reference to the matter of choice. And it is a fact that given her profession or that of the model is there any place for the veil?
Why did Ms. Azmi not talk about the Australian mufti? And why did she bring in Islam and terrorism in her London lecture? As I had said earlier, this is what the caption that went with her picture receiving the award said: “ SHABANA DOES INDIA PROUD: Shabana Azmi, who has for over two decades fearlessly articulated the rights of slumdwellers and the dispossessed, receives the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Prize 2006 from Vanessa Redgrave, an iconic actress and outspoken advocate of human rights herself. In her address to the House of Commons, Azmi dwelt on one of the most troubled issues of our times—the unthinking manner in which Islam and terror are being linked. Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, she added, is a contemporary tool to win a sustainable peace. Bravo Shabana.”
Those who do not win such awards and lead fairly invisible lives would of course be pulled up for "whining" about the Islam and terror link. 'Role-playing' model is more like it when we speak about her...
* * *
Islamic clerics criticise Shabana stand on veils - The Asian Age, Oct. 30, ‘06
The clergy and the intelligentsia in India have caught on to the controversy that got kickstarted in Britain over actress Shabana Azmi’s statement that the Quran does not make it mandatory for a woman to cover her face.
While in London to receive the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Award, Ms Azmi had called for a debate on Muslim women wearing the veil, saying the Quran speaks about women wearing clothes to cover their modesty and that they need not cover their faces.
Significantly, Islamic scholars are all unanimous that in all the dos and don’ts in the Quran, each is accompanied by a punishment. But in the case of hijab, no such punishment has been mentioned. It only makes it clear that hijab is something wholly voluntary and not mandatory. In countries like Iran, women dress normally but cover their heads with scarves, leaving the face uncovered. The veil or purdah is also seen more as an influence of the Rajput women in India, who covered their faces completely.
All-India Muslim Personal Law Board secretary Syed Qasim Rasool Illyasi said, "If Ms Shabana Azmi says that the face need not be covered, then she should accept the other injunction of the Quran that the body must properly be covered."
Mr Illyasi felt that the entire veil controversy was meaningless and irrelevant. "Why is their no controversy when Christian nuns cover their body, leaving only their faces visible?" he asked. The Quran has laid down instructions for purdah, but there were two opinions on whether the face should be entirely covered. "As far as the Quran is concerned, there is no dispute that the body should be properly covered," he said. In a democracy, he said, it was best left to the individual to decide about his or her dress code, he said.
Most of the maulanas were angry at the controversy and sharply reacted, saying that it was fashion of sorts for some Indian Muslims to criticise the teachings of the Quran and the Hadees. Some Muslims in the country think they will be considered modern only when they criticise the Quran and Hadees, they said. In a statement in Lucknow, Tilewali Masjid Imam Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali said, "The Quran has clearly instructed that women should put on veils." Imam Firangimahali said this did not mean that they should not go to college or work and remain confined to their homes. However, reacting to Mr Jack Straw’s statement that Muslim women should not wear veils was tantamount to a violation of their fundamental rights, he said.
* * *
On another note, news that will never be given much prominence...
OIC says discord on Id dates is wrong -- The Asian Age, Oct 30
Jeddah, Oct. 29: The secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has deplored the way Muslims marked Id-ul-Fitr on different days. In India and Pakistan, Muslims celebrated Id on three different days.
"The disparity of dates for celebrating Id-ul-Fitr is deplorable, when science, and especially astronomy, has reached high levels of development and precision," he said in a written statement issued on Friday.
According to Mr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, celebration of religious festivals on the same day is supposed to "unify the sentiments and positions of Muslims," while it now reflected their disunity and disparity of positions.
He called on religious and official institutions to cooperate with the OIC to harmonise the astronomical calculations which determine the time of the new moon, used to mark the start of the lunar month following Ramzan.
Last year, an Indian researcher had called on the OIC to discuss a unified Islamic calendar which would be followed by all countries with Muslim populations.
Ali Manikfan, founder of the Kozhikode-based Hijra Committee of India, had said a political decision on the matter would enable Muslims across the world to celebrate Id on the same day.
"Id-ul-Fitr should be celebrated on the first day of the lunar month of Shawwal. Muslims around the world are now celebrating it on three different days due to the lack of a unified calendar," Mr Manikfan was quoted as saying at the time by newspapers in Saudi Arabia.
According to Mr Manikfan, Muslim scholars have misunderstood a Hadith of the Prophet which said: "Sumoo Lirueyatihi Wa Aftiru Lirueyatihi (Fast when you see it — Ramzan crescent; and end fast when you see it — Shawwal crescent)."
"The Hadith actually means the date should be based on the lunar calendar," he had pointed out.
"Islam is the most advanced and scientific religion. It is impossible to believe that the Prophet would instruct his followers in this age of science and technology to search for the new moon with their naked eyes when lunar and solar dates can be determined in advance on the basis of scientific calculations," he said.
Mr Manikfan said a mistake made in the past should not mean Muslims have to live with it forever. "When we realise it is a mistake, we must have the courage to correct it in order to protect the common interests of Muslims," he added.
In the audience and among the speakers there were women wearing either a hijaab or a full veil; there was Mr. Owaisi, and there was a model (not a prominent one, I might add) who said she was half Muslim but identified with Islam. She was in the studio wearing a dress with a rather gross-looking décolletage. (I do have problems with people who do not know how to dress when.)
I will emphasise only two points that were made:
1. Ms. Azmi said that if someone asked her to wear a veil here she would never do so, but if Jack Straw asked her to not wear a veil in England, then she would wear three veils. Of course, it was the taaliyaan kind of statement that got the applause. I have yet to hear of such a simplistic analysis. This is the sort of knee-jerk rebellion that teenagers are given to. Is this even half an ideological position? I think some of these people really like riding on the wave of such storms in teacups. Because the reality (as the report will make clear) is different. And there are prominent Muslim women who have stated this time and again, including Dr. Zeenat Shaukat Ali and Saeeda Hamid.
2. Someone said that if Ms. Azmi decided to wear a veil she would be out of business. This the lady took as a “personal attack”. It wasn’t. I watched the whole programme. It was with reference to the matter of choice. And it is a fact that given her profession or that of the model is there any place for the veil?
Why did Ms. Azmi not talk about the Australian mufti? And why did she bring in Islam and terrorism in her London lecture? As I had said earlier, this is what the caption that went with her picture receiving the award said: “ SHABANA DOES INDIA PROUD: Shabana Azmi, who has for over two decades fearlessly articulated the rights of slumdwellers and the dispossessed, receives the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Prize 2006 from Vanessa Redgrave, an iconic actress and outspoken advocate of human rights herself. In her address to the House of Commons, Azmi dwelt on one of the most troubled issues of our times—the unthinking manner in which Islam and terror are being linked. Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, she added, is a contemporary tool to win a sustainable peace. Bravo Shabana.”
Those who do not win such awards and lead fairly invisible lives would of course be pulled up for "whining" about the Islam and terror link. 'Role-playing' model is more like it when we speak about her...
* * *
Islamic clerics criticise Shabana stand on veils - The Asian Age, Oct. 30, ‘06
The clergy and the intelligentsia in India have caught on to the controversy that got kickstarted in Britain over actress Shabana Azmi’s statement that the Quran does not make it mandatory for a woman to cover her face.
While in London to receive the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Award, Ms Azmi had called for a debate on Muslim women wearing the veil, saying the Quran speaks about women wearing clothes to cover their modesty and that they need not cover their faces.
Significantly, Islamic scholars are all unanimous that in all the dos and don’ts in the Quran, each is accompanied by a punishment. But in the case of hijab, no such punishment has been mentioned. It only makes it clear that hijab is something wholly voluntary and not mandatory. In countries like Iran, women dress normally but cover their heads with scarves, leaving the face uncovered. The veil or purdah is also seen more as an influence of the Rajput women in India, who covered their faces completely.
All-India Muslim Personal Law Board secretary Syed Qasim Rasool Illyasi said, "If Ms Shabana Azmi says that the face need not be covered, then she should accept the other injunction of the Quran that the body must properly be covered."
Mr Illyasi felt that the entire veil controversy was meaningless and irrelevant. "Why is their no controversy when Christian nuns cover their body, leaving only their faces visible?" he asked. The Quran has laid down instructions for purdah, but there were two opinions on whether the face should be entirely covered. "As far as the Quran is concerned, there is no dispute that the body should be properly covered," he said. In a democracy, he said, it was best left to the individual to decide about his or her dress code, he said.
Most of the maulanas were angry at the controversy and sharply reacted, saying that it was fashion of sorts for some Indian Muslims to criticise the teachings of the Quran and the Hadees. Some Muslims in the country think they will be considered modern only when they criticise the Quran and Hadees, they said. In a statement in Lucknow, Tilewali Masjid Imam Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali said, "The Quran has clearly instructed that women should put on veils." Imam Firangimahali said this did not mean that they should not go to college or work and remain confined to their homes. However, reacting to Mr Jack Straw’s statement that Muslim women should not wear veils was tantamount to a violation of their fundamental rights, he said.
* * *
On another note, news that will never be given much prominence...
OIC says discord on Id dates is wrong -- The Asian Age, Oct 30
Jeddah, Oct. 29: The secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has deplored the way Muslims marked Id-ul-Fitr on different days. In India and Pakistan, Muslims celebrated Id on three different days.
"The disparity of dates for celebrating Id-ul-Fitr is deplorable, when science, and especially astronomy, has reached high levels of development and precision," he said in a written statement issued on Friday.
According to Mr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, celebration of religious festivals on the same day is supposed to "unify the sentiments and positions of Muslims," while it now reflected their disunity and disparity of positions.
He called on religious and official institutions to cooperate with the OIC to harmonise the astronomical calculations which determine the time of the new moon, used to mark the start of the lunar month following Ramzan.
Last year, an Indian researcher had called on the OIC to discuss a unified Islamic calendar which would be followed by all countries with Muslim populations.
Ali Manikfan, founder of the Kozhikode-based Hijra Committee of India, had said a political decision on the matter would enable Muslims across the world to celebrate Id on the same day.
"Id-ul-Fitr should be celebrated on the first day of the lunar month of Shawwal. Muslims around the world are now celebrating it on three different days due to the lack of a unified calendar," Mr Manikfan was quoted as saying at the time by newspapers in Saudi Arabia.
According to Mr Manikfan, Muslim scholars have misunderstood a Hadith of the Prophet which said: "Sumoo Lirueyatihi Wa Aftiru Lirueyatihi (Fast when you see it — Ramzan crescent; and end fast when you see it — Shawwal crescent)."
"The Hadith actually means the date should be based on the lunar calendar," he had pointed out.
"Islam is the most advanced and scientific religion. It is impossible to believe that the Prophet would instruct his followers in this age of science and technology to search for the new moon with their naked eyes when lunar and solar dates can be determined in advance on the basis of scientific calculations," he said.
Mr Manikfan said a mistake made in the past should not mean Muslims have to live with it forever. "When we realise it is a mistake, we must have the courage to correct it in order to protect the common interests of Muslims," he added.
28.10.06
The Australian Imam and meat
Why Can't The Australian Imam Think Beyond Meat?
By Farzana Versey
28 October, 2006, Countercurrents
* * *
Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali chose the month of Ramzan to talk about meat. Unfortunately, he was referring to women in that demeaning fashion.
Said he, “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?”
While the concentration is on the woman as meat analogy, we should also cast a glance at his assumption that, as a consequence, men are cats. The cat brain is vastly different from the human brain, which the Mufti does not seem to understand.
He went on to add, “If she (a woman) was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Which world does he live in? Is there no rape in Muslim countries? Are women behind veils not molested? Don’t rapes take place inside homes?
What is surprising is these comments were made at a public sermon outside a mosque. What were the Muslims doing at the time? Isn’t Islam all about there being one god and one prophet and one holy book? Then, this human ‘middleman’ is not sacrosanct. Why did they not pull him up immediately or issue a statement distancing themselves from these disgusting views?
A month later ‘The Australian’, a local newspaper translated his comments, and now it has caused a furore. The problem with hindsight is that an emotive issue gets rationalised to the point that demerits too are rectified. Even the BBC, while interviewing him, described him thus: “A softly-spoken man, who clearly commands both enormous respect and affection within his community.”
This is a nice way to pin the whole community, at least within Australia. Did the BBC’s correspondent conduct a poll to ascertain his popularity? The media tends to assume that religious leaders, politicians, pop stars control people’s attention merely due to the fact that they cater to or represent them symbolically.
To those who see this as one more Islamic problem, my answer is, NO. It is the problem of one guy living in Australia.
There are those who are reacting to it and justifying the Imam’s statements by saying that even the Israeli President Moshe Katsav has been involved in scandals of rape, indecent assault and sexual harassment of women. The latter is clearly a criminal offence for which he will or ought to be tried in a court of law.
There have been several cases of such crimes as well as inappropriate behaviour, including by the former US President Bill Clinton. The law took its course, to whatever degree (some element of influence no doubt impeding the legal process).
However, bringing these examples into the present discussion does not help, because these are not religious leaders.
Should there be different standards for them? Most certainly. While politicians can be thrown out of power, what checks and balances are there against these ‘people of god’?
How different is the Mufti’s behaviour from, say, a situation in which a woman may be referred to as “a nice piece of ass”? Social interactions require an altogether different set of norms, based on the constructs of that particular culture, which may or may not look kindly upon such terminology.
But the Mufti’s words negate what HE is supposed to stand for. His religion, Islam, does not give him the right to talk in this manner. It is as simple as that. If anything, he ought to feel ashamed of claiming Islam as his own and so should the Muslims. He has no business to hijack the religion for his paltry understanding of it and his few minutes of notoriety.
I do believe people should reasonably argue this issue without getting into religious politics. Irrespective of the fact that Australia has recently asked for a citizenship test that may target Muslims and start the whole debate about “integrating into the mainstream” – a superficial and smart way to bludgeon a community – it is a separate concern that needs to be tackled at the level of immigration policy and political prudence. Race riots have indeed affected many Muslims of Middle East origin and as Walid Ali of the Islamic Council of Victoria said, “I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work.”
For now, however, the Australian Imam should be disowned by the community for his irresponsible remarks.
By Farzana Versey
28 October, 2006, Countercurrents
* * *
Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali chose the month of Ramzan to talk about meat. Unfortunately, he was referring to women in that demeaning fashion.
Said he, “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?”
While the concentration is on the woman as meat analogy, we should also cast a glance at his assumption that, as a consequence, men are cats. The cat brain is vastly different from the human brain, which the Mufti does not seem to understand.
He went on to add, “If she (a woman) was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”
Which world does he live in? Is there no rape in Muslim countries? Are women behind veils not molested? Don’t rapes take place inside homes?
What is surprising is these comments were made at a public sermon outside a mosque. What were the Muslims doing at the time? Isn’t Islam all about there being one god and one prophet and one holy book? Then, this human ‘middleman’ is not sacrosanct. Why did they not pull him up immediately or issue a statement distancing themselves from these disgusting views?
A month later ‘The Australian’, a local newspaper translated his comments, and now it has caused a furore. The problem with hindsight is that an emotive issue gets rationalised to the point that demerits too are rectified. Even the BBC, while interviewing him, described him thus: “A softly-spoken man, who clearly commands both enormous respect and affection within his community.”
This is a nice way to pin the whole community, at least within Australia. Did the BBC’s correspondent conduct a poll to ascertain his popularity? The media tends to assume that religious leaders, politicians, pop stars control people’s attention merely due to the fact that they cater to or represent them symbolically.
To those who see this as one more Islamic problem, my answer is, NO. It is the problem of one guy living in Australia.
There are those who are reacting to it and justifying the Imam’s statements by saying that even the Israeli President Moshe Katsav has been involved in scandals of rape, indecent assault and sexual harassment of women. The latter is clearly a criminal offence for which he will or ought to be tried in a court of law.
There have been several cases of such crimes as well as inappropriate behaviour, including by the former US President Bill Clinton. The law took its course, to whatever degree (some element of influence no doubt impeding the legal process).
However, bringing these examples into the present discussion does not help, because these are not religious leaders.
Should there be different standards for them? Most certainly. While politicians can be thrown out of power, what checks and balances are there against these ‘people of god’?
