there were bridges to be built
generations abridged
many old ones to be mended
before the next monsoon
it will pour again
but no one needs them now
the other side
has crossed over the horizon
taking away
analgesic wafts
moisturised wrinkles
pendulum swings
typewriting knocks
I often see
cotton swabs from diabetic tests
a pack of cards, 52 in all
the jokers as well
smiling on
headsets, unused
sweets unhidden, neglected
sometimes I encounter
over temple bells and remote switches
an impish smile
iron will
winsome persuasion
emotional drifts
conflictual trysts
the bridge I walk on now
is another
a bridge over
stories untold
waves threatening to straighten out
struggling
losing
becoming memories
bridge over
stilling waters
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
bombay meri jaan
(This piece was written during the MNS campaign against Bihari and U.P migrants. Then the november attack happened and this went into temporary back burner. With elections round the corner, this issue of migration and outsiders is going to flare up not just in Maharashtra but other states as well, Punjab being one of them.)
Every vacation to Delhi in my childhood would see this grand debate between me and my uncle. I guess my lawyer uncle enjoyed provoking kids and arguments away from the court room, so every year the two of us – a pre teen kid and a mid thirties man- would stoutly defend their respective cities. Bombay or Delhi? Which is better? Which has better roads? Better cars? Friendly people? Better places of interest? It was as profound as ‘Gateway of India’ from my side to ‘India Gate’ from his!
Looking back, I can see we were both defending our ‘homes’. After all, we were both, despite that huge age gap, south Indians who had grown up outside the south. We debated about our homes in a combination of Tamil, English and Hindi. Though my Hindi then was much ridiculed as Bambaiya Hindi.
I grew up as a south Indian in Bombay. During the period when the Shiv Sena had declared that south Indians were outsiders depriving Maharashtrians of jobs and hence should leave the city. I don’t know how many did leave. We didn’t then and when my family moved, ironically to Delhi, it wasn’t because of the Shiv Sena. In Delhi, I slowly forgot the Marathi I knew and it took me a very long time to accept Delhi as ‘home’. Years later I learnt about the Shiv Sena when the Ayodhya controversy was hotting up leading to 6 December and as I began to take positions on Hindutva, secularism and communalism. The Sena had by then found that Muslims made a better enemy, a better outsider, than south Indians.
Now as the MNS and its parent Shiv Sena try outdo each other in the vitriolic campaign against migrants, this time around from Bihar and UP, I am reminded of my childhood. Particularly of our neighbours in Bombay, a Gujarati-Marathi family, who were very important in our lives. While my parents retain fleeting correspondence with their south Indian friends in Bombay, everlasting fondness is reserved for this special family. ‘They were the best neighbours ever’- is how both families remember each other. While it was shared childhood for us kids, for our parents the basis of that enduring relationship lay not just in the daily borrowings, mutual baby sitting, little outings, shared festivals and different cuisines which characterise neighbourly existence. It also lay in shared everyday experiences of very tough times. Like the whole period when both the textile mills where uncle and aunty worked were under strike. My dad was with Premier Automobiles then and there was the famous strike in that factory as well. Those were times of irregular salaries and uncertain futures; meanwhile home loans had to be paid, kids had to be sent to school, and the household run.
Around the time of the Gujarat genocide (an event which I think shaped the sensibilities of a whole generation just like the Babri demolition had for mine), I learnt that Uncle has always been a staunch Shiv Sena supporter. And aunty made enough communal statements last time I spoke to her. Now as the anti-migrant campaign has become a constant headline, I wonder at how uncle reconciled his support for Shiv Sena with a close association with south Indians living next door at the time when the Sena was in the flush of its anti-south Indian campaign.
This sounds like a reassuring story. Often we look at instances of friendships between warring and prejudiced communities- Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Palestinians, as resources of hope. We cite them to backup our assertion that ‘ordinary’ people don’t indulge in hate politics and are manipulated and humanity survives in these friendships. But this recollection does not make this point. Rather it makes the contrary one.
I don’t think we can dismiss Shiv Sena’s or MNS’s activities as one of goondaism by a few lumpen disgruntled youth. Just like we cannot dismiss communal pogroms and riots of Mumbai and Gujarat as the handiwork of a few. We know that people killed, looted and raped their Muslim neighbours. Or covertly supported the attacks. We also know that people protected their Muslim neighbours at great personal risk. Hence from our experiences of living together and sharing joys and sorrows, we cannot conclude that the majority of the oppressor community was not involved. Because it is, in its collective consciousness, even as individuals have acted heroically due to personal convictions or political values.
