On.... the sparrows' cry for help ( a bit of rant on nature and us).

I have begun to wonder lately- do I know soil? Have I held it in my hand for once and never looked at it without feeling it is dirt, but a component of every eco-system? The answer, sadly, is no. There is a difference between being aware of something as crucial as climate change and attributing climate to local environment and its dynamics. Lot of work has been done on the urban jungle and how the anthromes affect the habitat. But very less has been done on how to make people aware of the crucial situation. To us in the developing world, climate change is not the immediate concern. It occupies a sphere of less importance than food, water, shelter, etc. It does not enter our minds that climate change is something that affects us in the very grass root level, something that even democracy hasn’t been able to do properly yet.

When I was studying away from Thiruvananthapuram, it was a relief to come home every time. It was not because I was home sick, but because I loved to see trees lined up along the sides of the road, huge trees that the royal family has planted decades back. The city was green. It was welcoming. It was an urban jungle, but a planned one with the commercial centers packed into exclusive pockets and not spread out. Then our Govt decided that it was time to renovate the city. This in time when the world was ablaze with pre-Cop15 talks. Widening the roads, building larger buildings with western design, etc can hardly be called sustainable development. The Left, the Right and the Centrists all joined hands in applauding this development. Whatever sanity that was left in the city intelligentsia, like the architect Shankar, was accused to be anti-development and called him a 'tree-hugger'. Now, you might be wondering why this blog post now, if I had found the whole episode disturbing then. Because an acquaintance of mine actually posted this status message on Facebook- ‘Was happy to see the changing face of TVM. Much needed change. Wide roads, new buildings, exclusive outlets of some global brands.’.

Let us look at the items of emphasis here. First of all, there is the stress on the much needed change. I would have left it as another piece of ignorance, had not the clause ‘exclusive outlets of some global brands’ caught my eye. He is right. The availability of global brands and consumer items has increased. So has the cost of living. Do these global brands have a major impact on the vast majority of the local population?  I wonder if he or anyone who cares more about the former actually cares about the farmer. The answer would most probably be no. There is a notion among the general public that once you cast the vote, your necessity and participation in democracy are over, that there is no further role.  Most people take this ‘modernization’ for granted instead of thinking about viable solutions. They think that in order to cater to the growing economy and growing number of vehicles on the street, the roads have to be widened. They think that for the economy to grow, high rise buildings are necessary, which instead of taking the local weather conditions into consideration, follow blind aesthetics.

The main problem in such thinking is that we forget two things- first of all, every society has an ecological footprint. The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the bio-capacity (the available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%. The footprint of India is fast increasing, population growth being a major problem. Forests are decreasing in area alarmingly, the various programmes of the Govt for afforestation taking time. Now, the problem with emulating the mainstream western models of development is that this foot print only increases. Developed countries have huge ecological footprints. One of the reasons that our footprint is low is because we have traditionally used eco-friendly mechanisms and given more priority to regeneration.  Such a statement does not mean we should regress to traditional economically nonviable energy fuels or methods of habitation. It simply means we need to leapfrog and use novel tools and techniques of development. We need better public transit systems and mandatory car pooling, so that instead of widening the roads for the increasing number of vehicles, the number is reduced to accommodate the regulations. The next option is to make our huge buildings self sufficient. This is the age of science in which scientists are devising better and better technologies to harvest energy; even from human urine (I will not say that it is the only option.). It is the age of designs based on biomimicry and biomorphing. We need to use local sources and local intellectual pools which encourage creative collaboration to understand the systemic problems and tackle them fruitfully. 

The second thing that we forget is that we have a rather large young population. We forget that the earth is theirs to inherit. Every parent tries to give the child everything he/she might need. Doesn’t the child need clean air, water and food for tomorrow? I always thought of the food I used to waste as ‘some food’. I also used to think that I possibly couldn’t make a difference to the poor by eating what I didn’t want. That is the wrong approach. It is not the consumption, but the production. I should not cook more food than necessary thus wasting the raw food material, energy and time. It is not a hard habit to inculcate. Nor is the habit of leaving some grains of food and a bowl of water on the balcony for the little birds. I hardly know ten or fifteen local species of plants. My children would know even lesser. Like me, they would consider plants that grow too much in the soil as weeds. Like me, they would most probably wait to buy a pair of gloves to pluck them out because soil is full of germs and it is dirty. Isn’t it time that every concrete forest with a terrace had gardens? Every plant and animal species has evolved in a particular climate rather painstakingly. Instead of importing and cross breeding garden variety plants with prettier flowers, let us have indigenous plants and the beehives harvested and not destroyed. Let us not pave concrete the space around the house. Let there be soil. It is high time we converted the anthromes to consciously include the micro ecosystems that flourish around us.

I consider D H Lawrence to be one of the most boring writers ever. But there are no better words than these, taken from the ‘The Rainbow’ to show the rawness of nature and the complete interdependence of humans with the land and nature.

‘But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding.’

I think it is time I actually did something about the garden.

Girl

 

Little girl, little girl

you love your laugh and the arc of

the rainbow, wind carrying you swift

down the undulating meadow.

You own the world with a smile,

your smile, a hint of blush, loud rush of

freedom, giggling past life’s stream, blissful

the mundane pleasures of heart.

Your tears melt stone, tear the

raging inferno, open the tombs of every

mighty soldier who never  so flinched

to the gun’s thunder.

And yet, my dear, you

seek why he doesn’t play with you

anymore, no more you feel a child,

ever since it began flowing between

your legs: red, thick and murkily sad.

