Cross Connections

Watching Sex, Reading Sex

2012-01-31T22:04:00.001+05:30

Plot or no plot, our bodies react to what we see. So, when film directors say that some sexually explicit scenes are not meant to titillate but are crucial to the plot, I wonder. People do not get intimate in the streets for a reason – it is about intimacy, and that is private.

That is the reason I do not understand why director David Fincher insisted that he will not allow the cuts in his film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo recommended by the Indian censor board. The suggestion was to blur bare bottoms and bare breasts.

When access to varied forms of media is easy, one might question such prudery. This is precisely the point. Sexuality titillates and there is nothing that would make it so crucial to the story. People are watching YouTube videos of real people being battered and raped. It is all live streaming. Even if we find it squeamish, our brains are partitioned enough to ‘enjoy’ what is going on without endorsing it.

Is it cultural? To an extent. But even in the more open societies, one cannot assume that love-making is necessarily seen in context and not just for pleasure. Cinema is in a sense a tactile medium, besides addressing the sensory stimuli of sight and sound. It transfers the smells to us, especially if we are watching it in an auditorium with others. Taste is about dry throats, salivating salvation.

One of the most disturbing rape scenes I have watched did not show anything. It was in a Hindi film, Ghar. It relied purely on one piercing sound and the aftermath was in the eyes. Yet, one could feel the terror.

For someone who talks about several sexually related subjects, I do get uncomfortable watching explicit scenes. It could be partly a sense of shame that is ingrained in us, and also fear about one’s hormonal responses. There are beautiful sequences that build up like foreplay, but I want them to stop just short. Again, a comment I always recollect is when a Hindi film director, known for his light comedies and subtle romances, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, was asked why he did not show bedroom scenes in his films, he said something to the effect that he left the room when his characters made love.

There has been a departure and we have some hardcore films. Unfortunately, however hard they try, they look self-conscious. I don’t see much ‘realistic’ difference in the deliciously simulated Bollywood kiss that showed two flowers meeting and today’s lip licking and finger sucking. Both are merely conveying something. And for those who go on and on about the Kama Sutra and how free we were, well it was written by Vatsyayana, a celibate, and he used his imagination.

Sexuality in contemporary cinema does not leave much to the imagination although in other aspects there are several nuances it lets us explore.

Does one say the same about books? Can we not get turned on by a piece of writing? Of course.

I had read an account by a person I respect a lot. She spoke about her personal experience with date rape. If the idea was to display the gruesomeness, it did not work. The graphic details of being roughed up, being pushed, while she was in her senses and in fact continued talking to the man, and then the assault from the back just made it exciting in a macabre sort of way. I speak here as a woman who has and will raise my voice against such violence and abuse. But I cannot deny that reading that did not nauseate me; it had the opposite effect. Perhaps too much empathy makes one feel it right in the bones as well as flesh.

Why was it so? Because, she did convey any hatred towards what was happening while it was happening. It was later that she realised that it was an intrusion. This is to not to justify my response, which might for all you know have been similar had I watched animals on Discovery Channel. What I am saying is that sex in any form is titillating, whatever be the motive.

Some of my poetry has been described as ‘raw’. It comes from rawness, whatever other emotions go along with it. Obviously, the potency registers more sharply than the purging. But then, tears too are wet.

Radia Tapes: Open Sesame?

2012-01-31T20:19:00.000+05:30

We have seen how the 2G scam unfolded. Important people were packed off to jail. The really prominent names were not. No Tata, no Ambani. The role of the lobbyist thawed. Nira Radia became a ghostly figure making court appearances.

Now, the tapes that were at the centre of the controversy have been given a clean chit. I say tapes deliberately:

The Centre has argued before the Supreme Court that the Nira Radia tapes that were leaked to the media were tampered with. The tapes contained conversations between lobbyist Nira Radia and various industry leaders. The government has also stated that the tapes were not leaked by government agencies. The government said there were eight to ten agencies, including service providers, involved in the tapping of telephonic conversation of former corporate lobbyist Nira Radia.

Is this a victory for anyone? Was it not the government that was culpable, to begin with? So, how is the government version acceptable? What are government agencies doing? Why was the inquiry handled by the Ministry of Finance who appointed officers to investigate into the case?

The report says the starting and the end point of the conversation do not match with the original tapes, Justice Singhvi said referring to the report. He said the report also says that officers, who had conducted the probe, do not know who has leaked it."It is quite possible that someone else has done it," the bench said.

This is the SC making such vague statements. Of course, it is possible. We have seen the Shanti Bhushan case; Amar Singh is now a veteran in these false tape cases. Is it not crucial to ask who leaked the tapes and why?

Why should we accept the government statement when we doubt it on almost every other occasion? It is a seriously flawed argument, for the government got trapped in the scams. Why would it leak the tapes, anyway? To clear the main decks?

The other possibility is business rivalry and ego.

I had written the following a while ago:

We are witnessing this farce as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), while not yet giving a clean chit to Ratan Tata and Anil Ambani, has been talking about their honesty and how candid they have been. Niira Radia has been called “evasive”.

Ratan Tata, when asked about his letter to the Tamil Nadu chief minister praising Raja’s work in the telecom ministry, with some gumption said, “We had a chemistry problem with (his predecessor Dayanidhi) Maran.” Yet, he claimed, “I didn’t manipulate the system for 2G licence allocation.” Did not Mr Tata file a petition regarding breach of privacy about the leaked tapes? The political machinery does not wish to completely alienate the corporate lobby, so it accused Radia of being anti-national and an agent of foreign intelligence agencies.

Both sides are getting trapped in quick sand and they need to prop each other up without being seen to ostensibly do so. Why did they not produce records of the Rs. 300 crore that Radia had accumulated? Of course, there is every possibility of impropriety, but for whom and for what?

If foreign agencies were involved, how did they pay her so that the authorities would know the amount? Have the finance and other departments tapped those calls from foreign agencies? What foreign agencies have interests in seeing to it that the Ambanis and Tatas get the prime deals? Which foreign agency would be interested in what portfolio Raja got? It might be important to examine how these players then can be indicted for such foreign connections as well as anti-national activities, including the governments, past and present, for accommodating them.

This is a morass. Now, we come to the media. There was a huge noise by those who were acting as whistle-blowers as well as the ones defamed. The strange aspect is that both groups have continued with their work and moved on. Vir Sanghvi had, in fact, sent the tapes to a couple of laboratories abroad that showed there was something amiss. Will the government use this as evidence? What about the magazines that carried transcripts – will the courts file a case against them?

How much of it is fake? If the “starting and end point” do not match, then what happens to the middle? Besides, who will be seen as culprits in these tampered tapes – will there be a hierarchy of favoured ones and those who can be put to pasture? The politicians, the businessmen and executives, the media persons – if some of their conversations have been tampered with, then does it follow that everything is? Does it, therefore, falsify the whole case and we discover there has been no scam at all?

And to think that a whole people’s movement started by riding on this wave. It is the people who will have to live with such half-truths.

Do read The Media as Middleman for a background and more

Gandhi: Man for all Seasons

2012-01-30T15:24:00.003+05:30

Had there been no Mahatma Gandhi, we would not have to invent/imagine/simulate/recreate/upgrade one. That would have been a truly good thing for India. For there are a few Gandhi ideas that are the overloaded baggage we have been left to deal with. Instead of accepting the fallacy of these, we are forced to deify them out of force of habit or because we love holy cows.

Gandhi with Nehru and Sardar Patel

Gandhiji learned well from the British about divide and rule. Without being a part of active politics, he played one against the other, knowing well that everyone, including he, had to deal with an ego. It was his ‘suggestions’ about the prime ministership that resulted in a game of musical chairs.

Gandhiji started the strategy of what came to be called, and derogatorily at that, the policy of appeasement. His alignment with the Khilafat movement was as politically expedient as Jinnah’s new-found discovery of sherwani politics. But, at least, he had the good sense to form a country. Gandhi’s legacy continues to force groups to ‘cater’ to Muslims, and for Muslims to be used, and at times use, this policy.

Gandhiji’s ahimsa resulted in people being beaten up. Non-violence should essentially mean a state of peacefulness. Offering the other cheek does not wipe out the violent principle. Even today, there is more violence in the name of maintaining law and order or protecting the peace of the country. Such irony.

Gandhiji’s experiments with toilet cleaning only made it clear that this was a low job and he was taking it up to dignify it. It was a generous gesture, the magnanimity of the high-born. The term Harijan – god’s children – was just such a pat pigeonhole. Everyone is considered god’s child for non Darwinists, and in India it is generally considered so. He was creating one more ‘special’ interest group. There was no suggestion that they could rise above toilet cleaning.

Gandhiji’s swadeshi movement only managed to make a bonfire for his vanity. It was like bra-burning feminists. People did not adopt the charkha and khadi is today a designer garment. Also, while promoting all things indigenous, he was quite happy to be ministered to by his foreign acolytes.

Gandhiji brought religion into state politics. He spoke in terms of dharma, and invoked god. His public gatherings were prayer meetings held in an ashram. This was his idea of secular nationalism.

Gandhiji pushed the rural ideal of India living in the villages. While this is true, the process of industrialisation was burdened with guilt. It led to Nehru’s destructive policies of socialism, which was neither here nor there.

Gandhiji’s abjuring of wealth and worldly desires were personal whims that he projected as part of an iconic lifestyle. This was brand creation. Had he been true to it, he would not need to announce it. His hosts were big business houses, and he put many people to test only to test his own mettle. This was not sacrifice, but selfishness.

Gandhiji is largely responsible for post-Independence kingmakers. He had no dynasty, but he had a pedestal from where he could wave the baton and orchestrate major events, often not giving a thought to the consequences. From L.K.Advani to Sonia Gandhi, these moments of ‘sacrifice’ have only drawn the nation into a leaderless state or a state with a leader as mask/puppet.

The fact that people as far removed from each other as Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Anna Hazare, Yaseen Malik think of him as an ideal should tell us that Gandhiji was a man for all seasons. It is not the Gandhian philosophy that they care about, but the sheer breadth of the marketing genius of the man who became Mahatma.

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An earlier piece The Gandhian Orgy: Ideological Bunga-bunga

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It's time for the Guinness Book. 485 "underprivileged" boys in Kolkata took out a peace march dressed as the Mahatma. It became a record. Their lack of food and education may never make it.

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There is an attempt by the RSS to distance itself from the assassin, Nathuram Godse, saying that he had severed ties in 1934.

This is what his brother Gopal said:

“All the (Godse) brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah (intellectual worker) in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”

Poof goes the spoof

2012-01-28T22:11:00.000+05:30

The past few days saw a couple of Jay-Joe humorous swipes that met with two distinct reactions: WTF and WTF. The potent acronym is, however, about duelling ideologies.

1. “WTF! How can anyone be so insensitive?”
2. “WTF! Can’t we just chill and grow up? It’s a joke.”

I think I know a few mean jokes; I am told I do possess a dry wit. I swear by a good satire, and not at it. And that’s the point. If we have to laugh at something, we put ourselves in a superior position. It may not be deliberated upon. Yet such jokes that make someone or something an object of derision automatically imbue us with the power of looking down on them. You might ask, don’t opinions and indignation do the same? In a sense, yes, they do. But one has the time to at least attempt an argument. It may be implausible to others, but that’s what pushing the envelope is about. Flat humour is more like licking a postage stamp and showing tongue. Beyond the juvenile aspect is a not-so-innocent narrative.

In the age of connectivity, we can see some snide personal comments being leavened by the clever use of emoticons and a heavy dose of exclamation marks. This seems to often suggest that the comment made is all in good fun. It often is, though not always.

When Jay Leno put up a picture of the Golden Temple on a show with Mitt Romney and suggested it could be his summer home, there were the two reactions I mentioned. I am afraid I did not find it funny. It is perhaps the most visible religious symbol of worship for the Sikhs in India. My argument is that a place where people pray is not something to be messed with. There are other glittering glorious monuments. Would Leno have sold the idea of the Vatican to Romney, or is it not summery enough? Besides that, my squabble is about reference to the context: Had Romney talked about conversion, for example, then a subtle mention would seem legitimate. A good parody is not something you pull out of a hat. Heck, when the brilliant Chaplin pulled something out of a hat it ended up as rather profound humour. There will be jeers over the term profound prefixed to humour. It reveals the paucity of the humour discourse that is so slapstick even our minds need to fall on banana peels to get tickled.

So, is Joe Biden, who is supposed to be full of gaffes, imitating an Indian accent offensive? We again get the “WTF! It’s just a joke” reaction. In this case, as I have said so often, we get into the veracity dispute. What is an Indian accent? If you live in India you would realise that there is variety, as there is in the United States, in UK, and I am sticking to the English language. The slightly worrying aspect is that his target was the call centres. We know just how bad the employment situation is in America; this sort of draws attention to the outsourcing.

I read a report that talked about how the people in Delaware are cool about it. They would be. They have to keep their little stores open, and quite a few do indeed use their ethnic background as a calling card. It is amusing to see how they market this, in their mode of dress, deportment and speech while they are abroad. When they return on visits home it is as Americans or Britons – foreign accents laying on the slang, ill-fitting western clothes, and the mandatory shrug of shoulders.

This is great material to lampoon, and the ‘Mind your language’ series did a pretty nifty job of it. However, Peter Sellers enacting an Indian was a bit off simply because he remained on the periphery of stereotypes. Stereotypes are often comical.

There cannot be straitjacket rules for humour. That would defeat the purpose. A lot of stand-up comedy by the diaspora in the West is a defence mechanism; it is a nervous laugh. It is the desperation to be seen as ‘nice’, as ‘belonging’ that results in most of the jokes that cater to the mainstream. Leno was informed that Sikhs are the butt of jokes, so why the issue over the Golden Temple reference. Indeed, Sikhs are the subject of many jokes, but it is about them and their foibles. I’d say even the priesthood makes for a great subject across the board. These are people who need to be outed with jokes, if not in a more serious manner.

If Joe Biden finds Hinduism weird and someone else finds Islam weird in another manner and somewhere else Catholicism is seen as weird, then we are talking about a whole lot of weird atheists who are obsessed with how the ‘opponents’ behave. There really is nothing to take jibes at atheism. There has to be something when we hit out.

Where does one draw the line about that something? It really depends on where we are. It is culture specific. I do not believe religion should be out of bounds, but certainly leave gods and places of worship alone. There are jokes about Jews, many of them, but one leaves Judaism alone. I read that Liam Neeson “may become a Muslim”. I was amused by the announcement of a possibility. You do not declare that you may fall in love, or you may change your gender. But if Leno may interview him on the subject, I’d think it would be quite apt if he asked the Irish Catholic if he would give up his Guinness and settle for a pint of camel milk. Personally, I would have no problem if even zam-zam were mentioned, but it is holy water from Mecca and it has history and flows with the devotion of millions. The reason I would not mind is that I know there is a whole ancillary industry that markets this holy water by adulterating it, so its holiness is quite diluted. But not many think of these pragmatic details, and faith is not about pragmatism, even less about scepticism.

The problem with the broad professional liberal attitude is that freethinkers recoil when the joke’s on them or their favoured icons. This openness allows for a faith to be caricatured, but dare we not make a farce of the person who does so. Now, this is funny. It might have been a joke, too, except that I prefer mine sharp.

This quote by Anon exposes the wooziness best: “Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side”

For someone who does not believe in political correctness, I’d like to ask a question: Would these people look kindly on humour about obesity, anorexia, women, homosexuality, men, the body, physical and mental deformity? No. If the reason is sensitivity – though I can assure you that privately these are subjects of humour in these same liberal bastions – then the belief of people is also not a joke. We can, and must for clarity, split hairs and nitpick and fight over every aspect of what is right and wrong with all of these. It is called debate and discussion.

A one-liner, a rolling on the floor laughter is a kneejerk reaction. A spasm does not a satire make.

(c) Farzana Versey

From Ayodhya to the jungles

2012-01-27T22:25:00.000+05:30

Is anyone surprised that the BJP would rake up the mandir issue again for the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh? The party is living in a time warp. However, this happens to be a good time for such ‘regression’.

"Construction of a grand temple is associated with the faith of crores of people of the country. Ram is the symbol of prestige, pride and dignity of the country. Unfortunately due to pseudo-secularism and vote bank politics it is being opposed. BJP is committed to remove all hurdles in the path of construction of Ram temple," the manifesto said.

With all due respect to the faithful, many of them too will agree that outside of the puja room and temples Lord Ram is not associated with how the country is viewed. Was his name uttered to fight the Mughals or the British? Before the Ramjanmabhoomi movement gained ground, did the country lack in pride, prestige and dignity? When tourists go to religious monuments, are they doing so because those represent national pride? Have visits to the Ayodhya site increased since the demolition of the Babri Masjid because suddenly Indians have discovered their dignity is dependent on it? How many people have given up their worldly desires to simulate banwaas (exile) and internalise the pain of what a coloniser built over Ram’s birthplace?

Is this the pride of a country that secures and barricades a place after destroying something by making incendiary speeches using cheap language and orchestrating riots? Does this not amount to barbarism?

On questions regarding the temple at Ayodhya, UP state unit President Surya Pratap Shahi said that the party was of the opinion that Hinduism was the life substance of the country, but due to vote bank politics it was being attacked by parties, including Congress, SP, BSP and the Left.

If this is not trying to cater to a vote bank, then what is? The BJP is offering a cow to every poor family. I am not sure whether those who do not have space or any interest in the dairy industry will benefit. There is a subtle use of the cow as metaphor, as well. Its association with religion cannot be ignored.

Besides, on what basis has the party arrived at the conclusion that Hinduism is the life substance of the country? If it means in areas of culture, then certainly it is manifest in most parts. It is about tradition, mores and even a value system. We are not talking about yoga, babas, and public display of affection for symbols. These exist and have a place. But it has nothing to do with the country as a nation state.

Although one is quite certain the party has no chance in UP, this pushing of an agenda has come at a time when certain Muslim groups in the state started a little fire fanned by the Congress. At this point, let us be clear that the Deoband is an independent organisation and not a political party. Let it attempt to contest elections and we will see it fall flat on its face. It has no political or largescale credibility among Muslims. I keep giving the example of the Shahi Imam who lost his deposit. The BJP’s conniving method is to sell a Gujarat-Bihar dream state while retaining its ‘heritage’. It won’t work in UP, and now. But this is the party’s best chance to capitalise on the Deoband’s stupidity without even naming it. This is preparation for the national elections.

Does the person in the street care about a nice big temple (it has to be nice and big, which just shows that this is economics and not just religious)? Not really, but when the option is a Congress that is behaving like a novice, despite being a veteran in the corruption stakes, then people would look elsewhere. And if that elsewhere is offering a nice, big temple and embedding it in national pride, while giving students laptops and promising Modi’s malls and Nitish’s bridges, then this sounds utopian. Like escapist cinema, people will buy tickets. Inside the dark auditorium, they are brainwashed into believing all that they see. When they come out and are blinded by the light of reality, it is too late. And the political parties do not care about that. It is to get them to the box office.

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In another escapist move, the chief of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) K Vijay Kumar has given his 70,000 troops another dark auditorium moment to deal with the Naxalites:

"Your adversary is far too inferior than you – in training, in equipment, in physical strength, in tactics, in weaponry, in number, in food he takes. He cannot give you a face to fight. He believes in hiding, hitting and running. This is his strength. Let us also modify our tactics – be like hunters, hide in his area and hit him hard. Learn to be a junglee.”

If this is supposed to be a morale booster, then there is nothing new. Guerilla tactics are employed by security forces; they use camouflage. The reason they have to sometimes be ‘open’ is to give those not involved in such activities a sense of security. When the political machinery is inept, then the forces reflect it. The police have complained about inadequate supplies and support.

Besides, it might be prudent not to use terms like ‘junglee’. There are many who live in forests and lead such isolated lives hide and hunt for that is their only means of sustenance. Will they, who are not involved in fighting the forces, also be ‘neutralised’?

Where are the golden birds?

2012-01-26T20:50:00.003+05:30

The garbage has not been taken. The black bag lies huddled. No municipal truck will come to collect it. It is a holiday. A day when she is written into the Constitution. Until the other day I did not know her name, did not even know who she was. Silently, early mornings, she’d pick up the bag and leave. I realised that her whole family has been doing the same work for years. I know the father. He is a filmi sort who always blesses everyone in the language/greeting of their community. I knew the mother. She met with an accident and decided to stay home. Where was home?

I had gone there once. Not because I am nice. I was a predator, doing a story. I reached there, jumping over puddles. She shooed off the onlookers, but they continued to stand there, edging away slightly, their bodies twisting and turning in anticipation. She felt grateful. She, who had seen leftover rice that I threw away with curry floating in it, the blood-stained sanitary napkins, my useless pens and lots of sheets of shred paper that hid secrets, was protecting me from the crowd. We talked as my eyes scoured the room. A bedsheet I had given her covered a large bundle; it looked like a coffin. She was wearing one of my salwaar kameezes. For a few seconds, I felt displaced. This could have been my life. This could be me. Suddenly, my nails with silver varnish looked like neon lights in a dhaaba.

Someone brought a bottle of Fanta and opened it right there to assure me so that it had not been touched by them. A man hobbled in. He had some mithai in his hand. It was prasad he said. I could not believe that he was not sure whether he should drop it in my hand or let me pick it up. Which of the two acts would his status permit? He would not even look up. My fingers reached out and took a piece from his curled open palm. He looked up and folded his hands. He thought I had done him a favour. I was eating what he had to offer, and yet I was making him feel tall.

As I left, a trail of kids followed me. Bimla would not forget this day, she told me. Years later, I did not even know what her daughter looked like. A daughter who has inherited the job, the leftovers, those black bags stuffed with another day of my life that went to waste.

As on every year, today too I could hear music. It came from a place I do not know. My not knowing about it is what I mourn for. It is not personal ignorance. It is about all those who live other lives. “Jahaan daal-daal par sone ki chidiya karti hai basera”…the golden birds. Where are they?

They love playing the poor. The Chikni Chamelis. The tough guys who break matkis. Agneepath! Agneepath! Actor Hrithik Roshan goes to his old school Bombay Scottish to promote the movie. What are we coming to? I hate the promos. There is too much colour, it hurts the eyes. But see, this kind of film in a fancy little school would never have made the grade earlier. But now it is acceptable. Everything is a commodity. They will say they are exposing the children to reality. They have done it by exposing him to a little man who pretends to be a clone of Mahatma Gandhi. A sanitiser ad took over a whole page of a broadsheet. One of the points made is that children should carry it with them to school. These children will never touch mud. Agneepath! Agneepath!

Author James Shapiro, an authority on the Bard’s works made an astonishing comment on his visit to India: “I’d say that first and foremost, half the street children around the world now read Shakespeare. It is not just in India, the US or the UK but around the world.”

Where do people get these ill-informed ideas from? There are hardly any statistics about these kids, so how would one know their reading habits? Besides, much as I love Shakespeare and literature, how does this transform their situation? Do they have a choice – to be or not to be street children? When they cling to the edge of your kurta as you leave after ‘doing time’ with them, are they thinking of sitting back with A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

The newspaper had this on the front page yesterday.

It is such an insult. The Republic cannot lose just like that. Has the Republic lost when those street children cannot even read their own names? Has the Republic lost when a man cannot offer me prasad because he belongs to a low caste? Has the Republic lost when people play music at high volume because the words will cut through them and their lives, and slice their hopes? “Sone ki chidiya.” Where? In saheb’s house. In a gilded cage, beaks nibbling aperitifs. On some days, when their servers gather together – an assembly of more than five not allowed, they are told ominously – they too are called the mob. The Republic is supposed to protect them. The Republic has made them lose.

Most of the gallantry awards this year were given to those who fought insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and the Naxalite areas. Those people did their jobs. But remember, we are killing our own and being killed by our own.

It is late now. My windows are still shut. The music has become a whimper. I did what I heard without thinking. My eyes were filled with tears “Zaraa aankh mein bhar lo paani” because the garbage bag now looks dead. I mourn for the waste. In a few hours, the day will be over, so why am I writing now? Because I want the water to flow tomorrow and the day after and after…

“Ae watan, ae watan, tujhko meri qasam…”

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These two pictures were taken on different trips in India.

