Blog

Celebrating Women’s Day with my family of feminists

So another Women’s Day rolls by. This year, this month, I think it fitting to celebrate the feminists in my life who are special to me, and who inspire me in different ways, at different moments of the year. The past month has been particularly significant for me in terms of the writing of two women in my family, and this post celebrates the sis-in-law, who is also friend, feminista and fun. Some time down the line I’ll write about the mother, who is a little difficult to describe in words, which is why I need more time to mull over her. chuckle.

Anindita won the Toto Funds The Arts (TFA) award for creative writing last month in Bangalore. Both awards in this section went to Bongs in Bengaluru, which is interesting enough in itself, but even more so, as Ani – and the rest of us – saw it, was that the award was presented by Amitav Ghosh. Now if that isn’t a matter for joint celebration and collective swooning, I don’t know what is. 🙂

Anindita’s poetry is archived at her poetry blog, but here’s a taste of her crisp craftsmanship. I chose this one because it speaks of a woman with a history and a future different from ours, of a woman who “bears the hollows in deep places”. Women’s Day is about celebration, but it is also about consciousness, that sharp poet’s eye for life – for a woman’s living – that can otherwise pass us by in a mundane flurry. Thank you for that watchfulness, and your own, bright, particular voice, Ani.

Parvati
the migrant’s wife

when the wind comes down from the hills
and palm trees fling their leaves about
like Sufi saints stepped off the edge,

she lies on a mat on the floor,
arms out,

and listens to coconuts falling on the roof
like tough-shelled meteors.

in her, quiet,
is the cry of marauding elephants
grey. heavy. it flattens her.

Parvati, woman of the foothills,
woman of hard hands and bright teeth,
woman who endlessly waits.

woman whose waiting is a wound
that will not let skin
close over it

a wound full of tree, grass, rain
and the smell of mud

woman who bears the hollows in deep places
but feels herself break
with the slow burn, the stench in the night
of things growing old.

Tagged. Tugged.

So Black Mamba tagged me the other day:

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

I was determined to do this, not only because I like Black Mamba (and I do), but because I had to prove Tabula Rasa wrong; he said BM wouldn’t get a cheep out of me (this childish tit-a-tat has, in fact, gone on since we were about ten. I love it.).

Result: near failure. Not because of my lack of output – though it certainly could be a lot more consistent than it is now – but because I rarely seem to write about anything other than politics and the big bad world outside. Of course, there’s a lot of me in there – the personal is political and vice-versa – but not in ways that are necessarily familiar or familial. sigh. Looking back, I think it was because I was determined, when I started out, not to make this a blog of the kind that led the blog-o-boom: the vicarious exploration of other people’s private lives and lesions. Frankly, I found that sort of blogging both terrifying and self-indulgent. I also felt I had nothing to offer of value online, that could remotely interest a set of unknown readers. Ashwin persuaded me otherwise; a lot of his argument had to do with the description of the blogging community he comes from: the techies. Clearly there was a space for blogging about one’s interests, one’s passions, rather than about oneself.

I realise now that I have – somewhere along the way – gone to the other extreme of the pendulum and am dangling hopelessly from an oblique position of self-denial. I find that many of the blogsters I read, write about themselves and theirs with humour and insight. I kid you not: I *like* reading them! If I don’t see these blogs as self-indulgent, is there possibly space for me to sneak back in a bit of me and mine into this blog? Black Mamba, you didn’t think you’d lead to an orgy of reflexivity now, did ya??

With this long preamble, here’s my meagre offering for the tag.

Family: A bit of a stretch, but to my extended family in Raichur. Also a cheeky aside to my pun-tashtic family (not really a post at all, but wothehell, I love xkcd).

Friend: about a friend in Gujarat, and her struggles with fundamentalisms.

Yourself: a post about ‘being an action hero‘. Also my previous stab at being tagged.

Your love: music and poetry. Unsurprisingly, a post about Gangubai Hangal that conveys both my awe-struck admiration and her comments on caste. And a tribute to Kaifi Azmi.

Anything you like: a whimsical post on Durga Puja and JK Rowling. And a diatribe against the news in India today.

…and I tag those I haven’t tagged before: Anindita (in the spirit of disclosure and familial-ity, my gorgeous sis-in-law who normally tags _me_), Mangs, Lalit and (relatively new) blog buddies: Pranav and Suzanna (whose blog I promised some time ago I would explore, and this is a great way to begin!).