You blush with a thunderous hush

at the looks of lust and desire, unbound

feeling your bosom, temptation abound.

And you will weep, my dear, the

tears no more precious, your laugh made

silent and untrue; a ragged doll of unknown

rage and sorrow of morrow you become.

Men who pinched your cheerful

behind, who mouthed words shameful,

they wander free; clad in irony, warm in

agony, you become nothing but a bird, 

which forgot its song.

On... Religion 2.

Most Trivandrumites know that Palayam is famous for being the point of intersection where there is a church, a mosque and a temple. I had noticed the other day that there were renovations going on at the church and now it is visibly larger than it was. It would have been another event of insignificance in the scale of events had I not noticed a mosque being built nearby a church where there is no significant Muslim population or a temple trying to encroach the street. It brings me to the cardinal question I have in my mind. Is religion bigger than faith? Or, has religion become so much of an identity for the common man that the rest fade into the background?

Till some years back, I knew what a burqa was only in theory. I had seen the pictures, but couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it. It so happened that I could also not imagine Shiv Sena ambulances in the city. I couldn’t understand why a friend said that Hindus need to stay united. It was incomprehensible to me as to why a favourite teacher of mine, who was a Christian, wasn’t allowed to enter a temple. Now, I know. I have also observed that the worship places are becoming larger and bigger. Is it because of the increase in population? Perhaps. But, it could also be due to the fact that religion as a practice has been overwrought with pretension, that spirituality and faith has ceased to be factors of consideration.  The looser your purse strings, the nearer you are to the creator. The hassles of life have given us a new tangential velocity, minuscule perhaps in its magnitude, but definitely enough to divert us to a desired orbit. The illusion of choice is so strong that the individual often ignores the associated side effects. Isn’t this the illusion that is alluded to in the chronicles of medievalist clergy? Heretics were burnt at stake. Those were simpler times. Heretic had only one meaning – one who defied the church’s decrees. Now, the manifolds of differentiation are so huge that even Riemann would fail at categorizing them.

Religion had the ultimate purpose of making sense of the universe. It did not begin with the intention of becoming exclusive clubs where the inquisitiveness was considered evil. But, society has evolved to a point where man being an in group animal, needing the interdependence, has failed to come up with any competent institution which caters to his need for survival, on a large scale. Political affinities can change. But religious sentiments seldom do and continue for generations. A friend once told me how her husband cannot stand Muslims. He has Muslim friends (I wonder!), but refuses to trust strange Muslims. The identity here is not friend. It is Muslim/Hindu/Jew/Christian friend.

Another question I have is whether globalization has something to do with this accelerated need to belong.  With the cosmopolitism typically associated with globalization, the world does shrink to the point where a person cannot perceive his/her roots as strongly as he/she would like to. It creates a vacuum and the need to force the identity further. What further accentuates this void is the capitalized packaging of religion. Religion thus becomes a commodity and the clergy become the shopkeepers. The subject-verb agreement is extremely distorted to the point where it becomes inordinately hard to trace the origin of each practice. This in turn acts as a constant bubble wrap around the ignorance that religion has nothing to do with faith. Or is it a kind of Barnum effect: catering to the subjective validation of the individuals who descended from social animals and using this evolutionary trait to negatively create spaces that are absolutely isolated?

This brings me to another point. An observation based on the Attukal Pongala. Lakhs of women assemble here at Thiruvananthapuram annually, on a specific day to worship the goddess through rice dish offerings. While the media focuses on clicking the images of Parvathi Omanakuttan or film actresses and writing up about how foreigners are turning up in hordes to give their offerings, there is a section which goes unnoticed in this sensationalized glamourous milieu. The ordinary woman of poverty, who wants to unburden herself for a day and tell the goddess all her woes, hoping she will have some relief. The underprivileged are taught to accept that this is god’s will. That their poverty is fair. The poor cannot contribute much to the rising cathedrals, minarets or gopurams and hence they are god’s least favourites. Charity is a fixture of most religious institutions. We do have to ask whether religious philanthropy is altruistic or not. I will definitely be obliged or to an extent emotionally submissive to someone who bails me out of a tough situation. It could also generate a sort of peripheral persuasion enough for me to start inculcating at least some of the values the person hold.   

There is a widely held view that globally, religion as a direct cause of violence is rare. But when you take every ethnic, geopolitical or purely political conflict, you cannot depreciate the role of religious sentiments. Though the groups may not be fighting over theological issues or spiritual practices, the religious-cultural identity markers usually utilize the faith based sectarian symbols which the people are emotionally attached to.  Even the culturalism can give way to a sentiment of religious-nationalism, which we see around us, arising even in India.

This is a situation which is worsening every day. We can easily say that I have my beliefs and you have yours and that our Constitution guarantees us the Right to Freedom of Religion. But we really have to ask ourselves whether it is the right Right or Freedom. Something that distorts the very nature of diversity hardly encompasses the natural diversity. So the next time you make a contribution to your temple or mosque or church, ask yourself whether it is the right thing to do. Or step it up a notch and kindle the thought whether religion is more important than faith or not.

I find no better quote to wind this musing up with, than Stendhal on religion: ‘All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.’. 

Return

A gust of wind streamed lazily past me,
tottering ever so unsteadily under
the heavy clouds, in the whimsical
sagacity that provokes ideal eternity.

The tree smiled at me gently, leaves
cloistered in their burden of raindrops
sadly left behind, screaming agony,
demanding to drown in sweet gravity.