How different is the Mufti’s behaviour from, say, a situation in which a woman may be referred to as “a nice piece of ass”? Social interactions require an altogether different set of norms, based on the constructs of that particular culture, which may or may not look kindly upon such terminology.
But the Mufti’s words negate what HE is supposed to stand for. His religion, Islam, does not give him the right to talk in this manner. It is as simple as that. If anything, he ought to feel ashamed of claiming Islam as his own and so should the Muslims. He has no business to hijack the religion for his paltry understanding of it and his few minutes of notoriety.
I do believe people should reasonably argue this issue without getting into religious politics. Irrespective of the fact that Australia has recently asked for a citizenship test that may target Muslims and start the whole debate about “integrating into the mainstream” – a superficial and smart way to bludgeon a community – it is a separate concern that needs to be tackled at the level of immigration policy and political prudence. Race riots have indeed affected many Muslims of Middle East origin and as Walid Ali of the Islamic Council of Victoria said, “I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work.”
For now, however, the Australian Imam should be disowned by the community for his irresponsible remarks.
27.10.06
Shabana Azmi and reality shows -- what's the difference?
Not many are going to question it. She carries her bleeding heart on her sleeve and makes sure the cameras are around to capture the moment.
I will pose the query nevertheless: Why has Shabana Azmi been conferred the International Gandhi Peace Prize? That she is the first Indian to be so rewarded is all the more surprising. One report gushed, “Shabana Azmi makes every Indian stand six inches taller as she becomes the first Indian to receive the prestigious International Gandhi Peace Prize for her contribution in social work.”
I am no admirer of Gandhi, but if an award has been instituted in his name, there has got to be some modicum of allegiance to his projected values. Is Ms. Azmi the best representative of those values, of peace? Aren’t there other ‘social workers’? What about Baba Amte, Swami Agnivesh, Anna Hazare, Medha Patkar, Ela Bhatt? Please check out their credentials. They have not only had hands-on experience, but also changed the mindsets of large sections of society.
Shabana Azmi has been involved with some slum organisation, and she uses her fame occasionally to get the issue some extra media coverage. And if, as one report said, she has worked for women’s upliftment, I would really like to know where and in what field/endeavour.
On being informed about the award, the lady responded with, “In today's strife-ridden world, Gandhian values of non-violence as a means of conflict resolution have gained great significance. Nowadays, people talk about Gandhigiri, thanks to Lage Raho Munnabhai.”
Is this a socially-committed activist or is she doing a plug job for a film? Chances are her own discovery of Gandhi was through the film, because one has never heard her speak about all the things she is saying now.
The unfortunate thing about awards is that the more visible you are the more likely you are to be recognised.
* * *
There is a controversy going on about how reality shows are being rigged/influenced by the participants to garner more votes for themselves. They are buying SIM cards in bulk, distributing T-shirts, going from place to place canvassing for support.
There are the dance shows Jhalak Dikhla Ja and Nach Baliye, music contests like Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and Indian idol and many other smaller ones.
The manner in which the votes can be rigged is clear and no sensible person thinks of the winner as being the best or most talented. This is in-your-face popularity seeking.
Can there not be more subtle canvassing going on for the more prestigious and respectable awards? Are we not aware that political considerations often swing the deal, and deals they are? Isn’t it true that the Miss Universe and Miss World contests that suddenly found a spurt of Indian ‘beauties’ were marketing ploys by western cosmetic agencies to tap and trap the huge middle-class market?
I am afraid but Shabana Azmi being honoured along with Mother Teresa in France, Shabana Azmi getting the Martin Luther King Award by the state of Michigan, Shabana Azmi winning an award at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year fall in the same category.
The London weather is good right now. One hopes that she and her husband will once again get to enjoy the hospitality of and be feted by Lakshmi Mittal, the steel baron and an important mover and shaker in Britain. After all, Javed saab did write the script for Mittal’s daughter’s wedding.
There is the scent of victory and bracing winter in the atmosphere. I suppose this is what Ms. Azmi meant when she said about Gandhi, “his fragrance seems to be in the air till now”.
Sure thing.
I will pose the query nevertheless: Why has Shabana Azmi been conferred the International Gandhi Peace Prize? That she is the first Indian to be so rewarded is all the more surprising. One report gushed, “Shabana Azmi makes every Indian stand six inches taller as she becomes the first Indian to receive the prestigious International Gandhi Peace Prize for her contribution in social work.”
I am no admirer of Gandhi, but if an award has been instituted in his name, there has got to be some modicum of allegiance to his projected values. Is Ms. Azmi the best representative of those values, of peace? Aren’t there other ‘social workers’? What about Baba Amte, Swami Agnivesh, Anna Hazare, Medha Patkar, Ela Bhatt? Please check out their credentials. They have not only had hands-on experience, but also changed the mindsets of large sections of society.
Shabana Azmi has been involved with some slum organisation, and she uses her fame occasionally to get the issue some extra media coverage. And if, as one report said, she has worked for women’s upliftment, I would really like to know where and in what field/endeavour.
On being informed about the award, the lady responded with, “In today's strife-ridden world, Gandhian values of non-violence as a means of conflict resolution have gained great significance. Nowadays, people talk about Gandhigiri, thanks to Lage Raho Munnabhai.”
Is this a socially-committed activist or is she doing a plug job for a film? Chances are her own discovery of Gandhi was through the film, because one has never heard her speak about all the things she is saying now.
The unfortunate thing about awards is that the more visible you are the more likely you are to be recognised.
* * *
There is a controversy going on about how reality shows are being rigged/influenced by the participants to garner more votes for themselves. They are buying SIM cards in bulk, distributing T-shirts, going from place to place canvassing for support.
There are the dance shows Jhalak Dikhla Ja and Nach Baliye, music contests like Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and Indian idol and many other smaller ones.
The manner in which the votes can be rigged is clear and no sensible person thinks of the winner as being the best or most talented. This is in-your-face popularity seeking.
Can there not be more subtle canvassing going on for the more prestigious and respectable awards? Are we not aware that political considerations often swing the deal, and deals they are? Isn’t it true that the Miss Universe and Miss World contests that suddenly found a spurt of Indian ‘beauties’ were marketing ploys by western cosmetic agencies to tap and trap the huge middle-class market?
I am afraid but Shabana Azmi being honoured along with Mother Teresa in France, Shabana Azmi getting the Martin Luther King Award by the state of Michigan, Shabana Azmi winning an award at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year fall in the same category.
The London weather is good right now. One hopes that she and her husband will once again get to enjoy the hospitality of and be feted by Lakshmi Mittal, the steel baron and an important mover and shaker in Britain. After all, Javed saab did write the script for Mittal’s daughter’s wedding.
There is the scent of victory and bracing winter in the atmosphere. I suppose this is what Ms. Azmi meant when she said about Gandhi, “his fragrance seems to be in the air till now”.
Sure thing.
26.10.06
The Hindu Islamist
The Hindu Islamist
By Farzana Versey
26 October, 2006, Countercurrents
* * *
Dhiren Barot is the first person in Britain to be convicted for a terrorist conspiracy. He pleaded guilty before a London court for plotting to detonate radioactive “dirty’’ bombs and other explosive devices to commit mass murder in Britain and the United States.
There has been silence among op-ed writers about the episode. What is curious about this case is not that he is an Al Qaeda activist, but the arguments being dished out by the British Indian community to delink themselves from him. It isn’t because of their immense concern about terrorism, but due to their covert Islamophobia.
They are at pains to point out that Barot, a Muslim now, cannot be described as Al Qaeda’s “first Hindu operative’’ because he converted to Islam when he was 23. They quote this as yet another example of British Muslim youths turning to Islamist radicalism.
They do not question why he, as an educated adult, converted to Islam at all. They are too busy nitpicking that he was not born in India and his only Indian link is that his parents were of Gujarati origin. This would apply to Osama bin Laden too, for he can only claim Saudi origins (that too half; his mother was Syrian), and little else.
Barot, in fact, travelled with Laden’s former bodyguard to Malaysia at the time of the Al Qaeda summit where the 9/11 attacks were reportedly planned.
He has fought with the militants in Kashmir and served as an instructor at an Afghan training camp. His Al Qaeda connections were known to the US authorities.
The moot question to ask is: are these converts lured by what Muslims the world over call the ‘religion of peace’? If that were the case, then radicalism would be far from their minds.
The West, in its enthusiasm to find a voodoo doll that it can prick pins into has, in a twisted way, managed to make radical Islam extremely attractive. The war against terror has created a behemoth. Osama has made religion sound sexy in his isolation.
Had it been left to the Muslim world in the early stages Osama would not have had a leg to stand on. Were he to dare to appear like a messiah (he never wears a black turban, symbol of the Prophet), he would be discarded. Far from being a megalomaniac, he is seen as the man who has given up all worldly pleasures. How could he then be accused of mobilising the Muslim world? Why were Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the tough Iranians never spoken of in the same breath? Simple. They were visible.
Osama being a fugitive with selective access to the media of his choice is a convenient weapon for the West – it helps keep up its crusade and moralistic stance while at the same time attracting more people to the fold.
Dhiren Barot is just one among the many.
What the expatriates do not understand is that the India link is more damaging for those of us who live in India. Indian Muslims have not been a part of international terrorist organisations. Yet, the stamp of jihadi and Islamist follows us.
This has been the real fallout of the West’s Islamophobia – it has been exported to other countries where Muslim populations are in a minority. As an Indian Muslim -- although one is aware that one constitutes the second largest chunk of the Muslim population in any country, after Indonesia -- I am perturbed by this trend.
The Barot episode brings the prejudices even more sharply to the fore. The British Indians are distancing themselves from his Hindu origins. The message being that it is only “those Muslims” who indulge in terrorist activities. This is a curious denial of contemporary history, for Indian Muslims have been systematically put to test due to Hindu radicalism. And it has not been done by militant organisations, but by the State establishment in places like Gujarat.
Is there any excuse for this? Did not these same non-resident Indians create a ruckus when the Gujarat chief minister was denied a US visa? The American stand was unambiguous: “We confirm that the chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, applied for but was denied a diplomatic visa under Section 214 (b) of the act because he was not coming for a purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa. His tourist/business visa was revoked under Section 212 (a)(2)(g) of the act, which makes ‘any government official who was responsible for, or directly carried out at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom,’ ineligible for a visa.”
These same expatriates who are now talking about radical Islam were biting the bait of Hinduism being at risk that Modi was dishing out then.
The response to Barot reveals the biases that have embedded themselves in people’s minds. One can imagine them believing that had he remained true to his original faith life would have been different. Indeed, it would.
The world can handle only one enemy at a time. And Islam lends itself wonderfully as a whipping boy.
By Farzana Versey
26 October, 2006, Countercurrents
* * *
Dhiren Barot is the first person in Britain to be convicted for a terrorist conspiracy. He pleaded guilty before a London court for plotting to detonate radioactive “dirty’’ bombs and other explosive devices to commit mass murder in Britain and the United States.
There has been silence among op-ed writers about the episode. What is curious about this case is not that he is an Al Qaeda activist, but the arguments being dished out by the British Indian community to delink themselves from him. It isn’t because of their immense concern about terrorism, but due to their covert Islamophobia.
They are at pains to point out that Barot, a Muslim now, cannot be described as Al Qaeda’s “first Hindu operative’’ because he converted to Islam when he was 23. They quote this as yet another example of British Muslim youths turning to Islamist radicalism.
They do not question why he, as an educated adult, converted to Islam at all. They are too busy nitpicking that he was not born in India and his only Indian link is that his parents were of Gujarati origin. This would apply to Osama bin Laden too, for he can only claim Saudi origins (that too half; his mother was Syrian), and little else.
Barot, in fact, travelled with Laden’s former bodyguard to Malaysia at the time of the Al Qaeda summit where the 9/11 attacks were reportedly planned.
He has fought with the militants in Kashmir and served as an instructor at an Afghan training camp. His Al Qaeda connections were known to the US authorities.
The moot question to ask is: are these converts lured by what Muslims the world over call the ‘religion of peace’? If that were the case, then radicalism would be far from their minds.
The West, in its enthusiasm to find a voodoo doll that it can prick pins into has, in a twisted way, managed to make radical Islam extremely attractive. The war against terror has created a behemoth. Osama has made religion sound sexy in his isolation.
Had it been left to the Muslim world in the early stages Osama would not have had a leg to stand on. Were he to dare to appear like a messiah (he never wears a black turban, symbol of the Prophet), he would be discarded. Far from being a megalomaniac, he is seen as the man who has given up all worldly pleasures. How could he then be accused of mobilising the Muslim world? Why were Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the tough Iranians never spoken of in the same breath? Simple. They were visible.
Osama being a fugitive with selective access to the media of his choice is a convenient weapon for the West – it helps keep up its crusade and moralistic stance while at the same time attracting more people to the fold.
Dhiren Barot is just one among the many.
What the expatriates do not understand is that the India link is more damaging for those of us who live in India. Indian Muslims have not been a part of international terrorist organisations. Yet, the stamp of jihadi and Islamist follows us.
This has been the real fallout of the West’s Islamophobia – it has been exported to other countries where Muslim populations are in a minority. As an Indian Muslim -- although one is aware that one constitutes the second largest chunk of the Muslim population in any country, after Indonesia -- I am perturbed by this trend.
The Barot episode brings the prejudices even more sharply to the fore. The British Indians are distancing themselves from his Hindu origins. The message being that it is only “those Muslims” who indulge in terrorist activities. This is a curious denial of contemporary history, for Indian Muslims have been systematically put to test due to Hindu radicalism. And it has not been done by militant organisations, but by the State establishment in places like Gujarat.
Is there any excuse for this? Did not these same non-resident Indians create a ruckus when the Gujarat chief minister was denied a US visa? The American stand was unambiguous: “We confirm that the chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, applied for but was denied a diplomatic visa under Section 214 (b) of the act because he was not coming for a purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa. His tourist/business visa was revoked under Section 212 (a)(2)(g) of the act, which makes ‘any government official who was responsible for, or directly carried out at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom,’ ineligible for a visa.”
These same expatriates who are now talking about radical Islam were biting the bait of Hinduism being at risk that Modi was dishing out then.
The response to Barot reveals the biases that have embedded themselves in people’s minds. One can imagine them believing that had he remained true to his original faith life would have been different. Indeed, it would.
The world can handle only one enemy at a time. And Islam lends itself wonderfully as a whipping boy.
24.10.06
Ooh...aah...India
There are these promos on TV. Celebrities are telling us to root for India in the Champions Trophy: "Ooh...aah...India...aaya India". Supposed to be major emotional appeal, but ends up sounding like an ad for some pain in unmentionable regions.
It sickens me because some corporate organisations believe they have to tell us to applaud our country. Does it mean they assume we would not? Does it mean that watching some famous people is all there is to nationalism? Is a game a yardstick for how we must feel about India?
I don’t know how many of you recall an old ad where Saif Ali Khan was rooting for our men in blue. I had addressed the issue then…
How did you react when you were told you needed a few lays? You smiled. Yes, SMILED. You thought it was a fun thing. No, you thought it was good for your self-esteem, your…gulp… country. This was irresistible. A few lays and from a mere punk you had been transformed into a patriot. Potato chips that threatened you with cholesterol were now your weapon to make the globalised world into an Indian.
The ad being aired during the World Cup matches was clearly distasteful. Saif crunching on those wafers tells a White man cheering for another team that the munchies are so irresistible that he would not be satisfied with one. The bet is that if he asks for more he would have to wear the India T-shirt. Soon, the whole stadium is in blue screaming for our team -- Whites, Blacks, Browns.
What do I find offensive about it? One, we conveniently want a cohesive whole backing us at a time when we are digging our past and fighting amongst ourselves. Two, does nationalism mean over-riding others’ rights? Do we need the crutches of other countries to be able to say we are one? Do we need SMS messages telling us to wear blue condoms and f… the Pakistanis, as happened at that time? Do we need to offer special prayers to win against an ‘enemy’ when we never do that for droughts, train tragedies, people dying of extreme cold and souls getting burnt because of the intense heat? Do we paint our faces in the colour of the national flag when any of our worthy citizens get awarded for their efforts, when a village gets drinking water, when dignity is restored to displaced people?