Also an earlier piece: The Republic of India Divided

The Satanic Bourses

2012-01-24T20:37:00.003+05:30

I have not seen so many levels of bigotry, liberalism, and the medium path before. Tags are being flung around. Everyone is looking for moderate Muslim voices as they would pins in the haystack, when these voices are the darned haystack. But you don’t like the idea of something so obvious.

Here’s your Stop Press moment. Salman Rushdie was to come live in a video conference after not being permitted entry and the whole Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) turning into a battleground of ideologies, many newly-acquired. The news is that this chat has been called off, too. It is time to mourn for the freedom of expression once again. More martyrs. More ‘rabid Muslims’. More snide comments about ‘hurt sentiments’. More disgust about how people are feeding off this episode, even if some are raising legitimate questions, who have been following the writer’s work and the literary trail for years. No word about how Rushdie has himself milked the fatwa cow at every single opportunity. He needs this identity more than anyone else. He needs some little thread to connect him to his Muslimness so that when he writes again about one of the angels from jannat, he can by default be seen as an ‘insider’.

Not a single person or any of the ‘freedom’ groups has had the sense to file an FIR against the miscreants. Why? On what grounds, then, do you expect the police to take care of you? The cops have been on duty. To call the government cowardly makes no sense. How brave are the organisers? Are they being held to ransom by some Muslims? In what manner? What exactly is the threat? There has not been a single word on that. We heard about the Raza Academy and SIMI earlier, and Mumbai dons as well. Any case filed against them? What is the liberalism you speak about if you cannot act upon it?

There is a yo-yo even in the attitude towards the government. Sometimes, it is accused of advising against Rushdie’s visit, then there is denial, then back again. It is the government’s job and the police’s job to protect those who are there, not those who are absent. Has a single incident occurred that any of the delegates or visitors can complain about?

A report says:

Despite Rajasthan government supporting the organisers of the festival, the link was called off amidst much drama at Diggi Palace in Jaipur. The owner of the Diggy Palace Ram Pratap Singh said that he decided to not allow the video link fearing violence. Singh said that several people had entered the venue and threatened to take the law in their own hands if the video link was allowed.

"I have taken a decision on not to allow the video conference to go ahead on the advise of Rajasthan police. There are a large number people who are inside the property and a large number who are marching towards the property. This is necessary to avoid violence and harm to the property and my family," he said.

Don’t they have video cameras to shoot this march of the brigade? Are the police advising on their walkie-talkies while these people are stomping in droves to the venue? Why is there no clarity, and why is no one bothered to ask? Because, creating fear is a lucrative industry in such a situation. It gives everyone, including the cow that apparently is around to add an exotic touch at the venue, an opportunity to feel the pain of artistic muzzling.

Barkha Dutt was supposed to conduct the interview. She tweeted, “Wish me luck”. This is the woman who has gone to Kargil, covered wars in other parts of the world, interviewed separatists and people who are dangerous. Did she need luck for those coverages?

The problem is that the issue has had a snowballing effect and a good deal of it was allowed to get out of hand. Why the need for such a video chat when he was being asked to talk about ‘Midnight’s Children’? What’s the occasion? Just a rebellious act? Had he not been able to make it for personal or health reasons, would there have been such a need to link up? We know the answer.

So, should we applaud this freedom of speech? Will those in Jaipur and those following the festival circus care to oppose the move by the Gujarat police that detained six activists from the NGO Anhad when they attempted to enter Godhra for a programme ‘In Search Of Justice’ as a counterpoint to Narendra Modi’s Sadbhavana fast?

Whose sentiments were they hurting, these six people from an organisation? Do they have freedom of expression on an issue that is more palpable and real and certainly has greater consequences on people’s lives?

Now, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat), incidentally Anhad was formed by its founding members, has extended an invitation to Rushdie. Member Ram Rehman said:

"We have watched with dismay the unnecessary controversy which erupted over the presence of Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literary Festival. We strongly disapprove the threats - real or concocted - issued against Rushdie’s participation. Sahmat is issuing an open invitation to Salman Rushdie to come to Delhi to deliver a lecture or participate in a discussion on literature at any time of his choosing. We will host him under any circumstances along with an exhibition of the works of the late M.F. Husain, driven into forced exile by a similar retreat by the state in its cowardly unwillingness to stand up against communal politics.”

Do these people know what exile is? We must also remember that Safdar Hashmi belonged to the CPI (M). He was killed by goons of the Congress while performing the street play “Halla Bol”. We are getting into another political arena here. There is no doubt divisive politics, but it would be interesting to see how they would have viewed these two outside of the present strictures. The comparison of Husain and Rushdie is disingenuous.

For one, Husain’s paintings are not banned, and he chose available iconography. There is nothing that is not seen in ancient art. However, I have said this earlier, he lost the case when he took up the citizenship of Qatar. He was painting for patronage. He chose to be shackled. He kept in touch with his socialite hangers-on that used him to the last. He was an establishment man.

Rushdie too is very much establishment, and his ‘sin’ is not just of writing what he did but using that as the benchmark for a limited idea of freedom. A ban cannot change his basic outlook. He does not speak for the rights of the dispossessed. He makes his diaspora status sound like banishment, which is where even the Leftists join him. How do those who are now crying for Rushdie view this? Would they speak up for Maoists and separatists too?

A petition for lifting the ban on ‘Satanic Verses’ is being circulated. It has been endorsed by Hanif Kureshi, Charu Nivedita, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and "ordinary college students", as a report quoted one of the drafters say. Had a petition been circulated among ‘ordinary’ people for a religious/community cause, they would be deemed brainwashed idiots.

Anyhow, what it states is revealing:

The petition argues that the ban places India “alongside Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Malaysia, Liberia and Papua New Guinea” which are some other countries where the ban stands.

India often figures among the most backward countries where crime, corruption, gender disparity, standard of living are concerned. Do we want an Egypt-style revolution? Will we even have the ‘courage’ to overthrow a political leader in this manner? Such random comparisons are ridiculous. Why did the NDA government not lift the ban?

You already know that India was the first country to ban the book, even before the fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini. Ever since then the liberals have taken charge of telling us how the mullahs will threaten us, and they are only too happy to oblige.

This is not to suggest that the maulvis are blameless. But just look at how the events unfolded. The Deoband protests. In the beginning that was it. They have protested many times. Let us say they are exercising their right to express their views. Everyone agrees it was political. However, it was beyond political politics. It was literary politics and opportunism as well.

It brings us to the Fab Four. How many know about their politics, their views on The Satanic Verses? They say they acted on their own. What freedom were they upholding? What about those who joined in the chorus? Can a writer who takes extreme poetic licence about reality speak of freedom? Can someone who has a Rajya Sabha seat from a rightwing party that bashes up journalists fight for Rushdie’s rights? Can someone who writes hagiographical accounts talk about freedom? Can those who are silent when smaller artists are banned talk about freedom? Can we talk about the freedom of banned organisations? Or of politicians who are forced to resign because of some ‘incident’ where they hurt someone?

Yes, they can. But only if they first look in the mirror.

- - -

And since I know I will be seen as anti-Rushdie, and I do not have the time or inclination for ifs and buts now, here you are.

Today, I am a Muslim for your pleasure. So listen up. If it has been convenient for you to label me, then it is convenient for me to use that label. Remember the times I have been shamed into the pigeonhole of belonging to the ummah? The times I was told that India tolerated me, that I should go to Pakistan, that I should try driving in Saudi Arabia? Where was your liberalism then when you could not see me? Where was the liberalism of the liberal editor who said I looked “too Muslim” in my photograph? Where was the liberalism of the newspaper that could not palate criticism of a sadhu? Where was the liberalism of the radical rag that told me not to write a spoof on Muslims? Yes. This too.

Where are the voices that don’t go around looking for mountain causes only so that they can hear the echoes?

(c) Farzana Versey

PS: Blog comments are moderated. I am curbing your freedom, but you know you compelled me to.

L.K.Advani's Pakistani Elections

2012-01-23T21:26:00.000+05:30

At the Faisal Mosque, Pakistan

BJP leader L.K.Advani could not but help mention Pakistan. We are talking about a man who thinks he can be prime minister, who knows that his party is competing for seats in the assembly elections, and yet he feels the need to mention the P word.

Is this electoral strategy? Here, I do not mean the Indian Muslim vote, but the Pakistani Muslim vote of confidence. Our neighbour is going through a major political crisis, and the uncertainty is more palpable than it has ever been. Mr. Advani probably believes that by sneaking in some feel-good bon mots, he will send out signals across the border. This is a pre-emptive strike to prepare the ground for a return to power. He wants to do a Vajpayee.

His ambitions for the top post are conveyed in an ostensibly subtle manner:

If you would recall, the BJP had gone into the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, projecting me as the party’s face. Interestingly, that was when my party’s unhappiness with me was at its peak, following my description of Jinnah as secular. That was on my trip to Pakistan, which, till date I maintain was a high point in my life.

The question asked in the Times of India interview was whether he was willing to be the NDA’s prime ministerial nominee. So, what’s the deal here? He is into big-style masochism peppered with confidence. He is telling us that the BJP could never do without him, which is the reason he was the face, but when he called Jinnah secular his party members were miffed. This is cunning. Vajpayee was known as the mukhota (mask). Here we have Mr. Mask himself.

That visit to Pakistan became the high point in his life. That handing out a certificate to someone who is considered as the person behind the Partition was a smart move; regurgitating it now is shrewd. By default, he wants us to assume that he is secular. Can we forget that anyone who opposed the BJP was dismissed as “pseudo secular”? Today, he is recalling that definitive moment when although he was the most prominent leader, he still had to bear the burden of unhappiness by his colleagues. He had to watch their sadness, and yet stand his ground, irrespective of the fate the party would suffer.

Jinnah had long been dead. But both India and Pakistan considered it a landmark. We have a history of crumbs passing of as dough.

This is the Advani scheme. It’s like a student saying I was busy helping out the neighbour so I could not study. If he passes the exams, it will be seen as an achievement; if he fails, everyone will know it was for the larger good.

Where are the Indians in his plan of action? Where is the secularism he reminds Pakistan about? When asked about cultural nationalism, he said:

Nationalism in India is essentially Hindu. But interpreting nationalism in religious and not cultural terms would be wrong. That you can be an atheist Hindu proves the validity of my argument. On intolerance, I blame politicians for creating this atmosphere. There’s no doubt that intolerance is highest among all religions. I tell my party people that Ramakrishna Paramhansa had become a Muslim for three days, but there was no hue and cry about it then.

This is so much balderdash. I have problems with terms like ‘cultural’ prefixed to any community. This sort of diversionary tactic does not work. On what basis is Indian nationalism Hindu? Our dance forms, our music, our art, our literature, even our dressing and certain values are part of the symbiotic process that includes what the ‘outsiders’ gave us. An atheist Hindu is as much possible as an atheist Muslim. What does he mean by “you can be”? Do people seek permission from the scriptures and say, sorry god/lord/bhagwan, but I’ve got to excuse myself?

Jinnah was probably an atheist Muslim, for if you call him secular it means he believed that all faiths have a place under the sun and the…er…moon. The general perception, and going by how monotheistic faiths are formulated, this would not be permitted. But, it is. There are Muslim nations that have temples, churches, gurdwaras. Using Swami Paramhansa’s example here is specious. Is this the Hindu atheism he talks about? What would three days of a simulated religion give anyone?

We have a slew of celebrities who convert to Islam to facilitate remarriages. Are they atheists or opportunists or just looking for a convenient ruse to commit what is ‘wrong’ in their faith by using another without thinking of the dimensions of such licence, however obsolete it may be in contemporary times? Come to think of it, such licence is anyway used and the Hindu atheist can do so using several examples from mythology.

It is precious that Mr. Advani blames politicians for intolerance. What has his role been? Who was the one watching from the dais and egging on the kar sevaks?

But you know what?

Even though a Sindhi, from Karachi, I became the deputy prime minister. Indian ethos is essentially assimilative, while Pakistan is exclusionist.

And, Benazir was from Sindh, Nawaz Sharif from Punjab and Musharraf from Delhi. What’s the point? And why can we not discuss our elections, our ethos, and our political and social situation without mentioning Pakistan?

It is no time to remember the Partition, unless this is the ony way you can discuss the Indian bosom’s cleavage.

Hotel Room

2012-01-21T22:28:00.003+05:30

familiar scent of strangers

leftover fingerprints

on mirrors

reflecting lost caresses

in deep wrinkles

on mattresses

burdened with guilt

tables laden with fruit

like still-life painting

soft pillows heavy

with dried tears

crumbs hidden in carpet knots

toes scrounge for bits

of buttered toast

towels remind of other bodies

wrapping wetness

from the open window

a bird flies

with clipped wings

~FV

Poverty as Photo-Op: India's Zoo Story

2012-01-21T15:06:00.013+05:30

India's Zoo Story
Poverty as Photo-Op
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, Jan 20-22

Oprah Winfrey walking the seedy bylanes of Mumbai on a work assignment in India, Jeremy Clarkson dropping his pants for a reality show, and tourists paying to watch naked Jarawa tribals dance are part of the same deal: Branding Blahdcasting Corporation.

Should outsiders be permitted to portray us in a manner that might seem demeaning? Is there only one reality in a nation as multicultural and internally divisive as India? Is it a matter of reality or of ethics, and are they mutually exclusive?

The latest news is that the BBC will not apologise for the Top Gear show that the Indian High Commission complained was “replete with cheap jibes, tasteless humour and lacked cultural sensitivity”. The channel says that while the programme showed the warts, it could not be considered insulting.

Rather uncharacteristically an Indian politician, naturally deemed liberal, wondered what the noise was about: we do shit, pee and spit in the open. So why get upset about this? The political system in India thrives on obsequiousness. The visit of the head of state from a western country is treated with the reverence we reserve for gods. The streets are washed, buildings where the foreign leader will pass by are painted, potted plants line the streets, garish hoardings are removed. We do not want them to see the dirty picture. Why is the Establishment’s protocol of greater importance than how television channels air our offal?

There is the dirt; you can see it. Films have been made with the backdrop by Indian filmmakers. “Gritty reality” is how they are described. Sometimes, they are romanticised with a mournful background score and large vacant eyes. This is art as manufactured reality. A painting of snotty kids is an expression; the canvas is the statement: where it is placed, how much it fetches at the auction, and what the artist’s sensibilities are.

Jeremy Clarkson’s “light-hearted road trip” is no satire. It does not turn the tables to show us the under-side. He is poking where it hurts. He is not hitting out at stereotypes like an intellectual Samaritan; his agenda is to play those up and cage them. If the intention was to feel the place, a “spontaneous interaction” that would capture “beautiful scenery, busy city scenes, local charm and colour”, and bring the “local car culture” alive, then one might have indulged the delightful picaresque. However, Clarkson had a toilet fixed to the boot of his Jaguar. He said: “This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.”

There is truth in such a remark. Unfortunately, scatological necessities are a great leveller and a global phenomenon. If I may say so, this is not unlike some scheduled castes that until recently carried night soil, excreta, on their heads. Is Clarkson replaying it as tragedy or as farce, or is he just on his own trip of exposing?

Are Indians in denial? We have luxury cars, bespoke apartments, farmhouse getaways, scented toilet paper. The drains in the highrises are choked with used sanitary napkins; handbags at parties are stuffed with silver cutlery from the host’s table. This calls for a satire. This calls for light-hearted revelation.

The closest he got to this was when “he stripped off his trousers in public before two Indian dignitaries to show them how to use a trouser press, while joking that he used it to make naan bread”. The ‘dignitaries’ are not identified. See, this is what passes for reality. People wearing slightly dressy clothes seem important.

His train journeys were most certainly not about Indians, but about the British. He put up banners. One read “British IT is good for your company” and when the carriages split apart it read: "Shit For Your Company". This is precious. Indians are always praising the British rule for giving us the railways. Obviously, Clarkson forgot that.

One learns that his show is pretty much about being upfront and offensive. He is paid big money to crack racist jokes. What does it reveal about such a social ethos? The fact that the channel does not think showing warts is an insult might work if the next Top Gear episode is a road trip to Balmoral. It’s closer home and he would not have to fit a toilet to his Jaguar boot.

* * *

Is exploitation by the establishment any less devious? Some foreign tourists were taken to the Andaman and Nicobar islands where the Jarawa tribes live in isolation. The naked women were asked to dance and were offered food and knick-knacks in return. A video that was aired by television channels revealed that a police officer was complicit in this ‘adventure’.

I have visited some not-so-remote areas in the country and the moment the locals spot outsiders, they ask for money, food and pens, and they want to be photographed. The question here is a bit more complicated.

Is the isolation of the tribals an enticement for tourists? Columnist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wrote:

“To call tourism in Jarawa areas "human safaris” is to equate Jarawas with animals. Seeing Jarawas in their habitat is not fundamentally different from seeing Japanese in Japan or Tutsis in Rwanda. Every Republic Day, the government organizes tribal dances, and nobody call these safari performances. One TV anchor actually called the Jarawas an endangered species! Excuse me, but the Jarawas are Homo sapiens, like all of us. To call them an endangered species is to call them nonhuman, as though they are animals. To keep them as pristine tribals, isolated from all humans save a few anthropologists and administrators, is to convert their tribal territory into an open zoo where benevolent zookeepers oversee the creatures. This may be well intended, but deprives Jarawas of fundamental human rights.”

Empathetic as this comment is, how equal are Homosapiens in different parts of the world? Are those tribes equal to us? The Japanese in Japan example is wrong; the analogy of geishas in Japan would have been more apt. There is tourism for the geisha areas; there is tourism in Hamburg for red-light areas where you can see the ‘human’ display, which is of course also their calling card on any given day. I admit to having visited both, not to speak of a couple of strip clubs in Bangkok. One might argue that this is wilful; this is their job. Their job is to cater to their clientele and not to be photographed. I know that the women did not relish my presence, for I was not a potential client; I could not be titillated. I was from their perspective a waste of time and from an ethical point of view an exploiter. I did not take pictures everywhere, but there are a few.

Would I photograph the Jarawas? To be honest, yes. Can I, then, take a stand on this issue? Yes. It is a matter of perception. People can be endangered species. The Parsis, some of the most educated and prominent people, are nearing extinction. We keep hearing about it from their own organisations. They are afraid that if their numbers do not increase they might be termed tribals. The reason is that their ‘isolation’ is modern – late marriages, non-acceptance of the children of women who marry outside, non-conversion within.

These are issues of survival as sects and culture. There are books with portraits of them, as there are of other communities and groups. Where do we draw the line as to what is to be considered exploitation?

Had the roads been open to the area where the 500 or so tribals live, would access to them have been easier and would they become part of the mainstream? We live in an India where even the urbanite is not mainstream in certain specific areas of discourse. We have ghettos of all kinds, and some are forced upon us.

The Constitution offers basic rights, but have they been implemented? The NGOs working in these areas are accused of misusing money meant for the tribals. The funds are to keep them in their place and to maintain their heritage. Are the Jarawas aware enough of their heritage, much less of their rights?

The tourists could not possibly have gone to see naked women, for the westerner is exposed to show of skin. However, one might like to pose a counter-query here: would these people take pictures at a naturist beach? Most of them are out-of-bounds for those who are not members; there is a code that is followed. In some ways they are simulating the tribal lifestyle, unspoiled by influences. A camera would be an intrusion. The conflicting position between the Jarawas and the Naturists is that the latter have the power of knowledge. They will not be exploited. The tribals don’t. But, and this is crucial, they had to be baited with food and things. They did not start dancing without that assurance.

They have been able to instinctively understand that their isolation, their not being part of regular society, is their basis for survival.

* * *

It is these stark differences that make it difficult to negotiate India. Oprah Winfrey wore a flaming orange saree for her meeting with the swish society; she was driven to the seaside bungalow by the most famous film star. Hours before that, at the Taj Hotel she was welcomed by a group of visually impaired singers. It was a relief that the hotel did not line up family members of the cops who were killed during the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

The Taj was doing an Oprah on Oprah. They got these children because her oeuvre is based on heart-tugging stories. These kids probably sing at other functions too so it would be unfair to pass judgement, but this was a bit off-colour. I do not think any of our high-profile stars who visit America or Europe are welcomed with songs sung by hobos or children in rehab.

Indian emotions are an open drain. An outsider can look at it without much effort or turn away. Oprah will get right into it: “For my new show 'Oprah's Next Chapter' I am doing a story on India and I wanted to see all aspects of the country to get a broad view of what it is like to be an Indian. It is very revealing and very amazing to me so I met people from Bollywood and others. What I love most about this country is their tolerance...how the families learn to love and live together. When I was in America and talking to famous people...I would ask how you (Indians) live with your parents, now I see how you do it.”

She is not going with a microscope, but a kaleidoscope. It is pre-planned. Her Bollywood version of India might be more palatable than Clarkson’s or of the tourists in Jarawa. It will be peppered with life through the eyes of a foreign addict, with inputs from those who live in large homes. Among her first interviews lined up is of Dr. Deepak Chopra, better known as the spiritual guru of Hollywood. The pretence here is obvious.

Her five hours on India will be a paean to the subtext of all that it needs to be. This is rarefied reality looking for bottled nirvana.

(c) Farzana Versey

Modi reads from The Satanic Verses

2012-01-20T22:54:00.001+05:30

...and the Anna-fication of a literature festival

Narendra Modi realised that all his efforts for the Sadbhavna mission fast were not going as great as expected. He had planned it meticulously, but he chose the wrong venue. Godhra. Wrong timing: a month before 10th anniversary of the train burning. No mention of the riots. He wants Muslims to forget that. He wants to mend fences. Nice guy.

This was about peace and harmony. 1600 cops and 5 specially-trained Chetak commandos and unarmed jawans guarding the place. Peace? Peace is based on trust, and he says that there have been no riots. So, what is he afraid of? I get it. He is afraid of Salman Rushdie. What if that bloke who is not permitted to visit the Jaipur Literature Festival decides to land in Gujarat? After all, Narendra bhai has been promoting it as the wonderful Disneyland where you may scream in terror as long as you can afford the rides. Modi likes Rushdie. He does not know why, but maybe it’s the old if A=B and B=C, then A=C.

Yet, for all his liking, he did not want to spoil the Jumma party. He waited and waited for some real Muslims to pay their respects. Finally, he just gave up. Peace can go take a long walk. He asked his men to get a copy of The Satanic Verses. He was going to protest against these Muslims. Those Deoband guys who did not treat his progressive Gujarati fellow nicely when he was made Vice Chancellor and that SIMI is really awful going after poor Salman. No one cares for freedom of expression.

“But, saab,” said his favourite police officer who was transferred for giving signals for an encounter killing, but had now undergone cosmetic surgery and was back at duty, “We took down posters, we threw out artists…”

“Bhai, jo, that is different. We are the establishment. Establishment has right to protect minorities.”

“Er…we are the majority.”

“That’s okay. I am not counting. We must feel like the minority.”

“So, what to do now, sir?”

“Bring me that book. I have many copies in that underground place where I keep all those files about 2002.”

“The book is banned in India.”

“We are not India. I mean, Gujarat has 5 crore people, so we are India within India.”

“This could cause communal enmity, saab.”

Modi guffaws. “This is the land of communal enmity. If you add tadka to cooking oil it will splutter but you get good food. Go, get me a copy. Cover it with green cloth.”

The man leaves hurriedly. A few mullahs come and shake hands with Modi. He says, “You are late.”

“We went to buy you a special edition of the Quran to promote this wonderful multicultural system you started.”

“Time is over for peace.”

“You are insulting Islam by not accepting a copy. Last time you did not accept skull cap.”

“You people’s sentiments get hurt all the time. But you cannot reach on time. I had arranged for your bath here.”

“Kya?”

“For your namaaz, I made arrangements for you.”

“Wazoo…it is called wazoo.”

“Don’t try and convert me.”

“We are only informing you.”

“Why you did not inform me about Godhra train?”

There is silence.

“Okay,” Modi continued. “If you want harmony, go and sit quietly.”

His officer brings him a copy of the Rushdie book.