As I looked up to the thunder for a
moment not too long, the green giant
shuddered, shrugged in surrender, and
from up high, let a drop fall on me.

Nothing to ponder on, just a slow sigh
of surreal abandon, as the cold warmth
rolled from my eye and over my cheek
returns to impregnate the earth’s womb,
yet again.

On... polarisation: Religious 1.

Something happened the other day. I was in class when there was a sudden discussion about something in Islam. The Professor turned to a guy and asked him to explain the term since he was a Muslim. When he couldn’t, the jocular response was, ‘You are supposed to tell Us people about Islam, Us people are not supposed to tell you’. Needless to say, it made me uncomfortable. Quite true that such remarks cannot be avoided by most and are considered in sync with the social norms. Us and Them. In this occasion, Muslim and Hindu. Just one doubt though – where do I fit in? I am not a Muslim, am definitely not a Hindu. Not by any compulsion through inter religious marriage, but by choice. Where do I, an atheist, who does not identify with any of the religions, but identifies with my multitude of friends who practice various religions, fit in? In Us or Them? What is the logic here? It is a bit like the binary code. If it is not 0, then it has to be 1. But am neither. What about millions of spiritual, but non religious people? Will a Hindu be the center of attention if he didn’t know the Vedas?

Let us jump to another scene. The lecturer and his much talked about hand! I happened to tell my friends that he had no common sense. Apparently it is pseudo secular to criticize the culprits but also comment on his lack of common sense. I don’t quite understand. I do not in any way condone the incident. But is it pseudo secular if I feel that the sentiments of a community were rightly hurt by the question in question? I find that very peculiar- maintaining that members of a community who have been pushed to the margins and hence volatile, should preserve their peace and calm when all around their identity is being questioned. Now, you may ask why I am bothered if I don’t believe in the oh-my-spaghetti-god. Valid query indeed. The answer is that I see a system feeding itself on polarization, a system which uses force and security to change attitudes (foolish!) and works on an entirely negative feedback, hence amplifying the output in the opposite direction. My dear ‘secular’ Malayalee friends should be thankful that Christianity is shrewd enough to understand it should limit itself to ‘idayalekhanam’ (apart from loosening their purse strings) in order to wield the same power and that Hindus in the state are led in two ever warring groups by a senile fool on one end and on the other, a guy who though hasn’t seen much of school still has an engineering college to his name.

When it comes to Muslims, nobody wants to talk about poor Muslim students being denied the opportunities to open bank accounts or get loans. Nobody wants to talk about why Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar became the face of moderate Muslims in India or about the ‘encounter killings’. Nobody seems to wonder over the increasing presence of burqas in the society or the Shiv Sena’s desperate attention seeking by rambling on about ‘love jihad’. Or Sweden, Belgium or France for that matter. It feels ridiculous to not expect ripples across the pond when there is a crackdown on Islam all around the world. And when suddenly there is an upsurge of idealistic extremism in an incident: congratulations, we were right to think of Muslims as terrorists. Anyone who points out the obvious is pseudo secular. I don’t like Islam for many reasons. For that matter, I equally despise Christianity and Hinduism. I do think Abrahamic religions have a way of tight control over believers which though initially were supposed to act as a coherent system for development, stagnated in the face of modernity. (Chile’s bishops are asking for clemency in the case of Pinochet’s generals.) I believe that Islam and Christianity sustain themselves through interconnected intellectual cannibalism and ethical necropsy. I am also wonderfully amused by the fact that Hindus have evolved to a point where they actually forget they originated from a region, rather than a religious ideology in particular, diving more and more into ignorance. Fascinating, actually. But do such beliefs of mine justify any prejudices towards Christians, Muslims and Hindus that I may have?

Definitely not! We have had our share of controversies regarding the Muslim Diasporas. I think no other community has been subjected to such extreme alienation, driving them more and more into seclusion. The typical view of the post modern religious tolerance amounts to Oriana Fallacci’s famous words "sons of Allah breed like rats". It is in this context that we should see the West attempting to strike a balance between being too tyrannical and lenient or refraining from blandly expressing the xenophobia which acts as both cause and effect of marginalization, as could be summarized by Fallacci’s words again, ‘Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense’. No Obama could undo what has been achieved by his predecessors. Laicite does not amount to undermining the need for change from within rather than imposing it on any section of the society. We need an identity campaign, on all repressive forms of authority and ignorance, including those stemming from religion. Any other course of 'action' tantamounts to disrespect of the second person. But, i do guess it is allowed in this society of structural conflicts. Something that is woven with the fabric of social framework and has merged with societal evolution cannot be undone by simply opting to pick out one or two threads. A paradigm shift is needed, by immersing the entire fabric in lukewarm water and letting it loosen up.

I want to write more. But I feel that as always, it is better to extrapolate as necessary rather than write a thesis which is not flexible.

To quote dear old Russell,

"I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it."

I attack religion. But I refuse to attack a particular group of people without understanding the dynamics.

Pointless

Loud,
the truck rolled past with the cattle
tied to their deaths, slowly hobbling
their heads, inevitability brewing in
pungent air; chopped up to feed us.

Tied
to the fervor of the billions across
the globe of meat consumers akin,
we burst forth dissecting by section
the economy and political morality.

Quiet;
meat consuming me with bouts of
compassion, keeping me bound to
nothing and everything in between.

Words
soar high as passions fly cosmic,
food pyramid, morals, ethics of meat
warring each other, with no clear win.

