If not in six years, today I am scared...

As I write, may be thousands are protesting in Delhi today, braving the spine numbing cold. I have been having thoughts, all sorts, about what the gang-rape incident means to the average women in Delhi, who cannot afford to have a personal car for her safety to travel. So the bus, auto and the metro seem to be for now the only option, for thousands others like me.

Strangely enough, I was in Munirka yesterday and even spotted that ill-fated bus stop from where about two weeks ago, the now deceased 23 year old physiotherapy student who was gang-raped, boarded the bus. I had all sorts of scary thoughts yesterday until the time I was in Munirka.

I have been staying in Delhi for the past six years. When I came here, I was cautioned by family and friends about the perils of staying alone in Delhi. In my initial days I used to stay in Vasant Vihar, a typical plush South Delhi area where streets are mostly deserted, as private cars ply around. I can’t recall of a single evening when I was not escorted back to my PG by my friends, fearing that travelling alone might be a compromise to my safety. I was in Vasant Vihar for 2 years before shifting base to JNU campus.

JNU campus can be called an oasis amidst the sea of turbulence in the capital. Every time I enter inside the main gate, I feel I have returned back safely and unharmed, for the day. But one cannot get cocooned inside JNU all the time. One has professional, cultural and social needs and obligations. Interestingly, in Delhi all three needs are structured upon the issue of safety. If you have to travel, book a flight that flies during the day time, take a train that reaches Delhi in the morning (never after 5 PM!) If you want to hang out with your friends make sure you are back (previously it used to be 8 PM), by (now I guess I myself prefer) 6 PM. And yes, we are talking about a modern, empowered woman who stays in the capital of this country. She is not at all embarrassed to follow a stricture that is tinged with medievalist tradition. Every day my freedom is infringed; my rights are trampled by a fear; my parents’ peace of mind disturbed because they want their daughter to have the best education.

Today I am scared, may be I have not admitted it, but in some corner of my mind, fear lurks large. In six years I have not felt so. I guess a majority of other women in Delhi is constantly living under this scourge of fear, for no fault of theirs. The only fault is - she might be pretty, or she might like to dress in stylish attires or she might resist someone else’s unholy moves.

I have always loved Delhi ever since I came. But I have never admired its breed of populace. At the cost of sounding biased, I would say there is a general lack of respect for women that pervades in majority of North Indian men’s psyche. It is that psyche that makes rape a passable offence, because women in general were never and I presume would never be treated at par.

One cannot have police personnel posted at every signal. It is impossible in a country like India having 1.3 billion people. Police cannot change the psyche of a man. Strong laws? Who will make that law? We have ourselves elected MPs and MLAs who have criminal antecedents, some of whom even have rape charges against them. May be what we need today is a cultural renaissance. It is this culture of subjugation that has shaped men’s psyche, which has captivated and destroyed my freedom. It is this culture which does not let me be myself here. I can only hope my children would have better and safe streets to walk on even at 1 AM at night. But that too is a hope against hope.

This post appeared on 30 December 2012 in 'Ei Samay' ( The Times of India's Bengali newspaper circulated in Kolkata) as a translated version in Bangla. The Bangla version can be accessed here:

http://www.epaper.eisamay.com/Details.aspx?id=1773&boxid=23113921

“With malice towards none…”

If in the past all my blog posts were well accepted, one thing for sure, till you finish this post, I will be chastised and loathed for my audacity to be honest. But I don’t mind if obituaries are written for me for being honest. Thank God that I don’t have a Publisher to please; otherwise if writing was my means of livelihood, for this article I would have had to sacrifice my job. But this is my blog and so I have the luxury to have the liberty to give vent to my ideas, uncensored!

Few days back a friend’s status message on Gtalk read like this: “Does setting up attractive status message shows someone's character in any sense OR people try to attain faaltu ka attention!!!” I kept on pondering on those lines. The word that struck me was “ATTENTION”. Was questioning myself, how many of us would really not like to have attention? This ‘attention deficit syndrome’ or ‘hyper attention disorder’ (these are terms coined by me and I am not aware whether such terms trace its origin to Psychology or Sociology) is the most common ailment human beings suffer from. And with the coming of the new age concept of ‘social-networking’ I think this ailment is finding its most visible manifestation.