The mullahs smile when they see the green cover. “Subhan Allah! You are our supreme leader. We knew you had a surprise for us. We will pass a fatwa against anyone who does not vote for you.”

Modi whispers in his officer’s ear, “How did they know I am trying to conduct a counter election campaign to get some mileage because everyone is talking about UP?”

“The Deoband must have informed them.”

“This is same group that does not want Rushdie, na? Now see how papers will be full of Gujarat.”

He opens the book and starts reading. The group says, “Wah, wah” in unison.

Modi is confused. “You know what I am reading?”

“Ji haan. You have a sense of humour. You are reading Gulliver’s Travels.”

“What is that?”

“In the madrassa some boys have copies, they told us about how he lands in place where tiny people are and they tie him up.”

“So, why are you smiling? Now where is your Islam? It does not get insulted if book is covered in green?”

“The grass is also green and we walk on it, Khomeini saab.”

“I am not Khomeini,” Modi says disgustedly.

“Uff, mistake. Please continue reading, we are your prajaa, the little people.”

The CM shifts uncomfortably. The thought that he would be tied up by these little people worries him.

“How did these illiterates start reading books?” he asks his assistant.

“Because of Rushdie.”

“Does it mean if I read this book, I will become Muslim?”

“Saab, anything is possible. But don’t say this loudly. They will call it Islamophobia.”

“Take this away.” He returns the copy of The Satanic Verses. “Bring me some other book. These Muslims like stories. Even for peace mission, they want stories. It is always about god.”

The officer gets an idea. “I will get The God of Small Things.”

Modi shakes his head. “What things? These minorities will start thinking their god is the best again.”

“This is not about god.” The officer mentions the writer’s name.

“Arre, the same one who went jogging with comrades in Cuba?”

“Not jogging, only walking. Not Cuba, in India with Maoists.”

“Then send copy to Chidambaram.”

“What do get for you now?”

“Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. Muslims like fairytales. They think by rubbing a lamp, a genie will appear. They forget this is idol worship.”

“I cannot get it, sir.”

“Why? Is it banned?”

“No, your copy has disappeared.”

“How?”

“Sanjiv Bhat took it as evidence that you were plotting against minorities.”

“What happens to my freedom of expression?” This time he asks aloud.

The audience looks wide-eyed.

“Say something.”

“We thought you are reading from the book.”

“No. I want to know. Why can I not express myself however I want?”

The crowd starts to leave. He calls out to them.

A small voice says, “How can ashes answer what freedom the fire must have?”

- - -

Reports say that today, the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, some writers read out excerpts from The Satanic Verses, since Salman Rushdie is not allowed. This personality cult is seen as protest.

Was Rushdie going to read out from the book? A bunch of huddled up elites in their cocoon thinks this is freedom of expression. Would they have permitted Modi to read, had he written a book? Who are they catering to? A small group, and that includes the media, that knows precious little about such expression, that muzzles dissenting voices, that sells its space without ethics for ad revenue, that pushes political agendas, that also pushes religious ideas; this applies to publications in regional languages as well. It is, however, the English-language media that plays god. We have discussed this already in Salman's Atheist Shrine.

These interests sponsor the JLF and grabbing eyeballs is part of the strategy of making it commercially viable. If they have some enthusiastic pseudo martyrs, they will benefit. Incidentally, Taslima Nasreen and Arundhati Roy, both ‘victims’, have not been vocal about this. Taslima had a fight with Rushdie about Twitter followers and his misogyny. Roy has got to guard her Muslim constituency. Everyone is on their own trip.

This reminds me of Team Anna and the singing-dancing brigade exercising their freedom. Rushdie had attended the previous festivals, so cut it out. If it is so important, then I would like to know why the writers have not sent a petition to the government asking it in clear terms to arrest those who issued threats. Do that. Exercise your freedom, instead of sticking out your tongue.

The festival is already overcrowded. If this were a movie, it would have been all about buttered popcorn.

(c) Farzana Versey
- - -

Similar posts:

Why Modi refused spandex tights

Modi’s fast ‘unto’ death: Gujarat’s shame

A Lost Day

2012-01-19T23:59:00.004+05:30

I have spent the last 24 hours thinking it was Friday. What is strange about it? What does one do on Fridays that one does not on Thursdays? I don't know. But I feel as though Time has cheated me. It took away one day. It has given me a day that will by default repeat itself. FridayFriday. Like a stuck record. Like velcro. Like a mirror upon a mirror.

I could not even feel the skin of Thursday and am faced with Friday's flesh.

Don't Vie For Priyanka

2012-01-18T20:09:00.001+05:30

Priyanka Gandhi is a cheerleader. She may be seen as more assertive, but her role in the Congress Party campaign is just that. She said she would do what brother Rahul tells her. It is completely off to believe that this could mean she might play an important part in active politics. Today, there are several dynasties in India that are asserting themselves forcefully– the Yadavs, the Abdullas, the Scindias, the Pilots, the Pawars, the Dikshits, the Thackerays, the Marans, the Karunanidhis. It does not have to be blood inheritance, though.

Mayawati has inherited the Kanshi Ram mantle and taken over the Ambedkar one. In that sense, her’s is the more solid ground because it uses the heritage of ideology, irrespective of how she has faked the system to her advantage. Jayalilitha’s is similar, for she had the MGR legacy, but from there she was on her own and she is more willing to share space; Mayawati is aggressive. And she is quick to use any card, not only the one up her sleeve, but also from the deck.

The Gandhi children have not been able to sustain, or capitalise on, the heritage link. Is there anything about their conduct that is reminiscent of Nehru, Indira Gandhi or even Rajiv Gandhi? In a way, this would be seen as striking out on their own without any baggage, and it is not a pretty baggage. Nehruvian socialism is obsolete; Indira Gandhi’s tenure had some horrifying episodes; Rajiv Gandhi’s major claim to fame was as reluctant politician. His attempts at ‘modernisation’ were primarily cosmetic, and much credit (and discredit) goes to some high profile people he imported from overseas. Although Sanjay Gandhi was known as the guy with the goons, Rajiv did have his own little group that did the dirty work.

Rahul has to both live up to a name and also stay away from the smears on it. So, what does he do? India is not Amethi, and poverty is not about a farmer’s widow. Do we need to know his agenda on every issue? This is the pressure that only he faces, for it is like being taken off the cradle and asked to complete a marathon. It is not possible. Therefore, the relay race comes in handy. Sonia Gandhi passes the baton to Manmohan Singh who passes it to Rahul who passes it back to our PM and then it goes back to Ms. Gandhi, which is how the chain is sustained. (For more, my piece Dr. Do Little: Rahul Gandhi As Placebo)

Where does Priyanka figure in this? Whether it is her choice or it has been decided at the family dinner it is difficult to say, but she will be a moral support, a benign figure. Unlike many commentators, I do not see the elections in Uttar Pradesh as a test case. In fact, it will confirm that dynasty dynamics have changed and any kind can work for a ‘mai-baap’-oriented junta. The Gandhi family can only claim it as a memory for now. Using Priyanka is just adding gilt to an empty golden throne.

Is she inconsequential? Unlike her grandmother who was dubbed “goongi gudiya" (dumb doll) when she was merely her father’s daughter, and then we saw how her 'talk' turned into a nasty rebuttal, Priyanka is lucid. Her cheerleader act is not of a mute bystander, but a vocal one. She smiles, she shakes hands, she empathises. People feel happy, the locals who gather to watch such shows. She is a bit of Mother India – a complete woman, with husband, children, tending to her home and taking an ostensibly independent stand, even if that means it is not to be a part of politics.

She can at best be seen as the Sonia Gandhi of politics at a later stage.

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Other election titbits.

In Kanpur, it is not clothes and food that are offered as bait. It is bar girls:

Some election candidates here have found a novel way to entice voters. They are organizing sleaze shows where Mumbai bar girls dance to Bollywood tunes in skimpy outfits. Candidates book us for dance shows to lure voters and keep the morale of party workers high, said Chandni (name changed), a bar dancer from Mumbai, who was part of one such show organized by candidate of a political party in Kalyanpur area of the city.

A bit ironical, for a few days ago the Election Commission decided that it would send an all-women team of general observers to Goa. The reason?

EC officials said that in the past, there were complaints against male officers sent on election duty to Goa, these included drinking during office hours and partying in clubs while supposedly being on duty. There were also allegations that in some cases, candidates were bearing the cost of entertainment of officials. In a few cases, the allegations were made by poll candidates.

EC sources also said that officers had been given so much work that they would not be left with much leisure time. Moreover, women officers are more conscientious, an EC official said. This is the first time that EC is sending an all-women team as observers to any state. However, the poll body has retained male officers in the list of expenditure observers.

Candidates use women; the EC uses women. While the motives of the former are obvious, the EC is putting pressure on these women observers. This is a pre-emptive strategy, it has admitted. Instead of making women into incorruptible devis, it would have been better if the EC sent a mix bag of observers and took action against those who go against rules. This zenana vigilantism only reveals that enjoyment is a male prerogative and women are to be saints.

Ramdev and Digvijay: Leaky Pens

2012-01-16T20:02:00.006+05:30

Inked face and assaulter

We are a culture that thrives on condemning. We condemn those who are silent and we also condemn those who make a noise. Such condemnation takes away from any other questions. So, it was not surprising that the Congress, the BJP, the RJD, everybody condemned a man who threw ink on Baba Ramdev. Soon after, some ‘uncondemned’ the act. The theatre of the absurd does not quite go with a Greek tragedy, but Indian democracy can manage such contradictions. We will get there. First, a snapshot:

A man who gate-crashed at Baba Ramdev’s press meet on black money splattered ink on the yoga guru when he refused to answer a question on the 2008 Batla House encounter.

Kamran Siddiqui, was beaten up by the yoga guru’s supporters immediately after the incident at the Constitution Club where Baba Ramdev was speaking to reporters regarding his plans to campaign against black money in the upcoming Assembly Elections. Siddiqui, who runs a non-governmental organisation called Real Cause was placed under arrest following a medical examination. A case under sections 153 (promoting enmity among communities) and 355 (criminal assault) of Indian Penal Code has been registered against him, a senior police official said. A first information report has been registered against him at the Parliament Street police station. If convicted, he may be jailed for up to two years.

When Baba said that the Batla House encounter was not fake, Kamran threw ink on him. Siddiqui is a petitioner in the Batla House encounter case.

A few points:

If Baba Ramdev is discussing politics, stop calling him a yoga guru in the context of his speeches.
A bit strange that nobody had heard about Kamran Siddiqui even though he is a petitioner in the case. Is it difficult to find that out?
Even more strange is that he asked this question to Baba Ramdev, and the latter chose to answer it. On what basis?
Why has he been arrested for promoting enmity among communities? This sort of pigeonholing makes it into a communal issue. Batla House is not the whole of India.

Arrest anyone who indulges in this sort of behaviour, but is it so unusual? Don’t our MPs throw slippers at each other inside Parliament? What about heads of educational and medical institutions whose faces are blackened?

What about scheduled caste/female victims who are paraded with their faces smeared because of some ‘honour’? Why do we not condemn those acts with equal ferocity?

Typically, Baba Ramdev has become a martyr:

Media reports quoted Baba Ramdev as saying that he was not deterred by such attacks and would continue his campaign against corruption with full force. I spoke about bringing back black money to the country and giving it to the nation. I spoke about eradicating corruption. I spoke about turning a loot-tantra to a real loktantra (democracy). And in return, as a prize, this is what I have got. I don’t mind receiving black ink. By throwing ink on someone, one cannot malign someone’s character, he said.

You talk about a vague show-me-the-money, and everything else gets washed off. The report said that Baba Ramdev said that it was not an encounter and that led to the ink throwing.

This is not an attempt to blacken the face of Swami Ramdev. This is an attempt to blacken democracy, Hazare said in a statement.

Has Anna Hazare never seen such blackened faces before? Much as I do not relish the idea of such juvenile shoe-ink throwing, let us remind Mr. Hazare that his movement is a protest that has attempted to speak on behalf of the population without its consent. He should not be talking about democracy. If democracy is about protest, then black or blue ink should not be of concern. Hazare and his team should be finding out what it is that angers certain people. He has been holding the flag for such propagandised anger for a while now.

We have entered absurd territory, and the wilting cherry on a leftover cake is this:

Congress leader Digvijay Singh said the incident was a well-orchestrated conspiracy by RSS and the NGO activist who did it was anti-Congress and had links with BJP.

There have been occasions when such orchestrated attempts were made, by every political party. I do not understand how it can be deemed anti-Congress when the Congress government had said the encounter was not fake. (Unless, Ramdev has joined forces with the Congress Party!) Or, is this a strategy similar to the one he is accusing the RSS of – outsourcing, with the frontman speaking one version while the high command maintains its larger role?

The Batla House case was already politicised. The encounter had several loose ends that I mentioned in Shooting Terrorists and Other Stories: It was over within 30 minutes. 25 shots were fired by the cops; eight by the terrorists. Were these dreaded men so naïve as to open the door to a ‘salesman’, sub-inspector Dharmendra. What was he trying to sell? Did they buy anything? Did they not notice him looking at them carefully? Did all the “suspicious characters” stand at the door to welcome him?

Now Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has spoken out clearly:

"Congress is not serious on the issues pertaining to Muslims and treats them only as a vote bank. That is why when assembly polls are underway, the issue of Batla House encounter has been raised by party leader Digvijay Singh, who termed it as fake. Why has this issue been raised by him now? Congress should either sack him or take action against PM and Home minister, who feel that the encounter was not fake...This is just a political gimmick to befool Muslims, who are being treated as a vote bank.”

Do the political parties realise that for the majority of Muslims, all this produces a huge yawn? You think someone in Bhiwandi (a communally sensitive area in Mumbai) cares or even knows what Batla House is? Or are the ordinary Muslims suddenly expected to possess knowledge about all that happens with, to and by their community?

It disturbs me that one episode of ink-throwing has brought another case to the fore. And it is back to the chain reaction of condemn this and condemn that. Don’t. Each player is an actor here. If Siddiqui was sponsored by the RSS, and Digvijay Singh has been sponsored by his own party, with the satellite players Anna and the rest forming the chorus, then the crowded stage is bound to fall.

Nothing new. We invariably get the dark pits we deserve. If only we saved that ink and wrote our own fate.

(c) Farzana Versey

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Image: Mumbai Mirror

History Through Her Lens

2012-01-16T14:34:00.000+05:30

Homai Vyarawalla was always described as the “first lady photographer”, and the thought of someone tiptoeing with a little camera, gently clicking flowers and princesses came to mind. But, when we place her in those historical times, then being a lady was about being many things. And she was.

There is a lot written about her, her photographs of leaders. It is like tracing a period without the need for any other crutch.

These two pictures of Jawaharlal Nehru exemplify this.

1. There is deadpan humour in this one, going where you are not supposed to go. Was there a political message?

2. Here, the image is reminiscent of Michaelangelo. Nehru is releasing the pigeon, but the sky is overcast. One does not know whether Nehru is letting go or wanting to hold on to it, or perhaps reach the sky. It comes across as a pensive, yet optimistic portrait. I’d say it captures the persona of the man and the politician.

And of course among the many others; this is how an Independence Day dance used to be like:

My fascination is with the way she treated her subjects. There is warmth and yet no obsequiousness. She seemed to be part of what was happening, but as a spectator. The black and white images, unfailingly adding a mystique, gave away quite a bit. It seems like a contradiction. It is not. The enigma was in the telling.

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Check out more images curated by NGMA

Wayward thoughts: Blue Tooth, Water Song

2012-01-15T20:16:00.000+05:30

I cannot swim. I cannot even drown. There is wood in me from the tree of life. It keeps me afloat. I ingest the tears of the ocean. I can listen to it even as my ears get blocked. Shut out the sounds. There must not be so much moaning. Water flows, they say. I still do not know where. It crashes against the shore.

I cannot hear it. My ears, too, are filled with tears.

- - -

Since I cannot swim, a pool-friendly bluetooth device would be pretty useless. But, I was quite enticed by the idea. All ideas entice me, especially if they are not workable.

It's called the Splash 100 and comes from Behringer, a German pro-audio company, which is surprising considering it will retail for a mere $99 when it comes out later this year. It will have a 230-foot range and deliver 3.5 hours of sound from its rechargeable battery.

Imagine one is in the pool and instead of hearing our splashes, we are tuned into some music; we are blocking out the pleasure of the moment. For a 230-foot range, we forget what is right there.

I suppose this is what it is about. To connect with an ocean beyond the one we flow in, for ultimately we crash against the shore where the noises give our words meaning, or we crash into the water-bed. The signal is never weak there. I can hear the algae sing.

Sunday ka Funda

2012-01-15T19:10:00.000+05:30

"mez se jab meri tasweer hataai hogi

har taraf mujhko tadapta hua paaya hoga"

(My pictures taken off the shelf

Would have spread my pain everywhere)

War is not pretty. It is not desirable. It's Army Day in India today. 'Haqeeqat' remains one of the best films on the subject. It tackles the inner pain and not just outer bruises.

Sometimes, we have to forget because we are helpless...in any 'war'

Hoke majboor mujhe usney bhulaya hoga

Film: Haqeeqat

Music: Madan Mohan

Lyrics: Kaifi Azmi

Singers: Mohamad Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Bhupinder, Manna De

Director: Chetan Anand

How to be an expert on Pakistan

2012-01-15T00:36:00.002+05:30

Unlike armchair critics, I have become a couch potato expert on Pakistan. During my chocolate break (Allah be praised) when the Islamic moon shone, I saw that our neighbour's hopes rest on Mick Jagger without the lips. Imran khan has begun to resemble the Rolling Stones iconic singer.

CNN-IBN got together a panel that was at pains to discuss what is happening on the ground. Given that our cricket team is a bit under the weather, I was afraid the discussion would change course.

But that was impossible. Hamid Mir was there. And when Hamid Mir is anywhere you only think of Pakistan the way you see flies at the halwai's.

He said something very important, though: Asif Ali Zardari will stand with a gun. You want the context? Does it matter that Zardari is not known to willingly give up anything? So, Hamid Mir is using Zardari's gun to tell us that this is not 1999, when Pervez Musharraf came to power, and therfore army rule is out.

The media does not want it. Yes, he said it. And we call ourselves a democracy. If Hamid Mir speaks on behalf of the media, the judiciary, the government, that too from the ground, then there is no chance in hell that the army can come to power.

Imran Khan said the country was ruled by crooks, and made it clear that he will have nothing to do with Musharraf. There were reports that there might be an alliance, but Khan saab blamed it on his diplomatic colleague.

Here it is: Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani meets Zardari. Kayani meets PM Yousuf Raza Gilani. Zardari criticises Gilani. Kayani maintains stoic distance. Calm.

Imran Khan is waiting and watching. Best to keep himself away for now when Hamid Mir says army cannot behave like 1999; Musharraf is 1999. Imran said he comes with baggage. He believes people want something new. Like a great chartbuster.

My 'expert' opinion. If you get an Indian politician, a Pakistani politician, the mandatory gora covering the subcontinent, and a political commentator, all haveli waalas, to debate the state of the country then you will know as much about the ground as Neil Armstrong from the moon.

Pakistan does not need a coup. The army rules when it wants. 1999 or not. It elects governments that are potted cacti. And the new trend is jalsas where they show there are lots of people in the street. There will be elections because it is elementary, dear Watson. The army will have its boots on.

And Mick Jagger will remain a rolling stone.

Salman’s Atheist Shrine

2012-01-14T19:25:00.006+05:30

It is not people of the faith that are fearful of their belief being damaged but the purveyors of phobia who are scared stiff that their little world is not as large as they’d like it to be.

Rushdie, Hitchens and Voltaire's bust

The timing could not have been more serendipitous and ironic. Around the time when the Deoband Darul Uloom made a demand that he should not be granted a visa to attend a literary festival, Salman Rushdie was genuflecting at Christopher Hitchens’, and by default his own, shrine in Vanity Fair.

It is rather interesting that labels like far right and far left, religion and atheism while seen as pockmarks on the faces of traditional practitioners become the rationale of the evangelical rationalist.

The seminary has gone on its usual tripe trip about hurting the sentiments of Muslims and there is a belief that this could be a ruse to garner Muslim votes in the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh. While the Muslim vote bank is a reality, the person in the street is not interested in a book, and is often not completely in tune with even the Quran. Is that not the reason they consult the mullahs over simple matters? These are uneducated and naïve people who do not even know their scriptures well enough. Would the majority of them care about a parody of the holy book called ‘The Satanic Verses’ written in a language they are not acquainted with, forget the magic-realism twists and turns? They would prefer to get clothes and other freebies from their candidates and not a reminder about a man living in the west who had a fatwa issued against him by a man in another country.

Alluding to the Muslim voters as bumpkins only interested in their religious rights and in a constant state of war for their faith only keeps the stereotypes alive. If someone is behind this move, then it begs the question: why are the mullahs being blamed? Why has it become a question of the infidel as victim? And those who say, “Don’t make an issue of it” are precisely the ones fanning the fires.

* * *

The discussion has taken a full circle and it is liberal discourse that has travelled in a time machine back to1988. People snort that those religious goons burned copies without even reading the book. Were these liberals so adept at speed-reading? The one who first suggested a ban is a rationalist-pragmatist-agnostic (Khushwant Singh) who assumed there would be trouble. His assumption was lapped up first by another rationalist-pragmatist-believer (Syed Shahabuddin). The secular government banned it. If that had already happened, then who was feeding the mullahs pulp fiction? Why were copies made?

In fact, the whisper campaign started early. Those who had inside information were considered important. The publishers in Delhi probably sold out the lot in this mafia operation. Who wanted it so bad? The intellectuals and academics. Their interest in the Quran seemed to have peaked. I was gifted a copy of “the prize catch”. It came by courier wrapped with a mock cover and a brown sheet.

This is the wonder of it all. A primarily self-conscious satire of a scripture is treated with reverence. There is obeisance for one version of freedom of expression. Such a one-dimensional idea gives as much succour to its proponents as any supreme god does to devotees. This form of liberalism is monotheistic and suffers from righteous arrogance. As Rushdie writes, “I began to understand that while I had not chosen the battle it was at least the right battle, because in it everything that I loved and valued (literature, freedom, irreverence, freedom, irreligion, freedom) was ranged against everything I detested (fanaticism, violence, bigotry, humorlessness, philistinism, and the new offense culture of the age).”

His right is obviously the only right. The violence for his cause, both by those against him as well as the more lethal violence of inflicting thought by his supporters, was very much the “new offense culture” that he detests.

* * *

There are millions more who read holy books. Is their pleasure to be discounted? Why are those books never banned? Because, outside of the cocoon of pop history is the reality of a belief system. This system may be in opposition to the freer one, but soon enough the latter seeks to sanctify itself. It gets baptised in the salons. The safe zones preempt the battle, and perhaps prepare the stage.

Using Hitchens, Rushdie writes:

“He, too, saw that the attack on The Satanic Verses was not an isolated occurrence, that, across the Muslim world, writers and journalists and artists were being accused of the same crimes—blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, and their modern-day associates, ‘insult’ and ‘offense’. And he intuited that beyond this intellectual assault lay the possibility of an attack on a broader front. He quoted Heine to me: Where they burn books they will afterward burn people. (And reminded me, with his profound sense of irony, that Heine’s line, in his play Almansor, had referred to the burning of the Koran.) And on September 11, 2001, he, and all of us, understood that what had begun with a book burning in Bradford, Yorkshire, had now burst upon the whole world’s consciousness in the form of those tragically burning buildings.”

Joan of Arc did not write any book but, here we go again, there is the subliminal refuge of Belief, of being impaled at the stake. In fact, one might go further and even refer to it as the Cross, for the good authors felt as slighted, or even more so, about insults hurled their way. The difference lay in how cannily they used this. They carried around the nails, and rusty as they became over time, they kept polishing them because it was about the “world’s consciousness”. Here were the Twin Towers themselves.

* * *

It is not the people of the faith that are fearful of their belief being damaged but the purveyors of phobia who are scared stiff that their little world is not as large as they’d like it to be.