I see,
one gently nudge its neighbor, rub
against the face of its doomed friend.
Even more gently the friend responds,
closed eyes and pointed ears.

Smile,
am thinking of the nerves, soul, its
bovine heart and sadly primitive brain,
and if its life is worth my primal gain,
when our car passes the truck, as we,
sit comfortably numb in the sharpness
of our precious thoughts.

On... Political Responsibility 2

The premise of this whole musing depends upon a person A. Since I usually use a first person narrative, let A=I. I was born in Kerala, India and grew up during the IT boom. Most of my friends pursued engineering and are working for MNCs. So, suppose I was one of them. I am not talking about the IT sector strictly, but the service sector which is growing at a fast rate and generates more and more jobs for youth every year. Since I grew up in an age of ‘controlled liberalism’ and globalisation, I began to see the world like most of my peers. (Remember, it is all a supposition.)It was fun. Living in a city, having all comforts. So I chose what my friends did. I did my graduation and went into the service sector. Life is extremely good here. I have so much money on my hands that I really don’t know how to spend it. Of course, I have to work as per my company’s needs and dictums. But why bother when I get all this money?

I believe that I should make more money and that is how I serve the nation. But, what nation? Isn’t it just a geo – political demarcation? I am a true global citizen. I can show you photos of my visits to various countries. You should see the highways there. My car has lost its spirit running on our pothole filled roads. We need more development. But, home is always the best. I want to come home to rice, aviyal and fish curry once in a while. I shop from the finest of super markets. I have fine taste in the latest music. I enjoy art that I can understand.  I am hip and I am hopping all over the carefree world that I see. Yes, of course poverty, caste, corruption, everything exists. I know I should do my part. That is why I always roll down the window and give alms to the child beggar on the road. That is why I believe in Corporate Social Responsibility. I believe that these politicians are ruining everything. Why are there so many poor people? They are a disgrace to Incredible India. They spoil everything with their crass behaviour. Did you see that movie on racism? It was wonderful. Better than that movie on human scavengers. My lord, how can they be so insensitive as to put the audience through such agony? My work is going fine. I am being promoted next week. There is a puja next month at our apartment building. We are also invited. I have to buy matching accessories for my dress, which itself has gone out of fashion. Maybe I should just buy another one. I have children. I will raise them the best I could and inculcate my value system in them. Or at least try to. Then I die.

What is wrong with this picture? I don’t wish to go into a detailed analysis of each and every sentence. But somehow I find a large section today fits at least a part of the description. They hardly understand or care about a protest against price rise. Not because it doesn’t affect them. It does. They are acutely aware of the situation. But it is not their head ache. Sixty three years back, our forefathers emerged victorious after a century of freedom struggle. The ‘tryst with destiny’ is one of the most quoted and celebrated speeches of all time. We all know that the population in its entirety came out and fought the British. But post independence, due to several reasons, people has lost their will to fight for their lives. The last couple of decades have brought on tremendous changes in how we look, think and perceive reality. Media has become an engorged, sensationalizing conglomerate, which though brings to the fore many burning issues, embeds an idea of what the modern youth should be in capitalistic terms. They stay away from nation building, are mostly glad to dismiss politics as something that does not affect them, hide behind their Ray bans and are happy with seeing what they want to see.

What do they teach their children? That this world is not theirs to care for? Or that they should wait till someone else takes some action for them? In the end, what remains? If they don’t realize that country is a geo-political boundary and that nation is essentially the culture, the people and the roots that bind them to their existence, what good comes out of their procreation? What good comes out of holding fast to certain traditions that promotes oppression but doesn’t understand the true meaning of globalisation? Ultimately, isn’t it a waste – breeding like monkeys just to increase the population?

I don’t know who else to plagiarise other than the one who spoke of our tryst with destiny.

‘That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means, the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and to work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace is said to be indivisible, so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.’

Where do we stand when millions do not understand the gravity these words carry? We are capable. But only if we stand up straight and look around us.

  

Radheya

My father, my source, you saw my future
the blood, carnage; the savage luster
of the myriad sacrifices, thin rope of hope.
Your rays of power reached her womb
spun my soul; my strength, without a pause.
Was it your whim, a fancy, to let me be
in this existence void; bereaved of truth?

Mother, you cry for me as if I am yours
to be grieved for, be proud of; as if
am worn sparklingly a jewel; worthy hero;
my lifeless body makes up for your sin.
You knew my brothers would never stop.
Yet, they were let my life be spilled,
dignity snatched, crushed for a promise.
In this spiraling storm of hate, I was flung,
far and away, snapped, beaten.

Her laughter, chiding voice, ring clear in
my ears like the galloping thunder fast.
My friend, split open with vengeance
lies in his blood; the sweat of certainty
dripping down his killer’s smile, while
she looks on, content in a frozen moment.

Never sought, never wanted, not the
diamonds and platters of golden fruits.
All the ache, the anger, the pain, all for
what I didn’t know was indeed mine.
Though loyal; expendable, derelict in this
world where the worthy adorn the drain.

Finally the great Radheya retreats, bows
to the call of life; cheated and vanquished
from this realm where good and loyalty
measured in the bitterness of propriety.
I retreat.

A bit on gender in cinema... just a bit!

Every intelligent Indian movie goer finds himself/ herself at cross roads once in a while. This is one of mine – gender stereotyping in cinema. True that I could consider all mass media in this respect, but for now, I prefer just commercial movies. The main reason for such a consideration is that movies have a wider outreach than other forms of entertainment.