I don’t need two-bit advertisers, politicians, bending-over-backwards-to-please Muslim organisations, pretending-to-uphold-the-culture outfits, lighting-candles-holding hands ‘liberals’ to tell me what the nation means to me. I shall continue to ask inconvenient questions, stick my neck out, not allow anyone to accuse me of being an ‘appeased minority’ because I believe I can be true to something only if I am not blind. And yes, I like the colour green and I like the crescent moon. But if anyone dares to tell me that this indicates that my place is across the border, then I shall ask them to go take a walk. For they only want to smile during hollow victory marches, while I weep with my country, and when I watch the rainbow in the sky, I know the true meaning of colours. As the rains merge with my tears, I don’t need to prove to any part-time patriot where I belong.
So go ooh…aah…ouch…
It sickens me because some corporate organisations believe they have to tell us to applaud our country. Does it mean they assume we would not? Does it mean that watching some famous people is all there is to nationalism? Is a game a yardstick for how we must feel about India?
I don’t know how many of you recall an old ad where Saif Ali Khan was rooting for our men in blue. I had addressed the issue then…
How did you react when you were told you needed a few lays? You smiled. Yes, SMILED. You thought it was a fun thing. No, you thought it was good for your self-esteem, your…gulp… country. This was irresistible. A few lays and from a mere punk you had been transformed into a patriot. Potato chips that threatened you with cholesterol were now your weapon to make the globalised world into an Indian.
The ad being aired during the World Cup matches was clearly distasteful. Saif crunching on those wafers tells a White man cheering for another team that the munchies are so irresistible that he would not be satisfied with one. The bet is that if he asks for more he would have to wear the India T-shirt. Soon, the whole stadium is in blue screaming for our team -- Whites, Blacks, Browns.
What do I find offensive about it? One, we conveniently want a cohesive whole backing us at a time when we are digging our past and fighting amongst ourselves. Two, does nationalism mean over-riding others’ rights? Do we need the crutches of other countries to be able to say we are one? Do we need SMS messages telling us to wear blue condoms and f… the Pakistanis, as happened at that time? Do we need to offer special prayers to win against an ‘enemy’ when we never do that for droughts, train tragedies, people dying of extreme cold and souls getting burnt because of the intense heat? Do we paint our faces in the colour of the national flag when any of our worthy citizens get awarded for their efforts, when a village gets drinking water, when dignity is restored to displaced people?
I don’t need two-bit advertisers, politicians, bending-over-backwards-to-please Muslim organisations, pretending-to-uphold-the-culture outfits, lighting-candles-holding hands ‘liberals’ to tell me what the nation means to me. I shall continue to ask inconvenient questions, stick my neck out, not allow anyone to accuse me of being an ‘appeased minority’ because I believe I can be true to something only if I am not blind. And yes, I like the colour green and I like the crescent moon. But if anyone dares to tell me that this indicates that my place is across the border, then I shall ask them to go take a walk. For they only want to smile during hollow victory marches, while I weep with my country, and when I watch the rainbow in the sky, I know the true meaning of colours. As the rains merge with my tears, I don’t need to prove to any part-time patriot where I belong.
So go ooh…aah…ouch…
23.10.06
The scent of Eid
I think I will be using the mehndi cone after all, despite my protestations that, ok, it is Eid, so what’s the big deal?
For me the festival is associated with scents of all kinds.
- The first thing in the morning would be the whiff of henna being removed, its overnight stay on my hands giving it a deep tinge; I’d cup the palms before my nose and inhale.
- There was the strong ittar, the one day when non-alcohol-based perfume was used; it wasn’t mandatory, of course, and since I hated it I only hoped that heaven was nothing like Jannat-e-Firdaus, the particularly preferred one.
- There was the fragrance of aggarbatis as the fateha was said before one small bowl of sheer khurma, the rest to be distributed was spared any godly intervention.
- The smell of onions and potatoes being browned on a slow fire to be added to the biryani.
- The scent of gajras, strings of jasmine with a rose in the middle, which the women wore in their hair.
Finally, the aroma of gulkand and supari from the paan as they were chewed to pulp in the mouth.
Nostalgia has a very strong whiff…try as I may I cannot wash my hands off it.
For me the festival is associated with scents of all kinds.
- The first thing in the morning would be the whiff of henna being removed, its overnight stay on my hands giving it a deep tinge; I’d cup the palms before my nose and inhale.
- There was the strong ittar, the one day when non-alcohol-based perfume was used; it wasn’t mandatory, of course, and since I hated it I only hoped that heaven was nothing like Jannat-e-Firdaus, the particularly preferred one.
- There was the fragrance of aggarbatis as the fateha was said before one small bowl of sheer khurma, the rest to be distributed was spared any godly intervention.
- The smell of onions and potatoes being browned on a slow fire to be added to the biryani.
- The scent of gajras, strings of jasmine with a rose in the middle, which the women wore in their hair.
Finally, the aroma of gulkand and supari from the paan as they were chewed to pulp in the mouth.
Nostalgia has a very strong whiff…try as I may I cannot wash my hands off it.
22.10.06
Aina mera aks hai...
I had to scrape the rust with my nails, but the marks remained. This is an old sketch of mine. That is, done by me, not a self-portrait because those are usually abstract. I cannot ‘copy’ anyone’s face.It was stuck to the back of a wooden frame and the metal sides had aged. I tried to prise the paper away, and found these rusty stains on them. After scanning it, I zoomed in and found that I had signed twice. I have no idea why.
It isn’t a good drawing at all. I recall it was done with ordinary pencil. I asked a friend whether I should put up the “stupid sketch” here.
“If it is stupid, then don’t.”
“Oh, I don’t have a problem showing my flaws; it makes people feel good.”
I have not touched it up at all. Nature has been kind even to my feeble attempt. It has left the face and the core pretty much untouched.
There are many things in life that border our existence – they may be wonderful additions, but they stay on the periphery.
“You don’t want anyone to come close,” is an oft-stated comment.
“You are aloof,” is another.
If you look at the face closely, you will see the eyes are wide awake. Anyone who looks outside cannot be aloof. Not if she happily makes rusting metal stains too a part of her life.
Or is it only rusting metal stains that stay long enough?
20.10.06
Nameless people, eternal moments
There were times in my scribbling life when I felt completely useless. All those quotes would stare at me, mock at me. Did it matter that I carried the thoughts of those I had written about with me? Would that change anything?
I tried getting more involved beyond the call of my job, but how many would benefit? What happened to the beggars I had sat with – were they not back to their places with their hands outstretched? Were the commercial sex workers any better off after talking to me? Of course I remember sitting on the floor eating dal-chappati-chutney with them, but did they have a way out to fill their bellies? I may have had strong objection to bulldozers ramming into hutments and stood there as broken homes and strewn aluminium vessels lay on the floor, but could I stop the crying of those hearts that would again pick up bamboo sticks to build their shanties? I saw bullet-ridden walls and bodies, and held people close to me as they related their stories, but would their wounds heal?
“Don’t blame yourself for everything,” my friends used to say.
I wasn’t. I just held on to a stray thread of hope, waiting for it to turn to elastic so that it would stretch far. But having stretched far would it not snap back?
There have been a couple of wonderful memories that I have written about…like sitting on the wall outside a church with Charlie. The first handshake with him, a handshake that conveyed so much; Charlie had AIDS and at that time few knew how to deal with such people. I too thought I was doing something important. But slowly as we talked and the sky turned a flaming orange, we went to his building terrace and spoke some more. He told me about his sins, about the unprotected and unleashed lust that had got him to this state. He had a few years left and he was working out to build his muscles. Charlie was attractive in a rugged way.
Then I recall how on one assignment in Dharavi, known as the largest slum in Asia, there was one kid with a bad reputation who I interviewed regarding child labour. We went into a little tea-shop and I continued my questions, “Aapko pataa hai…aap kyon…aap kahaan se…??” that sort of thing. He answered twice and then he snapped in Bambaiya Hindi, “Yeh aap-aap kya lagayela kab se, seedha tu bol na!”
I was using the language I use for everyone, at least in form of address; he had perhaps never been addressed in this manner. He became uncomfortable. He felt patronised. He did not know how to respond.
In the next hour, he was calling me “Didi”. I learned an important lesson. If you stay as true to yourself as is possible without wanting to change others, then you don’t lose out on anything. I was doing my work…if that boy, despite what he had become, could bring himself to talk in a manner different from the one he was accustomed to, then I do take it as a compliment. The fact that I still remember a small man, in a small place doing small work means that it is possible to get enlightened in the smallest of ways.
* * *
And now to something else. I did not ever imagine Salam Azad would find me. It was important for him to find me for me to know more about him outside the confines of search engines.
It is always satisfying for a writer to have people identify, argue, discuss one’s work. But when that work enables an opening up of further knowledge from a source that would be resigned to a fair degree of anonymity, then it makes one’s efforts feel worth at least the paper/monitor they are written on.
Salam Azad has spoken out against several issues in Bangladesh. Recently on reading a new article of mine elsewhere on the Brick Lane controversy, he wrote to thank me for mentioning him.
I will not use his emails verbatim here for he writes in Bangla, a language he is more comfortable in than English. But in essence this is what he has said: He has written 41 books. His novel Bhanga Math (Shattered Dream) was banned in Bangladesh on 18th July 2004 when he was not in the country; he was attending a conference in Geneva. English and Hindi translations are available. His Hindi publisher in Delhi is Rajkamal, phone: 011-23274463, 23288769; Vani, Phone: 011-23273167, 011-51562622; Probath, Phone: 011-23289555, 011-23289666 and English publisher is Bookwell, Phone: 011-23268786.
His naiveté is touching when he asked, “Did you read my banned book Ban in Bangladesh?"
How would it not be banned? And who can deny the courage of this person as opposed to the much-lauded Taslima Nasreen’s PR machinery?
* * *
People are sending us sweets in the festive season; they are calling up to wish for a happy year. Some send bulk cards without even signing their names. And you are supposed to thank/respond in kind. I appreciate gestures, so I don't turn away.
Yet I cannot forget that there are so many Lakshmis in the villages and slums, named after the goddess of wealth. Life is full of ironies.
This blog is for those nameless people who gave me so much by way of understanding their wealth of patience, dignity and calm and asked for nothing in return.
"Hum ko na koi bulaae, na koi palake bichhaae
ai gham ke maaroun, manzil waheen hai, dam ye toote jahaan
andhe jahaan ke andhe raaste, jaaye to jaaye kahaan"
I tried getting more involved beyond the call of my job, but how many would benefit? What happened to the beggars I had sat with – were they not back to their places with their hands outstretched? Were the commercial sex workers any better off after talking to me? Of course I remember sitting on the floor eating dal-chappati-chutney with them, but did they have a way out to fill their bellies? I may have had strong objection to bulldozers ramming into hutments and stood there as broken homes and strewn aluminium vessels lay on the floor, but could I stop the crying of those hearts that would again pick up bamboo sticks to build their shanties? I saw bullet-ridden walls and bodies, and held people close to me as they related their stories, but would their wounds heal?
“Don’t blame yourself for everything,” my friends used to say.
I wasn’t. I just held on to a stray thread of hope, waiting for it to turn to elastic so that it would stretch far. But having stretched far would it not snap back?
There have been a couple of wonderful memories that I have written about…like sitting on the wall outside a church with Charlie. The first handshake with him, a handshake that conveyed so much; Charlie had AIDS and at that time few knew how to deal with such people. I too thought I was doing something important. But slowly as we talked and the sky turned a flaming orange, we went to his building terrace and spoke some more. He told me about his sins, about the unprotected and unleashed lust that had got him to this state. He had a few years left and he was working out to build his muscles. Charlie was attractive in a rugged way.
Then I recall how on one assignment in Dharavi, known as the largest slum in Asia, there was one kid with a bad reputation who I interviewed regarding child labour. We went into a little tea-shop and I continued my questions, “Aapko pataa hai…aap kyon…aap kahaan se…??” that sort of thing. He answered twice and then he snapped in Bambaiya Hindi, “Yeh aap-aap kya lagayela kab se, seedha tu bol na!”
I was using the language I use for everyone, at least in form of address; he had perhaps never been addressed in this manner. He became uncomfortable. He felt patronised. He did not know how to respond.
In the next hour, he was calling me “Didi”. I learned an important lesson. If you stay as true to yourself as is possible without wanting to change others, then you don’t lose out on anything. I was doing my work…if that boy, despite what he had become, could bring himself to talk in a manner different from the one he was accustomed to, then I do take it as a compliment. The fact that I still remember a small man, in a small place doing small work means that it is possible to get enlightened in the smallest of ways.
* * *
And now to something else. I did not ever imagine Salam Azad would find me. It was important for him to find me for me to know more about him outside the confines of search engines.
It is always satisfying for a writer to have people identify, argue, discuss one’s work. But when that work enables an opening up of further knowledge from a source that would be resigned to a fair degree of anonymity, then it makes one’s efforts feel worth at least the paper/monitor they are written on.
Salam Azad has spoken out against several issues in Bangladesh. Recently on reading a new article of mine elsewhere on the Brick Lane controversy, he wrote to thank me for mentioning him.
I will not use his emails verbatim here for he writes in Bangla, a language he is more comfortable in than English. But in essence this is what he has said: He has written 41 books. His novel Bhanga Math (Shattered Dream) was banned in Bangladesh on 18th July 2004 when he was not in the country; he was attending a conference in Geneva. English and Hindi translations are available. His Hindi publisher in Delhi is Rajkamal, phone: 011-23274463, 23288769; Vani, Phone: 011-23273167, 011-51562622; Probath, Phone: 011-23289555, 011-23289666 and English publisher is Bookwell, Phone: 011-23268786.
His naiveté is touching when he asked, “Did you read my banned book Ban in Bangladesh?"
How would it not be banned? And who can deny the courage of this person as opposed to the much-lauded Taslima Nasreen’s PR machinery?
* * *
People are sending us sweets in the festive season; they are calling up to wish for a happy year. Some send bulk cards without even signing their names. And you are supposed to thank/respond in kind. I appreciate gestures, so I don't turn away.
Yet I cannot forget that there are so many Lakshmis in the villages and slums, named after the goddess of wealth. Life is full of ironies.
This blog is for those nameless people who gave me so much by way of understanding their wealth of patience, dignity and calm and asked for nothing in return.
"Hum ko na koi bulaae, na koi palake bichhaae
ai gham ke maaroun, manzil waheen hai, dam ye toote jahaan
andhe jahaan ke andhe raaste, jaaye to jaaye kahaan"
19.10.06
Will 'Don' see the dusk?
A big deal is being made of the new version of Don. Worse, they are talking about whether it will live up to the legendary status of the old one. When was that silly little film a pathbreaking filmic venture? It was a regular potboiler.
I do like Farhan Akhtar as a director, but he has nothing to live up to. If he has remade the original in his own style it might turn out to be a taut movie. That’s it.
A lot of hoo-ha is being made about whether Shahrukh Khan will fit into Amitabh Bachchan’s boots. No, he won’t. Amitabh has large feet. And in that over-hyped “Khaike paan Banaraswaala” song he looks like one of those street acrobats balancing on stilts while rolling a scarf as a magician would do before bringing out a pigeon.
It was an exaggerated performance, not even in the sense of caricature. The small-town or dehati has been done with great sense of comic timing by Dilip Kumar in Ganga Jamuna and later Gopi…
As for Shahrukh, I have never thought him to be an actor; his own admission of being akin to a madaari fits him well. His typical roles are urban, not necessarily urbane. As small-towner/villager he seems like not even a disaster, but a damp squib. Paheli will bear witness to this.
So, in the other part of the Don, would he jell? As one of those irritating ad types said, “Amitabh was all about dignity; Shahrukh gives a damn for it.”
Ah well, Amitabh as Don was a stiff, starchy-suited, deep-voiced mannequin. That passes for dignity in Bollywood. Shahrukh may well be in control, but the effort will show. A bit like holding back a sneeze.
I know this is presumptuous. I have not seen the film. I am a presumptuous person. But if I do watch the film and it turns out to be different from my perceptions, then I am willing to eat my words.
