Mukhtaran and Meena

How did a rape victim become an icon and why? Is Jamshed Dasti a stand-alone, callous bloke trying to use pressure and clout to stifle justice or is he representative of the pugnacious social structure? Mukhtaran Mai’s bravery is a personal one, I am afraid. There has not been a spurt of such court cases; it has not sensitised people at the ground level; it has not resulted in understanding of what rape, especially gang rape, conveys.

Meet Meena. She heard the screams. Her husband lay in a pool of blood. Before she could do anything, the men had pounced on her. After some time she managed to drag herself and get help. She then went to file a complaint. The cops tittered, looked at her breasts above her pregnant belly and said: “Doodh pila de”. She yelled out helplessly. Months later, life was still miserable, now with an incapacitated husband and fear. “They barricaded most of the area. If I left the hut for long they’d break it again. It was so bad that we had to defecate inside on sheets of paper and I’d carry the excreta and throw it on the other side, which was a swamp,” she said.

I was sitting with her far from the cold floor, but her story was chilling. She was indirectly caught in a fight between two builders. Her husband worked for one. The rival hired a goonda gang. This was cosmopolitan Mumbai and they were only earning a living. Until that day, a day that she had to leave behind even as she went looking for work and visiting the police station. Justice was being scraped out painfully; it could not be brandished in bold letters.

Does it all end after the devastation of riots, militant attacks, wars? No. Brutalisation is only the outer manifestation. Women become double victims — first of the actual battle and then of the ideology. In the days when sati was a sanctified institution, the motive was to save women from marauding enemy armies. But, what was being protected —their lives or their sexuality? We have heard about victims marrying their rapists. These are literal demonstrations of masculinisation of power.

Jamshed Dasti’s ‘compromise’ formula is based as much on the tribal laws that forced Mukhtaran’s rape. She was the price they had to extract for another’s ‘sin’. The urban politician is using a similar yardstick and, much as his views are reprehensible, there are often coteries that take over a symbol to showcase their concern for the co-existence of feminism and tradition. Mukhtaran has been hawked like fusion cuisine.

She has become a cliché for injustice and, ironically, even more exploited. The value system and marketing machinery are patriarchal. The victim woman who fights, becomes a canonised caricature, so beloved of the Wsest and the westernised, leaving little room for the voiceless. It is appalling that we cheer when a case gets international exposure. Our media gives them the exotic version when in those countries date rapes, incest and teen pregnancies are a common occurrence. How many of their victims are seen as icons?

Had Jamshed Dasti been worried about the international repercussions he would have shut-up. He is concerned about the local constituency. For all those disparaging him, yes, he is for real. If we look deeper, then he is what many surrounding us are about, including women who accept the status of trophy wives and state, “It’s okay if my husband goes here and there as long as he comes home to me at the end.”

If we have said or heard this and not given it a second thought, then Dasti’s crime is not very different from ours.

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Published in The Express Tribune, July 6th, 2010.

Comedy of 'menners'

Every once in a while we are introduced to a new species of male. It gives us women something to look forward to, at least theoretically. In practical terms it is the same old caveman in different togs.

So, when I read about how the Alpha male is turning into the Omega man, it sounded Greek to me. But it crosses cultures. This character sleeps in late, lives with his parents, does not bring home the moolah every month, but is happy. Happiness means:

On a typical day, he wears tatty clothes, plays computer games and “works on his music”. He does his washing and cooks his meals, and is usually single.

Why this obsession with types of men? Earlier we had the metrosexual guy who shaved every part of his body that had hair; for some weird reason that also made him sensitive. I guess it’s because of the razor.

Then we have nice guys who are not rakes; they help with cooking, cleaning and occasionally even making love. Nice.

Between the Bad and the Good, there is a wide range and women are left wondering at the amazing array that is on offer. Sometimes, we get so lucky that we can even take one ‘on approval’ basis, test a sampling and then return to the shelf.

Why am I pissed off, then? Because it is all about men. I am an Omega woman – I lounge in tatty clothes, I don’t play computer games, but I potter around trying to create designs, I sing into the microphone and have been ‘working on music’ by creating tunes for my cell phone, I don’t even cook, but for the occasional tossing and turning of things in the pan; I do a bit of cleaning; I am single.

I am mostly happy – with myself. That is darn Omega. Here comes a small problem. I also am focused about what comes after the doodle; the times I write I am committed to deadlines that I love meeting; I have an opinion and it comes on strong; I have a keen sense of dress that I put to use when I want to; I like to get the best for myself. That makes me Alpha.