Here am going to dissect the stereotyping language wise, since I am familiar with Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil films and the stereotyping differs in its modus operandi as we continue across the spectrum. So for the first part, let us consider Malayalam. You would think that a group as enlightened as the Malayalees would actually be averse to stereotyping. Well, it is not the case. Apparently, here, education has nothing to do with the level of hypocrisy. Or rather, I have found that it follows a y=mx+c plot; constantly increasing. In a typical Malayalam movie, there are always sneak peeks at the heroine’s belly button since a proper glance is deemed too vulgar. Sometimes, my blood boils when the extremely masculine hero points at a female character and bellows that he is not going to hurt her because, just because she is a woman, and she should always remember that.  The question that obviously arises is the nature of message that a simple dialogue, the characterization of an individualistic woman as ‘over smart’ or the demarcation of gender territories through the hero conquering the female lead, conveys.  When there is clear importance to the female lead, it often portrays the faithful mother or wife trying to overcome domestic hurdles and revolves around family. At this point, we jump the fence and tip toe to the neighbour.

Tamilians have always celebrated cinema. With genres typical of them, they worship their heroes and heroines. But what a flimsy layer of saree hides in Malayalam is bared through bright colours accentuating the ‘jerk’ of the hips. (Jerk is a term used in roller coaster design. It is the time rate of change of acceleration. I do hope you get my drift.) The actress is revered for not only her acting talent, but for every part of her body. Like Simran’s waist was famous and Rambha’s thighs delicious, each part is further classified, de-personifying the individual and giving rise to abject sexual objectification. The Tamilians need their heroes to be ultra masculine and their female leads ultra feminine. One thing I have noted is the colour discrimination. The fair, slender female has to fall in love with the hero having relatively conspicuous Dravidian features.  Here again, we find the male ‘conquering’ the female. Makes me wonder though, if we haven’t moved past such images through social evolution.  Speaking of social evolution let us dive into the Bollywood pool, shall we?

I find Hindi female leads pretty boring. Whether it be the tall, beautiful, petite figures prancing around in miniskirts or the new variety of characters that the directors try to spin out of the hip-independent-modern woman era. It is as if there is a universal set of certain attributes, which are permuted, combined and selected from within themselves, leaving no space for an extraneous variable. There is a lack of gumption in the brand ambassadors of Indian glamour industry. The machinery keeps getting stuck when it comes to women. There is no novelty in the way that bollywood female characters contribute to the story. But this is not just the crux of a particular language.

Cinema as a medium always caters to the trend of the moment. But what most film makers forget is that they also reinforce strongly the stereotypes existing in the society. It is almost like the butterfly effect. For every small change in the system, ripples are created, which as time moves forward becomes a massive ripple. Now the problem here is that, we cannot simply stop this process. Rather, new set of conditions are to be added to it so that it follows a new path. I strongly believe that every artist should act as a variable. It becomes the moral obligation of the artist as the tool of the director to necessarily malfunction in case there is a dissonance between their belief system and the script’s requisite. They cannot go on embedding this ritualisation of primordial gender conceptualization in the vast populace. Especially in the illiterate or the semi literate people, over whom cinema has a great emotional control. This cycle has to stop somehow. But I do wonder how. However, I look at it, there are no concrete measures. Every small factor negates or adds to another social factor, creating a symphony, which desperately needs to be broken.

Remembering a conversation from Alice in Wonderland,

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.”

Majority of Indian cinema viewers are like Alice. They have no direction. But, the destination always alters the direction. We should decide what our destination should be.

No more

Am no more dead, my ashes
vaguely scattered in the wind,
carried away in the coldness of
his breath; no more numb.

My lung starts to breathe with
a vigor and purpose hitherto
unknown, nameless; so i run,
surreal in sublime freshness.

The deep gashes, nasty cuts that
profoundly I presented myself,
heal, veins close, wounds seal,
as I cease to suck my blood.

Though death coveted my heart,
inert soul stirs to life slowly yet.
trembling, scared and forlorn, oh!
but born of hope’s fiery womb.
Sown in love’s brutal floods.

On... vernacularising English

The paradox of this age is represented in many forms, one of the prominent ones being language. I opened the newspaper to find that another Indian –American child has won the Spelling Bee, the eighth to do so in eleven years. The father reportedly said that this was because of the emphasis on education. On the other hand, we have a generation of Indians who are accustomed to ‘fucking’, ‘bitching’ and the lot. So let us consider the fucking bitching Indian.  I find this personally disgusting. I was one of them for a brief period of a couple of months some time back. Used such terms a lot. Instead of thinking ‘what are you doing?’ angrily, I began to think, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’.  I thought it was better and more or less benign than swearing in Malayalam. Well, there is also the point that I don’t know how to swear much. Then there came the realization that English or Malayalam, swearing isn’t good just for fun, even though it might be in my mind. There is a level of decency that I have to keep while interacting with others and that shouldn’t include negative incursions from any language.

Again, consider the way Indians use English language. We have quite made it our own, constantly vernacularising it. Though it is in an entirely different way than how the Brits intended with ‘filtering theory’. The other side of the coin is where a section says that English should be English. We cannot deviate from the printed language of Webster’s and Oxford, even though usages like slum dog were shortlisted to be included in them. They feel that in a world where the osmotic balance is tilting in favor of vernacular incursion, the Anglo balance ought to be maintained. In a nation where around a hundred million people use English as their second language, it is a pretty strict restriction to keep, forgetting the evolution of language and ordering it to stay static.