It’s been a while since I had a delicious meal…
* * *
Talking of which, let me tell you about my disaster. Yesterday, with minimal pomp, I entered the kitchen with the purpose of cooking. It was to be humble fare – aloo paratha. I love aloo parathas. The potato mix had been kept ready, the dough was ready. All I had to do was fill the mixture into the dough, make it into round thick parathas and cook.
The potatoes kept peeping out, as though in protest for being trapped. The dough was clinging to me like a spurned lover. The flour that was to be dusted waited sullenly to be sprinkled. I overdid it. I put lots of it and rolled the damn thing and put it on the tawaa. Suddenly, I remembered the fat had to be added. As a child when anything was being cooked I would run miles away because the smell of cooking ghee sickened me.
Here I was dunking it on the frying pan and waiting for the paratha to cook itself. Turn, wait, turn…and I couldn’t figure out whether it had been cooked completely at all. I put my head close to it and saw spaces that were raw, the dough the colour of sallow skin. I don’t know how long it took.
At lunchtime, my mother bravely ate; she said it wasn’t bad. I thought it was awful. I took spoonfuls of yoghurt to cover the bites I took.
I wasn’t trying to hide my mistakes, but having committed them I was making an attempt to make up for my flaws, for no one but myself. I owed it to me.
Making parathas is not my scene. This isn’t about giving up so easily, but some things are not meant to be. And that which we relish need not be something we ourselves can be good at.
I feel humbled by Ammi’s efforts and all those who make good parathas.
I cannot. There are many things I cannot make. Many more that I cannot unmake.
I do like Farhan Akhtar as a director, but he has nothing to live up to. If he has remade the original in his own style it might turn out to be a taut movie. That’s it.
A lot of hoo-ha is being made about whether Shahrukh Khan will fit into Amitabh Bachchan’s boots. No, he won’t. Amitabh has large feet. And in that over-hyped “Khaike paan Banaraswaala” song he looks like one of those street acrobats balancing on stilts while rolling a scarf as a magician would do before bringing out a pigeon.
It was an exaggerated performance, not even in the sense of caricature. The small-town or dehati has been done with great sense of comic timing by Dilip Kumar in Ganga Jamuna and later Gopi…
As for Shahrukh, I have never thought him to be an actor; his own admission of being akin to a madaari fits him well. His typical roles are urban, not necessarily urbane. As small-towner/villager he seems like not even a disaster, but a damp squib. Paheli will bear witness to this.
So, in the other part of the Don, would he jell? As one of those irritating ad types said, “Amitabh was all about dignity; Shahrukh gives a damn for it.”
Ah well, Amitabh as Don was a stiff, starchy-suited, deep-voiced mannequin. That passes for dignity in Bollywood. Shahrukh may well be in control, but the effort will show. A bit like holding back a sneeze.
I know this is presumptuous. I have not seen the film. I am a presumptuous person. But if I do watch the film and it turns out to be different from my perceptions, then I am willing to eat my words.
It’s been a while since I had a delicious meal…
* * *
Talking of which, let me tell you about my disaster. Yesterday, with minimal pomp, I entered the kitchen with the purpose of cooking. It was to be humble fare – aloo paratha. I love aloo parathas. The potato mix had been kept ready, the dough was ready. All I had to do was fill the mixture into the dough, make it into round thick parathas and cook.
The potatoes kept peeping out, as though in protest for being trapped. The dough was clinging to me like a spurned lover. The flour that was to be dusted waited sullenly to be sprinkled. I overdid it. I put lots of it and rolled the damn thing and put it on the tawaa. Suddenly, I remembered the fat had to be added. As a child when anything was being cooked I would run miles away because the smell of cooking ghee sickened me.
Here I was dunking it on the frying pan and waiting for the paratha to cook itself. Turn, wait, turn…and I couldn’t figure out whether it had been cooked completely at all. I put my head close to it and saw spaces that were raw, the dough the colour of sallow skin. I don’t know how long it took.
At lunchtime, my mother bravely ate; she said it wasn’t bad. I thought it was awful. I took spoonfuls of yoghurt to cover the bites I took.
I wasn’t trying to hide my mistakes, but having committed them I was making an attempt to make up for my flaws, for no one but myself. I owed it to me.
Making parathas is not my scene. This isn’t about giving up so easily, but some things are not meant to be. And that which we relish need not be something we ourselves can be good at.
I feel humbled by Ammi’s efforts and all those who make good parathas.
I cannot. There are many things I cannot make. Many more that I cannot unmake.
"u bloody bastards," he said...
The bane of saying anything that does not quite go with people’s perceptions and expectations is always there.
Among the letters I have recently received, there is one which I should ignore, but I found it just too delectable to let go. It says:
Hi,
u bloody bastards percecuted us for 1200 yeasrs killeing inocent people evryday..why u making chaos on one incident
Go and ask your forefathers what sins they did?
bastard
I cannot figure out why the person has signed out with ‘bastard’. I thought we were the illegitimate ones. Anyway, thanks for the empathy.
I am assuming the person is referring to Mughal rule. I wasn’t born 1200 years ago, although I do believe in rebirth. But, I was not a Mughal in my last birth. I was not aware that they killed everyday, because then they would not get their jiziya (tax), their harems, their cheap labour – like all colonialists do.
Come on, cut them some slack. They did give us some of the finest architecture, some of the best musical heritage, some fine poetry and dance were preserved under their patronage.
Of course I cannot figure out why for such an aesthetic lot they went around wearing frocks over their salwaars or jodhpurs or whatever they wore in the lower half, and why they stuck those ridiculous feathers in their turbans and posed for paintings with silly roses held in front of their noses.
I ask for forgiveness for such travesty.
Now, tell me, how can I ask my “forefathers” what sins they “did”? They are dead, na? I can call them using a Ouija board, but I don’t know who is the most articulate and sporting of the lot.
Babar might be in a foul mood because his name was ruined into Babri…sounds like some Bengali’s ‘pet name’. Humayun – no one cares much about except that his tomb in Delhi is a nice little lover’s nook. Jehangir spent too much time with Noor Jehan playing with pigeons, or flying kites. Shah Jehan was too busy waiting for his wife to die so he could give us one of the wonders of the world, where people sit on a bench and get photographed looking like sissies in front of what looks like a Catholic wedding cake. That leaves us with Aurangzeb. He is said to be real nasty, but I don’t know what to say about a guy who lived frugally and knitted skull caps. Sounds like a bored housewife to me.
And no one mentions Bahadurshah Zafar. The poor man wanted to be buried in India but the British insisted on Burma. I would personally like to invite his spirit, but we’d discuss his poetry, which I love…
I am sure they all “did” sins. Some of which I am aware of and do not deny. I have also ‘done’ many sins. You want to know?
So, let us play fair and square, as they say. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. You call me bastard; you call yourself bastard.
We are equals.
Among the letters I have recently received, there is one which I should ignore, but I found it just too delectable to let go. It says:
Hi,
u bloody bastards percecuted us for 1200 yeasrs killeing inocent people evryday..why u making chaos on one incident
Go and ask your forefathers what sins they did?
bastard
I cannot figure out why the person has signed out with ‘bastard’. I thought we were the illegitimate ones. Anyway, thanks for the empathy.
I am assuming the person is referring to Mughal rule. I wasn’t born 1200 years ago, although I do believe in rebirth. But, I was not a Mughal in my last birth. I was not aware that they killed everyday, because then they would not get their jiziya (tax), their harems, their cheap labour – like all colonialists do.
Come on, cut them some slack. They did give us some of the finest architecture, some of the best musical heritage, some fine poetry and dance were preserved under their patronage.
Of course I cannot figure out why for such an aesthetic lot they went around wearing frocks over their salwaars or jodhpurs or whatever they wore in the lower half, and why they stuck those ridiculous feathers in their turbans and posed for paintings with silly roses held in front of their noses.
I ask for forgiveness for such travesty.
Now, tell me, how can I ask my “forefathers” what sins they “did”? They are dead, na? I can call them using a Ouija board, but I don’t know who is the most articulate and sporting of the lot.
Babar might be in a foul mood because his name was ruined into Babri…sounds like some Bengali’s ‘pet name’. Humayun – no one cares much about except that his tomb in Delhi is a nice little lover’s nook. Jehangir spent too much time with Noor Jehan playing with pigeons, or flying kites. Shah Jehan was too busy waiting for his wife to die so he could give us one of the wonders of the world, where people sit on a bench and get photographed looking like sissies in front of what looks like a Catholic wedding cake. That leaves us with Aurangzeb. He is said to be real nasty, but I don’t know what to say about a guy who lived frugally and knitted skull caps. Sounds like a bored housewife to me.
And no one mentions Bahadurshah Zafar. The poor man wanted to be buried in India but the British insisted on Burma. I would personally like to invite his spirit, but we’d discuss his poetry, which I love…
I am sure they all “did” sins. Some of which I am aware of and do not deny. I have also ‘done’ many sins. You want to know?
So, let us play fair and square, as they say. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. You call me bastard; you call yourself bastard.
We are equals.
17.10.06
Mohammed Afzal ko ghussa kyon nahin aata?
Whoopee! Two of the biggest cuckoo cases have jumped onto the ‘Guru ho ja shuroo’ bandwagon.
Instead of reading Urdu novels and the Quran in prison, Mohammed Afzal Guru ought to display some fire and ask some of the siyaasatdars to lay off.
Tomorrow, Rahul Mahajan, son of late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, will sit in a protest rally, looking very committed and innocent, to press for the death sentence on Afzal Guru for his role in the Parliament attack case. "I feel Afzal should be hanged and to register my protest against those seeking pardon for him, I will sit on a dharna," he said.
Rahul has a case in court against him for a drug binge in which his father’s secretary died under mysterious circumstances, he was himself put in prison and is now out on bail and a few others (including a Kashmiri whose credentials are said to be iffy) were arrested.
Since the case is sub judice, how can he be given the right to protest in a political matter? "From the same venue, Mahatma Gandhi had given Quit India slogan in 1942 against the British. Similarly, we will be asking terrorists to leave India.”
Who is the ‘we’? If he is doing so as a voice of the party, then will the BJP please tell us what position he holds and that he has yet to prove his innocence? If the ‘we’ is the people, then who are the people? We need to know.
It is also so convenient bringing in Mahatma Gandhi. And it is very sweet of him to ‘ask’ terrorists to leave India. But what happens to the ghar ki murgis? Are home-grown local ‘boys’ not to be considered? They are Indian citizens, just like him. He should start with the Gujarat CM, since he is apna aadmi, then we can move to the fellows who indulged in yesterday’s shootout in Mumbai and killed two men, including one police informant. Then we go South, then East, then further North East, then North…
And then he might also like to deal with the fixers within his own party that shamelessly make deals with those they call terrorists.
* * *
The other politically-motivated guy is Dr. Farooq Abdullah. (He and Ghulam Nabi Azad must be banned from entering J&K.) Is this the way to fight for Afzal’s case in the manner in which he has been going about it? He said, “You want to hang him? Go ahead and hang him. But the consequences of hanging him must also be remembered. One of the consequences will be... we have paid the price of Maqbool Butt’s hanging by the judge who was shot in Kashmir. Those judges will need to be protected like anything.”
Fool. He should do what he is best at – go to London and play golf and return to the Valley only when he has to take film stars (the oh-so-conscious-of-my-social-responsibilities Ms. Shabana Azmi, if you please) pillion riding on his motorbike.
This just about suits him. He has not done a thing to solve the problems of the Kashmiris and happily slept with the NDA combine to "bring peace". Har-har…
By making such silly statements, he is impressing no one and impressing upon no one.
Judges have been shot at in courtrooms by goondas and the underworld too. And people in the public eye in controversial cases are always at risk. That is the reason our country has Z or is it “Zzzzz” security.
He also said the nation would go up in flames. This is the language Bal Thackeray uses all the time, and of course everyone just indulges him; some even feel he is right. Farooq Abdullah should find better inspiration for his dramabaazi.
* * *
Talking of drama, on Monday (Oct. 16) the local BJP unit in Rajkot organised a play, enacting the hanging of Mohammad Afzal Guru to highlight the party's protest against his clemency demand.
A former BJP MP said, “One, who killed nine persons in the Parliament attack, should be hanged without delay.”
How do they become MPs? Afzal killed no one. What he did is in the court papers, but on that day he fiddled around while Parliament was attacked, just like Modibhai did during the riots.
Instead of reading Urdu novels and the Quran in prison, Mohammed Afzal Guru ought to display some fire and ask some of the siyaasatdars to lay off.
Tomorrow, Rahul Mahajan, son of late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, will sit in a protest rally, looking very committed and innocent, to press for the death sentence on Afzal Guru for his role in the Parliament attack case. "I feel Afzal should be hanged and to register my protest against those seeking pardon for him, I will sit on a dharna," he said.
Rahul has a case in court against him for a drug binge in which his father’s secretary died under mysterious circumstances, he was himself put in prison and is now out on bail and a few others (including a Kashmiri whose credentials are said to be iffy) were arrested.
Since the case is sub judice, how can he be given the right to protest in a political matter? "From the same venue, Mahatma Gandhi had given Quit India slogan in 1942 against the British. Similarly, we will be asking terrorists to leave India.”
Who is the ‘we’? If he is doing so as a voice of the party, then will the BJP please tell us what position he holds and that he has yet to prove his innocence? If the ‘we’ is the people, then who are the people? We need to know.
It is also so convenient bringing in Mahatma Gandhi. And it is very sweet of him to ‘ask’ terrorists to leave India. But what happens to the ghar ki murgis? Are home-grown local ‘boys’ not to be considered? They are Indian citizens, just like him. He should start with the Gujarat CM, since he is apna aadmi, then we can move to the fellows who indulged in yesterday’s shootout in Mumbai and killed two men, including one police informant. Then we go South, then East, then further North East, then North…
And then he might also like to deal with the fixers within his own party that shamelessly make deals with those they call terrorists.
* * *
The other politically-motivated guy is Dr. Farooq Abdullah. (He and Ghulam Nabi Azad must be banned from entering J&K.) Is this the way to fight for Afzal’s case in the manner in which he has been going about it? He said, “You want to hang him? Go ahead and hang him. But the consequences of hanging him must also be remembered. One of the consequences will be... we have paid the price of Maqbool Butt’s hanging by the judge who was shot in Kashmir. Those judges will need to be protected like anything.”
Fool. He should do what he is best at – go to London and play golf and return to the Valley only when he has to take film stars (the oh-so-conscious-of-my-social-responsibilities Ms. Shabana Azmi, if you please) pillion riding on his motorbike.
This just about suits him. He has not done a thing to solve the problems of the Kashmiris and happily slept with the NDA combine to "bring peace". Har-har…
By making such silly statements, he is impressing no one and impressing upon no one.
Judges have been shot at in courtrooms by goondas and the underworld too. And people in the public eye in controversial cases are always at risk. That is the reason our country has Z or is it “Zzzzz” security.
He also said the nation would go up in flames. This is the language Bal Thackeray uses all the time, and of course everyone just indulges him; some even feel he is right. Farooq Abdullah should find better inspiration for his dramabaazi.
* * *
Talking of drama, on Monday (Oct. 16) the local BJP unit in Rajkot organised a play, enacting the hanging of Mohammad Afzal Guru to highlight the party's protest against his clemency demand.
A former BJP MP said, “One, who killed nine persons in the Parliament attack, should be hanged without delay.”
How do they become MPs? Afzal killed no one. What he did is in the court papers, but on that day he fiddled around while Parliament was attacked, just like Modibhai did during the riots.
Mohammed Afzal ki ajeeb dastaan
In a rather unusual development, Colin Gonsalves, who represented Mohammed Afzal in the high court has written an open letter to clarify about certain people “spreading a rumour that I did not defend Afzal in the High Court and instead asked for him to be put to death by lethal injection”.
Ram Jethmalani has defended Mr. Gonsalves and one discovers that the certain persons include Nandita Haksar, who has been defending Afzal!
This is my open letter, and the other two are reproduced below…
Dear Colin Gonsalves:
Those of us who are aware of the work you have done on several human rights issues would not for a moment doubt that you would not stand up for what you believe in.