I always consider this idea of social-networking as ‘self-networking’. It is the most appropriate platform for self-eulogy and self glorification. Truth is we all are narcissists. Only the extent differs. And social networking today is the most visible reflection of this narcissism. Mark Zuckerberg (for the uninitiated, he is the founder of Facebook) is the most intelligent man on earth today. He understood this logic of narcissism so well. And as a reward for this understanding and intelligence, Facebook today has over 500 million active users as of July 2010 (Source: Wikipedia). For that matter other social networking sites like Orkut and Twitter are also cashing on this logic of narcissism.

Day after day as I log in and scan through the pages of my account in Orkut/Facebook/Twitter what I come across is some unnecessary information that makes no difference in my life. But it does make a difference to other people, because it gives them publicity and helps them acquire a cult-status (of course not according to me, but its self-professed). What I fail to reason is how is buying a ‘X’ TB Hard disk drive going to help the people in your friend list ? And surprisingly this has been a status update. I have even seen status updates that say “bought a new blah blah phone with blah blah GB space and blah blah Mega pixel camera!!” Can anyone enlighten me as to what will I do with all these useless information?? The only idea that this kind of updates convey to me is that ‘look my phone/HDD/camera is new and swanky and comes for a hefty price and you don’t have one!” What would you call it then? Isn’t it narcissism? (Otherwise I don’t find any logic behind that update. Pardon my naivety in that regard.)

Let me share with you yet another instance of narcissism galore. There are people I know who the first thing they do when they are transferred to a foreign country (for any reason-job, marriage, project, education) is update the ‘Current City’ option of their accounts. For example, if someone is transferred to say New York or London or Paris, they would immediately update their “current city” option even before their flight takes them to their current city! But strikingly the same pace is not followed when some one is transferred from say Bangalore to Delhi or for that matter from New Jersey to New Delhi! I am not conjuring up stories from thin air. I have made these observations and I am writing it from my own experiences in this unreal world of social networking.

My innocent querry is that what are we trying to prove out of this silly publicity? I know and most of us know that all of us love attention. But what is the rationale behind such blatant narcissism? I have seen people upload bizarre pictures in their albums. Pictures which convey nothing but yet are fashion statements. What is the logic of having a profile picture where you are grabbing your husband or your husband is grabbing you until you or your husband choke of asphyxiation? Does that convey your love which is immeasurable or the lack of it in which case the picture bears testimony to that realization? Have we all lost our private world? Is this unreal world of social-networking everything? Does everything that happens to us need to be made public EXPLICITLY? Do we really do things keeping in mind what others would think about it or do we still do things using our own heads?

May be I am a misfit in this strange world of self-marketing. But I am happy that I have a world of my own with my loved ones where I share my dreams with them. That is all mine. I have established a ‘Firewall security’ for that world. Interestingly some of my closest friends are not even in my friends list in Orkut/Facebook. I don’t want to be known by how many followers/ friends I have. It conveys nothing to me. And I don’t experience any joy or pride in bragging that “I have bought a phone” or “going for a holiday in Singapore” or “I have completed my so and so degree.”

When I joined Twitter I had X number of followers and today I might be having X+X number of followers, but how does it matter to me ? My world does not revolve around these ‘Virtual Friends’. Tweets mentioning going for blah blah meeting, shooting for blah blah movie, gave a blah blah speech or inaugurated a blah blah auditorium are nothing but mindless mementoes of trying to rise from mediocrity. I used to follow Tharoor, Shahrukh and many such stars. But eventually I lost interest in their tweets because it has nothing but information about their daily schedules and LOVE YOU ALL, HUGS TO ALL-type messages. I want to learn and status messages like these portray nothing but insensible narcissism.

So readers (both friends and anonymous) bash me, hate me or criticize me after reading this post, cause I know for a post like this more brickbats would be laid than bouquets ( because if not all, there would be some who would fall in any one of the above mentioned categories of narcissists !). But I am not a ‘please all’ type of a character.Social networking can and should be used for connecting with the society.Explicit narcissism would defeat the entire idea behind 'networking' and would eclipse the essence of the word 'social'.

A Route to Life...