One of the examples of vernacularising English is evident when we ‘pass out’ of college. I used this term once to an English professor and he immediately chastised me. I went home disillusioned as I had always thought that I had good command over this language. But hardly had a week gone by when I saw the exact same term used in the exact same context in a news paper article. That is when I began wondering about language and how we change it through daily use. Every day, like every other aspect of society, language changes. The effect maybe miniscule in the short term, but in the long run, it has the same effect as the literary evolution from Chaucer to Bukowski. It is just the same as vernacular English was once deemed unsuitable to write seriously.

But one point to be added here is that nowadays, changes are taking place rather rapidly than any great writer would have dared imagine. The diasporas of every race are everywhere. As such is the case, it becomes increasingly easy for language to seep through geo-political boundaries. A major contribution is globalization, which achieved its maximal thrust in the recent years and continues to act as the arbitrator for an accelerated transformation.

In India’s case, there is no uniform assimilation of English into its fold. India itself being diverse, the absorption of an alien language is itself in different measures. But what I love most about this integration is that it simplifies the language, breaks down the components to a level where every person can utilize it. What remains is what the pragmatics conveys through a bottom-up process.

We have this quirk here down south. We ‘ify’ it. We ‘nokki-fy’, we ‘thalli-fy’ etc. There are other forms of integration too. For being sentimental, we just use ‘senti’. It is a noun and a verb both. What is the use of millennia of cultural integration if we choose not to enjoy its advantages? The English sure have. What is ‘coir’ if not a variation of ‘kayar’?  Dacoit, jungle, loot etc are just some examples of such incorporation.  The sentinels of language purity seldom attend to the evolution and interpretation of socio cultural processes in which language plays a huge role. It is like the gene pool, only that we are collectively enriching it by throwing in usages and coining new words. Some sink to the depths with disuse while others are fished out, polished and put to work.

Like Samuel Johnson said, ‘Language is the dress of thought’. I sure am glad I don’t wear nineteenth century gowns.

       

Letting go

I am so glad he eats
By himself with no help.
Am glad he understands my words,
In languages two, maybe three.
Happy that my silence comprehended,
Though fleetingly vague.
Relieved his legs cover
Longer distances and farther every year.

His opinions and questions,
Curious and brash, unevenly.
I smile at the sound of toothbrush,
Without my ominous hollering.
Truly astounding that he walks
Home from class; by himself.
And when the clock hastily
Strikes the hour, he knows the cuckoo
Sings play, homework and sleep.
He buys his sweets and counting
The balance, smiles divinely
Pearly teeth and flourishing gaps.

Then why do I often smell him,
Inhaling the last of his innocence?
Why am I at peace when,
At times he pats my bosom,
Comforted in their protection?
Every giggle and laughter
Cherished and revered like never before,
A small sting at times that lullabies
Are no more requisite.

But he still hides his face in my
Chest when he cries.

Dedicated to a friend... No... it is not any of you. So stop wondering.

Some time back, a friend and I had this conversation about homosexuality and how ‘deviant’ it is. It started me thinking. Why is it that an educated person, who has seen much of the world and someone who is respected by many, so myopic when it comes to homosexuality? Why is it that we label people rather than get to know that person as an individual?

I could write very objectively, logically and dispassionately presenting my idea, but I wanted it to be different. That is why I decided to write this. It is hardly mushy, political or philosophical. It is just a life experience.

When I got into college, I was fresh from a culture that was diverse. Having studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya, I had friends across the social cross section. I grew up in an environment which was alive with different languages, creativity, loving teachers and most importantly-innocence. I loved my school. I still do. So, college was a bit different. Having joined a Women’s College, I thought that there was not much scope for fun like I was used to in school.  (Oh, that prejudice was gone by the time I was a senior.)To make matters worse, there was a  culture shock. Most students in class came from schools in groups. They had their own cliques, conversations, interests. I felt totally left out. So I began to mingle more, in a very superficial way. I was everybody’s acquaintance, but nobody’s friend. I became a front bencher because the gangs had taken up the rear benches. That is where I found a new friend. Let us call her X. So one day, X comes and sits down with me and tells me she couldn’t make it earlier that week because she had an NCC camp. I was alright. In my usual diplomacy, I enjoyed her companionship.

As an year passed, though she would disappear for weeks together, she became my closest friend there. She was strong, opinionated, but diplomatic; her NCC training made her extremely resourceful. You could say that where my heart became empathetic but needed a practical helping hand, she was always there. And of course, she was a brilliant actress. I have this passion for theatre, which she shared as well. (Funny, because, now that I remember, my roommate through my grad school was a brilliant actress as well.) In short, she is the only one of college mates that I found worthy of trying to trace after all these years. X was the person who was always full of these little insights that one marvels at. It was around then that my fight with a bunch of my classmates reached the peak. I think it was more of a prestige issue on their part to ‘put me down’ than my idea of silly quarrel. She stood by me then. I thank her for that. I will never forget the way she laughed when those silly girls finally elicited a public reply from me which left them sweating for months to come. I will never forget the way she rushed to me on my birthday, right after a camp and handed me a collection of O Henry’s short stories.

But best of all, I will not forget one particular incident. We were at the Mysore palace as part of a College trip. She kept looking at the roof and finally pointed somewhere and said, ‘That glass tile doesn’t match with the rest.’ You can imagine my confusion. I looked for around ten minutes before I came to ‘that tile’. She was right. One had a different pattern. As I looked at her with awe, she slowly walked away, unaware of my fascination at how observant she was.