And they are tremendously in awe of the Establishment. Rushdie got his moment at the White House to sort out his ‘war’ with the help of his fanatical atheist friend. And as he reached the room where the President awaited him, Hitchens declared, “The Eagle has landed.” Salman takes great pride in this brush with power. However delectable his prose, you take the fatwa out of him and he won’t be this Goliath in the political stratosphere. His oeuvre seeks sustenance from the ‘better’ societies.

Rushdie’s tribute to Hitchens is an occasion to revisit the only site that can keep him a martyr:

“The spectacle of a despotic cleric with antiquated ideas issuing a death warrant for a writer living in another country, and then sending death squads to carry out the edict, changed something in Christopher. It made him understand that a new danger had been unleashed upon the earth, that a new totalizing ideology had stepped into the down-at-the-heels shoes of Soviet Communism. And when the brute hostility of American and British conservatives (Charles Krauthammer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Paul Johnson) joined forces with the appeasement politics of sections of the Western left, and both sides began to offer sympathetic analyses of the assault, his outrage grew. In the eyes of the right, I was a cultural ‘traitor’ and, in Christopher’s words, an ‘uppity wog’, and in the opinion of the left, the People could never be wrong, and the cause of the Oppressed People, a category into which the Islamist opponents of my novel fell, was doubly justified. Voices as diverse as the Pope, the archbishop of New York, the British chief rabbi, John Berger, Jimmy Carter, and Germaine Greer ‘understood the insult’ and failed to be outraged, and Christopher went to war.”

Can’t you see? The knight-to-be found his knight. There was no way out. Everyone was against a book. The earth shook. The clique went into seismic spasms. The Oppressed People were capitalised, typographically as well as literally. They continue to be. They do not know who Salman Rushdie is.

He arrogantly announces that he does not need a visa to visit India, he who had to once beg the rightwing parties in India to do so because he worked on their ancient heritage blather by invoking his roots. Now, with a government announcement, people of Indian origin overseas can vote too. The ‘Bombay boy’ will not do so. I am sure he will have some civilisational argument. The fact is, he does not care. He is not the classic outsider, the metaphysical maverick. He is a god who needs complete devotion from the praying liberals.

(c)Farzana Versey

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Image (cropped version): Vanity Fair

Ask the vexpert - 29

2012-01-14T19:15:00.000+05:30

Question: I want to measure the exact size of my boyfriend's penis. He claims that it is 6.5 inches when erect. I just want to confirm it. Should I use a scale or measuring tape?

Sexpert: Let the expert decide. It is not his pimple I am worried about but your attitude. Instead of being romantic and loving, you are so ‘physical’. It is not the length of his penis but the way he uses it to show you his love and affection that is important.

Me: Valid query. I believe that all relationships should be based on trust, and that needs to be verified. He has chosen a 0.5 figure, which immediately puts him in the suspects category. A tailor's measuring tape would give you a more rounded picture, instead of just the length. I'd suggest that to make sure the figure he has provided also carries weight, you should put it on a weighing machine. You might also try and check on stamina by putting 'him' through a stress test when he is in a 'happy' frame of mind.

- - -

Question: I am 26, but still the cover of my penis has not been uncovered. What do I do?

Sexpert: Try daily with a little oil to slip it back till the base of the head of the penis. If you cannot, see a surgeon who will guide you further. Do not hesitate to consult one. If you act now, you will ensure pleasure during sexual intercourse.

Me: Don't do a thing. Wait for WikiLeaks.

Does Michelle Obama want to be Ms. Congeniality?

2012-01-12T20:29:00.000+05:30

She has not read the book, she does not care about people’s perceptions because they would not know, yet she sends out clarifications. I am disturbed by what she seems to have a problem with:

“I guess it's more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here and a strong woman. But that's been an image that people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced [he would run for president] - that I'm some angry black woman.”

And why can she not be one? Have those specific words been used? People have said things about Hillary, when Bill Clinton was President. Did it become an ‘angry white woman’ issue? People have called Sarah Palin several names, and she spawned a whole humour industry, as indeed did George Bush.

We are talking about The Obamas, a book by Jody Kantor. Like many such biographical accounts, it does not have an official stamp of approval and is based on interviews. This is a valid form of writing, as are opinion pieces. Had it been hagiographical, would Michelle Obama be concerned about how she is projected? Would she feel the need to debunk the archetype of the angry black woman?

Let us dissect the three words separately:

Angry. It does convey a negative emotion, but its potential to be channelised and keep the spark alive is even more potent. ‘Look back in anger’ goes right into the heart of such fury. The problem is that the world is rather interested in the Ms. Congeniality and Mr. Nice Guy ideas. Anger may lead to just an extra dose of arrogance, of righteousness, but belief also leads to introspection.

Black. It is a colour. It is a race. It comes with baggage, like many other shades – yellow, brown, white. I understand that racism is a major concern, but people in power in other societies have had to deal with labels too based on their origins. There have been black people who have contributed in several fields and to even mention it is exceedingly patronising. There are barriers, but they aren’t waiting for handouts or confirmation of their credentials – of blackness or beyond.

Woman. Again, the gender issue will talk of the ‘second sex’, which I find insulting. In a country that is still not quite certain whether it wants a woman to be President, the First Lady should be holding out for this one. I am not suggesting that a woman ought to be head of state, just as I do not think such choices need to be based on narrow definitions and identities and bandied about. It only shows we have not quite evolved and need these pigeonholes.

Now, if we take these three words together “angry black woman”, we can see it in a positive manner of a person who thinks independently, is comfortable with the identity she was born with (I will not say ‘be proud of’, for it is puerile to be proud of an accident of birth, unless you have great skin and an awesome pair of boobs, but that is about natural vanity, not worked-to-earn-a-place pride). This person is a woman and does not need masculine yardsticks to judge her, so if she is angry, then she bloody well will yell and scream and if you call this female hysteria then you will have to put up with it, because she is going to have her say. You think she in on the soapbox, fine. So, don’t expect a pedestal, lady, for that is the big trap. Your anger is as just as it is justified, and you don’t need for it to be justifiable.

On the other hand, we have Naomi Campbell, an angry black woman, but she is seen as a tyrant for what she has done. Should we psychoanalyse her behaviour necessarily through a black female prism?

When Michelle Obama says that being pinned as an angry black woman seems “more interesting” to people, she is using a limited definition by imagining it. However, one might like to know more interesting than what? That she fights for causes? That’s she brings up two teenage daughters? That she makes sure young Americans eat right? These matter only because of the place she occupies in the White House.

Therefore, one wonders why she thinks it is not quite right to say she sits in her husband’s political meetings? She has gone defensive:

“I am his biggest ally. I am one of his biggest confidants. But he has dozens of really smart people who surround him. That's not to say that we don't have discussions and conversations.”

Yet, one of the reports has this to say:

In the opening pages of The Obamas, Kantor sets out the terms of her project: “In public, they smiled and waved, but how were the Obamas really reacting to the White House, and how was it affecting the rest of us?” The questions are at once labored and absurd. The state of a marriage is a poor guide to the course of a presidency.

Really? Why was Clinton impeached? Why has Nancy Reagan’s role been dissected? The Obamas have talked about their life; they discuss with the media their concerns about their daughters; there is public display of affection. If Michelle were faced with that yawn of a quote “Behind every successful man there is a woman”, both she and Barack would have smiled, at the very least. Neither would deny it. They might not go the Clinton way of getting two for the price of one, but this reveals that a partner plays a role. She may not have problems with the White House staff, but many people have issues with those who work with their spouses, especially if they are essentially sharing the same physical space. The fact that one calls it home and the other office gives the former an advantage, and rightly so.

It would be a tough task to make it sound like an edition of Friends. As she said:

“My hope is that over time people get to know me. And they get to judge me for me. That’s why I don’t read these books. Because, you know, it’s a game in so many ways… Who can write about how I feel? Who? What third person can tell me how I feel? Or anybody for that matter.”

True. She might like to write her own story, but that too would be selective, would it not? Or would she write a self-help book, “How Not To Be An Angry Black Woman”?

(c) Farzana Versey

The Man with the Phallic Tattoo

2012-01-11T23:59:00.002+05:30

I don’t know whether wishing his penis bon voyage would have taken him places or not, but the guy is now doomed to be living off his ‘suitcase’. According to MSNBC’s The Body Odd reports:

The 21-year-old Iranian man found himself between a rock and a hard place after he got a tattoo in Persian script reading "borow be salaamat" (good luck on your journeys), and the first initial of his girlfriend's last name ("M").

The tattoo artist used a handheld needle and caused damage. The reconstructive surgery did not work. Result: A semi-permanent erection.

There is no pain and he can get a “relatively normal erection”. Was it worth it?

I don’t have any particular opinion about body inking and piercing; in fact, I find some mild tattoos and piercings attractive. So, where does one draw the line? Is it cultural or personal? When I got my nose pierced way back when I was in college, quite a few people asked me if it had to do with being a Muslim. Later I was told it was against Islam. For me, it was just a shiny little thing on my nose and carried no baggage of anything other than personal whim.

Yet, in many ways it is more exhibitionistic than the Iranian’s private part. Esoteric tattoos and piercings do reveal personality as well as projection. If I see a person with her/his whole body covered with flora, fauna, faces, symbols, verses I would cease to notice the human behind these externals. One might well ask, don’t we wear clothes that could be considered different? That is where one conditioning revolts against another. Clothes may give away what we are to an extent, but do not take away from us. Even the big name labels are about us. Colourful works of art on skin may draw greater attention, but they strip us of identity. It does sound strange and in fact contrary to what the purpose is – an in-your-face assertion of a self-inflicted ‘wound’. Or, of the self as an art installation.

This could be seen as body mutilation too. In some tribes, parts were burned and marinaded to form an embossed jewel on the skin. Then there are instances of neck stretching, corset waists, tongue splits, and even colouring the whites of eyes and embedding crystals on teeth. How much of it is a fad and how much a need to be part of a group or to carve out a separate identity? Most of those who overdo it are seen as ‘weird’, and it may be the desired goal. But what if they tire of it? One can give away clothes, what does one do with skin, teeth, eyes?

In the case of those who have such embellishments in secret places, we cannot see them in the manner of the rest. No one but they or those they are intimate with would know. So, how can it be projection and the rest? It is probably a niche, a standing apart while doing what the rest do. It is a beguiling hush-hush thing that is often stated to be hidden, or the hiding is the statement.

The Iranian has to live with a phallus which is all dressed up but has nowhere to go. A bit like a travelling salesman who has nothing to sell.

- - -
Image used for representative purposes: www.verparacreer.net

Saleem Shahzad Pe Mat Ro

2012-01-11T20:02:00.000+05:30

Don’t weep for Saleem Shahzad, for the tragedy of his death, the investigations, the report and much of the concern is beyond tears.

There is a rage storming over the findings presented on January 10 by the Pakistani judicial commission that probed the abduction and murder of the journalist. But, this is like a chain reaction. Does anyone recall that an NGO buried his body?

In a June 2, 2011 article Lessons From Shahzad’s Murder, I had written:

Pakistan is the most dreaded place for journalists. The pronouncement has been made. Yet a Pakistani reporter, and a person with an insider view of the al Qaeda and Taliban, Syed Saleem Shahzad’s brutal killing was not the top news on the websites of three prominent dailies in the country. The internet allows you to update stories. Since they have carried the news, it cannot be fear. Some call it (Pakistan) a police state. A police state has order and the level of shackling is complete, except perhaps for underground movements.

We will revisit a few salient points from that piece later.

Some of the current media talk is bizarre:

Though the commission was given six weeks to investigate the incident after Shahzad was killed in May last year, it took six months to finalise its findings. The commission led by a Supreme Court judge submitted its report to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday.

Why was it given six weeks? Don’t many cases drag on? Was the media following up? How many petitions were filed by news agencies or independent journalists?

The report has not held any institution or individual responsible for the abduction, torture and murder of Shahzad. The Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying that the panel had "stopped short of fixing responsibility for the journalist's killing". The commissions members have agreed that the report would be made public only by the government.
"We have strongly recommended that the report be made public by government as soon as possible," an unnamed member told the Dawn.

Under the commission's terms of reference, it was asked to "inquire into the background and circumstance" of Shahzad's murder and to "identify the culprits involved" in the crime. Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists president Pervaiz Shaukat, a member of the commission, said that while the panel had not held anyone directly responsible, it had included its doubts and concerns in the report.

What else are investigations about? How much information did the media have? If the government is complicit in the case, then one would be curious about the doubts and concerns. What I’d like to know is the reason for the initial silence of the ‘lambs’. Here, let me take you back to those pestering thoughts I had expressed:

Shahzad had been taken in by the Taliban in 2006 on suspicion of being a spy; he was released after seven days. He knew the perils of his profession and had also registered his fears with Human Rights Watch of Pakistan. He disappeared on Sunday, May 29. A police complaint was registered by his family. Did any human rights organisation do anything instead of being “disturbed” that a state agency might be involved? The media does have considerable influence and can approach government functionaries directly or interview them. Was any of that done? He had left that evening to attend a talk show on a television channel. Did the channel keep flashing the news about his disappearance?

and

This is strange that the local police picks up a body, conducts a post-mortem that reveals torture, and hands it to a NGO that goes ahead and buries it. No questions asked. Later, the Islamabad cops and the local ones realise the identity matches that of Shahzad, which his papers would have shown anyway. His family had to seek permission to exhume his body to confirm his identity. How can an unidentified person be temporarily buried? There are mortuaries in hospitals and the police ought to have alerted the intelligence agencies.

The Pakistani media will in the coming days raise questions about the ISI, which really is the state of Pakistan today, as in what comprises the nation-state. To extricate the ISI from the other arms of Pakistani polity is to merely play a game of chess and move the pawns about. The chess board remains the same.

Cut to now. The ISI denies it role. What did anyone expect?

Katju's Kama Sutra

2012-01-10T12:18:00.003+05:30

Wah, kya baat hai, Katju saab

Our sage is chucking moral pebbles in the froth while imagining he is causing ripples in the liberal sea.

Chief Justice Markandeya Katju has decided to take up the cause of adult film star Sunny Leone.

Katju said he had not seen anything to suggest that Leone was indulging in pornography. Citing religious examples, he said, Lord Buddha stayed with the courtesan Amrapali and ate food served by her, and she later became his disciple. Similarly, Mary Magdalene was a fallen woman (according to the Gospel of Luke as interpreted by Pope Gregory) and Jesus allowed her to wash his feet and she later became his disciple.

Indian morality does Sunny

So, whose disciple should Sunny become? I have a problem with this patriarchal notion because Ms. Leone is a porn star, and she is not doing it alone. She is not here to cook and serve food and wash feet or whatever the contemporary equivalents are. She is going to act in the movies, and will bare skin like many of our respectable movie stars do – men and women. If Justice Katju wants to go Biblical on this one, then one may surmise that she occasionally uses the fig leaf. What do those who surf websites wear?

“My opinion is that Sunny Leone was earning her livelihood in USA in a manner acceptable in that country, though it is not acceptable in India... if she conducts herself in India in a manner which is socially acceptable in India and does not breach the social moral code, we should not treat her as a social outcast.”

I know about the Indian Penal Code (IPC). What is the Indian Moral Code (IMC)? Is it the same for women of certain tribes whose dress code is different from those of the more ‘civilised’ urban areas? Is it not precious that the elite among the latter in some ways mimick a natural state as clotheless designer hippies? Why does he not quote from the Kama Sutra and tell us what women can do? Why does he not point out the scupltures in Khajuraho? What has changed?

I appreciate his knowledge of Ghalib (and I endorse his stand on this), but he should probably check out Firaq Gorakhpuri’s orientation, which was so against one version of the IMC. Why go back in time. There is a thriving porn industry. Politicians and godmen are regularly caught with their pants down and they are not performing their morning ablutions. Some are exploiting their status; some are making films against the picturesque holy rivers to sell to a foreign clientele looking for the exotic Indian with missionary zeal.

Does the IMC have different standards for bar dancers and for the clients? Can we not say that our apsaras danced, so what is wrong? And we had somras, so let us drink? (Ghalib drank, too, just in case the good judge wants to get a bottoms up.)

How did Justice Katju get himself into this, erm, position?

A report had stated a while ago:

Sunny Leone, the porn star who entered Bigg Boss 5, had so far generated TRPs for the show. Now, she’s generating some controversy too. Her website, which features her porn videos, had a large, unmissable message on its home page that read ‘As seen on ‘Bigg Boss Season 5.’ This using of the Indian TV show to promote her videos didn’t go down well with the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC), an independent body instituted by the Indian Broadcasters Foundation (IBF). The BCCC directed Colors, the channel, to stop this cross-promotion of Leone’s pornographic videos and sites by December 26.

He was asked to address this complaint, which is when he got into the mood.

With reference to this, we are complete hypocrites. Sunny Leone was invited to participate in the show because she is an adult film star and not because she fed stray dogs. (My earlier post Of Porn and Pawns) Everyone on the show promotes themselves. We have had wife-beaters, gangsters’ molls, MMS heroes, politicians. Many are going through a low phase and want to resurrect their career or reputation and this is the forum they use, whether in the House or outside. Why did Swami Agnivesh enter this season? Was he aching to be imprisoned,so that he could cook and clean? No. He went there after his fallout with Team Anna. He wanted to promote himself, clarify his stand. Therefore, Sunny Leone’s website had every right to use her participation in the show, as people do in any resume.

Bigg Boss is anyway not an ashram. Neither is Indian society. Justice Katju should take his head out of those books he is reading and check out reality sometimes. I can promise him it is socially acceptable to do so.

Passive-aggressive in Pakistan: Tharoor’s Day Out

2012-01-08T20:40:00.002+05:30

Pakistan must have been in an “Aa bail mujhe maar” mood, except that the bull was in a china shop where there were broken pieces already. Former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor was invited by the Jinnah Institute to deliver a lecture on “India and Pakistan: Cooperation or conflict”. Now, there is nothing new that you can say on this subject, except to try low angle or fish-eye shots; aerial view has been taken over by the United States.

He obviously meant to make an impassioned argument for India, but in times when everyone likes a bit of dazzle his reference to the Pakistani army being one of the most “lavishly funded” in the world with a “stranglehold over policy” would have given even his think tank hosts a bit of an ego boost. They know that a civilian government has never completed its term, but even the most liberal Pakistani would not want to stinge on defence. They are in dire straits, despite the minister whacking them for expenditure that was a “grossly disproportionate share” of the GDP. If we can get an assurance from Pakistan, will we stop spending crores on just Siachen? There is a defensive and an offensive aspect, and when one will transform into the other is a matter of real politick.

He linked the military with the jihadi. I have issues with that. It was the army that went into the Lal Masjid; the army fights the Taliban. And the traditional bias of Punjab-heavy forces against the Pashtuns – Taliban or even the small percentage within the army – does not need reiteration. One can only say that the army does not prevent the militants, and they may use them. The army’s motives are a bit different from the ‘jihadi’ motive though, and Pakistan is getting a taste of it almost every few days, which Mr. Tharoor himself pointed out.

Here are a few more of his ideas that need to be analysed. They are sourced from his website, so I cannot be accused of choosing selectively:

“The army lays down the red lines that political leaders dare not cross,” he said. The army also preserves the “myth of an Indian threat”.

Again, everyone knows that the army looms over Pakistan; we do diplomacy with its military governments, so does that change our yardstick for détente? It is often the political class that is in charge of myths. And it creates this soap opera of paranoia, for which the army is only too happy to play saviour/aggressor.

Addressing Pakistan’s concerns about India, Tharoor said the people of India were “totally reconciled to Pakistan’s existence as an independent state” and no one believes that the events of 1971 – which led to the creation of Bangladesh – can be replicated. He noted that the 1971 war was a “special case” precipitated by a Pakistani crackdown on the people of erstwhile East Pakistan.

So, we the people of India have finally reconciled ourselves to the idea that Pakistan is an independent state after 64 years. Had he been discussing this at a psychology seminar, one would have understood the implications. Rather, it came across as an admission that ‘we’ created Bangladesh, and it was a ‘special case’. So special that Bangladesh will not give us the time of day now. It was a quasi-pugnacious gesture and seemed particularly ironic when you place it in tandem with the elements within the country that let terrorists “bleed India”. This was real passive-aggressive stuff.

He also said that India had neither the intention nor capability to foment unrest in Balochistan. I think we are a capable nation; it is just that Baluchistan is none of our business, just as Mumbai is none of Pakistan’s business.

A strong and stable Pakistan was in India’s interest, he said. India was essentially a “status quoist” country and there could be peace between the two sides if they agreed on “mutually acceptable parameters”, Tharoor said.

Why do we go on with this tired argument about ‘agreeing’? What does he mean by status quoist? We have thought out of the box in several instances, and if he meant that our position on Kashmir has remained unchanged, then he is alluding to the ruling establishment as hardliner. Seriously, one cannot have mutually acceptable parameters with a status quo. Simple logic.

While terrorist groups have a momentum of their own and cannot be turned off like a tap, Pakistan and India can focus on softer issues like a free trade pact and educational exchanges to improve relations.

Just a minute. He just said that Pakistan was sponsoring terrorism, so how do these groups have a momentum of their own? Why not talk about cutting the water supply, instead of discussing taps when there could well be underground wells? This business about peace through exchange of trade, designers, actors, singers is not going to make a difference to the conflict. Not one bit.

When people are fighting over water, do you talk about trading in bottled water?

(c) Farzana Versey

Sunday ka Funda

2012-01-08T14:51:00.001+05:30

Why do we describe victims of cold-blooded murder as "well-mannered and never got angry"? Is it ok for angry, rude people to get killed? This is what they said at Anuj Bidve's funeral; he was killed in the UK by a 'psychopath'. Some people even call such guys mild, those who'd never hurt a fly.

We will not change. The world is round.

"I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times

Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes

Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief

I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief"

A Thousand Years - Sting

Symbols and the Poll Cabaret

2012-01-07T20:18:00.001+05:30

Vote the hell! Acting as spoiler, the Election Commission is going to make Uttar Pradesh pardanasheen (veiled). So Mayawati and her saathis, the haathis will be covered:

"The Commission has decided that statues of the CM and elephants (her party symbol) will be draped," Chief Election Commissioner SY Qureshi told reporters here.

Apparently, it is poll time and no such promos are allowed.

Those statues are gross anyway, but why is the EC spending so much time, money and effort when the CM looms larger than the jumbo? Is a statue more representative of the person than she herself is? Will all Congress candidates have to wear gloves to cover their hands, their party symbol?

People are bribed with everything from trips to pilgrim sites to CCTV cameras. Indian democracy can wait; let the fun begin.

It is like Moulin Rouge in the streets. Elections in India are a combination of dance, drama, pantomime, jugglery, and the acrobatic skills of purveyors of false hope. You will hear of the new voices raging like matadors towards bulls, but the red rag is often a cloth of blood. Or a clot. If this is pessimism it is internalised by the very karmic feed from the environment.

But that does not matter. We care little about who is in power and more for getting them there. The pre-ballot ballets are what make it so very interesting. You might find a cow with slogans scrawled on its body or an elephant with posters stuck on it; loudspeakers in open jeeps belt out patriotic songs to Bollywood tunes and film dialogues pass off as socially-relevant messages; election symbols can make you chuckle – would you vote for an independent candidate who thinks a balloon represents her/him? Flowers, birds, animals, vehicles, body parts are on display as party symbols.

Promises are made for rose gardens…yes, they do promise you a rose garden…in a country where people need a place to defecate, where women squat near drains with umbrellas hiding their faces to cover their shame as they extricate remnants of malnourished meals and contaminated water.

Promises are made for big industries where the fumes would help burn the fires in homes with stone cold floors and cook grains with insects crawling in them. These people will be taken in trucks to vote, with bait of a little money or a little ride. The rich will celebrate in fancy bars and watch exit polls as they drink their gin and tonic. The glossies will flash pictures of them showing us their inked index finger, the nail varnish a bright fuchsia.