When uncle managed to retain his friendship with us (and does to this day), it was not an exception. He could simultaneously occupy both realms- of friendship with the ‘enemy’ as well as resentment against the ‘outsider’. One of these sentiments won, perhaps because there was no real confrontation involved, but it is not a given that it would have.
For all of us who wish to understand the deep roots of biases and prejudices that regressive fundamentalist politics tap into, we need to examine this co-existence, this possibility of ‘living with the enemy’, in people’s lives.. Not only as we have done till now, as evidence of triumphant humanism or resources for conflict resolution. Instead, it should constitute the entry point into exploring the dynamics of collective ‘cosmopolitan’ co-existence of our times.
We cannot assert false truisms like ‘ordinary people don’t believe in hate’ anymore. Ordinary people may not believe in killing or throwing people out. But they share the resentment, paradoxically while maintaining friendships. This resentment is what unifies them with the lumpen activists and organised right wing political fronts. They lend silent support. Which can get tapped to active participation. Any time. As we saw in Gujarat. As we may see again. May be in Bombay, may be not. I do hope not.
Every vacation to Delhi in my childhood would see this grand debate between me and my uncle. I guess my lawyer uncle enjoyed provoking kids and arguments away from the court room, so every year the two of us – a pre teen kid and a mid thirties man- would stoutly defend their respective cities. Bombay or Delhi? Which is better? Which has better roads? Better cars? Friendly people? Better places of interest? It was as profound as ‘Gateway of India’ from my side to ‘India Gate’ from his!
Looking back, I can see we were both defending our ‘homes’. After all, we were both, despite that huge age gap, south Indians who had grown up outside the south. We debated about our homes in a combination of Tamil, English and Hindi. Though my Hindi then was much ridiculed as Bambaiya Hindi.
I grew up as a south Indian in Bombay. During the period when the Shiv Sena had declared that south Indians were outsiders depriving Maharashtrians of jobs and hence should leave the city. I don’t know how many did leave. We didn’t then and when my family moved, ironically to Delhi, it wasn’t because of the Shiv Sena. In Delhi, I slowly forgot the Marathi I knew and it took me a very long time to accept Delhi as ‘home’. Years later I learnt about the Shiv Sena when the Ayodhya controversy was hotting up leading to 6 December and as I began to take positions on Hindutva, secularism and communalism. The Sena had by then found that Muslims made a better enemy, a better outsider, than south Indians.
Now as the MNS and its parent Shiv Sena try outdo each other in the vitriolic campaign against migrants, this time around from Bihar and UP, I am reminded of my childhood. Particularly of our neighbours in Bombay, a Gujarati-Marathi family, who were very important in our lives. While my parents retain fleeting correspondence with their south Indian friends in Bombay, everlasting fondness is reserved for this special family. ‘They were the best neighbours ever’- is how both families remember each other. While it was shared childhood for us kids, for our parents the basis of that enduring relationship lay not just in the daily borrowings, mutual baby sitting, little outings, shared festivals and different cuisines which characterise neighbourly existence. It also lay in shared everyday experiences of very tough times. Like the whole period when both the textile mills where uncle and aunty worked were under strike. My dad was with Premier Automobiles then and there was the famous strike in that factory as well. Those were times of irregular salaries and uncertain futures; meanwhile home loans had to be paid, kids had to be sent to school, and the household run.
Around the time of the Gujarat genocide (an event which I think shaped the sensibilities of a whole generation just like the Babri demolition had for mine), I learnt that Uncle has always been a staunch Shiv Sena supporter. And aunty made enough communal statements last time I spoke to her. Now as the anti-migrant campaign has become a constant headline, I wonder at how uncle reconciled his support for Shiv Sena with a close association with south Indians living next door at the time when the Sena was in the flush of its anti-south Indian campaign.
This sounds like a reassuring story. Often we look at instances of friendships between warring and prejudiced communities- Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Palestinians, as resources of hope. We cite them to backup our assertion that ‘ordinary’ people don’t indulge in hate politics and are manipulated and humanity survives in these friendships. But this recollection does not make this point. Rather it makes the contrary one.
I don’t think we can dismiss Shiv Sena’s or MNS’s activities as one of goondaism by a few lumpen disgruntled youth. Just like we cannot dismiss communal pogroms and riots of Mumbai and Gujarat as the handiwork of a few. We know that people killed, looted and raped their Muslim neighbours. Or covertly supported the attacks. We also know that people protected their Muslim neighbours at great personal risk. Hence from our experiences of living together and sharing joys and sorrows, we cannot conclude that the majority of the oppressor community was not involved. Because it is, in its collective consciousness, even as individuals have acted heroically due to personal convictions or political values.