It is commendable that you took up the case at the last minute and truly distressed to learn that Nandita Haksar could have said that you were suggesting a lethal injection for Afzal.
This is also surprising considering Ms. Haksar has braved flak and more for appearing for Prof. Geelani, the other accused. It is due to this reason that I believe an open letter is not such a good idea for this is the time that committed activists did not expose their differences.
If she has publicly accused you, you do have Ram Jethmalani's testimony and the court papers that you could have put before her. The onus would then be on her to clarify and, if need be, even apologise.
At this moment, it will only give grist to people to crib about ‘pseudo-secularists’ and ‘pseudo liberals’, of which incidentally you ought to proudly lay claim, given that the ‘pseudo’ has been added by certain political groups to legitimise their fake beliefs.
It is true that the “current champions coming on television were nowhere to be seen when they were needed most”. But I wish to draw your attention to the fact that these are media-created champions, drawn from glamorous activism. This is the unfortunate fallout of byte-sized news and large egos. However, among these people there are some who are deeply involved in various movements and must be given their due.
Publicity is a double-edged sword. Citizen’s activism is possible only if there is awareness.
In fact, the emotional appeals for Afzal denude the factual ground on which he can rightfully claim not only clemency but exoneration, too.
-- FV
Colin Gonsalves’ open letter On Afzal Case
Dear Friends,
I was taken aback to hear that certain persons are spreading a rumour that I did not defend Afzal in the High Court and instead asked for him to be put to death by lethal injection.
I was asked by advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan who appeared for Shaukat in the High Court to defend Mohd Afzal. Apparently many persons were approached before me but were not available. I was brought in at the last moment, perhaps a couple of weeks before the arguments were to begin in the High Court. I was told that payment would not be possible and that I would have to do the case free.
I gladly accepted even though it meant sacrificing my other work because I am totally opposed to the death sentence for any person. This has been my consistent stand over years.
When I appeared for Afzal in the High Court, I found that there was nobody to help me in those days except for advocate Nitya who was more familiar with the case than I was since she had appeared in the Trial Court. Apart from her I found nobody interested in helping Afzal. I believe campaigns were conducted to help the other accused and also to raise money for them, but not one person met me during the six months of the day to day proceedings in the High Court. The expenses of the case came to about Rs. 40,000/- because volumes of materials had to be Xeroxed. About half that amount was reimbursed by Afzal's cousin. I am putting this on record to emphasize that all the current champions of Afzal coming on television were nowhere to be seen when they were needed most.
I argued before the High Court for three weeks continuously. I have never argued that Afzal accepts his guilt and that he prays for death by lethal injection. I have my written arguments which were filed before the High Court and anyone wishing to read them may contact me. In the 250 page written submissions there is not one word on death by lethal injection. In the High Court judgment there is not one word on that.
You must remember that in those days the High Court arguments were being covered by a battery of journalists on a day-to-day basis. Had I mentioned to the Court that I want Afzal to die by lethal injection that would have made sensational headlines.
I met Afzal in jail thrice. On the second occasion he told me that someone had informed him that I was asking for him to be put to death by lethal injection. I told him that I would never argue such a position. He was satisfied on that explanation and the issue was not raised with me thereafter.
I spoke to Mr. Jethmalani who was also in Court during that period and he has given me a letter which I am attaching with this document.
Sd-
Colin Gonsalves
Letter from Ram Jethmalani
Date : 10-10-2006
Dear Mr. Gonsalves,
You appeared for accused Md. Afzal before the High Court of Delhi at the hearing of the Death Reference in which Md. Afzal and two others had been sentenced to death.
I watched with admiration the manner in which you defended your client. It is all the more creditable that you agreed to appear for him in the first instance and in the second place you did an honorary job. It was a very unpopular cause and many stalwarts had refused to represent him.
You acted at the request of a Human Rights Organization and your junior Nitya in the case. I believe she had appeared in the Trial Court too. You have acted in the best tradition of the Indian Bar and everyone should be proud of your performance.
I have with me the final summary of your submissions which you made to the High Court running into nearly 250 pages. I have preserved it for my education and the education of the young lawyers who keep coming to my Chamber for training in the art and practice of advocacy.
I can only imagine the amount of industry that must have gone into the preparation of this massive volume and the enormous energy that you used in your speeches as to the High Court over a long period of almost three months.
I write this because I have been distressed to learn that Ms. Nandita Haksar, an advocate has appeared before the media and made statements against you which have no content of truth at all. She is reported to have said that you did nothing for your client except to tell the Court that he deserves a lethal injection. The impression that she has created is that you made no effort to provide any legal assistance to your client.
While I cannot believe that Nandita has made these false statements with malice against you, I cannot but think that they are totally and recklessly false.
I remember your argument that the provision of our criminal law which sanctions death by hanging is a cruel and unusual punishment and is constitutionally impermissible. If this argument had succeeded there was no provision left for executing the death sentence. You were only suggesting to the Court that there are more humane methods of carrying out the death sentence and a lethal injection is one of them. You never suggested to the Court that your client is guilty but he should be given such an injection. I am quite sure Nandita did not understand what was being argued. It may be that she was wrongly informed by somebody else. Please forgive her.
I was quite impressed about by your eloquent argument supported by extracts from the record that your client did not get a fair trial. I regret that this argument did not succeed with the High Court. I am not sure whether it was pursued in the Supreme Court. It should have been and might well have produced a welcome result.
I do want that you should help Md. Afzal in his family's Petition invoking the presidential powers under Article 72 of the Constitution of India. That would raise your stature and will certainly add to the reputation of our legal system.
With warm regards
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-
(RAM JETHMALANI)
Ram Jethmalani has defended Mr. Gonsalves and one discovers that the certain persons include Nandita Haksar, who has been defending Afzal!
This is my open letter, and the other two are reproduced below…
Dear Colin Gonsalves:
Those of us who are aware of the work you have done on several human rights issues would not for a moment doubt that you would not stand up for what you believe in.
It is commendable that you took up the case at the last minute and truly distressed to learn that Nandita Haksar could have said that you were suggesting a lethal injection for Afzal.
This is also surprising considering Ms. Haksar has braved flak and more for appearing for Prof. Geelani, the other accused. It is due to this reason that I believe an open letter is not such a good idea for this is the time that committed activists did not expose their differences.
If she has publicly accused you, you do have Ram Jethmalani's testimony and the court papers that you could have put before her. The onus would then be on her to clarify and, if need be, even apologise.
At this moment, it will only give grist to people to crib about ‘pseudo-secularists’ and ‘pseudo liberals’, of which incidentally you ought to proudly lay claim, given that the ‘pseudo’ has been added by certain political groups to legitimise their fake beliefs.
It is true that the “current champions coming on television were nowhere to be seen when they were needed most”. But I wish to draw your attention to the fact that these are media-created champions, drawn from glamorous activism. This is the unfortunate fallout of byte-sized news and large egos. However, among these people there are some who are deeply involved in various movements and must be given their due.
Publicity is a double-edged sword. Citizen’s activism is possible only if there is awareness.
In fact, the emotional appeals for Afzal denude the factual ground on which he can rightfully claim not only clemency but exoneration, too.
-- FV
Colin Gonsalves’ open letter On Afzal Case
Dear Friends,
I was taken aback to hear that certain persons are spreading a rumour that I did not defend Afzal in the High Court and instead asked for him to be put to death by lethal injection.
I was asked by advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan who appeared for Shaukat in the High Court to defend Mohd Afzal. Apparently many persons were approached before me but were not available. I was brought in at the last moment, perhaps a couple of weeks before the arguments were to begin in the High Court. I was told that payment would not be possible and that I would have to do the case free.
I gladly accepted even though it meant sacrificing my other work because I am totally opposed to the death sentence for any person. This has been my consistent stand over years.
When I appeared for Afzal in the High Court, I found that there was nobody to help me in those days except for advocate Nitya who was more familiar with the case than I was since she had appeared in the Trial Court. Apart from her I found nobody interested in helping Afzal. I believe campaigns were conducted to help the other accused and also to raise money for them, but not one person met me during the six months of the day to day proceedings in the High Court. The expenses of the case came to about Rs. 40,000/- because volumes of materials had to be Xeroxed. About half that amount was reimbursed by Afzal's cousin. I am putting this on record to emphasize that all the current champions of Afzal coming on television were nowhere to be seen when they were needed most.
I argued before the High Court for three weeks continuously. I have never argued that Afzal accepts his guilt and that he prays for death by lethal injection. I have my written arguments which were filed before the High Court and anyone wishing to read them may contact me. In the 250 page written submissions there is not one word on death by lethal injection. In the High Court judgment there is not one word on that.
You must remember that in those days the High Court arguments were being covered by a battery of journalists on a day-to-day basis. Had I mentioned to the Court that I want Afzal to die by lethal injection that would have made sensational headlines.
I met Afzal in jail thrice. On the second occasion he told me that someone had informed him that I was asking for him to be put to death by lethal injection. I told him that I would never argue such a position. He was satisfied on that explanation and the issue was not raised with me thereafter.
I spoke to Mr. Jethmalani who was also in Court during that period and he has given me a letter which I am attaching with this document.
Sd-
Colin Gonsalves
Letter from Ram Jethmalani
Date : 10-10-2006
Dear Mr. Gonsalves,
You appeared for accused Md. Afzal before the High Court of Delhi at the hearing of the Death Reference in which Md. Afzal and two others had been sentenced to death.
I watched with admiration the manner in which you defended your client. It is all the more creditable that you agreed to appear for him in the first instance and in the second place you did an honorary job. It was a very unpopular cause and many stalwarts had refused to represent him.
You acted at the request of a Human Rights Organization and your junior Nitya in the case. I believe she had appeared in the Trial Court too. You have acted in the best tradition of the Indian Bar and everyone should be proud of your performance.
I have with me the final summary of your submissions which you made to the High Court running into nearly 250 pages. I have preserved it for my education and the education of the young lawyers who keep coming to my Chamber for training in the art and practice of advocacy.
I can only imagine the amount of industry that must have gone into the preparation of this massive volume and the enormous energy that you used in your speeches as to the High Court over a long period of almost three months.
I write this because I have been distressed to learn that Ms. Nandita Haksar, an advocate has appeared before the media and made statements against you which have no content of truth at all. She is reported to have said that you did nothing for your client except to tell the Court that he deserves a lethal injection. The impression that she has created is that you made no effort to provide any legal assistance to your client.
While I cannot believe that Nandita has made these false statements with malice against you, I cannot but think that they are totally and recklessly false.
I remember your argument that the provision of our criminal law which sanctions death by hanging is a cruel and unusual punishment and is constitutionally impermissible. If this argument had succeeded there was no provision left for executing the death sentence. You were only suggesting to the Court that there are more humane methods of carrying out the death sentence and a lethal injection is one of them. You never suggested to the Court that your client is guilty but he should be given such an injection. I am quite sure Nandita did not understand what was being argued. It may be that she was wrongly informed by somebody else. Please forgive her.
I was quite impressed about by your eloquent argument supported by extracts from the record that your client did not get a fair trial. I regret that this argument did not succeed with the High Court. I am not sure whether it was pursued in the Supreme Court. It should have been and might well have produced a welcome result.
I do want that you should help Md. Afzal in his family's Petition invoking the presidential powers under Article 72 of the Constitution of India. That would raise your stature and will certainly add to the reputation of our legal system.
With warm regards
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-
(RAM JETHMALANI)
Why did they clip Shoaib Akhtar’s wings?
Right, so two Pakistani cricketers have tested positive for taking performance-enhancing drugs and have been banned from the Champions trophy being played in India. And everyone is going, “Hai, hai!”
Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif took some anabolic steroids which are supposed to be virilising agents. So, would the Pakistan Cricket Board ban all the players who take Viagra or ginseng or even the occasional palang tod paan? The anabolic drug is said to build bone mass and muscle and if you are in the business of being fit, then you cannot only do bench presses and running on an inclined treadmill.
Steroids are used for various other purposes, and the only worry should be the side-effects: baldness and impotence among them. Imagine the hunks going for a duck…
The PCB, like all government bodies in the subcontinent, tends to acquire this moral halo once in a while because it wants to be seen as ‘good’. They need to create bad boys, and Shoaib at least is a great one at that. If his steroid-thingie was so powerful, then why was he ‘out of form’ earlier’? Weren’t the reasons different then?
And then there are Pakistanis who are lauding this organisation for acting promptly. Hah. How prompt? And why did the fleshy Inzamam get banned? Naturally the ICC is thrilled. The PCB is playing its game and acting like a nice little poodle.
* * *
I had written the following about Shoaib on March 3, 2005, and have highlighted certain portions...
Hell's Angel
"Shoaib Akhtar`s withdrawal is a body blow for Pakistan. The Indians must be celebrating. Pakistan, I think, have lost the series even before it has started.” Former Test fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz
Wrong.
Shoaib Akhtar has already won the series for Pakistan. How our neighbour fares on the field is immaterial; it has scored its victory by keeping the bad boy away. The message being sent out is that Pakistani cricket, Pakistani society, Pakistani politics are all about squeaky clean gentlemen out to do a hard day’s work and play fair. This one masterstroke has achieved what a hundred diplomatic meetings and handshakes would not have.
Shoaib’s situation is not unlike Laloo Prasad Yadav’s at the moment; those who ought to support him are steering clear simply because they want to show that their hands are clean. But are the hands they stay away from all that filthy?
Undoubtedly, there is a rasta-chhaap quality about Shoaib. Everytime he starts his run-up, it is like he is forming little spit-bubbles and pre-empting the batsman to such levels of disgust that when the ball does leave his hand it sounds like an indecorous “Ach-thoo”.
Don’t go by that put-on Pindi meets Pennsylvania with a stopover in Bradford accent. He is in the thick of a world not his own, and camouflage in his best defence. Interestingly, his small-town status and mentality that were a cause of fear and insecurity have been his biggest weapons. This is why he welcomes trouble. He needs it to prove his mettle, to tell people he exists, to announce that he has arrived.
When there are accusations against him, he does not deal with them like one to the manner born but as a person who has been nursing a wound for long:
“When they called for the ban I packed my stuff and was ready to go to England to live the rest of my life. They told me to change my action, make it right, put things back in action and come back again. I said I can`t do that. I said I`m going to England because I got my house down there. I said I will never play cricket again.”
He knows how to pronounce panache, but does he have it? Beneath those snazzy suits and confident demeanour is a boy-man who feels completely rootless. He goes a step further and takes potshots at himself. He also laughs the loudest at his own jokes. It is funny. And it is sad. For the man has talent, but he is afraid that someday it will all be taken away from him. As it has been several times. Today, every gesture of his is a desperate cry to call attention to himself. He may have the money, glamour and buying power, but he is in a profession where he can never be sure of security. He is also learning how it might be advantageous to be used:
“I have a fitness problem. There is just too much cricket these days. The past three years have just been a bit too hectic for us. There is too much of bloody cricket being played. But I try to keep myself fit.
Like many who come in from closed, cocooned backgrounds, Shoaib has been confused whether to embrace the notoriety of one who has made the sharp moves or take a principled stand and talk about the values he imbibed. That he tries to stride both reveals his discomfort. He makes a public display of his charms and yet talks about being the fall guy. In either case, he becomes vulnerable to ridicule as well as pity. And he can do without these. For instance, when he had a court case against him for attending a fashion show on the night of Shab-e-Baraat he said:
“I don`t know why this guy filed a case against me. I was invited to have a meal with some people. When I went there I saw there were some models walking up and down. I was not aware of the fashion show. I just had my dinner and left. They all saw that I went to this fashion show but no one knows that I went home and prayed all night and only slept after Fajr.”
This might come as a surprise, but it is probably how he wants himself to be portrayed. He came late to cricket, got into controversies, has few friends and more enemies, is banned and fined on a regular basis, and has allegations of ball-tampering and chucking and faking illness against him. He is constantly humiliated but becomes a super-star and, along the way, self-centred and ruthless too.
They don’t want him to be an Imran Khan (whose confession of ball-tampering elevated him to the status of one with a conscience!), they don’t want him to be a Wasim Akram or a Waqar Younus or even a Javed Miandad. They don’t even want him to be himself. They don’t want him to forget that he is a little man who made it big.