Gods are brought out in the streets – every faith is pandered to, no god should be unhappy. The people? They are god’s slaves. They are the slaves of leaders. They are the slaves of helplessness. They are we and we are they and we know the difference so well. That is why someone sits on a high chair and gives speeches about the horrible state of affairs. These people get elected and stay behind barricaded walls, eat beneath the light of chandeliers as large as ceilings and from crockery with gold rim, and drink off glasses so fragile that when they break they make no noise.

This is not the only silence you will hear. The silence of people with no voices but feet that can be dragged to the booths to put their stamp on someone’s name, never their own. The faceless ones who live for those days when life is a cabaret.

Peeling suns

2012-01-06T21:01:00.000+05:30

I want to walk right into the sunset

And feel its depleting heat

Clothe my skin a pale pink

And then enter flesh

Colours will mesh

The peeled sun within me

Changes

Lights up

My insides

And when I cry

Each drop of tear

Will have a rainbow in it

Can transformation

Get deeper than this

~FV

Muslim Fire, Hindu Ire

2012-01-06T20:20:00.000+05:30

No patakhas for Muslims?

Leading Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband has issued a fatwa against manufacturing and sale of firecrackers, saying that it is against the Sharia law.

Manufacturing and selling of firecrackers is against the Sharia law, and firing crackers is a gross misuse of money, the fatwa said. It also said that that men who misuse money are the ‘brothers of devil’. The Islamic seminary issued fatwa on a query from a man involved in the business of manufacturing firecrackers. The news holds significance given that a large number of Muslims are involved in the manufacturing and sale of firecrackers across the country.

I just cannot understand this. Why would a person who is already involved in the business want to consult the seminary?

If firing crackers amounts to misuse of money, then so is placing flowers over tombstones at dargahs.

If those who indulge in this are ‘brothers of the devil’, are women permitted to play with phuljhadis?

Is there any evidence of the devil misusing funds? Did he not inherit hell, or should he be pulled up for spending a fortune on adding all those satanic thingies in there?

I do not see how there can be any mention of firecrackers in the Sharia. Did some of the Prophet’s opponents light up anaars on the desert sands?

If the Darul Uloom is so concerned, it should seek justice for children who work in these factories and are exposed to risks of extreme levels of pollution. Get over this fatwa obsession and do something that matters.

- - -

Gays threaten Hinduism?

An artist holding an exhibition in the capital on the theme of homosexuality was on Thursday attacked and abused by an unidentified assailant, who also damaged one of the paintings on display. Balbir Krishan said the attacker entered the solo exhibition space at Lalit Kala Akademi with his face covered by a handkerchief. He pushed and kicked Krishan, a double amputee who has lost both his legs, while hurling insults all the while.

He has been receiving threatening calls saying: “Tuney Hindu dharam ko bigarne ka theka laga rakha hai (You are determined to ruin Hinduism).”

Someone should take these guys on a yatra where temple sculptures clearly show all kinds of sexual activities, including homosexuality. Will they dare to deface those? Will they dare insult the deities?

I am not suggesting that art should be irresponsible. In this case, he was only exhibiting works, giving expression to his thoughts and personal experiences. He was not indulging in criminal activities like paedophilia, for which a few good godmen have been caught. Why do these assaulters not land up in those ashrams and use their fists. Well, to beat up those holy folks...

No dharam can be spoilt. It is not perishable food.

Flag jousting and Indo-Pak 'peace'

2012-01-05T20:44:00.001+05:30

The Pakistani flag is hoisted on New Year's Eve in India. At the tahsildar's office at Sindgi town in Bijapur, Karnataka.

Was there any news about it in the media immediately after?

There was damage due to violence. The police have arrested six people from the Sri Ram Sene youth wing.

Why was there silence, even if the idea was to spark off "communal tension" and a few Muslims could have been arrested? Why did that not happen?

The reports are coming in now, after things are under control. Does the BJP muzzle such news? How did the violence go unnoticed when the Sene and Bajrang Dal even gave a call for a bandh?

Not unexpected is the reaction that the BJP and RSS have nothing to do with this organisation. Remember how the BJP would distance itself from the RSS and continues to do so for opportunistic reasons, when the moderate mask wants to hide an aggressive face?

How different are the ministers in Karnataka telling women on the dress code to follow to prevent rape from the Sri Ram Sene group that goes on a rampage against westernised women?

It would be foolish to let it pass that such "miscreants" managed this and it came to light only after the BJP government took action.

You might wonder why they did it at all. One word: elections. The make-up van clears all blemishes.

As for the news, a trickle will now become a storm, and only storms have news value.

- - -

In other news Shashi Tharoor thinks Indo-Pak peace can happen only if we deal with the messy stuff first. Now, people like us have been saying so for gadha (donkey's) years. Mr. Tharoor will hobnob with Them at soirees, though.

One more observation: Pakistani liberals will really cry for peace with India despite their dictatorial government policies. Indian professional liberals will toe democratic government lines.

People like us just speak without waiting for taalis or gaalis.

How Much Freedom Can We Choose?

2012-01-04T18:53:00.000+05:30

If a nation were a person, then how would she deal with freedom? The question of freedom has become exceedingly complex politically – although it always was philosophically – because even issues outside the realm of social and armed conflict have become politicised. Is political independence the same as personal freedom? Can we deal with border conflicts the way in which we treat our neighbour’s backyard? Is the pugnacity for democracy the same as one for glory? Is America free or are its people chained to one idea of freedom?

As an outsider, even as I am aware there is much self-introspection within, the U.S. pushes me to re-examine the concept of independence. One obvious reason is that most of us have been brought up on stories of the great melting pot. Logically speaking, a melting pot takes away the independence of different ingredients. Therefore, we have the patronage of multiculturalism; I deliberately call it patronage because the Otherness remains the beneficiary of tolerance. It is partly because the United States, like many other societies, would like to hold on to its ‘purity’. Strangely enough, although it cannot claim to be a race, the racism prevalent cannot be ignored. Yet, it is American society that pushes the patriotic principle to its limits.

How free is patriotism? Do the citizens have to suffer from the xenophobia of their leaders? This subject would apply to almost every country for, whether we like it or not, there is an element of Americanisation that has entered our shores in some form or the other. Do the people believe in the wars that the U.S. fights outside its shores? Are they free to stop it?

As celebrations were on for the Fourth of July, I read this rather sad observation in an Op-ed in The Los Angeles Times:

“I speak not of the flower-covered vehicles that lumber slowly down Colorado Boulevard every year, not far from the golf course that sits almost adjacent to Pasadena, but of the airborne kind capable of dropping nuclear warheads almost anywhere on the planet. Around 8 a.m., a B-2 stealth bomber made a low pass over us, banked right and flew south as it gained altitude over the San Gabriel Valley. The whole thing was over in a few seconds. Mission accomplished, I suppose.”

It has been exit time from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are miles away. The guns are being fired in universities. There is angst within.

The nation got freedom on a certain date. The outsiders were thrown out. Are those who were born later naturally free? I know that as an Indian, almost everyone who did not suffer from the calamitous Partition is considered fortunate to be born free. This leads me to delve into some questions about what constitutes such freedom. Is birth a matter of choice? Moreover, is choice a valid yardstick of freedom? You enter a mall and have an array of brands on display. You opt for one over the other based on price, quality (if used earlier), its adept marketing, the retail prompting, needs, and whims. When we make such a choice we are not free but basing our purchases on demand and supply.

Take this argument further to the discussion on freedom of expression. An opinion is an expression that we give freely; organised dissent is not necessarily so. It could be a crucial way to deal with established laws and the system but it does not as a consequence make us free. And, we need to be honest about this: we value our freedom even if it means not quite letting others have the same. That is the reason I had said once that love is not unconditional because there are expectations of reciprocity.

This would apply to other areas of convergence and divergence. Today when I read Salman Rushdie hold forth, it only sharply delineated the nature of choice. He said, "Free speech…you say what you like, I choose what I listen to. I write what I like, you choose what you read.” I wonder about such use of choice. If we follow the trend, then can we say that if they issue fatwas against him, he has the choice to save his head and the price over it? How many of these prominent people who are victims of repressive regimes or thought have fought for the rights of others lesser known, in less visible fields – the refugees, the displaced who have no art to hang or hang on to?

Are such choices limited binaries – you say this, I say that? Go ahead and make the choices. There are rebels in the streets, but they too will formulate laws, they too will need to streamline their agitations, they will have to be inclusive. This too is ‘herdism’, and that goes against the perception of being completely free.

Freedom of choice is individualism's sidekick. A true individualist Does, without thinking of it as a choice.

(c) Farzana Versey

Why women don't rape men

2012-01-02T20:10:00.000+05:30

A minister “personally” does not favour women wearing certain kinds of clothes. Bad enough. Worse is that Yahoo India has this discussion titled: “The Big Question: Are women to blame for rape?”

Why repeat such an idea? It could have been worded differently, instead of such a passive manner. E.g. “Are men such jerks that they rape women’s clothes?” Seriously, how many times do we have to repeat that fully clothed women, not wearing trendy or flimsy westernised dresses, are raped?

Karnataka’s women and child welfare minister C C Patil said:

“I personally don’t favour women wearing provocative clothes and always feel they need to be dignified in whatever they wear…Today’s lifestyle makes it mandatory for women to work like men and live on equal terms with them. So women work in IT companies and call centres at night, they ought to know how much skin they should cover when they leave for such work places. Thus, I leave the issue of their dressing to them.”

Well, thanks, but we should drop the term ‘moral policing’ for morality is the big culprit that starts these stereotypes, and policing assumes they have the power. There is another issue that we are not addressing. What does he mean by saying that it has become mandatory for women to work. It is as much a choice as any other, and it has little to do with aping men. If that were the case then women would be doing the dhinka-chika pelvic thrust, keeping their shirt/blouse buttons open till the waist.

Why don’t women rape men? After all, in many animal species it is the female that hunts prey, and a few smart insects even devour their mate after mating. I won’t get into the nurturing argument. Women’s brains are where they are supposed to be – in their heads. They may get attracted to men and their bodies but they do not lunge. There can be an element of lust when they eye someone, but they do not lick their lips.

Besides the tired argument about conditioning (how many of us are told not to look at men in that way?), women tend to be more individualistic in their thinking, even where sexist ideas are concerned. Men are more likely to follow the herd, which is why gang rape is quite common, often in places where women in fact do work similar to men: in the fields.

The female construct of conquest is not just about security, but exclusivity. Women gossip, but they rarely discuss their bedroom tales with their friends. Ask men and chances are that long after it is over, they will still be tied to the G-strings.

Writers, Patrons and Politics

2012-01-02T19:56:00.000+05:30

There are some writers who I find difficult to read because of their politics. They pen books that are well-researched and woven with magic, and magically realistic, words. However, should they be knighted or awarded by the Establishment, I might question the motives of the System and their own supposed ‘unpopular’ positions, mainly because their impact is on today. They are capturing our world.

That is the reason I take issue with M.J.Akbar’s recent piece on the Bharat Ratna that I have written about earlier. Here is my rejoinder to some of his statements:

But his (Markandey Katju’s) campaign for a Bharat Ratna to Mirza Ghalib and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay is ludicrous. One of my great personal regrets is insufficient knowledge of Urdu, and ignorance of Persian: the two books I would carry to the proverbial desert island are the complete works of Shakespeare and Ghalib. Ghalib’s poetry is eternal, but his views did not always belong to the narrative of modern India. Ghalib lived through 1857. He watched 23 Mughal princes being hanged and fellow Dilliwallahs being massacred by merciless British columns. Ghalib was more interested in a pension from Queen Victoria, as is evident from his diary, Dastambuy, than a war for independence. This does not diminish his poetry, but it does raise questions about his politics.

Was he supposed to save those princes? 'Modern' literary mavens murder literature itself, so why question Ghalib's politics when the award is political. It is patronage in a contemporary setting for services rendered to the Republic. I have already expressed my reservations about using that date as definitive of merit.

How many writers, artistes, media persons came out to save Dilliwallahs in the 1984 riots? Did they or did they not get honoured anyway? Can we hold it against them?

Our cultural ambassadors who are chosen for special reasons and RS seats would also be looking for such Victorian encomiums without appearing to be corseted intellectually.

Justice Katju has read a million more books than any silly journalist, but perhaps he has not come across Joya Chaterji’s masterly Bengal Divided [Cambridge University Press, 1996]. He would surely have noticed a speech that Saratchandra, an undoubted literary genius, made in 1926. There isn’t space for the full text, but a few sentences establish the flavor - and trust me, I am leaving out the more gruesome bits: “The truth is that if Muslims ever say they want to unite with Hindus, there is no greater hoax. The Muslims came to India to plunder it, not to establish a kingdom…Unity can only be realized among equals…’Hindu-Muslim unity’ is a bombastic slogan…Hindustan is the homeland of the Hindus.” Et al. Saratchandra’s India was not the India that Mahatma Gandhi lived and died for.

Only because Godse killed for a particular cause does not mean that Gandhi died for the same cause.

As regards Saratchandra's communalism, how is it surprising? Are we going to split hairs over the nature of the kingdom when you cannot colonise without some amount of plundering, British trade being another form of it? If Justice Katju is wrong to wish for recognition of historical figures, then such regurgitation of history does the same. It is sanctifying his words by emphasising their notoriety. Everyone loves the bad guys, and now one can expect some Hindutvawadi to use Sarat babu with an, “He told you so”. They will have one more reason to shout down the ‘pseudo secularists’.

The past has its glories. The past has its dilemmas. The past has its mistakes. The past has its rage. Shall we reserve the Bharat Ratna for those who fought for a future in which every Indian is an equal?

The fact that a certain person will get the Bharat Ratna (“reserve” is an interesting word here), and a select few other Padma awards, means that every Indian is not an equal. Let us not even try for such equality, whether it is among religions, castes, gender, race, regions. Each has its dynamics and an equitable and just way of looking at it makes more sense. And rewarding, shall we say?

Two drops of almond

2011-12-31T19:56:00.004+05:30

That year I had banged my head against imaginary walls. It hurt more than real walls would, for when you imagine things they get magnified. The walls were made of stone, grey and cold and weathered. They knew pain.

It was end of December, when there was a nip in the air and I'd walk through the familiar streets holding myself tight like a stranger afraid of taking a wrong turn. Upon reaching the main thoroughfares, my frozen smile would melt. The store windows were dressed with stars and balloons, there were Santa caps, clothes, shiny stringers, cribs, baby Jesuses, and often tableaux with the Magi.

These were scenes I had seen every year. That year it looked different. As though the walls had broken and I was in a manger, born again. It was the serenity on the face of the Virgin Mother, a part I had ached to enact in a tableau at school. Too shy to register my name, I watched someone else become 'me'.

That year again. Christmas was over. These window dressings would stay until the New Year. Two days were left. Melancholia was seeping in again. The walls were back, barricading me. I looked in the mirror and saw a yellow tassel over my head. It looked like a halo. Yes. Birth. Rebirth. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

I twirled on the slippery bathroom tiles as though it were a powdered wooden floor and I was dressed in a tulle gown.

I could not wait for the new year. I brought out the fruits, whatever was there, and chopped them finely, the juice dripping on my palms like a psalm. I recalled the fruit punch at a friend's place. It had given us a pleasant high as we filled up glasses with it, spiked with rum.

There was no alcohol at home. I put the water to boil and just when the bubbles started to burst I added a few tea leaves, waiting for it to turn just dark enough to look like rum. While it cooled in the deep freezer, I squeezed lime into the fruit, a dash of pepper, a touch of mint. My punch was ready with the colour of fake rum.

I was happy but something was missing. Should I start the year with make-believe?

The answer came in a golden wrapper, roughly scrunched. There was just one piece of chocolate hidden inside, a liqueur chocolate. I bit off the top and slowly emptied the liquid into the bowl of punch. Amaretto. Two drops of it made it all so real.

Two drops that saved me from imaginary walls.

- - -

Wishes for a many-splendoured New Year, and for reality to be as interesting as our illusions...

Ice Flowers

2011-12-31T01:35:00.000+05:30

vapours rise
from frozen dreams
circling the air
they nestle
on moist leaves
slither along branches
wrap around the tree
settle near the roots
liquid now
soil swallows them
like seeds
frozen dreams
will become trees
with flowers of ice

~FV

Indian Lolly Cow: Re-run of the Native

2011-12-31T01:25:00.002+05:30

For the native, returned or revived, it is about creating an outside world inside. Nationalism is a pleasant hangover. They are doing their own country, touring it, a form of counter-escapism where kitsch makes culture into hyperbole.

A song 'Kolaveri Di' that has gone viral with several spinoffs is a wonderful analogy.

Re-run of the Native
Indian Lolly Cow
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, Dec 30-Jan 1

“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.”

- Thomas Hardy, ‘Return of the Native’

They strip the whole mansion that belonged to the royal courts in a re-telling of history. The Hindujas, a prominent business family, buys a £100 million huge mansion near Buckingham Palace and renovates it in the East meets West fashion, Victorian balustrades with ancient patterns sourced from the monarchies of their homeland.

A once-reigning Bollywood diva returns ‘home’, bags, hubby, children and new accent in tow. She touts the tired excuse of wanting to inculcate Indian values in her children. She, who used to sing praises about a suburban life in Denver, grocery shopping without being mobbed, is seeking the crowd. In a sad Fedora-like account, she wanted to perform at one of those many New Year’s Eve shows where people pay to watch others dance. There were no takers; her style was passé. But there is hope. Her spouse, a cardiac surgeon, is being wooed by the best hospitals. This is what the return is for – to make the best of India’s wealth. It is not xenophobia that they run away from or values they run to, but the lure of a lifestyle without mortgages where celebrity is still worshipped. The famous in India live in a time-warp where no one must know about their botox, their rehab, their crimes.

Both these examples are two aspects of the same story. Even as the value of the dollar makes the rupee go soggy with remorse, India continues to smile beatifically. This is not part of the old fatalistic paradigm. We still have elephants, but they are now in the room, and on the doors of sprawling London houses.

The India Shining story was a sorry little slogan that simulated glitter, but that has made way for the heavy metal. India probably remains the most ‘untouched’ nation in terms of financial meltdown. How can any country be measured by its economic situation alone? The answer lies in the query. India’s monetary power cannot be measured. Those who make it to the Forbes list are only the showpieces.

Indian industrialisation is steeped in guilt. Guilt does not mean empathy, which was so sharply delineated by Chaplin in ‘Modern Times’. Group guilt is guile camouflaged. Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to dress free enterprise with the garb of socialism. In this case, the clothes became the first impression, the label the nation was tagged with. Added to that, it had to live with the looming shadow of Mahatma Gandhi and his spinning wheel yarn. In many ways, when Indian business people bribe, the psychological dimension to it is of generosity, charity. The peon is given money for ‘chai-paani’ (tea and water, literally); those slightly higher up are advised to “buy something for wife and kids”; the big powers are given the ultimate – familiarity and an opportunity to be equal. The dress of socialism covers all ills. Gandhi’s shadow is like graffiti on walls, designed for a nervous chuckle, a release of tension.

* * *

He threw his hands up in the air as though waiting to catch a ball. “India!” he muttered under his breath, like a whispered secret, as he nodded his head. The imported shrug and nonchalance could not quite take away the yes-no combination gesture.

"India!" the one word muted by arrogance was also the destination of the whitewashed brown man. We were seated next to each other on a flight from Dubai; he had travelled a longer distance from New York so he seemed to believe his stake in India was greater.

He thought it was mandatory to abuse the system because he was accustomed to a more streamlined work ethos. "I am a financial consultant, but I have explored opportunities to set up my own business. I will bring my expertise to the venture." It was his Indian education that had given him the expertise; he worked for some of the best firms here before he got his green card. So, what did he learn in the United States that he could superimpose on the system here? Why did it take him so many years to make that leap of faith? It was not easy for him to admit that he feared for his job and that he could do in India what he was otherwise chary about.

It reminds me of Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire involved in what was billed as “history’s biggest insider trading”. When writer Suketu Mehta interviewed him, a stray sentence caused quite a stir. He wrote:

“The Rajaratnam case can be seen as a metaphor of the difference between immigrants from South Asia, who have a more elastic view of rules and a more keenly developed art of networking, and their children, the first generation, schooled to play by American rules. Preet Bharara came to the U.S. when he was an infant. Yet for all his complaints about unfairness, Rajaratnam, surprisingly, still believes in American justice. ‘In Sri Lanka I would have given the judge 50,000 rupees and he’d be sitting having dinner at my house. Here, I got my shot. The American justice system is by and large fair’.”

My co-traveller quite happily meets lobbyists for his company, and the company donates funds to political parties. He would not do that in India. “Politicians in our country are odious.” I was struck by the reference to “our” country, but I knew that despite a foreign passport he would get through immigration quicker than I would. I was furious with him and his linen jacket, coolly opening a packet of ‘gutka’ and pouring it into his mouth like a hick-town buffoon. They would let him go through, as he’d click his red tongue to sound just slightly agitated over the time wasted. “Time is money, no, Sir?” He will hear this often and will hasten his stride to make that money walk faster.

He is returning because he has watched the country of birth and the one that sustained him in his growing years transform to his specifications. There are parts of it that are now called “gora (white) town”. He will not miss his other ‘home’. In fact, like some westerners, he too will think of this move as a calculated risk, although he knows exactly where to park his funds and his car. The initial days of living abroad had filled him with some nostalgia that found solace in the stores that sold the smells he once loved. Today, he wants non-smelly foods.

If you live in a place that has a past in its quaintly-named lanes and the shops that were lined with glass bottles brimming over with strong-scented foods that made you hungry, you now have to often place an order for those. Or, they come packaged differently. Instead, you have international herbs. Every fruit has a label. I was sick of New Zealand apples and felt ridiculous asking for Indian apples in India. The store guy was unruffled and quite amused as he replied in perfectly-enunciated English, “You mean you want desi apples?” Yes. And I do not want my oil to be a virgin.

* * *

International retail chains like Wal-Mart and Tesco were to enter the market under the FDI, but there was opposition to it. The neo Quit India movement is not about freedom or fear, but its own superpower dreams.

Beneath all the arguments about overdoing free enterprise, there is the canny knowledge that a large segment of people are already being catered to by the local malls. The middle-class has travelled overseas, and pushing a trolley along alleys and falling prey to impulse buying is not an Indian trait where most households above the poverty line has some form of domestic help. In a decade or so, the malls too have lost their sheen. When the first one had opened in Mumbai, families would make it a holiday outing, the children taking joy rides on the escalators. The Swarovski and Patchi chocolate showrooms were mainly window-shopping destinations. Would Indians who could afford expensive baubles buy it here? The exclusivity principle is at play. You cannot have an insignia of ‘By appointment with Carrefour’.

The executive on the flight is the equivalent of Wal-Mart. He too comes with the offering of more jobs, healthy competition, better infrastructure. Curiously, on the same flight, the man across the aisle had another story. He was a recruiter and was hoping that this time he would get lucky. “Young qualified people do not want to leave India. I am surprised. A few years ago, I had to reject so many applications. These days, I am the one rejected. It is impossible to compete because they have salaries I cannot match.” He sells them a better lifestyle and they smirk. They are carrying the latest gadgets, wearing high street fashion, if not designer labels, have gone overseas, and are not ignorant about the concept of weekends. They are willing to work late, as long as they can party late too.

Pico Iyer had said about immigrants, “...it does involve, for some of us, the chance to be transnational in a happier sense, able to adapt anywhere, used to being outsiders everywhere and forced to fashion our own rigorous sense of home. (And if nowhere is quite home, we can be optimists everywhere.)” For the native, returned or revived, it is about creating an outside world inside. Nationalism is a pleasant hangover. They are doing their own country, touring it, a form of counter-escapism where kitsch makes culture into hyperbole.

A song 'Kolaveri Di' that has gone viral with several spinoffs is a wonderful analogy. It uses heavily accented English words, was written and sung spontaneously; there is apparently no purpose to it, but it has broken records. It tells a simple story of a man dumped by his girlfriend. He expresses it as the rage of angels, as it were. One of the lines goes, “Girl white, heart black, eyes meet, future dark”. Some have called it racist. It really is about how this pitching of the tent optimism and pessimism cleaves the world into black and white. Without the intrusion of colours, the space is magnified.

This is an India that has broken the barriers while remaining caged with too much of too little. Indeed, the best little hoard house in town.