There must be many women who have qualities of both but no one discusses us. No one is interested in whether we shave or not, whether we are working on music or creating noise, and if we are not dressed up it is assumed to be because we are supposed to be wearing aprons, even if nothing else to go with it.

I am not getting into a gender war simply because there is a bunch of guys out there trying so hard to give us a choice when we know already that beneath the ho-hum of variety all we hope to find is a man who can light a fire and watch candle-wax melt. And he can do it in Greek if he wants to.

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I have no problem with football. Men need something to kick around. However, this silly obsession of the Indian media and therefore the public is unfathomable. We are not playing in the World Cup. Do you hear me?

No! I know that football is played in this country but, except for Kolkatans and their Mohan Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting, no one gives a damn about these teams. Yet, when some Messi starts messing and Ronaldo goes rolling, you hear the same old screams. The build-up started early and everyone from Bollywood actors to other sports stars to industrialists was asked about their favourites.

It is quite amusing to see some of them plan parties or decide to gather at a bar or coffee shop at a fancy hotel where large screens show the men in action. It has become a huge business. I once had the horrible experience of going out with some people visiting from overseas; we got a table quite close to this mammoth television. No conversation was possible and even worse we had to watch the idiotic women in the ‘fan’ groups letting out little screeches of delight holding their glasses of strawberry daiquiris. They were not there for the sport; they were there to hang on to the men they accompanied or who happened to be around.

All of these men come dressed in Friday clothes, and that becomes occasion for the Page 3 photographers to capture them at their casual best, never mind that they are very carefully casual.

I am rooting for the little boys who will be kicking a large rubber ball in the puddles of my city now that monsoon is here.

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End note:

Did this blog not talk about ads using bushmen? So, today on the Ideas page in a slot called Snap Judgement, we had this picture and writeup:

In Poor Taste

It is disgraceful that some TV commercials with racist undertones have recently surfaced. The advertisements in question poke fun at African people, who are depicted as backward. Humour cannot be a defence for racism. Our ad-makers would do well to steer clear of such politically incorrect commentary and give vent to their creativity in a more responsible manner.

Yes, of course. But the Times of India did not take names. Because if it did, then how will their Response Departments go soliciting ads, how will their TV channel air those ads and how will stories connected to such ads be woven around the consumer ideal?

This is not restricted to one media group, I might add.

The Death of Bo

Think. The last member of your clan dies and what you had hoped would outlive you has gone. Disappeared from the face of the earth, the universe after 65,000 years of existence.

Think.

Boa Senior, the only one left of the Bo tribe of the Andamans, died at 85. And took with her every remnant of a culture, a language, a way of living.

Survival International director Stephen Corry said, “With Boa Senior’s death and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of society is now just a memory.”

A memory for whom? Who would know and, even if they did, why would they remember?

Apparently, she once told linguists, “We were all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us ‘the Earth would part, don’t run away or move’.”

They knew how to survive. Yet, they were not allowed to. First it was the British colonisers who killed them or just let them die of diseases they could not cope with due to the advent of new viruses. Their departure did not help. The process of civilisation is complicated and in the urban mindset it means trying to change people. But only superficially. You give them clothes to cover themselves up, but nothing is done to preserve their heritage. Or if it is, there is commercial exploitation.

They provide fodder for photographers; a visit is considered dangerous and akin to a trip to a wildlife sanctuary where you are supposed to spot them.

Channels such as Discovery do attempt to trace them and provide a semblance of understanding, yet no one is concerned in helping them live their lives the way they want to by working within their system and needs.

The more accessible tribes are showcased on important national events for their dances and acrobatics. Those who have creative talent are given some materials to express it; these are then sent to the market and sold at trumped up rates. One does not know how much the tribals themselves benefit from it. There would be totem visible star who will be taken to award shows as a symbol of our national culture.

How many of us remember? How many of them have been sustained after this? Besides, can we not respect the fact that what they draw is rudimentary and meant for rough walls and floors and not soft boards? I feel sickened by the idea that these are displayed in houses that reek of ostentation.

Am I over-reacting? Isn’t it better than leaving them in little places? The point is that we are not including them in what we call civil society; we are using them, and that too not all of them. The rest will continue to be in those places until some great shining hope in the form of big fat cameras descends to capture their work or their breasts.

Boa’s death is a frightening reminder that the thousands of years of what was created and built upon was allowed to perish.

The Bo was a sub-tribe of the Great Andamanese; there are only 52 left of these as well. I can only hope that we get some sense and work on preserving them and what they stand for. It is not they who need to be civilised but we, for our callousness and our idea of inflicting supremacy on those who still have some self-esteem to keep their culture alive.

The beauty is that they don’t even know it. If only such innocence could be canonised in a world where even saints need to perform miracles.