The problem is that we won’t play ball. His is the voice of protest. He went and stood before the jury in Australia to prove that he was right. He showed them how his limbs twist, his joints bend – he bared himself. He refuses to go for fitness tests when he is not ready. He admits to being aggressive. He has physical flaws. As he told an interviewer, “Did I say I was flat-footed? Nothing, no contours, flat as a pancake, I can take my shoes and socks off and show you if you like.”
For him this means defeating his shortcomings. And he flaunts it. He is selfish. So is every player. He has fun. So does every player. But while his team-mates in India are busy being garlanded and posing for cute pictures with their wives and kids, Shoaib Akhtar will be tossing his mane, wiggling his middle finger, spitting out an invective. And then, beckoned by the devious sun, he will once again become Icarus and melt his wings.
Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif took some anabolic steroids which are supposed to be virilising agents. So, would the Pakistan Cricket Board ban all the players who take Viagra or ginseng or even the occasional palang tod paan? The anabolic drug is said to build bone mass and muscle and if you are in the business of being fit, then you cannot only do bench presses and running on an inclined treadmill.
Steroids are used for various other purposes, and the only worry should be the side-effects: baldness and impotence among them. Imagine the hunks going for a duck…
The PCB, like all government bodies in the subcontinent, tends to acquire this moral halo once in a while because it wants to be seen as ‘good’. They need to create bad boys, and Shoaib at least is a great one at that. If his steroid-thingie was so powerful, then why was he ‘out of form’ earlier’? Weren’t the reasons different then?
And then there are Pakistanis who are lauding this organisation for acting promptly. Hah. How prompt? And why did the fleshy Inzamam get banned? Naturally the ICC is thrilled. The PCB is playing its game and acting like a nice little poodle.
* * *
I had written the following about Shoaib on March 3, 2005, and have highlighted certain portions...
Hell's Angel
"Shoaib Akhtar`s withdrawal is a body blow for Pakistan. The Indians must be celebrating. Pakistan, I think, have lost the series even before it has started.” Former Test fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz
Wrong.
Shoaib Akhtar has already won the series for Pakistan. How our neighbour fares on the field is immaterial; it has scored its victory by keeping the bad boy away. The message being sent out is that Pakistani cricket, Pakistani society, Pakistani politics are all about squeaky clean gentlemen out to do a hard day’s work and play fair. This one masterstroke has achieved what a hundred diplomatic meetings and handshakes would not have.
Shoaib’s situation is not unlike Laloo Prasad Yadav’s at the moment; those who ought to support him are steering clear simply because they want to show that their hands are clean. But are the hands they stay away from all that filthy?
Undoubtedly, there is a rasta-chhaap quality about Shoaib. Everytime he starts his run-up, it is like he is forming little spit-bubbles and pre-empting the batsman to such levels of disgust that when the ball does leave his hand it sounds like an indecorous “Ach-thoo”.
Don’t go by that put-on Pindi meets Pennsylvania with a stopover in Bradford accent. He is in the thick of a world not his own, and camouflage in his best defence. Interestingly, his small-town status and mentality that were a cause of fear and insecurity have been his biggest weapons. This is why he welcomes trouble. He needs it to prove his mettle, to tell people he exists, to announce that he has arrived.
When there are accusations against him, he does not deal with them like one to the manner born but as a person who has been nursing a wound for long:
“When they called for the ban I packed my stuff and was ready to go to England to live the rest of my life. They told me to change my action, make it right, put things back in action and come back again. I said I can`t do that. I said I`m going to England because I got my house down there. I said I will never play cricket again.”
He knows how to pronounce panache, but does he have it? Beneath those snazzy suits and confident demeanour is a boy-man who feels completely rootless. He goes a step further and takes potshots at himself. He also laughs the loudest at his own jokes. It is funny. And it is sad. For the man has talent, but he is afraid that someday it will all be taken away from him. As it has been several times. Today, every gesture of his is a desperate cry to call attention to himself. He may have the money, glamour and buying power, but he is in a profession where he can never be sure of security. He is also learning how it might be advantageous to be used:
“I have a fitness problem. There is just too much cricket these days. The past three years have just been a bit too hectic for us. There is too much of bloody cricket being played. But I try to keep myself fit.
Like many who come in from closed, cocooned backgrounds, Shoaib has been confused whether to embrace the notoriety of one who has made the sharp moves or take a principled stand and talk about the values he imbibed. That he tries to stride both reveals his discomfort. He makes a public display of his charms and yet talks about being the fall guy. In either case, he becomes vulnerable to ridicule as well as pity. And he can do without these. For instance, when he had a court case against him for attending a fashion show on the night of Shab-e-Baraat he said:
“I don`t know why this guy filed a case against me. I was invited to have a meal with some people. When I went there I saw there were some models walking up and down. I was not aware of the fashion show. I just had my dinner and left. They all saw that I went to this fashion show but no one knows that I went home and prayed all night and only slept after Fajr.”
This might come as a surprise, but it is probably how he wants himself to be portrayed. He came late to cricket, got into controversies, has few friends and more enemies, is banned and fined on a regular basis, and has allegations of ball-tampering and chucking and faking illness against him. He is constantly humiliated but becomes a super-star and, along the way, self-centred and ruthless too.
They don’t want him to be an Imran Khan (whose confession of ball-tampering elevated him to the status of one with a conscience!), they don’t want him to be a Wasim Akram or a Waqar Younus or even a Javed Miandad. They don’t even want him to be himself. They don’t want him to forget that he is a little man who made it big.
The problem is that we won’t play ball. His is the voice of protest. He went and stood before the jury in Australia to prove that he was right. He showed them how his limbs twist, his joints bend – he bared himself. He refuses to go for fitness tests when he is not ready. He admits to being aggressive. He has physical flaws. As he told an interviewer, “Did I say I was flat-footed? Nothing, no contours, flat as a pancake, I can take my shoes and socks off and show you if you like.”
For him this means defeating his shortcomings. And he flaunts it. He is selfish. So is every player. He has fun. So does every player. But while his team-mates in India are busy being garlanded and posing for cute pictures with their wives and kids, Shoaib Akhtar will be tossing his mane, wiggling his middle finger, spitting out an invective. And then, beckoned by the devious sun, he will once again become Icarus and melt his wings.
16.10.06
Does It Pay To Be Gay?
This piece of mine was published in The Op-ed of The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle of September 19,06. As I said in a comment earlier, the issues have to be seen from a distance, whatever be our personal equation with individual gays and our concern for their well-being.
Does It Pay To Be Gay?
Gays are one lucky bunch of people to have leading luminaries write open letters to the government of India demanding a repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which prescribes punishment for same-sex relationships.
The fine print is that the law mentions “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall also be liable for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall also be liable to fine.”
Unknown to many, primarily because the proponents keep their private interests strictly private, there is quite a bit of unnatural sex going on between non-gay people as well. No one comes forward to fight for their rights, simply because their identity does not revolve around their sexuality. Therefore, while one agrees that the Indian law does make gays into criminals, one would like to know just how many people have been arrested, imprisoned and punished for homosexuality.
The figures will be negligible. No one is making a case for such punitive action, but every once in a while prominent citizens come forward to appeal against such ‘outdated laws’. We do not see them similarly enthused about other such laws or publicly oppose police action against innocent young couples in parks and the disgusting oppression of Dalits who dare to marry above their caste. The reason is simple: the gay movement is a hugely successful public relations exercise.
The latest to join the fray are economist Amartya Sen and author Vikram Seth; the latter has said he joined the campaign because he is “partially gay”. This is a curious comment. There is nothing like a partial gay.
This is the worrying aspect about the gay cult. It seeks to co-opt bisexuals who, if they were indeed inclined towards sodomy, could have perhaps been able to practise it in a heterosexual relationship, as many such couples do.
Homosexuality has probably existed all along, but in the past few years it has begun to use celebrity endorsements and posthumous tributes to further its cause. Why is it necessary when it is being touted as the most normal thing in the world?
In big cities, passive gay men revel in being ‘pretty’. Their parties get publicised in the media. They fancy themselves as idols and a small segment has got legitimised only for its sexual preference, and little else.
Often, this does result in glamorisation and many young men who are not yet aware of their sexuality find it a ‘happening’ thing to be associated with. The ‘hormonal imbalance’ theory has been slowly replaced by the iconisation of the gays.
When a prominent person like Professor Amartya Sen makes a clichéd pronouncement that the current law “curbed the enhancement of human freedom”, he ought to have taken a closer look at the responsibility that comes with such freedom. The fact is that homosexuals have carved out a separate niche for themselves. They are not burdened with the bugbear of upholding family values, in that they are free of the constraints of other kinds of social pressures.
Yet, do we hear them speak up against the deviants in their midst? Why was there no follow-up regarding allegations against the famous godman who had sexually assaulted a boy? They are quick to brand you homophobic if you raise questions about paedophilia, rape and promiscuity that beset them as much as heterosexuals.
The sad fallout of this is that young boys are forced into homosexual affairs. The most vulnerable are those who come to seek employment from villages. Hawkers and maalishwallas at beaches are regularly subjected to such abuse. Forget about arresting them, the cops are happy to pocket hafta – in cash or kind.
The group that is spearheading this latest campaign is really quite ignorant about several basic aspects. They say they do not have figures. According to the Hamsafar Trust that works exclusively with the community the number in India is over 55 million.
Vikram Seth has stated, “It is especially disgraceful that section 377 has on several recent occasions been used by homophobic officials to suppress work of legitimate HIV-prevention groups, leaving gay and bisexual men in India even more defenceless against infection.”
Where vulnerability to HIV infections is concerned, just how many Indians, irrespective of their sexuality, come out and talk about it? Isn’t there the universal fear of being ostracised? And Seth’s comment can be counteracted with a more authoritative voice. Gay activist Ashok Row Kavi protesting against RSS chief K. Sudarshan’s remarks had written in an open letter to him, “Finally, HIV is spread by unprotected sex and has nothing to do with homosexuality. In India, the highest risk factor for women to get HIV-infected is being married to men. It is our lesbian sisters who are possibly the safest because they rarely spread HIV.”
Sensitisation towards marginalised groups is a necessity, but a blind acceptance of their credo will not help them or society.
- Farzana Versey
Does It Pay To Be Gay?
Gays are one lucky bunch of people to have leading luminaries write open letters to the government of India demanding a repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which prescribes punishment for same-sex relationships.
The fine print is that the law mentions “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall also be liable for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall also be liable to fine.”
Unknown to many, primarily because the proponents keep their private interests strictly private, there is quite a bit of unnatural sex going on between non-gay people as well. No one comes forward to fight for their rights, simply because their identity does not revolve around their sexuality. Therefore, while one agrees that the Indian law does make gays into criminals, one would like to know just how many people have been arrested, imprisoned and punished for homosexuality.
The figures will be negligible. No one is making a case for such punitive action, but every once in a while prominent citizens come forward to appeal against such ‘outdated laws’. We do not see them similarly enthused about other such laws or publicly oppose police action against innocent young couples in parks and the disgusting oppression of Dalits who dare to marry above their caste. The reason is simple: the gay movement is a hugely successful public relations exercise.
The latest to join the fray are economist Amartya Sen and author Vikram Seth; the latter has said he joined the campaign because he is “partially gay”. This is a curious comment. There is nothing like a partial gay.
This is the worrying aspect about the gay cult. It seeks to co-opt bisexuals who, if they were indeed inclined towards sodomy, could have perhaps been able to practise it in a heterosexual relationship, as many such couples do.
Homosexuality has probably existed all along, but in the past few years it has begun to use celebrity endorsements and posthumous tributes to further its cause. Why is it necessary when it is being touted as the most normal thing in the world?
In big cities, passive gay men revel in being ‘pretty’. Their parties get publicised in the media. They fancy themselves as idols and a small segment has got legitimised only for its sexual preference, and little else.
Often, this does result in glamorisation and many young men who are not yet aware of their sexuality find it a ‘happening’ thing to be associated with. The ‘hormonal imbalance’ theory has been slowly replaced by the iconisation of the gays.
When a prominent person like Professor Amartya Sen makes a clichéd pronouncement that the current law “curbed the enhancement of human freedom”, he ought to have taken a closer look at the responsibility that comes with such freedom. The fact is that homosexuals have carved out a separate niche for themselves. They are not burdened with the bugbear of upholding family values, in that they are free of the constraints of other kinds of social pressures.
Yet, do we hear them speak up against the deviants in their midst? Why was there no follow-up regarding allegations against the famous godman who had sexually assaulted a boy? They are quick to brand you homophobic if you raise questions about paedophilia, rape and promiscuity that beset them as much as heterosexuals.
The sad fallout of this is that young boys are forced into homosexual affairs. The most vulnerable are those who come to seek employment from villages. Hawkers and maalishwallas at beaches are regularly subjected to such abuse. Forget about arresting them, the cops are happy to pocket hafta – in cash or kind.
The group that is spearheading this latest campaign is really quite ignorant about several basic aspects. They say they do not have figures. According to the Hamsafar Trust that works exclusively with the community the number in India is over 55 million.
Vikram Seth has stated, “It is especially disgraceful that section 377 has on several recent occasions been used by homophobic officials to suppress work of legitimate HIV-prevention groups, leaving gay and bisexual men in India even more defenceless against infection.”
Where vulnerability to HIV infections is concerned, just how many Indians, irrespective of their sexuality, come out and talk about it? Isn’t there the universal fear of being ostracised? And Seth’s comment can be counteracted with a more authoritative voice. Gay activist Ashok Row Kavi protesting against RSS chief K. Sudarshan’s remarks had written in an open letter to him, “Finally, HIV is spread by unprotected sex and has nothing to do with homosexuality. In India, the highest risk factor for women to get HIV-infected is being married to men. It is our lesbian sisters who are possibly the safest because they rarely spread HIV.”
Sensitisation towards marginalised groups is a necessity, but a blind acceptance of their credo will not help them or society.
- Farzana Versey
14.10.06
A Nobel for Grameen=People's victory
From among the list of recent Nobel Peace prize winners, I think this year's choice of Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus has been the least about political-correctness. It reveals tremendous insight into what the world needs today -- vision, an egalitarian economy, the will to make a difference.
I am reproducing below an old article because it says pretty much what I continue to believe in. Some figures may have changed, though...
Penny Wise
Can one person make a difference? How many times have we struggled with this thought when we feel inadequate or helpless, when we look at everything under a microscope rather than with the naked eye.
When we see poverty we shudder or put our bit into a magic box hoping the scourge will disappear by the time we have powdered our noses. Or perhaps we don’t really want it to; we’d just like it to be a little less visible. We’d like someone to grovel at our feet.
“This is again an example of writing the cheque. You stay there, okay, and I’ll take care of you – that is what these societies are telling their poor. But they don’t need handouts, they need opportunity, a fair deal.”
Who said this? Of course, a developmental economist. He broke through the academic walls to face reality, change it. Prof. Muhammad Yunus left his teaching job in the US and headed the economics department of Chittagong University just after the Bangladesh War.
He suddenly found that Independence chose its own favoured sons and theories he taught had nothing to do with the world he lived in. He walked the villages. Once he met a woman who after a hard day’s work managed to make only two pennies because she was caught in the borrow-for-raw-material trap. He scoured around and found many others in a similar predicament: 42 women who would just need the equivalent of $30 to make a living.
He fished out the money from his pocket but he knew this was no solution. There had to be an institutionalised set-up. He approached banks. They asked for collateral. He realised that most banks work like charitable institutions for the rich; if you are wealthy enough to provide guarantee, do you really need the money? He was also against the idea of a guarantor from the village – the poor would become his slave as much as they were of money-lenders.
Yunus chose to become the guarantor, and with $500 he loaned, recovered and thrived. Then he asked the banks to take over. They said it wouldn’t work on a large scale. Again, he did it on his own. In 1983, Grameen Bank was born to cater to landless, assetless people. It has one million borrowers covered in 23,000 villages, which is a third of Bangladesh’s rural areas. Each borrower is also a shareholder.
The obvious question is, do they return the money? The recovery rate is 98 per cent. And this is because Grameen trusts them. It goes to them. And they feel important, in charge of their lives, confident enough to take up the challenge together with the loan which expects repayment with 16 per cent interest.