Amidst the hullabaloo of the soccer mania that has swept us in the past one month, a recurring theme occupied my mind and at times went to the extent of intriguing whatever logical scaffoldings my brain could construct all these years. A very good friend of mine who time and again tickles my brain cells with his logical reasoning on a wide gamut of issues, on this particular occasion supplied the food for thought. He kept on asking me what keeps us so excited about the FIFA World Cup, when our own country was not participating.

I am a cricket enthusiast like any other ordinary Indian. Although I won’t say that I don’t understand football, but given a choice between cricket and football, I would go for cricket any day. So what makes India predominantly a cricket loving and cricketer worshiping nation loose sleep over the FIFA World cup? How does one explain the phenomenon of Indians being so much engrossed in a World Cup where India is not a participating nation?

I tried hard to fathom out the reasons behind such a craze. For once it appeared that the idea of nation and nationalism is passé now. Scratching my head, I thought that Benedict Anderson was right when he said that nations are nothing but ‘imagined communities’. So it does not matter whether you are an Indian working in USA, or a Pakistani studying in UK, you still have something to cheer for, as you became a Brazilian or for that matter an Argentine for this World Cup. It was as if globalization had erased the idea of nationalism from our memories. But that argument does not hold forte because the boundaries are still clearly chalked out on maps and border issues still happen to be one of the pertinent causes of inter-state conflicts and a strong sense of nationalism still pervade among the countries that are fighting it out in the football field there in South Africa. Glimpses of historical rivalries come to the fore when one thinks of a Germany Vs England match or for that matter an Indo-Pak hockey or cricket match.

Next argument that I tried to eke out was that Indians love to have an opinion on every issue under the sun. So be it football World Cup, or Wimbledon or for that matter F1 racing, we love to have ‘our team’ and fight it out with fellow Indians on the strength or weaknesess of our favourite team and try and snub the other out with stats as to how a particular player scored a goal from a particular angle on a particular match, or how Sharapova has a better back-hand or how Lewis Hamilton won pole position in the Spanish Grand Prix ! That argument made some sense but I was still not fully satisfied that it was ‘the reason’ beyond the hightened enthusiasm of the maddening Indian crowd towards the football fever.

It was only yesterday while watching the Germans loose the semi-final match against Spain, it struck me as to why were we so frenzied about the World Cup where there was no team representing India, my country. It is not about the spirit of nationalism, or enthusiasm about sports (Of course, for the numerous football enthusiasts this football World Cup is an event extraordinaire. And I am not speaking for them. My arguments are for the masses for whom football means only World Cup Football). It is about finding a way out of the monotonous life where your mornings begin with the dreadful thought of meeting a client, or meeting a deadline to submit a project report or for students to appear for the weekly tests. Such small little events makes us laugh, cry, fight and the feeling that sweeps us all through this phase is one of enjoyment. Forgetting the mundane mechanized moribund life for a moment we try to escape to a place where thrill and excitement awaits us. After all what is life without thrill! So in the past one month we got up in the morning thinking how the Brazilian side would thrash its opponents or how Germany would annihilate Argentina. And trust me these feelings made the days more exciting and the wait more fulfilling. Every time ‘your side’ won, the sleep at night after 2 am was so peaceful !

Interestingly I too allowed myself to get inundated with the football mania. My profile on Orkut and Facebook bore a German jersey all the while. The intense rivalry on the various social networking sites was only pointers to the fact that the excitement was palpable and it gave the Indians a chance to sneak a welcome break from their tight schedules. While hedging bets on the prospect of his/her team for a particular match, the first thing that came to people’s mind was that what should be an apt update for his/her Facebook account today? Or each time our team lost, the initial reaction was how people would make a fun on Facebook ! And all these, did precipitate some fervor of excitement in our routinized life. So, whether David Villa wins a Golden Boot or not on 12th July, we already had some golden moments all the while. Moments that made us revel in glory or regret in defeat and that too not for the Indian team but ‘our team’. That’s our own world where we live for ourselves all within us. I think now I have an answer. Its not escapism, it’s a route to enjoy and live life. All of us have one life, my advice is, rediscover that forgotten path time an again, that will make you smile and forget for a moment that life is nothing but a long arduous walk. Live life and not let life leave you…