When uncle managed to retain his friendship with us (and does to this day), it was not an exception. He could simultaneously occupy both realms- of friendship with the ‘enemy’ as well as resentment against the ‘outsider’. One of these sentiments won, perhaps because there was no real confrontation involved, but it is not a given that it would have.
For all of us who wish to understand the deep roots of biases and prejudices that regressive fundamentalist politics tap into, we need to examine this co-existence, this possibility of ‘living with the enemy’, in people’s lives.. Not only as we have done till now, as evidence of triumphant humanism or resources for conflict resolution. Instead, it should constitute the entry point into exploring the dynamics of collective ‘cosmopolitan’ co-existence of our times.
We cannot assert false truisms like ‘ordinary people don’t believe in hate’ anymore. Ordinary people may not believe in killing or throwing people out. But they share the resentment, paradoxically while maintaining friendships. This resentment is what unifies them with the lumpen activists and organised right wing political fronts. They lend silent support. Which can get tapped to active participation. Any time. As we saw in Gujarat. As we may see again. May be in Bombay, may be not. I do hope not.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Greer and chaddis
I finally got it. While its symbolism was targetted at the RSS 'knickerdaaris' which is masculinist, The Pink Chaddi campaign rung some bell in my head -about underwear, feminism and women. Now I figure its Germaine Greer's The Madwoman's Underclothes'. Here is Greer
on underwear
'In Australia if you leave your room in a terrible mess, your mother says: 'Look at this room . . . it's like a madwoman's underclothes.'
on pubs
'When I first came to Sydney what I fell in love with was not the harbour or the gardens or anything else but a pub called The Royal George, or, more particularly with a group of people who used to go there every night … and sit there and talk…'
and for all those whose sense of decency and taste was offended by 'chaddi' talk
' The journey of woman's life defies order and good taste - if she is lucky.
on underwear
'In Australia if you leave your room in a terrible mess, your mother says: 'Look at this room . . . it's like a madwoman's underclothes.'
on pubs
'When I first came to Sydney what I fell in love with was not the harbour or the gardens or anything else but a pub called The Royal George, or, more particularly with a group of people who used to go there every night … and sit there and talk…'
and for all those whose sense of decency and taste was offended by 'chaddi' talk
' The journey of woman's life defies order and good taste - if she is lucky.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
warming up to mush
The early nineties saw the country’s entry into the new liberalised age, the entry of Valentine’s day into the nation’s vocabulary and my entry into teenage. The concomitant entrance of the first two was not a coincidence, though my foray into teenage was. As Valentine’s day became more popular, my ire against it grew at the nauseating celebration of patriarchal romantic love, stigmatisation of singlehood and the unbridled commercialism to which it was put to use. In those years nothing could be so irritating as red roses, red heart balloons and chocolate wrapped in glossy red paper on that day. And I do dig chocolates, balloons and roses. This continued till I started teaching and interacting with students for whom the day meant so much. The meaning seemed to have changed subtly, though it retains all its consumerism and patriarchy, since my time. Or is it because I was dealing with a different set of students than my classmates in school and college.
A recent piece in Indian Express pointed out that understanding the Mangalore pub attack on women required an examination of class. It cannot be done purely in terms of gender. This is a valid point but we need to ask what is in this moment that the ‘liberated woman’s body’ has become such a target for the right wing. After all there have always been ‘modern’ Indian women who drink, smoke, frequent bars/casinos/discs, dance with abandon and wear revealing clothes. Every self-respecting hindi film till the late 1980s had the vamp character who was the embodiment of the fallen woman; never mind she was the only woman having so much fun. The liberated woman has become a threat at the same time when the vamp has been rendered obsolete in the hindi film with the heroine taking over her role. As long as the liberated woman was a vamp and her life safely distant from the aspirations of the ‘normal’ ‘respectable’ women she raised no fury among the protectors of culture. But it is precisely the smudging of the boundary lines between the vamp and the girl-next-door that has raised their heckles. She and her life is dangerously close to ‘ours’. She is definitely a product of class, but a product of the mobility and affluence of middle class and the spread of middle class aspirations to the smaller towns and mofussil areas of the country, some part of which is a result of liberalisation.