This has been the bank’s greatest success. Money-borrowing has only been a small part of it. The main aspect is that it has given these people the concept of self-employment. In a country where only a third of the population can find employment, where would that leave the rest? This is what saddened Yunus: “Our economic theory begins with the firm and how much it can produce, how much labour it must employ, how much wage it must pay etc. Why should I be at the mercy of somebody else? I’m a creative person. I can find a way of seeing how to make a living. But that economists have completely lost sight of.”
Together with that they learn to work as a team and this has been made possible because when a person goes to get a loan, it has to be in a group of five; the two most needy will get the money and the three others will act as monitors. The premise being that if they shirk on repayment the group will be under suspicion for further loans. It works because, “when you’re part of a group, you try to do things which will make everybody a winner – you want to do something together that your friends outside your group will appreciate.”
Grameen acts as watchdog in other ways too. It develops social consciousness. Since 92 per cent of its borrowers are women (a fact that has been encouraged after seeing that income from feudal enterprise goes into children’s education and improving the household) messages are easily understood. One is no dowry will be given or taken. As the Grameen family has grown, they don't need to look outside; they marry amongst themselves!
Earlier husbands did not like it too much, but they soon realised where they stood. As the women worked from home, they could get housing loans to protect them from the monsoons.
The bank has taught them about greening (it is one of the largest seedling sellers in the country), about malnutrition, about the future. “Now Grameen has put them in a situation in which they can see the tomorrow and prepare for it.”
If all this sounds wonderful, it is because the scheme has had to face opposition, frustrations and yet stay afloat.
The Leftists argued: “Grameen is a Capitalist conspiracy to destroy prospects of a revolution; to give opium and divert people’s attention from political issues.”
The mullahs ranted, “Grameen is anti-religious. It encourages women to take money and enter a man’s world.”
The professionals said: “Grameen is not concerned about jobless men.”
Yunus realised that working among the poor meant having to ask more questions than coming up with pat answers. To him development has never been jets, highways, and fancy buildings. “If you want an index of development, I would say take per capita sets of clothing or food intake for the bottom 50 per cent. We meet women in Bangladesh who cannot come out of the house because she has washed the clothes she was wearing. To that person to have a change of clothes opens the whole world and re-establishes her dignity.”
Dignity never comes with dramatic flourishes. In a world where banks stay open at night, offer to come to your doorstep, and lure you with enticing schemes only because you can anyway afford it all, Grameen has been doing all this not to help people drive in their limos to withdraw urgent cash to blow up at the night club, but to take away the terror from those whose minds could not fathom that someone could give them money to be able to eat more than one meal and dream of the next.
We, with our foreign bank accounts inundated with colourful mailers, may not even think about such things. But honestly, if there was a bank that cut the spiel and gave me just a dream, I’d put my money on it, not just in it.
(First published in the Mid-day issue of April 9, 1999)
I am reproducing below an old article because it says pretty much what I continue to believe in. Some figures may have changed, though...
Penny Wise
Can one person make a difference? How many times have we struggled with this thought when we feel inadequate or helpless, when we look at everything under a microscope rather than with the naked eye.
When we see poverty we shudder or put our bit into a magic box hoping the scourge will disappear by the time we have powdered our noses. Or perhaps we don’t really want it to; we’d just like it to be a little less visible. We’d like someone to grovel at our feet.
“This is again an example of writing the cheque. You stay there, okay, and I’ll take care of you – that is what these societies are telling their poor. But they don’t need handouts, they need opportunity, a fair deal.”
Who said this? Of course, a developmental economist. He broke through the academic walls to face reality, change it. Prof. Muhammad Yunus left his teaching job in the US and headed the economics department of Chittagong University just after the Bangladesh War.
He suddenly found that Independence chose its own favoured sons and theories he taught had nothing to do with the world he lived in. He walked the villages. Once he met a woman who after a hard day’s work managed to make only two pennies because she was caught in the borrow-for-raw-material trap. He scoured around and found many others in a similar predicament: 42 women who would just need the equivalent of $30 to make a living.
He fished out the money from his pocket but he knew this was no solution. There had to be an institutionalised set-up. He approached banks. They asked for collateral. He realised that most banks work like charitable institutions for the rich; if you are wealthy enough to provide guarantee, do you really need the money? He was also against the idea of a guarantor from the village – the poor would become his slave as much as they were of money-lenders.
Yunus chose to become the guarantor, and with $500 he loaned, recovered and thrived. Then he asked the banks to take over. They said it wouldn’t work on a large scale. Again, he did it on his own. In 1983, Grameen Bank was born to cater to landless, assetless people. It has one million borrowers covered in 23,000 villages, which is a third of Bangladesh’s rural areas. Each borrower is also a shareholder.
The obvious question is, do they return the money? The recovery rate is 98 per cent. And this is because Grameen trusts them. It goes to them. And they feel important, in charge of their lives, confident enough to take up the challenge together with the loan which expects repayment with 16 per cent interest.
This has been the bank’s greatest success. Money-borrowing has only been a small part of it. The main aspect is that it has given these people the concept of self-employment. In a country where only a third of the population can find employment, where would that leave the rest? This is what saddened Yunus: “Our economic theory begins with the firm and how much it can produce, how much labour it must employ, how much wage it must pay etc. Why should I be at the mercy of somebody else? I’m a creative person. I can find a way of seeing how to make a living. But that economists have completely lost sight of.”
Together with that they learn to work as a team and this has been made possible because when a person goes to get a loan, it has to be in a group of five; the two most needy will get the money and the three others will act as monitors. The premise being that if they shirk on repayment the group will be under suspicion for further loans. It works because, “when you’re part of a group, you try to do things which will make everybody a winner – you want to do something together that your friends outside your group will appreciate.”
Grameen acts as watchdog in other ways too. It develops social consciousness. Since 92 per cent of its borrowers are women (a fact that has been encouraged after seeing that income from feudal enterprise goes into children’s education and improving the household) messages are easily understood. One is no dowry will be given or taken. As the Grameen family has grown, they don't need to look outside; they marry amongst themselves!
Earlier husbands did not like it too much, but they soon realised where they stood. As the women worked from home, they could get housing loans to protect them from the monsoons.
The bank has taught them about greening (it is one of the largest seedling sellers in the country), about malnutrition, about the future. “Now Grameen has put them in a situation in which they can see the tomorrow and prepare for it.”
If all this sounds wonderful, it is because the scheme has had to face opposition, frustrations and yet stay afloat.
The Leftists argued: “Grameen is a Capitalist conspiracy to destroy prospects of a revolution; to give opium and divert people’s attention from political issues.”
The mullahs ranted, “Grameen is anti-religious. It encourages women to take money and enter a man’s world.”
The professionals said: “Grameen is not concerned about jobless men.”
Yunus realised that working among the poor meant having to ask more questions than coming up with pat answers. To him development has never been jets, highways, and fancy buildings. “If you want an index of development, I would say take per capita sets of clothing or food intake for the bottom 50 per cent. We meet women in Bangladesh who cannot come out of the house because she has washed the clothes she was wearing. To that person to have a change of clothes opens the whole world and re-establishes her dignity.”
Dignity never comes with dramatic flourishes. In a world where banks stay open at night, offer to come to your doorstep, and lure you with enticing schemes only because you can anyway afford it all, Grameen has been doing all this not to help people drive in their limos to withdraw urgent cash to blow up at the night club, but to take away the terror from those whose minds could not fathom that someone could give them money to be able to eat more than one meal and dream of the next.
We, with our foreign bank accounts inundated with colourful mailers, may not even think about such things. But honestly, if there was a bank that cut the spiel and gave me just a dream, I’d put my money on it, not just in it.
(First published in the Mid-day issue of April 9, 1999)
13.10.06
Belabouring Over Child Labour
Belabouring Over Child Labour
By Farzana Versey
Countercurrents.org
October 13, 2006
The Indian government's recent announcement banning the employment of children as domestic servants and workers in roadside eateries, restaurants, teashops starts with a problem. The age limit is below 14 years. And its figures are 80 per cent off the mark – the verdict talks about 20 million children whereas the number is close to a 100 million.
Child labour is an inevitability. It sounds awfully romantic to shed tears over this fact, but then we forget that if they were not rolling beedis or knotting carpets or serving food, they would be out in the streets robbing, soliciting or even begging. The last ought to be taken into special account because there is a large mafia that maims children for them to qualify as prized beggars.
Often children work on their own in these unorganised sectors before they 'graduate' to working for employers. This is where a defined exploitation comes in.
Gerard Oonk, spokesperson of the international campaign 'Stop Child Labour – School is the best place to work', that India is affiliated to, has commented on the recent ban: "This is a very important step in the fight against child labour. Hopefully the Indian government will combine it with sound rehabilitation programmes, as many children are traumatized, and with programmes to get them into regular schools, either directly or through special bridge programmes."
This is naïve and hands over responsibility to an establishment that in the past took action only because the United States refused to buy our carpets. A follow-up action is a utopian dream. In our armchair cogitations, we completely forget the person at the centre of this: the child.
I have met a number of children working in private establishments in the tanneries at Dharavi, in shops, doing arduous work, and they all felt work was the only way out. Mubarak who left a job washing dishes at a small restaurant now works in a factory making flash doors and at the very suggestion of banning child labour he had smirked, "What's wrong with working anyway? It is better than being in the streets. If you ask me I am willing to work anywhere, do anything as long as I make money. I have to survive in this city."
Together with child labour are connected the issues of other remedial actions, for many of them are immigrants. The pavement becomes the child's home. In Brazil they used to kill street children; in India it is a case of slow poisoning – hafta, drug peddling, pimping, prostitution and the inhumanity which robs them of innocence.
The present ban that has been imposed under the Child labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 mentions frequent physical violence, psychological traumas and "at some times" sexual abuse. Long working hours are mentioned, too.
Who is going to ensure that there will not be night shift, that there will be a one-hour rest period in the stipulated six-hour day, and that the employer would maintain a muster roll? Isn't the employer the exploiter? Aren't the parents conniving due to financial compulsions?
Children themselves are powerless. Sanctifying child labour with all the provisions will not take away the bondage factor, just as abolishing it on paper is not going to end its practice. Several years ago a Bill was tabled in the Upper House making provisions for minimum legal protection: "Any person can file a complaint before the courts," it said in all earnestness.
Who would go around scouting in factories, make-shift hovels and homes to find beleaguered children who would bare their souls? Moreover, who would take the case to court? Would the parents, themselves ignorant, helpless and a party to the deal, fight against an employer who is their mai-baap? Or does the law think that work experience has made the child so mature that s/he could hire a lawyer and make the employer a respondent?
Let us extend the parameters a bit. Remember all those children immortalised in Mira Nair's film 'Salaam Bombay'? They were back to where they belonged, where they were meant to belong. In the gush of authenticity it was forgotten that the raw emotions they exposed for the camera would stay with them. They too were exploited.
Or take the reality shows on television, be it a fun programme or a serious music contest. Children look and perform like adults and are made to wear outlandish and vulgar clothes. It isn't their education that counts, but how well they can manipulate the audience to send SMS votes that seems to matter.
Parents themselves exploit these kids by pushing them in directions they had wanted to go but couldn't. Under the garb of promoting their untapped talent, they display them as their property, emotionally blackmailing them all the time.
Employers are only one of the categories of exploiters.
By Farzana Versey
Countercurrents.org
October 13, 2006
The Indian government's recent announcement banning the employment of children as domestic servants and workers in roadside eateries, restaurants, teashops starts with a problem. The age limit is below 14 years. And its figures are 80 per cent off the mark – the verdict talks about 20 million children whereas the number is close to a 100 million.
Child labour is an inevitability. It sounds awfully romantic to shed tears over this fact, but then we forget that if they were not rolling beedis or knotting carpets or serving food, they would be out in the streets robbing, soliciting or even begging. The last ought to be taken into special account because there is a large mafia that maims children for them to qualify as prized beggars.
Often children work on their own in these unorganised sectors before they 'graduate' to working for employers. This is where a defined exploitation comes in.
Gerard Oonk, spokesperson of the international campaign 'Stop Child Labour – School is the best place to work', that India is affiliated to, has commented on the recent ban: "This is a very important step in the fight against child labour. Hopefully the Indian government will combine it with sound rehabilitation programmes, as many children are traumatized, and with programmes to get them into regular schools, either directly or through special bridge programmes."
This is naïve and hands over responsibility to an establishment that in the past took action only because the United States refused to buy our carpets. A follow-up action is a utopian dream. In our armchair cogitations, we completely forget the person at the centre of this: the child.
I have met a number of children working in private establishments in the tanneries at Dharavi, in shops, doing arduous work, and they all felt work was the only way out. Mubarak who left a job washing dishes at a small restaurant now works in a factory making flash doors and at the very suggestion of banning child labour he had smirked, "What's wrong with working anyway? It is better than being in the streets. If you ask me I am willing to work anywhere, do anything as long as I make money. I have to survive in this city."
Together with child labour are connected the issues of other remedial actions, for many of them are immigrants. The pavement becomes the child's home. In Brazil they used to kill street children; in India it is a case of slow poisoning – hafta, drug peddling, pimping, prostitution and the inhumanity which robs them of innocence.
The present ban that has been imposed under the Child labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 mentions frequent physical violence, psychological traumas and "at some times" sexual abuse. Long working hours are mentioned, too.
Who is going to ensure that there will not be night shift, that there will be a one-hour rest period in the stipulated six-hour day, and that the employer would maintain a muster roll? Isn't the employer the exploiter? Aren't the parents conniving due to financial compulsions?
Children themselves are powerless. Sanctifying child labour with all the provisions will not take away the bondage factor, just as abolishing it on paper is not going to end its practice. Several years ago a Bill was tabled in the Upper House making provisions for minimum legal protection: "Any person can file a complaint before the courts," it said in all earnestness.
Who would go around scouting in factories, make-shift hovels and homes to find beleaguered children who would bare their souls? Moreover, who would take the case to court? Would the parents, themselves ignorant, helpless and a party to the deal, fight against an employer who is their mai-baap? Or does the law think that work experience has made the child so mature that s/he could hire a lawyer and make the employer a respondent?
Let us extend the parameters a bit. Remember all those children immortalised in Mira Nair's film 'Salaam Bombay'? They were back to where they belonged, where they were meant to belong. In the gush of authenticity it was forgotten that the raw emotions they exposed for the camera would stay with them. They too were exploited.
Or take the reality shows on television, be it a fun programme or a serious music contest. Children look and perform like adults and are made to wear outlandish and vulgar clothes. It isn't their education that counts, but how well they can manipulate the audience to send SMS votes that seems to matter.
Parents themselves exploit these kids by pushing them in directions they had wanted to go but couldn't. Under the garb of promoting their untapped talent, they display them as their property, emotionally blackmailing them all the time.
Employers are only one of the categories of exploiters.
Darkness at noon
I had spoken about prejudices in the earlier blog; here is my article on how I was seen as a racist and other issues...
Darkness at noon
Keith’s letter was soiled with innuendo. Every word was mocking me. “You think you are a liberal? Bah!” And then he told me he was in a serious relationship with an Australian, “a White woman, and unlike you she truly believes that all are equal”. I was overcome with both hurt and anger.
We had met because I was fascinated by his doctoral thesis. But when he asked me out, I refused. My reason was personal and I did not feel the need to explain it to him. I did not know he had held it against me. That he would want to hit out at me years later for a perceived slight. I wondered how I should feel. Embarrassed? Sympathetic? Or take it as just another day? Had he been upfront and told me that he felt rejected because of his colour and had I placated him that this was not an issue, he would have to look for other reasons. That would not have helped him, for he was seeing everything through the black tunnel. Sometimes I felt that by having me as a friend he was scoring points; the other Africans who come to study in India feel extremely alienated.
The others: you see them huddled together in their foreign-ness in the students’ hostel. Pigments speak and tongues stay silent. Traumas echo deja vu in the very next room. Observing this, I could understand their loneliness.
But why is it that their upward mobility rests on trying to become what they are not?
Why did Keith say he was an African-American in his first letter to me? Wasn’t this a lie only to legitimise himself? What was wrong in saying he was a Nigerian? Why did he describe himself as a good-looking, tall, well-built model when he knew I was not in the glamour business and he initially only wanted to discuss Third World phenomena with me?