Too many Indias in my India …

For a change I thought lets write on something that is not hardcore political commentary ( pick up The Hindu for that matter!).Was whacking my head as to what should be the ideal topic which will attract readership and visitors to my blog. One of the followers of my blog suggested a good topic, that on Obama and ‘his albatross’ (of course pun intended ! I mean his Peace Prize, is no less than an albatross that has been hung around his neck by the Nobel Committee as a reminder to the promises he made, because those promises need to be kept also. And that medal, whenever he gets it will remind him of the tasks that are still unfulfilled.) But good sense prevailed as I thought that Nobel Peace Prize had become a saturated topic, with opinions pouring in from a tea-stall owner to all the Twitteratis ! Then I picked up ‘2 States : The Story of my Marriage’ the latest book by Chetan Bhagat ( those who do not know about Chetan Bhagat, well for them, he is the writer of bestsellers like ‘Five Point someone : What not to do at the IITs’, which is soon going to be released into a movie titled ‘Three Idiots’ starring Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor and other books like ‘One Night at the Call centre’.) His last book ‘The 3 Mistakes of my Life’ disappointed me, so I was not quite inclined to grab ‘2 States’ the moment it was published. Toying with the idea I finally gave in to my temptations to unravel what lay in store inside the red colored book. But I did do some research before buying the book ( thanks to Twitter and other sites ). What attracted me was the back cover of the book. It reads:

Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. They get married.
In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s family has to love boy’s family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family…

I found it so true. Such a profound truth yet so simply put. Then there was no stopping me. I swallowed the book in 24 hrs. When I finished the book the only thing that struck me was that we have too many Indias living in India. We say India is an emerging super power, has made stupendous strides economically,and we brag about the 'Unity in Diversity' concept, but behind this statistical and emotionally charged well worded façade lie the real India, where to which caste and region you belong still determines your matrimonial potential. Where it doesnot matter whether you are from IIT or IIM or IISC, but what matters most is whether you are a Tamil Brahmin or Marathi or Bengali that will make you a good match for a girl/boy. So even if we have achieved economic footprints, culturally and socially we are still taking a step backward. What it matters most to an average Indian is ones’s prestige in one’s own community. If you marry your son and daughter to someone who is not of your own caste, you yourself become an outcaste and it doesnot matter whether your would be son-in-law or for that matter your daughter-in-law has an academic record that most people in your community can just dream of but can never achieve. So what ? At the end of the day, what you need is someone who can speak your language, eat your kind of food and be a part of your own festivals ! I thought it was necessary to marry someone whom you love and who loves you. That’s it ! But no, there are a whole lot of people you should satisfy and impress and endless conditions that you should fulfill to settle down. Like you will have to be a Bengali first, then a Brahmin or a kayastha then within that your gotra and then some more blah blah…n if all is well you might get a B- grade after all such ordeal !

To all of you who will read this article I have an innocent query-Is it possible to love someone if and only if these caste and sub-caste factors are met ? I feel then its not love but bargain ! I sometimes feel that Indian parents might well settle for a foreigner bride or groom but not an Indian who is not of their own community, caste or region. But it was to drive out these foreigners that we the Indians once fought unitedly for 200 years!

Chetan wrote it well, that we have a national anthem, a national symbol, a national bird, but we have many nations within a nation. To account for it I just cannot help recalling what once a very good and learned friend of mine said, that we never had a Renaissance in India. That was so badly needed. A cricket match can unite the many Indias within India but love cannot. Outside the cricket field, we are a Bengali first then an Indian, or a Punjabi first then an Indian. That is why only in India we have the phenomenon of honour killings. I think it has more to do with a South Asian mentality. I can bet even in Pak and in Bangladesh we have this menace.

I think it is but natural. A country that saw the pangs of partition during its independence can only reverberate with the sounds of division even after partition. Because even though we have made economic progress yet we are still to grow culturally and change the age old stereotypes. But for a cultural renaissance to happen it will still take another long and arduous struggle.That is because any struggle to change mindset is more difficult than a political struggle to change the seat of authority.

P.S: Read ‘2 States’ if you have a girl friend/boy friend who is not of your own caste or community and whom you want to seriously get married to.