Maybe I should have foreseen it. But well, frankly, it is a bit hard to assess sexuality when you are amidst a thousand something women everyday, who wander through the campus, completely and abundantly free, without a care in the world. It is a bit like the female version of modern day Rishyashringan.

So one day, we were talking as usual, walking along the road and I was admiring a guy who was walking in front of us. She suddenly tells me that she isn’t into that kind of guys. So I asked her what kind of guy she was into. Her reply was, ‘None’. That was the first time I had an insight into her sexual orientation. I think my first reaction was, ‘oh my’. The one thing that offended me was not the fact that she was a lesbian, but that she didn’t tell me for nearly two years. Till then, I was ideologically pro-gay. But, here was a closeted human being, in the typical Kerala society, who had become my confidante and emotionally close and I didn’t know the most basic thing about her. It freaked me out. I had never understood properly all the media sensationalism about a lesbian couple living together in Kerala, till then. I had never understood the emotional hurdles, the trust issues till then.  She was waiting for a chance, assessing me, measuring me up to be her confidante all that time. I still feel the anger at times I felt then. Not at her, but at this system that makes an ordinary person not able to express herself. She was beautiful, self assured, funny, intelligent. But she couldn’t live her life her way because of society denying something that has been around ever since modern man began cohabiting the gene pool.

It has been four years since I saw her last. Typical of her, she just disappeared. Trying to contact her was useless. I hope that one day, in a characteristic Houdini act of hers; I turn around to see her smiling at me with those ever warm eyes. This is to you, my friend, who came, saw and conquered.            

Persephone

My days grew dark,
As my mother scurried above
The surface, covered in the ashes
Of my still fading scream.

I hear her calls, cries,
Heartbreaking sobs for mercy,
Yet, I am helpless,
Hanging, eyes open scarce,
From the putrid clutch that
Pushes my fragile breath into
The abyss of anguish.

His face over mine, the grip
Of death; sordid and true,
I struggle with a shudder and
In his vile, mocking laughter,
I drift, lost in soulless oblivion.

My mother calls to me,
Save me, oh mother, here,
Deep in this crevice of lust,
Love, he calls it,
I be, morbid and violated.

This inferno that consumes
Souls of every man that
Ever sinned in the fires
Of evanescent desires,
Scantily scathes mine soul, but,
His touch, the master of
This misty and gloomy abode;
It, my mother, spells my doom.
Save me my mother, rescue me,
I wait, in tears and shackles
Of the Fates, I wait.

On... Political Responsibility

I sit here and wonder what I am doing. More importantly, am I doing it right?  Because at least some of what I am about to write has been plagiarized from someone I knew. And I really do not like to plagiarize.  Ok, let me dive straight in.

Well, till I was around seventeen, I had no idea about anything in politics. I was a typical capitalistic snob who thought that if you give a human face to capitalism, all would be well and good. There would be no need even for such a ‘superannuated’ ideology as communism or socialism. People change, I did. What my ideologies are now is not the matter at hand. Suffice to say I have moved way beyond capitalism ‘with a human face’.

All I had left with me is an intense urge to serve the nation. I say nation and not country, quite purposefully. Nation implies people, not the geographical area that is India. Why? Because I believe this society has been too fair to the likes of me and extremely unfair to the rest. I get to choose and make my own decisions because of where, when and to whom I was born. Isn’t that a right that should be within everyone’s reach? What I have understood till now is that there are others, millions who have this intense urge, just the same as me. It is not fully true what they say about this generation per say. Yes, a large or huge proportion is oblivious of what happens around them and equates the politico economy with last year’s fashion trend or fallen mangoes. It never occurs to them to pick the mangoes before they fall instead of treating them with disdain.

But now, a new breed is emerging. The ones who are much more enlightened than the older generations. They have seen the weaknesses of the system and want to rectify it. Now, in this category, we can have usually two types. The ones who join the mainstream parties in the hope that they will get to the top one day and the ones who think radically differently than the mainstream and form their own organizations or prefer to work alternatively, independent of the limelight and the unfortunate celebrity status the ‘united corporate of media’  is burdening the politicos with. Apart from these, there is another whole spectrum of activism.

But the problem that I have found with the aspiring politicians of today is that at least some think the mainstream ought to be cleansed inside out and that too within a day. They believe in a caste less society (hurray!), but they are not willing to grapple with the intricacies of caste. Some believe that women empowerment is different from class struggle or that feudalism has ceased to exist. I agree I may not be the best person to say this, but in most of them I have seen a typical ‘white man’s burden’ attitude. A feeling that the less privileged should be protected and ‘given’ the rights instead of making the opportunities and empowering them to take those chances.  There is another creed that disclaims the whole political system. Intelligent enough to discern the system is not working right, but feeling that every component in the system is wrong and below their kind attention.

Perhaps the most important ones are the self important ones. The persons who believe that ideology doesn’t matter. Or that  collective ideologies often lead to fascistic states. They attribute all the failures that might have happened on the theoretical theses rather than the practical modality. In a world where the greatest capitalistic economies are reverting to market control, we have a section which advocates further disinvestment of PSUs. In a dynamic system where textbook leftism has failed because of the complexities of power and human mind, we have another sect which adores armed revolution and a totalitarian state. It confuses me. I come across people who believe that the oligarchy which is leading our nation into ruins is role model.  What I don’t understand is when will they stop focusing on what they believe on a macro level, go into the depth and the manifold layers of the society and try to understand who an average Indian is?