(c) Farzana Versey

- - -

Why Can't Science Let Us Be?

2011-12-29T20:24:00.001+05:30

If you don’t wear stilettos and still get orgasms, then pat your back. You are the last hope of science. It’s funny that ‘science-ologists’ think such theories need to be debunked. The “year’s worst abuses against science” by celebrity offenders is the annual list that is part of the Sense About Science (SAS) campaign.

The organisation’s managing director Tracey Brown sets the tone for the attempt:

"It's tempting to dismiss celebrity comments on science and health, but their views travel far and wide and, once uttered, a celebrity cancer prevention idea or environmental claim is hard to reverse. At a time when celebrities dominate the public realm, the pressure for sound science and evidence must keep pace."

By making an issue of it, SAS is in fact giving it celebrity endorsement. Why are famous people asked to put their lot behind prominent medical causes like HIV and cancer? Don’t they often become a reason for treacle-inducing stories rather than gain any merit based on a factual analysis or research? Most celebrities perform at rock concerts and charity balls for these issues. How does it reach the real target audience when they are cocooned in their gowns and dinner jackets parroting what one version of the sponsor group tells them?

If scientific endeavour reaches a dead-end because of rumours or what someone personally believes, then it does not speak too well about science. A small group of people who are completely besotted by what celebrities say does not constitute the population of the world. None of the views they have listed can cause any damage.

Here are a few and my take:

TV personality Nicole Polizzi: "I don't really like the beach. I hate sharks, and the water's all whale sperm. That's why the ocean's salty."

People do not like the beach for several reasons; some do fear sharks; sperm – or semen at least – might be considered salty, although human and whale sperm could well be different. And don’t we say that even a drop makes an ocean. So there.

American singer-songwriter Suzi Quatro: "I used to get a lot of sore throats and then one of my sisters told me that all illnesses start in the colon. I started taking a daily colon cleanser powder mixed with fresh juice every morning and it made an enormous difference."

How is this harmful? Anything done in excess is bad, but I suspect the keepers of science are also the keepers of the pharmaceutical industry and the medical fraternity, and how they’d like to replace the powder-juice combo with a nice little capsule.

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, said that spending more time with horses had made her less allergic to them.

That is her experience. It is not like the whole of Britain or monarchists are going to line up at the stables to get rid of their horsy allergies, which they would be imagining about anyway.

Pippa Middleton: “It (cold water rinse) closes the pores and gives it a lift and shine... it really works.”

SAS tells us that hair does not have pores. All salons insist on washing off conditioner with cold water so that it does not become limp. How will it affect the hair to get a cold rinse?

Simon Cowell was ticked off for saying that he found vitamin injections “calming”.

Doctors use such placebos routinely, and many people are addicted to vitamin supplements.

Heiress Miss Ecclestone said her secret to prevent falling ill: “I have acupuncture to boost my immune system every month or so.”

Alternative medicine has been practised for centuries. She is using acupuncture as a preventive measure and not a cure.

Gwyneth Paltrow believes that a detox diet helped her liver and gave her “mental clarity”.

So? Don’t we harp on psychosomatic illnesses? Are people not uncomfortable if they are too full of themselves, so to speak? Getting rid of some of the elements might in fact make a person think clearly or at least not be so preoccupied with what is within.

Christian Louboutin, a French footwear designer, was taken with something a fellow party guest told him about shoes: "She said that what is sexual in a high heel is the arch of the foot, because it is exactly the position of a woman's foot when she orgasms. So putting your foot in a heel, you are putting yourself in a possibly orgasmic situation.”

An anthropologist or a psychologist would have the good sense to see it as body language or how illusions and analogies work.

Instead, they got a consultant in sexual medicine to ‘debunk’ this myth. Kevan Wylie, (“responded drily”, as the report states, which makes one wonder):

"A woman's foot may be in this position during orgasm, but that does not mean that putting her foot into this position under other circumstances will result in orgasm.”

The woman is not suggesting that, just as men do not get an erection if they hold a gun. She is fantasising.. The shoe industry uses such fantasies, too, as do other advertised brands. Why do some people find stilettos sexy and others think wedges are? Why do some like pumps while others prefer those mean leather boots?

I wish I had thought about this arched footwear…the image is wonderful.

The science saviours can go work on their test tubes. I am thinking of little needles poking into me and a small shot of calming vitamins as I get under the shower to wet my hair with freezing water that will leave it shining and bouncy. I shall then go the riding club and inhale deeply as I get astride a horse. We reach the beach and I walk on my toes on the sand and ever so hesitatingly dip my feet in the ocean. The fear of sharks lends an edgy feeling as I cup my hands and gather a bit of salty water.

The Ambani Matron Saint

2011-12-28T22:48:00.000+05:30

Hamare paas maa hai: Kokilaben with Anil and Mukesh

It does not matter whether the Brothers Ambani – Mukesh and Anil – will do the business tango or not. As the family got together for the memorial of Dhirubhai on his 80th birth anniversary, it was obvious that the Reliance empire is still holding on to Ba’s apron strings. Mother Kokilaben has shown great business acumen earlier and she seems to run the family in just such a corporate manner. Mukesh and Anil may address share-holders, but when it comes to making definitive statements, whether it is about her late husband or her sons, it is the matriarch whose word counts. It may be a mask, but with the sanctity that Indians have for the mother figure it gains extra currency.

She has seen the building of one of the major players in the country; she was with Dhirubhai during his struggling days, the days he fought to find a place, the days he manipulated the System, the days he became his own System. The Ambanis were the envy of many industrial houses because they were together. Dhirubhai did what most corporate patriarchs do not – he reposed faith in his sons. He knew who was good at what and delegated the tasks accordingly. It was not quite equal, but it was just. Just to his shrewd eyes. And that is what mattered. It was left to Kokilaben to be the General Manager or a sort of bureaucrat who knows more about the files than the politician who signs the papers and takes the credit or gets the flak for them.

Bahus can dance saala: Tina and Nita

So, when they met at the village Chorwad in the mansion they have built, it was all about carefully-planned sentiment. The media was allowed to shoot in what was a private ceremony. We caught glimpses of the brothers doing the dandiya, and the bahus playing traditional daughters-in-law as opposed to their more glamorous avatars when in Mumbai and their silent rivalry – Nita with her school, Tina with her art, both doing it for the benefit of society, of course. This was all about custom and it was custom-made. There was uniformity about the clothes, the camaraderie, the smiles.

Who cares whether or not it is good for the economy if the two brothers get together. It may certainly be good for their business, but again it is not an equal game. Kokilaben wearing bright pink spoke before the cameras, she said, “Agar pyaar nahin hota tau saath kaise hote (If there was no love, then why would they be together).” No one would dare to ask why they were together now (though they performed the havan at different timings) and for how long and what would happen once they reached their respective homes and went on their separate holidays.

That is not the point. This was the matriarch’s diktat and a clear signal to the business fraternity and stakeholders: When you buy one, you pay for the other too.

Of Ombudsmen and Wo(men)

2011-12-28T20:06:00.002+05:30

I think we need an ombudsman to overrule the ombudsman who will be overruled by everyone who knows what an ombudsman is not supposed to do.

Anna had a “wish list”. It just so happens that his wish is not his command. Why is his team's moral high horse better than anybody else's? There is nothing to celebrate about him, his movement, the Opposition, or the ruling party. After all this utter waste of time and effort, I think we deserve a couple of conspiracy theories.

Why did the BJP chicken out? Perhaps, the party had a tacit understanding with Team Anna that if there were not sufficient crowds – don’t bother about the traffic jams, in Mumbai cows, strays and fallen trees, all cause traffic snarls – then the BJP will not vote for the government’s Lokpal Bill even with amendments. This will give Anna reprieve from the fast, which he should have not undertaken for health and other reasons anyway. And it will give the anti-corruption movement something to do in the New Year.

Another important factor could be that this would take away the allegations of RSS links of Anna that they are so concerned about, and in effect the BJP might wish to distance itself from for a while to put on its moderate face in the make-up van.

Okay, let us get serious. I do not understand numbers, so will skip all that. There are some details here.

I'd like to address some points BJP's Sushma Swaraj made:

“It appears the government is placing this bill in a fit of rage”

It was pushed into this sewer and naturally came out smelling of turd.

“The federal structure of the Constitution is being violated”

And what was Anna’s movement about? The Constitution?

“Centre wants to make the Lokpal model optional for states, but the bill you have brought makes it mandatory”

True. The river flows from the seas. Same logic.

“18 states have Lokayuktas. Many of them have better bills than the ones you have brought. Like Uttarakhand. Your bill will override those. There are better ones like the bill that Karnataka passed long ago”

So, the Lokpal Bill was already there for 43 years. If that is not good enough, then it is all a matter of how you look at it. This is not a case of ‘uski kameez meri kameez se safeid kyon’. Incidentally, Mamata Bannerjee too is putting up a fight, so you cannot keep everyone happy all the time.

“Minority quota: Reservation in constitutional bodies is not allowed”

In principle, agree. But the ‘Jan’ Lokpal Bill was trying to over-ride the constitution. Besides, if we accept regional variety, then why not caste, class and religious ones? I mean, when you bribe someone with a khokha it is different from using ‘good offices’, hai na?

“Government is acting as if this bill is a nuisance and it just wants to get over with it”

True. Like fast-track justice for certain media-hyped crimes. If you set deadlines, pour out in the streets, have your demon Santas go around demanding support, then the government will play politics with even more vigour. It just has the advantage of being the driver.

“We wanted CBI to be freed from government control. But this bill does the opposite. All power lies with the government”

The Armed Forces are exempt and will be tried through regular and civilian channels. The CBI is an indepenedent agency. This is the time to prove it. The BJP can do what it wants when and if it comes to power.

“CBI’s prosecution and investigating wings need to be separated, with the latter handed over to Lokpal. This way, the government’s hold over the CBI ends”

Fantastic. Why not name it the Federal Bureaus of Investigation. We can have our own FBIs.

“Inquiry against PM comes with too many safeguards. Are you increasing transparency or checking it?”

The prime minister is not directly elected to the post by the people. It is the party that decides. So, in effect, there is no transparency to begin with. The role of the Opposition is to raise issues of crimes of commission and omission on the part of the PM. That is transparency enough. When he appoints people, shuffles portfolios, it is obvious what is going on. What more would we like to know? Heck, we even know that Mukesh Ambani has told him he will invest Rs. 70,000 crore in India. And we know that the PM has given the Home Minister a good report, the same Mr. Chidambaram who was fighting with Pranab Mukherkee who was fighting about who first passed the file for the 2G spectrum.

“Either you correct this bill or I say with folded hands, please take it back and send it again to the standing committee. Let there be a detailed discussion there and bring it back in three months”

No need to fold hands. This was expected. Why wait for three months? Ah, Anna Haxare does not like winters, I understand.

The real cherry on the cake was from the CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta:

“I support a Lokpal Bill but not this bill”

Yeah, I support Marx, but not Marxism.

- - -

The drama is not over. It will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha, then back to agitations. Meanwhile, here's my cheesy filmi line for the day: Thappad se darr nahin lagta Anna saab, bekar vaar se lagta hai....

Anna’s Blockbuster: Don or Munnabhai?

2011-12-27T19:04:00.002+05:30

Why has Hazare asked Sonia Gandhi for a debate? Is it because his churlish demands can get some legitimacy when standing across from a supra power? But, when something is wrong in the government, it immediately goes back to the ‘high command’. What does Anna represent? Power without responsibility.

We are supposed to applaud the fact that Anna Hazare’s team has not resorted to violent methods. The fact that this is emphasised reveals the potential the movement has to ignite just such violence. Besides, we cannot rule out the violence of intent. How did the latest box office showing manage to get people at the ticket counters? Through the internet and SMS. How does this ‘vote for your favourite reality show contestant’ sort of support qualify as a ‘people’s movement’? I know one is repeating many of these statements, but we are witnessing a strange situation where whipped up collective anger is passing off as idealism and resurgence.

1.4 lakh people have signed up for the Jail Bharo call. This is such a ridiculous strategy, to begin with. For, those who want to be participants in the Lokpal are behaving like opponents. To solve any major issue, such emotional tactics do not work. By courting arrest, you give more teeth to the System you wish to see tempered down. How many of the anti-corruption crowds are aware of what prison rules entail? Have they visited jails before, and sought to bring about change in the conditions in prisons, the abuse that takes place there, the wrongful arrest of several people for reasons ranging from petty robbery to terrorism? Do they know that people serve sentences for years only to be proved innocent later? Do they understand the seriousness of this issue, and it includes the flavour of the moment – corruption – which those imprisoned can ill-afford to indulge in?

Yes, there are ministers in jail; many of the elected MPs have charges of corruption against them, besides murder, possession of arms, involvement in scams. They are there long before Hazare got his Eureka moment. The Constitution was referred to to put them behind bars, the courts decided on it. There were industrialists and CEOs in there, too.

Does Team Anna have the courage to go and agitate before the houses of these corporate giants? Recent reports have stated that 100 prominent people from Mumbai have accounts in Swiss banks. No one puts legal money there; it is black money. Why is the anti-corruption brigade silent about it?

We are being fed the illusion that Team Anna is honest and upfront. Why is a businessman from Haryana sponsoring the food stall at the maidan? Why was it necessary to spend Rs. 8 lakh to hire the ground? Just take a look at the mind-boggling arrangement: a barricaded stage that has a room tucked with ensuite washroom for Mr. Hazare, 32 mobile toilets, ambulances, doctors on call, a fire tender, generators. There is also a separate VIP entrance close to the stage, so that those who matter do not have to pass through the ordinary people. Metal detectors, screening of vehicles, CCTV cameras and a police force of 3000 that includes 16 ACPs and 50 police inspectors will handle security. The people’s movement has also got well-wisher bouncers from a private agency.

While the Mumbai Police has ensured that it will put a plug on provocative speeches as it does for any public meetings, it has set up an Anti-Mischief Squad to protect Anna from any egg on the face, or rather shoe or slipper being hurled. Why? Because last month when someone slapped Sharad Pawar, the peaceful Gandhian had retorted with, "Sirf ek thappad? (Just one slap?)" Of course, he had immediately justified it as the anger of the public. Now, when a small group wearing black bands protests against him or if some parties suggest that he has links with the RSS, they get touchy about it and go into overdrive. Arvind Kejriwal even tries to meet Muslim groups, and yet these people object to quotas in the lokayukta. If you do not want reservations for certain sections, then do not try to woo them from the backdoor.

Kejriwal has taken on an offensive defence stance:

"The government is provoking us by saying Anna is an RSS agent. Congress government is targeting Anna by spreading such rumours. Even former president Abdul Kalam and Digvijay Singh have been photographed with (Nanaji) Deshmukh.”

Such excessive reaction clearly denotes that they have something to hide and they agree that the RSS is not quite the desired company to keep. Or, like political parties, they too believe in vote banks.

Why has Hazare asked Sonia Gandhi for a debate and not Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? Is it because he knows that his churlish demands can only get some degree of legitimacy when standing across from a supra power? In that case, he is not completely right. Ms. Gandhi is, for better or worse, the Congress Party president and the members as well as the allied parties in the coalition accept that. She represents the UPA. What does Anna represent? Power without responsibility. When something is wrong in the government, it immediately goes back to the ‘high command’ and that includes some decisions she might not be well-versed with. Like all political parties, there are sycophants who want to be more loyal than the queen. Their statements are hurled back at her. We have the choice to hold her responsible, and we have the choice to express our opinions about dynastic politics and also ensure that the party does not return to power whenever we have a better option.

Just as L.K.Advani held forth when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the PM, Sonia Gandhi can do so too. However, she is answerable to her party members, the coalition party leaders and the public when the time comes. Right now, we can only make the prime minister directly responsible. There is no question of a public debate between Ms. Gandhi and Anna Hazare.

His ideological terrorism is dangerous. His perspective is neatly divided into black and white: “Gore chale gaye, aur kale aa gaye (The Whites, British rulers, left us and the Blacks, obviously refers to Indians, replaced them). What difference did their departure make to your lives?" And this man wants you to fill up the prisons, when he has no sympathy for the many Indians who were thrown in jails for fighting for our freedom. Who did he expect would rule us? I understand his query is rhetorical, but the same Gandhi whose back he is riding on did think it made a difference, and the Mahatma was guest to an industrialist, who probably would have indulged in some form of corruption to be safe in British-ruled India, as did many princelings and rich saabs.

Anna’s satyagraha is not about the people, but the core group, which has had its share of infighting like any political squabble. It was shocking to read a report that stated:

“Anna Hazare aide Prashant Bhushan stepped up pressure on the government by declaring that any political party or individual not backing Team Anna’s four-point agenda for a strong Jan Lokpal Bill will be targeted in a campaign.”

Bhushan was quoted as saying:

“The statements by Sonia Gandhi and the government show that power has gone to their head and they understand only one language –of votes – so we have asked the people of the five poll-bound states to not vote for those who oppose the Jan Lokpal Bill.”

This is pugnacity, and that is the reason Team Anna could not wait until Parliament made an announcement. It is also a smart tactic to take credit for performance when the Congress is anyway not likely to shake the citadels. However, for all the talk of speaking against the establishment, Team Anna wants to be considered king-makers. They forget that a Mayawati is not a greenhorn; she got elected with a huge margin. Team Anna had better understand that the anti-corruption group will have no influence on the results. What they want has nothing to do with constitutional validity, but a parallel government or a kangaroo court. We already have panchayats and we have certain Articles that are relevant to some states. This appears to be more like the durbars in the courts of kings or our latter-day parties that subsist on machismo. The Shiv Sena has used such aggressive tactics before, but it was at least obvious and did not seek subterfuge under the guise of ‘peace’. Pushing and jostling for space, and craning necks to appear before the cameras are all forms of aggression.

Had there been no media coverage, how many people would have expressed solidarity? The media backing is unfortunate, for the charge of paid news could well be leveled against it. There are probably no envelopes exchanged here, but there will be people in positions of power who have a stake in this movement. Flawed as the government is – and the buck always stops at the ruling party – its opponents are not pure as driven snow. We have seen industrial groups in different states given special privileges and they need to fight the Congress to retain hold of that acquired land, the proposed factories.

The arrogance of the movement is evident when Kejriwal says, “This fast is not a protest. This is more of an engagement with Parliament where discussions will be held. We hope the voice of the people will reach Parliament.”

Parliament is not on the grounds of MMRDA and not in Mumbai. If you wish to engage with Parliament, then you do not threaten to agitate outside the homes of political leaders. Moreover, let us make it clear to the members of this movement that they do not represent the people. What they want cannot be “non-negotiable” because they are unwilling to negotiate. Their form of dictatorship will suit ‘activists’ who have been created overnight. It includes film stars, businessmen, students from big universities, a sprinkling of godmen, a few political upstarts.

The Bandra Kurla Complex was the desired venue because it is the new trendy destination and houses some big companies, posh institutes, and the US embassy.

Three days of fasting, singing and dancing qualify as drama, not debate. It is a bit like pronouncing a film a hit based on an item song.

(c) Farzana Versey

Closed Doors: Band Darwaaze - Satyadev Dubey

2011-12-26T20:03:00.001+05:30

Satyadev Dubey made me uncomfortable. On two occasions.

First: Prithvi Theatre. Lights out. Power outage. Everyone stood where they could find space – the foyer, near the entrance or in the lane outside. Many were familiar faces. The café was full with those who were not going to watch the play. It was always full. Writers, directors, actors, wannabes, has-beens. I stood near the tree at the curve of the entrance; a short stocky man in a kurta was ambling the distance of a few feet. Makarand Deshpande, whose play was being staged, introduced us. There was a short verbal exchange, but his eyes continued to speak, to probe. It was as though he was taking up the air around me, converting it into frost that would cage me in some unfathomable way.

I was already acquainted with his work (films and stage) and recall watching Sambhok Se Sanyas Tak (From Lust to Sublimation) at the Karnataka Sangh, not one of those charmed places where everything different is seen as ‘path-breaking’; the different was meant to be just that. No overdose of adjectives. Dubey was in some ways the Osho of the theatre world, and the serious aficiandos might take offence to it, which would be precious because he was offensive most of the time. His work was designed to hit where it hurt. His gaze unrelenting.

The second uncomfortable Dubey moment was again in the dark. The same stocky figure waiting at a park for a young girl, trailing her wherever she goes, a foreigner in a country that is supposed to be alien, but which is more like him than anything he has known. A playwright who has so dramatised his life that he is looking for a grand finale to it. Nothing else, or less, will do.

She is young, pert and full of ammo. On the face of it, a propah English girl, but slowly, with every professional failure, she unclothes herself before our eyes to reveal what she has always denied: Her alienness. She does not quite belong, so she is shunned. She is displaced and grudgingly has to admit that to be deflowered she needs not a gentle touch but to be roughed up. To unleash her anger, her potential. The music must rise from the waltz, the jive, the samba to a deafening crescendo of Antigone’s cry.

Dubey could not be for real. He acted the part he wrote in It Could Happen Only In London, taking you on a fantastical journey of a girl becoming a woman and a man turning into a boy. It is about age catching up with us or making us regress. About seduction. Violence. Ambition. Realisation. And at the end of it all the menace of futility being unable to prevent that glimmer of light from penetrating through its transparent wings.

Satyadev Dubey died yesterday and is closer to the sun now. But that night, tucked away in a lane in Juhu under canopy of fake stars, I had discovered the full thrust and throb of what “effing your head off” truly meant. It was about chasing an evanescent dream, and when it assaults resistance gives way to release.

Sunday ka Funda

2011-12-25T18:06:00.002+05:30

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

- Albert Camus

- - -

And must we not be generous to the past too and leave it the way it wants to, was meant to be? Not everything we have is great, not all that we give is wonderful, not all that we receive fills the emptiness. But it is there and we are there. It just might be something beyond the obvious...

- - -

"The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes
Some of it's just transcendental
Some of it's just really dumb

But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything"

A Christmas full of giving and acceptance to all...and...

The Book of Love - Peter Gabriel:

Kim Jong-Il's Virgin Town

2011-12-24T00:10:00.001+05:30

Among the many stories coming out about Kim Jong-il, the one that has fascinated me is about how he built an entire city in the 1950s. Kijong-Dong was designed only for propaganda. No one lived there. Ever. Of course, the North Korean government said it had some 200 families, but they were invisible. Lights are switched on and off at set timings; caretakers clean the place. And then back to nothing.

It makes me wonder:

If no one lived there, no one thrived or enjoyed the facilities – and there were many – then what was the use of such propaganda? Does it even qualify as propaganda? What is ideal about a place that no one experiences? Or is that what makes it ideal – being untouched?

Cannibal Farm: Bare Bones and People’s Power

2011-12-24T00:05:00.002+05:30

The close-up of the Protestor's head is much like the trophy brought back by head-hunters or warlords. Our lack of spine in the social construct is taking us away from the fine-tuned art of the gourmand to a basic need for the raw. Such instant aggressive gratification has numbed memories.

A bit of him - the TV shot

Bare Bones and People’s Power
Cannibal Farm
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, December 23-25

Two suited guys at a candle-light dinner nibbling on each other’s flesh for a television show does not denote cannibalism. If placed in a larger landscape, it could be seen as a microcosmic interpretation of contemporary socio-political mores. The ‘noble savage’ transported into an Orwellian version of Noah’s Ark is a devious mirror of excoriating glass.

Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno are in their mid-20s, which by today’s standards is considered seasoned. They are Dutch TV hosts. Both went under the surgeon’s knife; Zeno had a length of muscle removed from his abdomen and Storm opted to give a part of his buttock. The chef presented them the meat to sniff, after which it was cooked in a pan with sunflower oil without any seasoning. Then, before a studio audience, they pierced the fork into each other’s flesh. The motive ostensibly was, according to Storm, to answer “a stupid question”. He admitted that it was “weird to look into the eyes of a friend when you are chewing on his belly” but “we wanted to find out how human flesh tasted. It was just a few centimetres of meat and now I have a good story about that scar."

There will be the valid queries about legality, ethics, and good taste (never mind the pun).