Religion :The PARANOIA of the Masses

I had shut out this world of blogging for the past one month.Underwent some highs and lows in the bygone one month, hence words were hard to flow.Desperately wanted to write but found my thoughts incarcerated amidst a haze of confusion and was fumbling for an articulate manifestation of ideas to write on an issue.Thanks to my Orkut well wisher and my teacher that i finally managed to pull up my socks and get back to the groove ! This article is for him and his encouragements.

When i look back at the month gone by,many issues found front page space in many newspapers.Chandrayaan's abrupt end,the infighting within the BJP,the ghost of Jinnah and Partition,swine flu,YSR's untimely death and many such issues of national and international importance.But one issue kept on troubling me, eversince it was reported in the media - Shahrukh Khan's detention at Newak airport in New Jersey in USA.At the very outset let me put the facts straight across the table-I am not a big fan of Shahrukh Khan,but yes he is my fav hero ! So i have no bad blood with him that i would be spitting venom against him through my blog ! I understand the mental agony that he underwent at the airport and the subsequent bold and brave face he kept after the incident, where no harsh words errupted from his side.Truly appreciate his composure and gentlemanly attitude to handle the issue.

However my concern is with regard to the hypocrisy and the double standard that the media and some sections of the so called progressive and enlightened individuals exhibited.If we recall the day this incident happened it was our Independence day.And since the evening (Aug 15) the web was innundated with articles,blogs and tweets on the SRK issue and the gross injustice meted out to him. There is no denying the fact that it was an injustice and also comdemnable.But my question is,when just a week earlier,Emraan Haashmi was denied a flat accommodation in Mumbai on grounds of his religion,where was this outburst ? Where were these shouts of injustice then ? Or for that matter how many from the Bollywood fraternity took the initiative to look into the matter as to what had really happened to Haashmi ? There was a clear fault line between a famous Muslim and a not so famous Muslim. King Khan himself said after the Haashmi incident that he has never faced such discrimination in India !! How can he ?? Come on...he is KING KHAN !! And in India he is really the undisputed King ! Which fool will dare to raise an objection on his religion in India ? But i guess King Khan got his answer some weeks later.Thats what i call 'Divine Justice'! Nobody will ever understand the pain and agony of someone else unless he/she undergoes the same pain.

The question is not of Shahrukh Khan or Emraan Haashmi,there is a larger issue to it.It is heartening to know that almost more than 50 years after Tagore wrote the famous lines 'Where the mind is withou fear...', the world is still 'broken into narrow domestic walls' and the mind is still 'not without fear' and the head is still to be held high ! If such discrimination is what our celebrities face then can we just gauge the depth of the discrimination which an ordinary Muslim faces in India and elsewhere ? May be, we wont be able to fathom out the trauma that they undergo,because we have not yet suffered their anguish.Be honest to yourself and ask how many times have all of us raised our eye brows seeing a bearded man wearing a cap ! That sense of 'WE and THEY' is getting so entrenched that it is as if it will take centuries to come out of this dangerous maze of polarization.That is an ominous sign for the health of our polity.Incidences involving hi profile celebrities are reported in the media but stories of the ordinary masses are lost to time.The stories of discrimination of 'no ones' are too trivial to be reported by someone.

I do not know what is the conclusion of the WAR ON TERROR but we have certainly lost the WAR AGAINST HATRED.And the tragic irony is that we have lost it badly.Osama Bin Laden might be hiding in some mountainous caves in Pakistan/Afghanistan and might have lost the War on Terror,but he has won the psychological war against America and against us.