There was a recent debate I came across where a person stressed the need to de-backgroundise politics. Fine. Hey, let us not stand on the shoulders of the giants. The question is, by diving head long into a system and using a disclaimer towards it, what will be achieved? Why does alternative politics languish in comparison with mainstream? I am sure there are better parties than CPM, which use the left ideals better. But I don’t hear of them on an important platform. Isn’t it the failure of alternative politics (which is usually the most people centric) that its mass reach is low? In 63 years of independent India, isn’t it time for alternative politics to change the strategy to fit the times? I don’t know, I am just asking.  If we can’t appreciate the fact that mainstream politics has kept this nation going for such a long time, aren’t we kind of being blind? Yes, there are flaws. As with everything else. 

And let us, arguendo, consider the other side. Isn’t it high time that mainstream politics shed its celeb attire and became more humane and people centric? This feudo-imperialistic and neo- liberal approach will only drive people closer and closer to the edge.  Never the less, the mass is largely ignorant of the way they are manipulated.  As long as they are given symbols of something they could look up to and believe in, they will continue to be victimized rather than empowered. That is precisely why we have half baked Rahul Gandhi aspirants and people who worship film star turned politicians. Am I ranting too much? Maybe it is time to stop.

I have only one thing to ask of everyone who wants to serve the people of this nation.  De omnibus dubitandum - doubt everything.    

Surreal

Am I to end this in happiness?
Or in sorrow so troubled,
A pinch of hope or a dash
Of unabated love?
Wrap up my life because,
I am curious of its end?
I stand at the door of
The moving train whistling
Its way to destination hope!
Often I stand pondering,
Judging death,
The muted effervescence
Ending this wild rush.
Maddened by this urge,
Trembling at the horror of,
The deep green calms smiling
Beneath the narrow rail bridge.
When the wind gushes past my
Closed eyes and feet lingering
Surreal over the ledge,
I smile anticipating the
Uncertain and mundane joy
Of the obvious,
And yet, I stay.
Am I to end this now?
Would I be happier,
Knowing the choice was mine?
Or should I,
In this tentative matrix
Of livid uncertainties,
Wait for it to end?
Answers I have none,
Except I desire to stay.

To Amma

Alright, I am confused. I could either write about how anti Mother’s Day I am or I could write about Amma. Just because I feel like writing about her. What should I do? Guess I will write about Amma. I have never written about her and it is high time I did.

My mother is what you would call a high powered working woman. She strikes you as this perfect woman, balancing her career and home and in between tries to care about people she loves. But the truth is, she is much more than that. She is much more than an average mother who feeds you or clothes you or scolds you because she was forced to have kids through marriage. This is a woman with so much integrity, such an intact character that sometimes it is hard not to feel awed. Yes, I am in awe of her. If I tell her that, she will immediately make funny noises. If I tell about a friend’s mother who made that friend do something he or she didn’t like, she immediately points towards her leg and says… you should touch my feet.

So here is my tribute to my mother on this Mother’s Day.

Amma,

I love you so much. You are the only one who sees who I am and for that I am thankful. Many people go through their lives just because thy need to exist. You showed me that every moment, whatever happens to you, you can live, you can find your own purpose and come out of every hardship smiling and being a better person than before. You taught me that age is not about rigidity, but about how you keep your heart young. You taught me that as long as one carries goodness and love inside his/her heart, one cannot be dejected in life.

I am thankful to you for a lot of things. I am thankful to you for not making me wear gold when I didn’t want to. I am thankful to you for dragging me to every extra curricular activity when I was a child and always telling me how I performed, always urging me to do better. I am thankful for making me realize I cannot always win and what matters more is how gracefully you accept that defeat and utilize that defeat as a learning experience. I am thankful to you for not imposing any decision on me ever since I was a child and for giving me the choice to decide between right and wrong.

I love the way you try to tickle me when I hug you. I love the naughty look on your face when you tell a very irritated me that you have a seminar the same day and that you need my help with it. I love it when you pretend to be asleep when I come near you and try to startle me (you always forget that you smile slightly in anticipation and that I can see it).

I will never say that you are a great cook. Let us face it, you aren’t. I don’t mind it though, because your idlis and upma are the best. That’s the truth. I am really glad you never asked me to do something because of my gender. That whatever had to be done, it was shared between him and me. I love you for showing me what empowerment is all about. I am thankful to you for giving me not money, not gold, not diamonds (the pearls, definitely yes), but for giving me choices, freedom and lots and lots of unconditional love. I love you being the kind of mother who likes to be cuddled by her kids, the kind that doesn’t claim respect the ordinary way from her kids. I love you letting me boss you around, listening sulkily when I tell you what an idiot you are for doing something silly, for letting someone exploit you. But also for slapping me whenever I have behaved like an abominable toad (maybe five or six times all these years, I think).

I can never find another person like you. Not because you are my mother. I am proud that you are my mother. I am proud people are drawn to you because you are insightful, empathetic and most of all, beautiful, inside out. I know that if I continue writing, I could write a novel.

I could write entire chapters about your idiocies, your silliness, your embarrassing moments, but no time. If you see me writing this, you will scold me. But when you read this on the blog, you will start laughing. Thank you for giving me life, Amma. I would not want to be born to anyone more perfect. Mad perhaps, a little kinky, my beautiful butterfly, but still perfect for me. You are a big part of my heart.

So let me end with something you told me sometime back… Every mother is a prayer, a light which is lit for her children.

I love you.

Your eldest progeny.

And, keeping aside all my reservations against Mother’s Day, I wish every mother out there a very happy life ahead. May your children bring you happiness.