This is where we must make that leap onto the big stage and the bigger questions, irrespective of the duo’s motives. It might help if we kept in mind that the show is called Proefkonijnen, which means ‘Guinea Pigs’. It exposes the expediency of experimentation to its bare bones.

Replace this ‘stunt’ with the stunted studio wars, the cameras on the battlefields of Operations and Revolutions, following soldiers and cops, zooming in on dead bodies, the anchors lying flat, mimicking the dead, even as the microphones – the ultimate symbol of pop potency – is ‘eaten’. When we chew such news and digest it, we are in effect committing cannibalism by default.

Besides, the nature of news becoming stale and dead would also allude to necrophilia. There is power in such revivification of the dead.

Salvation and Survival:

While the need to survive is basic, latter-day salvationists resort to reductionism in the moral sphere they seek to uphold.

Time magazine’s Person of the Year is an un-named, undefined, unrecognisable Protestor. With a few rare voices that question the dissident’s management of the System – recent examples being Hitchens and Havel – potential hagiographers continue to feast on the morsels of the maverick mafia. It shows us just how the process of natural selection has changed to create shrines for survival of the niftiest.

What appears to be a gratifying validation of dissent is, in fact, a slot-machine caricature that grabs all the coins of common leverage. This individual representing a herd needs to be shepherded, or slaughtered. More importantly, the Protestor has been made into an assembly-line product lacking individuality and armed with the stereotypical designer wear that does not demarcate between the masked terrorist and the masked victim. The covered mouth is also a mouth that can be silenced; hunger is transferred to the gaze. The close-up of the head is much like the trophy brought back by head-hunters or warlords.

Salvaging honour is survival.

Noah on the eve of another year in the 21st century has no assurance that there will not be another flood. The continuum of retribution is to step down from the mountain and flow with the tide. What was to be a test of human endeavour has become a commercial proposition. Who will sponsor the exile and the damned? What happens to all that wood?

In the innards of Africa, certain western countries now run the timber trade. A research team found that as a consequence not only are the forests taken over, but it also whets the appetite of the intruders for primate meat. A few steps away from where we have come as human beings.

When American activist Abbie Hoffman said, “I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars”, he did not take into account that wars are drama. You do not see the audience when you perform. Drones, missiles, firing across fences from a distance - these cause salivation and the urge to get closer to blood. The primacy of the primal supersedes any strategic manouevres. Sophisticated weapons have only sharpened the urge for rudimentary knives to experience the valour of real work. It is not restricted to professional soldiers. Warriors are created to justify borders and niche markets.

Never Whole:

Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya

The culture of the guinea pig only allows for bits and pieces. In the Dutch television show, we got just such samples. The reason they were not marinated or garnished is that as modern societies when we pay tribute to any ancient ritual or tradition such as the masquerade, the street festivals, the public mourning, there is also a lot of skin show. In what may look like a letting down of inhibitions or a spiritual submergence, we are being devoured. Collective catharsis results in a collective burp of satiation from the senses. Abstinence is also a form of cannibalism for the sheer metaphysical breadth of its self-destructiveness. It is a bit like eating oneself.

Body parts are targeted, whether it is for marketing purposes or as cultural embodiments. Ironically, if religious sacrifice replaced the human with the animal, today animalism is more than an idea. Human emotions are represented in what segment of the body inspires or reviles another. The mechanism of building on such aspects becomes part of civil society’s identity. All it takes is a flash mob to ignite such thoughts, the rest gathers momentum as we go along from one open square to another, one TV debate to another, one election to another, one morally-sanctioned war to another, one withdrawal of troops to another. Often, it turns the philosophical dimension of being and becoming on its head when we become what we just ingested.

However much a Snowball might prompt, “Four legs good, two legs bad” to the sheep, the Squealers will have a reply in “Four legs good, two legs better”. Neither might believe it, but it makes the discourse easy, as George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ so stunningly expressed. Legs are not people or animals. They just follow the trail of the road most trod upon. With time, it becomes a stampede.

When we talk about parts, it also objectifies people. Ideological butchery seems to be the intent. Skin colour, shade of hair, shape of nose, girth, demeanour, all reveal differences. Flesh is not just flesh, but fetishised in a cultural kiln. The captured man and the ‘loose’ woman are beaten up for what their bodies expose about them. They are faceless and nameless, but they are not The Protestor. Their resistance is the inadvertent actualisation of their origins.

People are auctioned even today. Bonded labour exists. Forced prostitution exists. There is a physical aspect to these that are as devouring of flesh as is cannibalism.

Our lack of spine in the social construct is taking us away from the fine-tuned art of the gourmand to a basic need for the raw. Such instant aggressive gratification has numbed memories. The squealer and the protestor might indeed share table for the last stupor. They are both products of a phantasmagoric resurrected reality.

(c) Farzana Versey

Character Assassination

2011-12-22T20:31:00.002+05:30

Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters, I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time.

This is a real note I sent years ago. A colleague had entered my name for a short story competition by the British Council. I was not terribly enthusiastic about such events, but since it required imagining, it was par for the course. I thought nothing about it and since I was not accustomed to writing for a reason, I wove the words at a leisurely pace.

A tap on my shoulder and a thick envelope served as reminders that I paid no attention to. The date of submission was gone. I folded the sheets of paper and put them in the envelope – the address and stamps were ready. My friends were still enthusiastic. I quickly grabbed a page from my diary and wrote down the note:

“Due to the untimely demise of one of my characters I was in mourning and could therefore not submit the story on time.”

What else could I say? I am not good with formal letters. Besides, it was succinct and happened to be the truth. The cat in the story had died. Obviously, I had killed it. Yet, its death was a departure, a turning point.

Recently, an Indian media house gave an award to a novel and the jury used a curious phrase for its choice: one of the reasons was “for its non-judgmental attitude to the characters”. How does a writer not judge a character when s/he has created it? This is not immaculate conception. You sweat over it, love it and get suffused in it, for however brief a time. The judgement lies in the nature of the relationship. The writer is the initiator and woos the character. It is possible that the character might mirror the writer. Introspection is also judgement. You are pronouncing a verdict on your thoughts and feelings.

Any objectivity would be forced. The character is because you are.

Back to my old story, I had written it for myself. In those days, there was no audience I was seeking or speaking to.

A few days later, rather uncharacteristically, I got a note from the British Council. It said, and I will rely on memory and promise not to exaggerate, that indeed I had missed the date of submission and rules would not permit my work for consideration. However, my accompanying note was rather interesting and caused much amusement and they could not but let me know that although the story would not be included in the competition, it was noticed.

I wondered whether dead cats could lick the cream.

Can you ban a scripture?

2011-12-22T18:38:00.001+05:30

ISKCON's rath yatra in Moscow

Why is the Indian community in Russia upset over the proposed ban on the Bhagavad Gita? The ban is on a Russian translation by Swami Prabhupada, the head of a cult that has raised eyebrows due to its own controversial interpretation of the holy text.

We shall come to that later. The moment a Siberian court deemed it “extremist”, Indian politicians of the rabid right began making demands for the Gita to be made the national book. A secular republic now wants a religious text to become a national book only because some court in another country seeks to ban a version translated by someone who has made ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) into a pop spiritual movement.

Most of its members are not Indians and one is not even sure whether they have converted or are temporary operational Krishna bhakts (devotees). They are pretty much like Jehovah’s Witnesses and carry tiny copies of the Gita that they distribute free. Who sponsors them? How have they spread worldwide?

On the issue of extremism, let us understand that all religions are based on some sort of extremist thought, of the superiority of the faith. It may not be upfront, but the subtext is clear: hail the believer of this text, this religion, this god. Everything else is just a roundabout way to reach some imagined heaven.

It confounds me that there is violence in every holy book – whether it was battles fought for land or people or even violence against oneself. It must have been to show that good triumphs over evil, but then why are James Bond and Superman not gods?

Rather interestingly, since Lord Krishna, the ‘hero’ of the Gita, was a Yadav, we have members of this lower caste community – some of who are not even permitted to enter temples to this day – also joining in to oppose the ban in Russia. Therefore, the high caste and the low caste will fight for the same overseas rights, so to speak, but will not come together on home ground.

Not to be left behind, the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband has also condemned the “Russian dictate against the holy scripture of Hindus” urging Hindus and Muslims to unite to drive home the point.

This is really funny. The seminary issues the most ridiculous fatwas against women, and because fatwas sound so serious everyone believes that they have the authority to issue them, which they do not.
But I can already see the Muslim ‘moderates’ applauding them for respecting “the secular fabric of the nation”. The problem with the secular fabric is that there is just too much cloth and too little thread to sew anything.

Let us not forget that recently Delhi University dropped A.K. Ramanujan's essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and three thoughts on translation” from the reading list of an undergraduate course in history. In fact, it was reported that Oxford University Press even apologised to a rightwing group for “hurting religious sentiments”. They denied it but did agree that they followed popular sentiment.

Popular sentiment is essentially a matter of numbers. Even a peaceful crowd can be seen as extremist.

Whatever the Russians are thinking, we must ask whether a religious text can be 'banned', in the sense that it is part of people’s beliefs. Do beliefs cease because a country that is not even of the same religion decides to not permit a few copies of the book in their language? Is it not possible that their problem is with ISCKON and not with the Gita?

Two minute noodle: Lokpal Bill

2011-12-21T19:45:00.001+05:30

If we go by Team Anna logic, then the Opposition and independent agencies should be running the government. Forget everything else, it would spell the end of a real Opposition as it should be - to question, debate and give a contrarian point of view and not fight over the spoils of who gets to swivel in the chair.

If the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) comes within the Lokpal ambit - which the government draft rightly does not allow for - then all investigation will be left to whims and fancies and further delays or worse. The CBI is not the ISI.

Ghalib, Bharat Ratna and Lost Memories of the Indian Republic

2011-12-20T20:33:00.003+05:30

Are we to consider the conceptualisation of India as a Republic as the cut-off date for historical relevance of India as a nation? In what manner did Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela embellish the Indian Republic?

The highest Indian civilian honour is become a joke, not only because of the names being bandied about but due to the so-called reasoned responses to those names. There is a cultural, philosophical and atavistic leap from Sachin Tendulkar to Mirza Ghalib.

Ghalib may ever-so-gratefully be turning in the grave on being considered for the Bharat Ratna, though the chances the finance minister quoting him in the next ‘baajit’ (budget) are remote. Pranab Mukherjee might just opt for Sarat Chandra.

That the Padma awards are politicised is a known whisper, but this year we have everyone jumping on to the Bharat Ratna bandwagon, which has resulted in a glut of Ghalib verses reappearing with as much vigour as Veena Malik’s disappearance. Sarat babu has not been as lucky, and it is rather interesting that most op-eds are not even mentioning him. What is the politics behind such counter-politics? It started with Markandey Katju, a former judge and chairperson of the Press Council of India, doing what people consider the equivalent of digging graves. He has responded in a column in the Indian Express:

“I have been criticised for demanding Bharat Ratna for Mirza Ghalib and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Some even lampooned me by saying that Bharat Ratna should also be given to Lord Rama and Gautam Buddha, and Param Vir Chakra to Tantia Tope.

In reply, I wish to say that there is nothing wrong in giving awards posthumously, provided they are given to the right persons, and Bharat Ratna has been often conferred posthumously in the past, for instance to Sardar Patel and Dr Ambedkar.

Moreover, Ghalib is a modern figure, not a legendary one like Lord Rama, or an ancient one like Gautam Buddha. Many of his thoughts were, for his times, surprisingly modern. Though he was steeped in the feudal tradition, he often broke through that tradition on perceiving the advantages of modern civilisation…

As regards Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, in a recent function in Kolkata I appealed for the award of Bharat Ratna to him. Here was a man who in a feudal society (early 20th century Bengal) launched a full-blooded attack on the caste system, against women’s oppression, and superstitions…”

Irrespective of his motives, I would not rubbish Justice Katju without taking into account the larger framework. His proposal, in fact, lays bare the idea of how we view history and whether such honours and their contribution affect a large mass of people and in what manner.

The reactions can be revealing, as is this piece by Ashok Malik in the Asian Age:

“The Padma series of awards and the Bharat Ratna are state honours given by the Republic of India to those who have been of service to or have otherwise embellished that very Republic of India. Can they be given to those who lived and died before the republic was instituted or even conceived?”

If service to the nation is the yardstick, then not many have been real contributors. There is lobbying for these honours and professionals wait for the lists like students waiting for results. The Bharat Ratna has been arbitrary, in that it is based on the whims of a small group and pressure tactics have been used to make sure that the person so anointed is popular. Popularity is based on commercial considerations. The most-endorsed person (and there is a pun in there) is likely to be feted with a Padma. Some have refused these awards. Does it make their contribution any less?

In what manner did Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela, both recipients of the Bharat Ratna, embellish the Indian Republic?

Besides, let us see such honours holistically. Are we to consider the conceptualisation of India as a Republic as the cut-off date for historical relevance of India as a nation? What about the tumultuous period of 1857? What about the gathering momentum of the freedom struggle? I reiterate that this is not only about handing out awards, but to see the nature of contributions to the country beyond its status as a Republic.

Ashok Malik’s reasoning is frightening:

“A posthumous award rarely makes sense, unless given within a year or so of the person’s passing, when memories of his or her life and achievements are fresh and relevant to contemporary society."

What does it tell us about the nature of achievements if they are dependent on memories? If a person’s work is likely to be forgotten or become irrelevant within a year of death, then what really is the contribution to the Republic? Do we need statues, roads, and garden benches named after people for us to remember them? Posthumous awards are as relevant as death is inevitable. Since death does not announce itself, it becomes a bit difficult to put someone in queue.

As regards the swipe and sarcasm doing the rounds about awarding people like Rani Lakshmibai and Emperor Asoka, there are awards named after several historical figures. One wonders why our Republic has not grown up enough and suffered from the much-needed amnesia to forget them. Now, why does someone not tell these people that forgetfulness would help a great deal when we are discussing certain political issues where such a past is made the pulpit from where contemporary India fights elections for its Republic?

Justice Katju has pushed the envelope a bit:

“People are talking of giving the Bharat Ratna to cricketers and filmstars. This is the low cultural level to which we have sunk. We ignore our real heroes, and hail superficial ones. I regret to say that the present generation of Indians has been almost entirely deculturised, and all they care for is money, filmstars, cricket, and superficialities.”

He is not entirely right, and certainly not when he rubbished the media coverage of Dev Anand’s death, but it does not merit Mr. Malik’s wonder as to why he is “expending his energies in seeking a Bharat Ratna for a poet who had been dead 150 years. Could he not have devoted his precious time to composing a petition related to the agrarian crisis?” Those of us who are responding to Mr. Katju are not penning paeans to the farmers. We are also discussing these very superficialities. And many of us do question film stars and cricketers ourselves.

Anna Hazare is one of the names being pushed, and whatever he writes about the agrarian or industrial crises, he would still be seen as a drumbeater by quite a few.

There is the question of real heroes, and the youth treats Hazare at the same level of pop iconism as it does film stars and cricketers. He too appears on reality TV shows to promote his campaign as they do.

I shall - Aila! - leave the matter of Sachin Tendulkar.

As regards the crowning glory, let me leave you with another poet who wept for his land. Alas, it was not a republic then:

"ya mujhe afsar-e-shahaa na banaya hota
ya mera taj gadayaa na banayaa hota"

(Bahadurshah Zafar)

- - -
(c) Farzana Versey

Also published in Countercurrents, December 23

Response to another view in a new post

Ascent of Dissent: Václav Havel

2011-12-19T19:51:00.000+05:30

Václav Havel was with me, sitting across on a flowery print upholstered sofa in the verandah of a tony club in Mumbai. He lit a cigarette. Was smoking allowed? I do not know. I cannot remember. It was mid-1995. The staff was on strike and the British nobleman who had founded this club was a large portrait in a gilt-edged frame like the one they have in museums. What was the great dissident doing here? He smiled sardonically. As it turned out, the staff was on strike. All the new brown sahibs and memsaabs had to go to the counter instead of being served by bearers who opened the lids of even the most humble cheese balls as though they were precious jewels.

Václav…may I call you by your first name, I wanted to ask, as the smoke rings merged with the clouds that rose over the golf course greens. I desisted. Was he smoking? Was smoking allowed? I do not know. All I remember is his presence. I had a guest with me. Coffee? Tea? I asked. Tea. I walked to the counter, the wooden floors creaking with a pleasant sound in the silence. I had two Styrofoam cups with tea bags and the twinings hanging out, brushing against my hands. I had to tiptoe, ladylike. Not spill a drop. The staff was on strike and who might wipe the stains?

Václav smiled. Or smoked. I do not know. Was he there? Yes. His myth hovered over us. I was being interviewed about my work. Barely had we started sipping the tea and biting into the cookies, he, my interviewer, mentioned Havel. I had once written a column titled ‘Hope in the gutter’. On that sleepy afternoon, someone remembered it, and somehow I felt engulfed by this man on that day as I had when I wrote the piece.

In many ways, Havel’s myth preceded him and tailed him. I had often battled, and continue to do so, with the thought of a dissident sitting in the highest office of his land. Did he recall those days in prison and did he see the position he occupied as another prison? Did the office make him pro-pro or anti-pro, or anti-anti or pro-anti? Did opposing Communism make him a capitalist? If he believed in non-violence, was the selectivity of using Nato against Yugoslavia justified? How do moralists make the distinction, and he has been called a moralist? He took refuge in art, and wrote plays that captured the political ethos of his times. The problem is that his time was for a certain period – the before and aft of it has been included by default.

I wish he were on that sofa that day, smoke rings covering his face, eyes burning with answers. Like most dissidents, he managed to make his country more than a picture postcard, a travel brochure, or a bullet-riddled, fissured-land entity. He gave it character as much as the environment imbued his character. However, he could not possibly be limited to it or by it. As he wrote:

“If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.”

It was the emotional undercurrent, the sense of déjà vu that I related to completely. My posers were for the poet in him. Intellectualism appeared to irritate him if it was bereft of feeling.

Once, in the dark, Havel fell into something sticky and smelly. It turned out to be shit swimming in slush. Attempts to get out did not help until, finally, a ladder was procured. Later, he was to ask, “Who could have known that I was to leave this unfortunate sewer only to end up in the president’s office two months later?” He could have wrung his hands, said a prayer and wilted, but then for him “scepticism is dehumanisation of history”. History is based entirely on hope, because it goes beyond the immediate.

I also hope little hopes, and like Havel it is the sewer that brings out the best in me.

I took the Styrofoam cups with dried remnants of milky tea to throw away in the garbage. The large portrait of an English nobleman looked down at us. The wooden floors creaked. My much smaller, and probably inconsequential to the world, rebellions had taken place within these charmed rooms. There was no conflict. I had got at least some answers about dissent and belonging.

More than 15 years ago, Václav Havel was there with me. There is no reason why he should now leave.

(c) Farzana Versey

India Copulated:The Dirtier Picture

2011-12-13T20:49:00.001+05:30

This is a marketing gimmick camouflaged as a film. I went to a single-screen theatre to watch it. Alone. After all, this was about female empowerment. Sipping coffee, waiting for the door to open, I looked at the audience. Men – young and old. Women – young and old. One woman wore a burqa, but her face was visible; another one wore a tight tunic with pants, but her face was covered and only her eyes were visible. Weird. There was an infant, too. One elderly lady told me, “No one was willing to come along.” Aha, it was ‘The Dirty Picture’.

I had booked in advance and opted for a corner seat. The film began and at some point the dirtiness started with the protagonist making funny sounds while a couple is at it in a filthy room. Dirty, remember? It was not quite certain whether she was faking an orgasm or a crap. Just as the film is a confused medley. It does not even have the grace to be a parody; it is downright slapstick with the so-called bold dialogues not going beyond what you might hear boys in school talk about when playing with themselves. Yes, boys. Despite now claiming it is a work of fiction, the makers had pushed it as a biopic based on the real-life story of South Indian actress Silk Smitha – her overt sexuality, her exploitation and her ultimate destruction and death by suicide. It is an insult to her and to any kind of sensibility, even the crude.

Silk Smitha

For months news items and television promos were showcasing Vidya Balan, the actress who essays the part, in ‘character’. Bright clothes and a wink, irrespective of which programme she was on. The film has been declared a hit at the box office and almost all reviews and stories have been applauding Ms. Balan for her courage. This is such irony. No one ever thought of Silk as courageous. She was dismissed as a soft porn star. There are many such stories and the entertainment industry, including Hollywood, has used women. Those who make it to the big grade deny the casting couch. The others like Silk have no choice. They remain where they began, bathing under a waterfall or falling off slopes with an ageing hero.

Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika had tackled the subject with finesse, although it too had its love-making scenes and even a tantalising lavni dance by Smita Patil. It, too, was based on a real-life story. We could empathise with the character and her growth. Silk, on the other hand, does not at any point give us an opportunity to feel her pain or even her pleasure.

Bollywood has been commending the fact that a ‘respectable’ actress took up the role. This is hypocrisy and exploitative. They are using the story of a woman whose family lives in poverty in some village, and yet tacitly they are running her down. All this talk about celebrating the body is so much smooth talk. There are many such young women who perform dance numbers and they are called item girls. They go through the process of shedding their clothes, but no one says they are celebrating their bodies. They are well endowed, but no one says they are the ideal “voluptuous Indian women” as though it is a national asset. These women are low down and if they flick their tongues or bite their lips suggestively it will be deemed obscene.

The pampered star takes such a role as a “challenge”, implying the hierarchy. It is nothing short of patronising. The urban herd has certified that this is not sleaze. It makes them feel smug. Moreover, women are expected to understand that this is liberating and empowering. Did Silk have a choice? Will middle-class women “unleash their sexual side” without being branded, if not as floozies, then nymphomaniacs?

Ms. Balan who is on a high right now assisted by her PR machinery talks about Silk with a know-it-all attitude:

“She’s unapologetic about using her body and her sexuality as a big ticket to fame. There’s no shame in doing it.”

No one has asked if she, Vidya Balan, would have done so since there is no shame to it.

That would be putting a wet blanket over a hose-pipe assisted wet dream.

New meeows - 33

2011-12-13T20:33:00.002+05:30

Should any person holding high rank in the government take the oath of office in the name of god, any god? In secular India that boasts of being a khichdi culture and tolerant society a student, Kamal Nayan Prabhakar, filed a petition against the Jharkhand Governor Syed Ahmad for taking the oath by uttering “Allah ke naam par” (in the name of Allah). When the High Court dismissed his petition, he appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Bench pronouncing the verdict said:

“Your client has come with a sinister motive. He has tried to draw a comparison with the Constitution of Pakistan. World over in the mythology, god is described as formless. Why do you want to confine him to a name or image? It is very sickening.”

This is the problem. The petitioner has, technically, the rulebook on his side.

The petition says, under Article 159 of the Constitution, the Governor or other constitutional authorities can take oath only in the name of “god or Eshwar” or he/she may “solemnly affirm.”

This means that in India the formless god has got to have an English or a Hindi/Marathi/Gujarati kind of name. On what grounds is Eshwar permitted? Or even god?

It is fairly obvious that this young man was not merely invoking the law:

The petitioner submitted that if the trend goes on, it might encourage others to use their choice of personal deities like Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Hanuman, Ganesh, and Christ at the time of taking oath.

“A new trend will emerge and will be continued whereby the Governor or any other dignitary of high post having faith in different religions would start taking oath in the name of different gods/spirits according to their beliefs and then there would not be proper following of forms of oaths which may lead to a Constitutional crisis.”

Why will it lead to a Constitutional crisis? Our politicians fall at the feet of godmen, and often follow their advice. They consult astrologers, numerologists, aura readers, and they do use various deities to get into power, even if it means causing mayhem.

Why has this issue been raked up only when someone invoked the name of Allah? Why not Eshwar? Only because it is permitted? Then the ssue of one religion taking prominence should have been raised. It is time that any godly reference is removed and the oath is taken with a mere “solemnly affirm”. We all know they aren’t solemn or affirming anything. On the other hand, since we know that, we may as well allow them to take the name of some god or the other, who we can subsequently blame for any “Constitutional crisis” that might arise.