But that is just one part of the picture. If we look at our films again, the language of love changed in the decade since the inauguration of economic reforms. From the long duree where love -especially inter-caste, inter-community, inter class- inspired rebellion and unconditionally justified defiance of the family/community our films moved on to define socially sanctioned and permissible love. My students, when asked about their preference for love or arranged marriage, come up with ‘love-cum-arranged’ as the first preference. Our films and our middle class now endorse this seemingly oxymoronic category which effectively sees inter-community and inter-caste marriages as violative of community honour, parental affection and Indian culture. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Hritik Roshan pleads with the Patriarch (Amitabh Bachchan) to forgive Shah Rukh Khan but admits that ‘Unhone galti ki hai, Unhone pyar kiya’. A far cry from the proud defiance of ‘pyar kiya toh darna kya’ and its innumerable variations.
But love as defiance flourishes among the young, but not our metropolitan upper middle class elite, but rather in the small towns, suburbs and the edges of urban India. For this generation of youth, the promises of liberalised India overlap with hope for a liberal India. They are ready to risk life and futures for love. Many do not manage to convert their romances into choice marriages. Many are posthumously labelled victims of ‘honour killings’. For them Valentine’s day is special. They may not relate to the language of the Pink Chaddi campaign but do concur with its content. They dot campuses, parks and shopping arenas holding hands with cards, roses and balloons. Many see this day and this time of their lives as the only opportunity they have to give vent to their desires and can later remember with fondness. I find my fully formulated critique of Valentine’s day still valid but unable to capture the import of these happy giggling faces. So I wish them back, and give them a day off.
A recent piece in Indian Express pointed out that understanding the Mangalore pub attack on women required an examination of class. It cannot be done purely in terms of gender. This is a valid point but we need to ask what is in this moment that the ‘liberated woman’s body’ has become such a target for the right wing. After all there have always been ‘modern’ Indian women who drink, smoke, frequent bars/casinos/discs, dance with abandon and wear revealing clothes. Every self-respecting hindi film till the late 1980s had the vamp character who was the embodiment of the fallen woman; never mind she was the only woman having so much fun. The liberated woman has become a threat at the same time when the vamp has been rendered obsolete in the hindi film with the heroine taking over her role. As long as the liberated woman was a vamp and her life safely distant from the aspirations of the ‘normal’ ‘respectable’ women she raised no fury among the protectors of culture. But it is precisely the smudging of the boundary lines between the vamp and the girl-next-door that has raised their heckles. She and her life is dangerously close to ‘ours’. She is definitely a product of class, but a product of the mobility and affluence of middle class and the spread of middle class aspirations to the smaller towns and mofussil areas of the country, some part of which is a result of liberalisation.
But that is just one part of the picture. If we look at our films again, the language of love changed in the decade since the inauguration of economic reforms. From the long duree where love -especially inter-caste, inter-community, inter class- inspired rebellion and unconditionally justified defiance of the family/community our films moved on to define socially sanctioned and permissible love. My students, when asked about their preference for love or arranged marriage, come up with ‘love-cum-arranged’ as the first preference. Our films and our middle class now endorse this seemingly oxymoronic category which effectively sees inter-community and inter-caste marriages as violative of community honour, parental affection and Indian culture. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Hritik Roshan pleads with the Patriarch (Amitabh Bachchan) to forgive Shah Rukh Khan but admits that ‘Unhone galti ki hai, Unhone pyar kiya’. A far cry from the proud defiance of ‘pyar kiya toh darna kya’ and its innumerable variations.
But love as defiance flourishes among the young, but not our metropolitan upper middle class elite, but rather in the small towns, suburbs and the edges of urban India. For this generation of youth, the promises of liberalised India overlap with hope for a liberal India. They are ready to risk life and futures for love. Many do not manage to convert their romances into choice marriages. Many are posthumously labelled victims of ‘honour killings’. For them Valentine’s day is special. They may not relate to the language of the Pink Chaddi campaign but do concur with its content. They dot campuses, parks and shopping arenas holding hands with cards, roses and balloons. Many see this day and this time of their lives as the only opportunity they have to give vent to their desires and can later remember with fondness. I find my fully formulated critique of Valentine’s day still valid but unable to capture the import of these happy giggling faces. So I wish them back, and give them a day off.
Friday, February 06, 2009
what was this?
something rather strange happened to me a couple of days back. i reached office to discover that i had forgotten something very important back home. something i could'nt do without till the evening. so i went back home. feeling mighty stupid. cursing myself for increasing my carbon footprint. anyway as i entered home, a strange feeling enveloped me. i felt like an intruder. it was like i had walked into lovers caught in a 'compromising position' as they say :). or into someone sleeping, and had woken that person despite trying to be as quiet as possible. my footsteps actually got lighter and i became conscious of my breathing. i got out as quickly as possible, apologised and promised i would not show up till evening. when i came back in the evening, i had been forgiven, for i got my normal welcome.
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