Reality Shows vs Quiz

I was home for a vacation for almost two months,and hence had the luxury to watch television at free will.I should say it was a luxury because in my hostel in JNU,we just have one television set ! And if you have one tv in a girl's hostel, i think i dont need to elaborate much ! Cant become a part of the deadly battle that goes on to grab the remote and tune into those saas-bahu sagas which my hostel mates enjoy so much.So at home i was happy to see tv whenever and whatever i wanted.But i was deeply dissappointed when i got the pulse of what was actually being aired on tv these days.When we grew up ( i am sure most of you will agree with me)satellite television just started its course.But even then the leading family entertainment channels aired atleast one quiz programme.Be it 'The Bournvita Quiz contest',or 'Kab,kyun,kahan' or 'Get set Go',we were atleast abreast of the latest general knowledge.Even till recently we had KBC to give us some feed of general awareness.Siddharth Basu was in our times a household name (for me he was a genius ).I grew up watching Crossfire,Parliamentary Quiz,BBC Mastermind.It was chiefly because of him that i developed my interest in current affairs and general knowledge since childhood.But now i wonder and regret what today's generation is growing up upon ? They are so unlucky in this respect ! What do they get to see on tv these days ? - Kyun ki...,Balika Vadhu etc..(i dont remember any other soap operah's name !) and the countless Reality Shows which are by no stretch of imagination real ! Some of you might argue that if you want a taste of current affairs then u have the option to watch the innumerable news channels.But then which news channel today airs a quiz prog ? Surprisingly none ! (Correct me if i am wrong)They are all busy getting sound bites to increase their TRPs and solve Murder Mysteries ! Sad irony ! I think today's generation doesnot even know who is Siddharth Basu,but they know who is 'Tulsi'!

Television is such an important medium for creating awareness but i am saddened to see its deplorable slide into sub standard progs which donot have any functional value.I think its imperative that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry formulate a minimum guideline for the types of informative prog that a tv channel should air.Atleast one Quiz show should be made mandatory.

Is this PROTEST or PUBLICITY ?

I am amazed and deeply disappointed at the recent upsurge in the incidences of throwing shoes in India as a mark of protest. It appears that we have forgotten that everything that happens elsewhere in the world cannot and should not be copied. I mean there is something called individuality and originality also.In all this hussle and bustle i think we have decided that anything and everything goes for publicity.

India has been the pioneer in engineering the most famous form of protest- that of Satyagraha and civil disobedience. Those ideas over the years have served as the beacon of light for liberation struggles all over the world and made all those people famous ,whosoever has treaded on that path.But now, we have become rag-pickers from other's baskets it seems.Those dumb headed ill-mannered individuals in India,who in the last few days have taken to this new form of protest that has made its debut, (thanks to the journalist in Iraq who threw his shoe at Mr.Bush Jr.) are objects of disgust for me(others may disagree and have every right to). We boast about our great culture and values whenever we get a chance to,how did these people forget that then ? And all those who followed this form of protest did not belong to the so-called 'young, hot blooded hip-hop generation Y ' clan ( becuase its this group who always share the blame of mutilating our civilizational values).These were people who were made to grow up on the strong roots of Indian culture.So where did thier cultural virtues disappear now ? One may argue that 'frustration' made them do it.But i for one wont buy that argument.Because if we remember our history correctly,then nothing was more frustrating than to allow your motherland to be ruled by the aliens for 200 years.But flip through the pages of history, not a single episode (baring the Surat Session of the INC in 1907) was marked by such cheap forms of protest.I think its time we make use our minds and not get swayed by the idea of getting frontpage coverage in newspapers and become a hero ! All sensible and like-minded individuals must join to condemn such incidences.After al India still has some individualty and a special niche in the comity of nations.

STUPID CUPID - LETS ATTACK !!!!

Valentine's Day is approaching and the Hindutva Brigade is out of its slumber. Nice name they have given to their campaign this time- MORAL POLICING ! Its always nice to be self-appointed custodians of the civilisational heritage,or should I say its a superb cloak to camouflage their hypocritical non-sense ! Its ridiculous to see that this time their target is the state known to be the 'Mecca of the Software Revolution'.Its outrageous,as a responsible citizen and a thinking individual to digest their preposterous rhetoric.I mean is there a dearth of substantive issues in this country to fight for ? I am sure,our country has attained that level of enlightenment,atleast now, in not showing any sympathy to such publicity stunt-men and showing them their real place - an ASYLUM,may be ! If they really want to protect our civilisational values,then they should go and teach those youth a lesson who disrespect women on the road,or those who ill-treat their parents,rather than kidnapping and maiming a Hindu girl for talking to a Muslim boy.Our rich civilisational values never taught us such lessons. Where are we heading ? I know India is a democracy,so everyone legally enjoys a right to speech,but that doesnot give a license to paranoid individuals to get a frontpage picture or to appear or re-appear for a prime time news story ! We call India to be mature democracy,but i think the people should also show some amount of maturity in dismissing such signposts of stupidity.