“You don’t understand,” a Palestinian student told me. “We are all away from home, but they have more problems because of the way they look and talk. It is sad, they feel very isolated.”
There is most certainly apartheid, Indian style. Black is not brown, and we sure as hell notice that. They feel snubbed in local trains, in buses, in shops. Even in small cafes, a backpacking White will get better treatment than a decently-dressed Black.
Mumbai, the bhel-puri bowl that seems to be made up of diverse ingredients, holds more promise than it can deliver.
What were the expectations?
“We didn’t expect to be seen as savages. They tell us to our face that we are monkeys,” said Desmond, a Sudanese. He was eating a banana as I sipped some milky-sweet coffee. We were sitting in the canteen. It isn’t the most lively place; in fact, the desolation is disconcerting. And when they open up, one begins to wonder who is living in a shell – they or us?
There have been frightening instances. One student was pushed out of a train, and he died. In a city where a lot of people dot the tracks in rigor mortis this might seem like one more case. Except that those who come from elsewhere are more insecure about their position in a society they choose to spend a few years in. They think they are being singled out.
While they share some warm moments with Indian students and adopt Indian families through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, they cannot stride into office or raise uncomfortable questions. Either it is diffidence or it is a genuine fear of the consequences.
How can they amalgamate and yet remain rocklike in their endeavour to be themselves?
The assumption that they are all about rap music and a Harlem ghetto may seem hip, but within their hearts they seethe. Uko sounded indignant. “Africa is a huge continent. Most people do not even know the names of our countries. If a Black tourist is caught with drugs, everyone starts looking at us as criminals.”
I recalled what Djimon Honsbu, the Oscar-nominated actor who was introduced in Amistad, had once said: “I was very shy and did not have the mentality of a street boy. I couldn’t hustle in the way some of them could. I would wait until it was really dark, and then I would go to the apartment buildings and go through their garbage and find bread or anything that had been thrown away to eat.”
Money is a big issue for these students too. Though the Indian government does try to offer concessions and the embassies come to their help, but as Desmond said, “If you desperately need something, you cannot go knocking on the doors of embassies. Who do we turn to when we are in need?” They have the respective associations of their countries to fall back on, but an organisation can never replicate the warm embrace of a friend.
What is peculiar to India is that while we can kill softly with our hyped-up hospitality, we can also strike a death blow with our absolute disregard for the other point of view. The others are presumed to be what they are because of karma, of course! So how can a black person really share as an equal, instead of merely getting snapshots from under the wisdom tree?
Meanwhile they are building bridges of another kind. “We watch Hindi movies, dance at local discotheques, eat idli-dosa.” And cry at night. For them, darkness is a refuge. It can hide many things, including themselves.
(This was published in The Friday Times)
Darkness at noon
Keith’s letter was soiled with innuendo. Every word was mocking me. “You think you are a liberal? Bah!” And then he told me he was in a serious relationship with an Australian, “a White woman, and unlike you she truly believes that all are equal”. I was overcome with both hurt and anger.
We had met because I was fascinated by his doctoral thesis. But when he asked me out, I refused. My reason was personal and I did not feel the need to explain it to him. I did not know he had held it against me. That he would want to hit out at me years later for a perceived slight. I wondered how I should feel. Embarrassed? Sympathetic? Or take it as just another day? Had he been upfront and told me that he felt rejected because of his colour and had I placated him that this was not an issue, he would have to look for other reasons. That would not have helped him, for he was seeing everything through the black tunnel. Sometimes I felt that by having me as a friend he was scoring points; the other Africans who come to study in India feel extremely alienated.
The others: you see them huddled together in their foreign-ness in the students’ hostel. Pigments speak and tongues stay silent. Traumas echo deja vu in the very next room. Observing this, I could understand their loneliness.
But why is it that their upward mobility rests on trying to become what they are not?
Why did Keith say he was an African-American in his first letter to me? Wasn’t this a lie only to legitimise himself? What was wrong in saying he was a Nigerian? Why did he describe himself as a good-looking, tall, well-built model when he knew I was not in the glamour business and he initially only wanted to discuss Third World phenomena with me?
“You don’t understand,” a Palestinian student told me. “We are all away from home, but they have more problems because of the way they look and talk. It is sad, they feel very isolated.”
There is most certainly apartheid, Indian style. Black is not brown, and we sure as hell notice that. They feel snubbed in local trains, in buses, in shops. Even in small cafes, a backpacking White will get better treatment than a decently-dressed Black.
Mumbai, the bhel-puri bowl that seems to be made up of diverse ingredients, holds more promise than it can deliver.
What were the expectations?
“We didn’t expect to be seen as savages. They tell us to our face that we are monkeys,” said Desmond, a Sudanese. He was eating a banana as I sipped some milky-sweet coffee. We were sitting in the canteen. It isn’t the most lively place; in fact, the desolation is disconcerting. And when they open up, one begins to wonder who is living in a shell – they or us?
There have been frightening instances. One student was pushed out of a train, and he died. In a city where a lot of people dot the tracks in rigor mortis this might seem like one more case. Except that those who come from elsewhere are more insecure about their position in a society they choose to spend a few years in. They think they are being singled out.
While they share some warm moments with Indian students and adopt Indian families through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, they cannot stride into office or raise uncomfortable questions. Either it is diffidence or it is a genuine fear of the consequences.
How can they amalgamate and yet remain rocklike in their endeavour to be themselves?
The assumption that they are all about rap music and a Harlem ghetto may seem hip, but within their hearts they seethe. Uko sounded indignant. “Africa is a huge continent. Most people do not even know the names of our countries. If a Black tourist is caught with drugs, everyone starts looking at us as criminals.”
I recalled what Djimon Honsbu, the Oscar-nominated actor who was introduced in Amistad, had once said: “I was very shy and did not have the mentality of a street boy. I couldn’t hustle in the way some of them could. I would wait until it was really dark, and then I would go to the apartment buildings and go through their garbage and find bread or anything that had been thrown away to eat.”
Money is a big issue for these students too. Though the Indian government does try to offer concessions and the embassies come to their help, but as Desmond said, “If you desperately need something, you cannot go knocking on the doors of embassies. Who do we turn to when we are in need?” They have the respective associations of their countries to fall back on, but an organisation can never replicate the warm embrace of a friend.
What is peculiar to India is that while we can kill softly with our hyped-up hospitality, we can also strike a death blow with our absolute disregard for the other point of view. The others are presumed to be what they are because of karma, of course! So how can a black person really share as an equal, instead of merely getting snapshots from under the wisdom tree?
Meanwhile they are building bridges of another kind. “We watch Hindi movies, dance at local discotheques, eat idli-dosa.” And cry at night. For them, darkness is a refuge. It can hide many things, including themselves.
(This was published in The Friday Times)
12.10.06
Another Kiran -- this time Fortune's
Three Indian women have made it to Fortune’s 50 most powerful businesswomen in the world list.
While Chanda Kochchar and Naina Lal Kidwai are bankers, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is an entrepreneur. As head of Biocon, she has revolutionised the biopharmaceutical industry.
Of course, I do not understand a thing about the subject. I had met her years ago at the airport departure lounge in Mumbai. I was a bit fidgety as I had an important assignment that same evening. A slightly plump woman came and sat next to me. We exchanged smiles.
She guessed I was on work; I was doing everything possible to convey I meant business to hide the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing. I have noticed that if you appear laidback and chilled out, nobody takes you seriously. At that stage, I wanted to convey I was serious.
“Yes,” I replied. She was a curious person and wanted to know more. I told her and suddenly I was like my old stupid self, sounding excited. I did not ask her much, but she told me to get in touch with her if I needed anything. She handed me a card. It said ‘Biocon’. It sounded like medicine, so I dumped it in my bag.
Two days into my ‘work’ and I had an evening free. I dialled Kiran’s number and she immediately invited me over. She wanted to know how I’d get there. “Oh, I’ll manage,” I said like always do.
I looked at the address on the visiting card and called up the photographer to ask him how far it was. He said, “Kiran Mazumdar? Great.”
Why was it great? He explained to me that she was quite a biggie. I did not want him around. So I hired a taxi that drove me to god-knows-where. She was a warm person; her living room seemed to be a bit dark for tea-time, though. We indulged in what seemed like girlie talk for quite a while and then I realised that she was a biggie. This meant I could interview her.
“You know I can interview you,” I said.
To her credit, she remained unfazed. I rattled off general, non-Biocon type questions and she answered. I cannot recall much, which is surprising, but it wasn’t a dazzling performance. Later, I wrote it out, adding a lot of background details, and gave it to the editor. “Who is she?” I was asked.
“She heads Biocon,” I said authoritatively.
“Uhh…we’ll see.”
The interview was never used. I did not even bother to remind the editor. And today I do not kick myself for not preserving a copy.
What struck me about the woman then was her humaneness, and that is what I will remember. Her being on Fortune’s list is less important to me than her being the child of fortune and hard work.
While Chanda Kochchar and Naina Lal Kidwai are bankers, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is an entrepreneur. As head of Biocon, she has revolutionised the biopharmaceutical industry.
Of course, I do not understand a thing about the subject. I had met her years ago at the airport departure lounge in Mumbai. I was a bit fidgety as I had an important assignment that same evening. A slightly plump woman came and sat next to me. We exchanged smiles.
She guessed I was on work; I was doing everything possible to convey I meant business to hide the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing. I have noticed that if you appear laidback and chilled out, nobody takes you seriously. At that stage, I wanted to convey I was serious.
“Yes,” I replied. She was a curious person and wanted to know more. I told her and suddenly I was like my old stupid self, sounding excited. I did not ask her much, but she told me to get in touch with her if I needed anything. She handed me a card. It said ‘Biocon’. It sounded like medicine, so I dumped it in my bag.
Two days into my ‘work’ and I had an evening free. I dialled Kiran’s number and she immediately invited me over. She wanted to know how I’d get there. “Oh, I’ll manage,” I said like always do.
I looked at the address on the visiting card and called up the photographer to ask him how far it was. He said, “Kiran Mazumdar? Great.”
Why was it great? He explained to me that she was quite a biggie. I did not want him around. So I hired a taxi that drove me to god-knows-where. She was a warm person; her living room seemed to be a bit dark for tea-time, though. We indulged in what seemed like girlie talk for quite a while and then I realised that she was a biggie. This meant I could interview her.
“You know I can interview you,” I said.
To her credit, she remained unfazed. I rattled off general, non-Biocon type questions and she answered. I cannot recall much, which is surprising, but it wasn’t a dazzling performance. Later, I wrote it out, adding a lot of background details, and gave it to the editor. “Who is she?” I was asked.
“She heads Biocon,” I said authoritatively.
“Uhh…we’ll see.”
The interview was never used. I did not even bother to remind the editor. And today I do not kick myself for not preserving a copy.
What struck me about the woman then was her humaneness, and that is what I will remember. Her being on Fortune’s list is less important to me than her being the child of fortune and hard work.
10.10.06
The Kanshi Ram that Mayawati kept alive
That the funeral rites of Kanshi Ram should get embroiled in controversy is no surprise. I’d say he has been among the most under-rated leaders in India. In a society where caste matters, his Bahujan Samaj Party was meant for those who to this day have to go through the ignominy of being called ‘lower caste’ and ‘untouchable’ in some parts of rural India.
He became a Dalit, like many such ‘backward class’ people do. To stick one’s neck out in a place where politics is gossip, appetizer and a dose of nashaa, was indeed a bold move. Uttar Pradesh has always been a thakur/dacoit/local mafia domain.
Kanshi Ram changed all that. There were taller leaders than him, but they went the route of national politics. He stayed put in the vast expanse of UP. And then he introduced Mayawati. There is no doubt that he groomed her and pushed her in the forefront, and in an atmosphere where hypocrisy prevails, these two broke all those barriers to openly live together without engaging in any discussions on the subject.
Mayawati has had to bear a lot of flak, some of it well-deserved. She is a shrill woman, power-hungry, making use of her position to start completely faulty projects. On one of my visits to Lucknow when she was the chief minister, there was this horrendous Ambedkar park project with the leader’s statue on a granite platform.
She is wrong on many counts. But how worse is she than other leaders? Mulayam is a shrewd little man. While Mayawati can rightly be blamed for initiating the Taj corridor project, he has been giving away precious farmer’s land to Reliance for a pittance. He went about preening as ‘Maulana Mulayam’ but he will ditch any cause to become ’Mahant Mulayam’. He has his hangers-on, notably Amar Singh, who is a useless, media crazy man. He spends time doling out Rajya Sabha tickets and other sops to celebrities. Mulayam Singh is today Amitabh Bachchan’s devta. Why? Mr. Bachchan lives in Mumbai, has loads of money and fame. Why does a politician in another state become his god? One is aware that god is omnipotent etc, but faith has got to have some basis.
Mayawati has to work with these people around. They say she kept Kanshi Ram in captivity. Even if she did, he was terribly ill when we saw him on a TV programme. I think she kept the myth alive. But being a single woman in a place where you find shops selling arms openly in the bazaars she had to be attributed with dire motives. No politician works without motives, but the gender factor did come in here.
To make matters a bit more difficult, unlike Jayalalitha she does not have a convent accent and her guru was not a dead film star. She lacks glamour and speaks for those who are voiceless. Kanshi Ram saw the spark in her and she retained it and the memory of the man.
She is certainly not the best thing around, but to keep the wolves at bay we cannot have little Red Riding Hoods lost in the woods.
She will now be faced with Kanshi Ram’s ghost by those who didn’t give a damn about him. It is time we accepted that a person – and a woman too – has an individual style of functioning. Her tribute to her mentor will be to shut the mouths of the naysayers and truly work for those who have no say and have no right of way…
He became a Dalit, like many such ‘backward class’ people do. To stick one’s neck out in a place where politics is gossip, appetizer and a dose of nashaa, was indeed a bold move. Uttar Pradesh has always been a thakur/dacoit/local mafia domain.
Kanshi Ram changed all that. There were taller leaders than him, but they went the route of national politics. He stayed put in the vast expanse of UP. And then he introduced Mayawati. There is no doubt that he groomed her and pushed her in the forefront, and in an atmosphere where hypocrisy prevails, these two broke all those barriers to openly live together without engaging in any discussions on the subject.
Mayawati has had to bear a lot of flak, some of it well-deserved. She is a shrill woman, power-hungry, making use of her position to start completely faulty projects. On one of my visits to Lucknow when she was the chief minister, there was this horrendous Ambedkar park project with the leader’s statue on a granite platform.
She is wrong on many counts. But how worse is she than other leaders? Mulayam is a shrewd little man. While Mayawati can rightly be blamed for initiating the Taj corridor project, he has been giving away precious farmer’s land to Reliance for a pittance. He went about preening as ‘Maulana Mulayam’ but he will ditch any cause to become ’Mahant Mulayam’. He has his hangers-on, notably Amar Singh, who is a useless, media crazy man. He spends time doling out Rajya Sabha tickets and other sops to celebrities. Mulayam Singh is today Amitabh Bachchan’s devta. Why? Mr. Bachchan lives in Mumbai, has loads of money and fame. Why does a politician in another state become his god? One is aware that god is omnipotent etc, but faith has got to have some basis.
Mayawati has to work with these people around. They say she kept Kanshi Ram in captivity. Even if she did, he was terribly ill when we saw him on a TV programme. I think she kept the myth alive. But being a single woman in a place where you find shops selling arms openly in the bazaars she had to be attributed with dire motives. No politician works without motives, but the gender factor did come in here.
To make matters a bit more difficult, unlike Jayalalitha she does not have a convent accent and her guru was not a dead film star. She lacks glamour and speaks for those who are voiceless. Kanshi Ram saw the spark in her and she retained it and the memory of the man.
She is certainly not the best thing around, but to keep the wolves at bay we cannot have little Red Riding Hoods lost in the woods.
She will now be faced with Kanshi Ram’s ghost by those who didn’t give a damn about him. It is time we accepted that a person – and a woman too – has an individual style of functioning. Her tribute to her mentor will be to shut the mouths of the naysayers and truly work for those who have no say and have no right of way…
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