- - -

Anna with communists and Hindutvawaadis

Another Constitutional crisis or constipated one? Joining the Anna Hazare bandwagon for political gains is like putting the cart before a lame horse. You aren’t going anywhere with this one.

- - -

Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for practising witchcraft and sorcery, which are banned. One is not quite sure whether she really was a ‘witch’ or she merely did something that a patriarchal society cannot digest.

Many women are considered witches and exorcists are brought in to purge them of the demons that have taken over their bodies. Rather strangely, while the woman in Saudi was killed for it, often such people, including our tantrics, kill to practise such sorcery. Haven’t we heard about the blood of infants to cure impotency? Or children, women and those of lower status killed to solve everything, from financial problems to getting rid of the evil eye or the enemy?

- - -

Those still on the 'Kapil Sibal is an idiot' trip, especially from the media, do tell us how many of the editors/ channel owners allow all kinds of views? Do media houses not push one particular position? Do they not promote political parties and their agendas? Are not certain industrial groups favoured in matters of coverage? Don’t glossies make it a point to ‘like’ some socialites and shun others when their chips are down? Don’t we know of stories that are planted?

So, how does this qualify as freedom of expression when you are a pawn in different games of different people? Does this not amount to pre-screening?

- - -

Does Bombay Times not know the definition of plagiarism? Hindustan Times lifted one of its major pieces (yes, something about two people from the entertainment industry saying they are "just good friends") with the byline. They have not passed it as their own. This is a matter of attribution here, not plagiarism, unless BT has patent over anyone saying they are just good friends. Why HT would pick up something like this at all is a bit strange. Apparently, the media world was abuzz about the writer having quit to join HT. Now is this not earth-shattering? Isn't it like saying Neil Armstrong landed on Mars and not the moon?

- - -

Reading some of the obit pieces on cartoonist Mario de Miranda one is left with a bit of bitters. Comparisons are fine, but I found in them a sort of tangential and quite unnecessary put-down of R.K.Laxman. Here are excerpts from two pieces:

"It is the ideal example of two great cartoonists working together in the same publishing house. Much of the credit for the fact that they could do so must go to Mario, for the wonderful human being he was. He made sure his work never clashed with Laxman’s. Laxman handled the newspaper, Mario the magazines. Laxman was primarily a political cartoonist, Mario excelled in the social cartoon."

"That he was to the magazines of the Times of India what Laxman was to the daily paper. And, dare I say it, that Laxman was the Lata Mangeshkar who subtly ensured that the pedestal was not for sharing?"

This is such rubbish. The TOI had shifted Laxman’s column to the inside pages quite sometime ago. He is ailing and now lives in Pune. Would these same people have written such words had he been active and around in the TOI premises inside his cabin? The newspaper needed him; he did not need it. The TOI of course uses him when it wants. One rarely ever read paeans about Mario Miranda’s work earlier. We heard more about his attendance at parties. And Page 3 was always about events. Always. A small clique of people who propped up each other.

It is a pity that in death Mario is being used as an example of the approachable person he was as opposed to Laxman. Pity because he had his own style, which many later tried to emulate. It was something you could emulate – he used stereotypes, and there was no cheep about sexism where the secretary always wore cleavage-popping frocks, which was often understood that she had to be a Catholic or a Parsi.

He often illustrated a story or told a story, and his travel series were the best. Even his wayfarers and vagabonds seemed to be having a good time. They really were not common men. I am sure Miss Nimbu Paani will feel left out with his exit, but her kind always move on and find someone else to hang around with. That Mario lived in some heritage mansion and not in a rundown little apartment block in Goa just added to the society pages armour of a cultural ambassador.

He probably knew that this is a tail-wagger’s world, which is why the dog was omnipresent in his work.

The quiet yelp will be the only true test of fidelity to his being.

ISI in the Raw

2011-12-10T20:19:00.003+05:30

Seduction thrives on the seamy side and works its guile in risqué risky adventures. What if Veena Malik had RAW embossed on her arm instead?

If political asylum is the tacit goal, then it must be a most unusual manner to go about it. Pakistani actress Veena Malik’s notorious cover photograph in an Indian men’s magazine is now a lawsuit. She is nude. This is only one part of the exposure. The other is a tattoo on her arm with the initials ISI, which she says “was intended to be a humorous take on the fact that anything — big or small — is blamed on ISI in a funny way.”

She accuses the magazine of morphing the picture; the editor has video evidence of the photo session. The magazine’s website changed the cover, though. She is not fully naked in this one, but she is shown pulling the pin out of a grenade and the tagline says: “Pakistani WMD''.

This is not about the body. It is clearly political. Pakistan is seen as a nation that toys with arms and intelligence agencies. Sexing up these only reaffirms the potency.

The reaction has been rather quirky. Pakistanis are associating the ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, with Islam and patriotism and the whole nation. While there is most certainly an objection to her being in the buff, the emphasis this time is on the intelligence agency’s reputation. For a moment, imagine that she could possibly be an agent. After all, Mata Hari spent her early years in France dancing in the nude, leading a life that did not beg for answers and seduced many a powerful man. It was on one such sleeping assignment that she was recruited by the Germans to spy during World War I. Her initial forays were desultory and her abilities not of much significance. Her artistic background made espionage seem far more intriguing than it was. Her true calling remained the use of her body, primarily for her own pleasure and later to subsist of it.

Mata Hari by Paul Boyer

Seduction thrives on the seamy side and works its guile in risqué risky adventures. While we are hypothesising, what if Veena Malik had RAW embossed on her arm instead? India’s Research and Analysis Wing is often held culpable for some outings in Pakistan, although to a lesser degree than the ISI is in India. If the idea was to humour as much as be humorous, then her cultural and subliminal Indianness might have gained some currency and shaken the system. If not as an agent, then as agent provocateur.

Politics Passionale:

Women’s clothing and unclothing often offer a peep into a society’s mores. It would be interesting to posit two recent news items.

R&B singer Rihanna’s video ‘We Found Love’ has been banned – in France. It has been deemed too raunchy for daytime viewing as it features shoplifting, smoking and the singer being slapped on the bottom.

An offical report submitted to the authorities says that if women are allowed to drive they will have the option for premarital sex – in Saudi Arabia.

Both are political decisions. In France they assume that young people go to bed at 10 pm, and a bit of S&M is unheard of. In Saudi Arabia the authorities think that only married women will drive and transfer the action from the backseat of the car to the front.

Are these countries protecting their citizens or the ethos? Do individual acts make a nation decadent? Veena Malik does not represent Pakistan, but she is a Pakistani. By virtue of that, the country will see her as one of them. Is her rebellion akin to more discreet forms of protest? Is she exposing hypocrisy, or is she using the hypocrisy to get mileage?

The second cover

Gender Games:

Why is a woman’s body used to make political statements? This is what some contemporary ignorant feminists do not seem to understand. Causes cover them with cabbage leaves to propagate vegetarianism, or blood to protect animals, or even dowdiness to protest against the cult of beauty. Anorexics are made to bare skeletal rib cages and the obese spill out like beanbags to alert us about the harms of under and over indulgence.

The upfront attitude of pornography is shirked for the viles of such conscience-tappers. Susan Sontag had said, “Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives.” Such fear does not resolve the gender barrier, but increases the chasm. Conquering fear becomes a matter of survival. It requires machismo. There may be no damsel in distress prototype today but women continue to be afraid of the consequences of their actions. The whole build-up of ‘choice’ leaves them with the baby, the bathwater and dry taps. Tough luck, she chose it, is the refrain.

Women also choose to play the game according to rules made by men. Had Veena Malik posed in her national dress with a sash that said ISI, would it have the same impact or get similar reactions? Is not the message the same? Or is madness the method?

What does it say about a society where a person like her stands for freedom and feminism? The shedding of clothes is only about apparent apparel. If such societies are constrained by religion and narrow views of nationalism, then why do we not see their men drop clothes and make a statement? How many Pakistani feminists consider the women in Heera Mandi, their famed red-light district, free? Quite a few ply their trade of their own volition and operate under duress of the same mullahs and the same government. Why are they not legitimate representatives of women’s empowerment?

Such feminism is simplified to the point of being redundant when it will not protest against cultural shackles where it matters – and indeed a good deal of music and dance was preserved in those fetid lanes – but stand by those on the make.

The pecking order is clearly defined. And it comes in the form of some precious garbage about the difference between the vulgar and the erotic. Those getting a thrill out of it are not thinking about lighting, angles and whether the sheets are satin or of a cloth as rough as they might like it.

Oxygen to fire: Kolkata

2011-12-10T19:51:00.000+05:30

The most telling picture of Friday’s fire in a Kolkata hospital is not burnt bodies, patients being rescued with rope ladders, relatives crying. It is this: Hospital staff dragging an oxygen cylinder. This looks like a scene from some isolated township not a big city, and most certainly not a private hospital.

89 people died when a fire broke out in the basement of the Advanced Medicare & Research Institute (AMRI) hospital in Dhakuria. Most of the patients were in the intensive care units. I cannot even imagine those who are too ill and fragile in a position to even save themselves. Did they try pulling out the drips, the pipes, the wires linking them to machines when the smoke reached them and there was panic? Or were they asleep, rather sedated, at 1.30 am and died strapped to their beds?

There were some who pressed their faces on the windows and seemed to shout for help. Combustible material was placed in the basement. The fire brigade took time to arrive, ambulances took time to arrive…it was the nearby slumdwellers who rushed to assist in the rescue operations, but the guard refused to open the gate.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrived later in the morning, holding a mike and a megaphone leading the way, to assure people, to convince them. I do not wish to be cynical here. She was there at the other hospital where the injured were shifted and stayed there until late evening, apparently without food. Not many people in her position would do so. While I do not like the idea of politicians and their entourage disrupting real work, there are times when such gestures help assuage those who are suffering loss. I only hope that this is not a political angle.

In some ways it has become one. The government holds 1.99 per cent stake in the hospital. What about the 98.01 per cent that is privately-owned?

I also do not understand why they are now talking about the slums as a hindrance to the movement of rescue vehicles. They arrived late. It was those living in the slums who were physically present, and for years ambulances have been reaching the hospital.

It is good that six people have been arrested, but it needs more. Many of our hospitals, and not just government ones, are run in the most careless manner. Doctors go on strike, nurses go on strike, machines do not function, and cleanliness is not top priority, however many bottles of sanitiser liquids you see. Only some months ago a woman was singed and her newborn died because instead of antiseptic acid was used to clean them up. In another instance, stray dogs were roaming near the canteen and ICU areas of a municipal hospital. I have seen such dogs even in the premises of a private hospital.

What is the use then of thick glass panes that even firemen cannot break easily, as happened at AMRI?

Harvard Pottering with Swamy

2011-12-09T19:45:00.001+05:30

You are probably applauding Harvard University because it has decided to junk Prof. Subramaniam Swamy’s courses in next year’s summer session for the views he expressed in a piece where he, according to the report:

…recommended demolishing hundreds of mosques and suggested that only Muslims in India who “acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus” should be allowed to vote.

I think the Janata Party president’s role is different from the man teaching Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business and Economic Development in India and East Asia. His political views cannot and should not interfere in his academic role, and by the same token he ought not to be jusged by his stand in his other role.

If the university is trying to make a point, then it should not permit guest lectures by Bill Clinton, George Bush, Tony Blair and several others for different reasons.

There is the huge question about how much a person’s political views matter in his non-political work. I have often said it is impossible for me to like Naipaul’s writing anymore because I find his politics loathsome. In this case, he is ‘coming home’, so to speak. He is addressing the issues he feels about and I do not agree with, and there will be an opposite reaction from others. In an assignment where the topic is entirely different, I do not see the validity of such protocol.

Harvard is probably looking for an excuse to draw attention to the fissures in Indian, and subcontinental, politics. The West has courses on terrorism. India does not. Pakistan does not. Sri Lanka does not. Bangladesh does not. Nepal does not. That should tell us something.

As regards the good professor, one must always keep the salt shaker handy for Swamy’s stupidity.

Rehman Malik and Ghulam Nabi Fai: A Tale of Two

2011-12-08T20:30:00.000+05:30

A mourner in Afghanistan

Is Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s InteriorMinister, insensitive or stupid? Neither. He is trapped in a controversy forsaying:

"I had appealed to the Taliban thatthey should respect the Muharram. I am grateful to them that they respected theMuharram this time. This is a good thing."

What is so shocking? He is in charge of thehome department in the country. It is no secret that the Taliban do targetpeople in religious places, however absurd this may sound. So, when there ismass mourning during Ashura by the Shias with 177 processions and 900gatherings, and 7000 security personnel are deployed, it is obviously a matterof some concern.

You talk to people, and that includesnon-Shias, and they will tell you how the community has been targeted foryears, even when the Taliban was not active.

Why, then, you might ask, does the ministerhave to thank the Taliban? Does it not amount to being grateful to an extremistgroup and therefore accepting its role in politics? If the Taliban iseverywhere today in Pakistan, it is akin to appealing for peace in a difficultsituation. He is not known to use language very well, but there is no wayPakistan can go along by alientating the Taliban completely.

Why is no one talking about the fact thathe also lauded the role of the cops?

The fact that there were blasts inAfghanistan killing 59 people is a sad reminder that the two countries havebeen divided. In fact, there are murmurs that the attacks were orchestratedfrom Pakistan’s border areas. At one time, the whole Pashtun community was one.

This is not only about shrines or evenminorities anymore than it has been for a long time. Countries that have themisfortune of outsourcing their security will have to deal with insurgenciesthat damage their own society and people.

- - -

Ghulam Nabi Fai has admitted that the ISIwas funding him “to influence US policy on Kashmir”:

“For the last 20 years, Mr. Fai secretlytook millions of dollars from Pakistani intelligence and lied about it to theUS government,” said US Attorney Neil MacBride. “As a paid operative of ISI, he did thebidding of his handlers in Pakistan while he met with US elected officials,funded high-profile conferences, and promoted the Kashmiri cause todecision-makers in Washington.”

Right. Now, what will the US do about thosepolicy makers after they pronounce the verdict on Mr. Fai on March 9?

Will they do the boogey-woogey withPakistan? Will we know how the innocent policy makers were taken for a ride?And will they show us the money and tell us just how they were influenced andhow did they act upon it?

We seem to excel at looking at the curstand not reaching the core. Here are two bits from my earlier piece:

Did the ISI do it? Possible. Did Mr. Faiuse this money? Possible. Was the FBI unaware about it all these years? Notpossible.

and

It would be a pity if due to the ISI angle,the real issues will be pushed aside. America has the arsenal to deal with theISI, but does it have the will? If Mr. Fai is a front, then why only name theISI people and not the Congressmen who knew what they were expected to lobbyfor? Culpability in this case lies across the board. It is utterly ridiculousto make this sound like a terrorist plot when the monies have been traced andpeople of some stature have been consistently raising the Kashmir issue, notjust abroad but at home.

From Surely they’re joking, Mr. Fai?

Mona Lisa in the Lion's Den

2011-12-08T01:28:00.000+05:30

I always suspected that Mona Lisa was a bitof a wild cat. Something to do with the Cheshire cat smile. Oh, I know, it hasbeen analysed to death – from toothache to the pleasure of labour pains tomuscle dystrophy to sucking on a lozenge. Okay, that’s not been explored yet.Anyhow, New York artist Ron Piccirillo is a guy I’d like to go on a safari with.It is so difficult to spot tigers in the wild, and I am quite certain that hewill. He can see them. Just like that.

Piccirillo has transformed a yawn momentinto something exciting. Leonardo da Vinci’s subject is surrounded by animals,he believes. Most people look at paintings as they are meant to be, but ourartist here turned it horizontally and found a leopard, an ape, a buffalo andeven a crocodile or snake right near the subject’s right shoulder. I suppose daVinci maintained an element of delicacy and refrained from painting Mona Lisahorizontally.

I have tried to notice all those animals and it is the lady who seems the most beastly, because she is primal. Those other figures look like mushroom clouds to me.

But let it not be said that Piccirillo has not attempted an indepth analysis. What started as a “Geez, that kinda looks familiar” moment has turned out to possess some history.

According to a report:

One of the passages that references “herheart gnawed by a swelling serpent” also says, “Give her a leopard’s skin, becausethis creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit.” Though the passagedoes not mention the “Mona Lisa” specifically, Piccirillo said he believes thereferences to the serpent and the lion lead back to the painting and back tothe woman with the infamous smile. Piccirillo said he believes that Mona Lisawas not an actual person, but, rather, symbolic of the human trait of envy. Healso believes that his discovery will be important to an art community that hasbeen puzzled by the painting for centuries.

Symbolism is a matter of perception. Evenso, this sounds plausible. However, why is she so calm? Where is the envy inher demeanour? She has probably internalised the snake, but could the serpentnot be the Biblical tempter? And if is it coming out of her body, then is shenot released? Is that a smile of relief?

Why did the lion not eat the buffalo? Doesthe ape represent human evolution, which has not quite evolved? Why did the daVinci blur the figures?

Let us make this simple. If there areanimals, could it not just be a bucolic scene? One of the earlier theories wasthat the model who posed for the painting was a peasant woman, so this fits in.I understand that peasants might not really be surrounded by lions and apes,but farmlands are known to be intruded upon by wild animals. Or perhaps she hadstrayed into the woods. The fact that she is painted only upto her waist meansthat she was not joyous about her outing; there is no suggested movement in herstance. Or, she was unafraid. Perhaps she had been bitten but was too shy toadmit it and cringed just a little, enough for it to be considered a smile.

Or, as I began to say, she was a wild cat.On her hunting spree, in all likelihood she had trapped those animals, thetrophy snake on her arm. We see no weapons, but she has probably speared themalready and they lie there in a pose that in film parlance would be called ‘freezeframe’.

Mona Lisa to my mind is the precursor ofthe Sharon Stone ‘Basic Instinct’ character without an ice pick. And instead ofcrossing her legs, she has her hands crossed. Now that could mean she is hidingsomething. Another beast?

Social Networking Mobocracy

2011-12-07T23:41:00.000+05:30

Why is everyone so upset about a code ofconduct proposed by the IT minister Kapil Sibal for social networking sites?The protest has taken on a febrile “Kapil Sibal Is An Idiot” tag. This itselfreveals how such debates go. If there is no sensible argument and it comes downto merely snapping at idiocy, then it works in favour of ‘censorship’.

Sibal has said: “We have to take care ofthe sensibilities of our people…Cultural ethos is very important to us.” Onemay contest this, although one can be reasonably sure that even ourinteractions are rooted in culture, even though it may not be overtly so.

Some say this move is to protectpoliticians of the ruling party. Have we forgotten that the same party immediatelyticked off those politicians who used such sites to vent their anger orquestions policies, whether it was Shashi Tharoor, Omar Abdulla or DigvijaySingh?

Does the general public approve of such‘connections’ the leaders make with a limited group of people, although it doesget reported in the mainstream media?

Forums such as these act asextra-constitutional authorities where elected representatives can clarifytheir position, blame others, wreak vengeance, and campaign for themselves oragainst others. How is one toaccept their version? Why are the usual official channels not used? Why mustgovernment policy be announced and discussed on walls and in tweets where thereis more likely to be a back and forth of sound bytes rather than a sensible discussion?

This code should apply to people across theboard and not merely politicians or those in the government.

The users of these sites are angry. Wouldthey be any different from the Anna Hazare movement types, with everyone going“Kapil Sibal is an idiot"? Who do they represent? Who are they to decide on howmuch slander is good enough? How many people flag abusive comments? Let us faceit. Most people like a good fight. In fact, some people are made preciselybecause of the notoriety they gain by such networking. Their visibilityincreases and so does the fan base. Is it necessarily on intrinsic merit?

Those who are talking about how those whohate them must also be allowed to have their say are largely popular because ofjust such infamy. Such ‘freedom’ affords them statues even if it is tofacilitate pigeon droppings. It is the cult of the dishonourable dumb, and somewill fall for it. Take any issuein recent times and it has become more exaggerated due to this word-of-mouthpublicity. YouTube videos go viral and, much like terrorists claiming theirhand in bomb blasts, these denizens claim to play a role in every majorhappening – whether it is the Arab Spring, exposing leaders, bringing scams tolight, or pushing the anti-corruption agenda.

We have governments for a reason. We havelaws for a reason. Do they work well always? No. Does it mean that getting intoa huddle and fighting them online will change the reality? This is thefrightening aspect. How many of those commenting in morsel sizes are trulyattuned to such reality? True, famous people are on networking sites,reasonable people are there, people who matter are there. My question is: Arethey also not in places where it counts and are they not capable of pushing forchange from where they operate? They can and some do.

If the idea is that one gets to see allstripes of thought, then there are other places that offer the same. Theregular media outlets and the offbeat ones where commentary is at least moreindepth, though not always so. It gives us a choice to dispute. For those whothink that news is forced down us, how are they so certain that what passes forexchange of ideas on such websites does not do the same? There is bound to bean element of incestuousness, and it is a community too. Therefore, it is a bitamusing that when the minister mentions incendiary talk that hurts religiousand communal sentiments, there are sniggers. Yet, when this community ofnetworkers thinks it is in danger of being muzzled, there is a hue and cry.What are they upset about? That their space is being occupied, right? Theirfreedom shackled. It just so happens that there are different kinds of freedom,and much as we dislike what we deem to be non-liberal thought, also has a rightto exercise its freedom.

Today we have an Anna Hazare saying thatthe slap on Sharad Pawar’s face was violent but such violence is fine. Why doyou think he is doing this? Why is he shedding his supposed peace strategy?Because his constituency is the youth on a ‘zor ka jhatka laga’ trip. They arein a hurry; they want to become revolutionaries with hash tags who will trendfor a day or so. 15 minutes of fame has just become a lengthened shadow.

There are positive aspects to such sites,but the manner in which the opposition to a proposed code has taken courseleaves one with a slightly distorted picture of the whole anti-system. Itreally is not a contrarian viewpoint but a ghetto that wants its ownprotection. Not everyone is capable of self-censorship. There are loosecannons. There is anonymity.

You have a Varun Gandhi who says,“Internet’s the only truly democratic medium free of vested interests, owners& paid off journos. Can see why Kapil Sibal wants to gag it.”

Should his party come to power, will herepeat this? Are there no agendas being propagated on the internet, no vestedinterests, including his own? What about Google’s position? It says: “We workreally hard to make sure that people have as much access to information aspossible, while also following the law. This means that when content isillegal, we abide by local law and take it down. And even where content islegal, but violates our own terms and conditions, we take that down too, oncewe’ve been notified. But when content is legal and doesn’t violate ourpolicies, we won’t remove it just because it’s controversial, as we believethat people’s differing views, so long as they’re legal, should be respectedand protected.”

This is fine because it is making bigbucks. We forget that in October, it was giving out information about surfinghabits to America, France, Germany, Britain and India. A report had mentionedthen that “Google included the total number of user accounts targeted, insteadof just the number of requests made by police, courts and other agencies.Google is trying to get users to share even more tidbits about their lives onsocial networking service Plus, which has attracted over 40 million accountholders since it debuted in June as an alternative to Facebook.” Is this notmore intrusive? Or do we prefer such covert operations?

If Kapil Sibal does manage to make someheadway with this, then we must understand that it could possibly help othersas well. That should be the idea. It could be an anti-government crusader whois abused and can seek recourse to action. It could be an individual whoseidentity is being tarnished.

It is facile to assume that discourseagainst the establishment will stop. Before social networking, we threw out theBritish, we threw out a government that imposed the Emergency, scandals wereexposed. That will continue.

Never bog-ged down

2011-12-07T23:37:00.001+05:30

I just love this…flowers and ribbons toinaugurate a toilet. Only in India. Thane got its first electronic automaticpublic toilet (e-toilet) with computerised flushing, electricity, and waterstorage capacity in a 45 sg ft area.

I do not know if there is any speciale-facility to figure out what to do when some of us squat atop the pot ratherthan sit on it. For a two-rupee coin, it could become a bit of a curiosity, andwonder whether there is a time limit, for each time that there is a heave-ho,there could then be a lot of water and power wastage.

But you bet, if you go by this picture,wherever we Indians are we come out smelling of roses.