‘The mechanic with the oil can’: Baba Amte

ImgAmteMur.jpgStrange how death gives life to memories. I hadn’t actively thought of Baba Amte for some time, but he died yesterday at the age of 94. Suddenly, a collage of images starts putting itself together. In 1985, Baba Amte got the Magsaysay award, particularly for his work on leprosy. I don’t remember it clearly, of course, but I do remember, three years later, finding that my Hindi teacher was a cousin of his. I think she was surprised that I knew who he was, though my sense is that it had more to do with the news junkie I had begun to be, and less with any self-proclaimed activist zeal at the age of fourteen.

However, some time while I was in college in Delhi (if I’m not wrong; memories are images without accurate recall dates), I remember Baba Amte fasting in one of the first rounds of protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada. I remember going to sit on the margins of the crowd that had gathered outside Rajghat, watching this frail man (he was already into his eighties then) on a charpai, surrounded by those who admired him and who were inspired by him. Also surrounded – as usual – by the ubiquitous hangers-on who had come to see the tamasha, the incongruous sight of a brightly coloured pandal sheltering a sombre non-violent protest from the Delhi sun.

Why was I there? I suppose I was a hanger-on too, of a certain kind. Those years in college were signified by a painful, sometimes self-consciously intense need to find heroes for myself. I didn’t succeed; much. I think I came out of those years wiser, less pained, and able to make fun of myself, thankfully. And equally able to recognise that heroes are – in general – ephemeral souls, that inspiration is cut and paste: heroism and heroes are found in unexpected places. Yet there I was, watching Baba Amte, imagining Gandhi, juxtaposing one frail man against the other, one courage against another, one struggle for freedom against another. Somewhere, somehow, the cut and paste obviously turned into a collage. One that came back to me yesterday.

The Hindu’s obit quotes the Dalai Lama, calling him a man of ‘practical compassion’, but the description I like best is that by Baba Amte himself. In an interview to Graham Turner, he reportedly said:

I don’t want to be a great leader. I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes.

The mechanic with the oilcan, that is my ideal in life.

Image from the Ramon Magsaysay Award website.

Let’s get political

So… sitting here in the US of A, in California, in particular (gold rich in delegates for both Democrats and Republicans), it’s Super Tuesday. Basically a national primary. When 24 states vote for more than 3,100 convention delegates – the nominated candidates for the parties get directly chosen by these delegates; ‘the people’ cast their preferences – and we might know by the end of the night who the Republican candidate is, though we might not know the Democrat candidate (since Clinton and Obama are so close, it may be finally decided only at the Democratic national convention in August). A strangely confusing process.

Initially, I found the process more than confusing: it felt nasty, brutish and unbearably long (Indian elections might be nasty, brutish and bloody, but at least they don’t sputter on interminably). Candidates were slinging mud at each other, it seemed more like personality clashes rather than ideological debates, and nobody really seemed to define this amorphous word ‘change’ that was being bandied about furiously. Change not just for this country, but irrevocably, intrinsically, for the rest of the world.

It’s felt better over the past few weeks. Clinton and Obama seem to have quietened down their rhetoric against each other, and the Republicans are now busy slanging each other off, a process I enjoy (chuckle).

However, what’s really buoying my spirits as an inveterate politics junkie, is that the spirit of this country seems to be turning political. In a way that I have never seen before in all my trips here, and in ways that American friends themselves are feeling optimistic about. Politics is getting talked about. After all, as the Guardian puts it, this election has created a tableau like no other: those standing for President include a woman, a black man, a Mormon, a one time prisoner of war and a Baptist minister. No matter who wins, history will be made. Particularly if it’s the Democrats.

And here I am, the junkie whose rush comes from my conversations with the passionate auto driver in a dusty ride from MG Road to Koramangala, or the fiery isthri walla down the road, or the feminist panchayat leader in the middle of north Karnataka (who may not know the word but does the deed)… here I am, firm believer in Indian democracy – with all its ills and spills and grease and slime – a believer because my people are political. They care. They care, passionately, fiercely, deeply. Often disastrously and despairingly. But they care.

And finally, I find that we may not be that different from those rushing out to vote here in America, today. Finally, politics matters. It might be time for change. It might even be time for transformation.

Frankly, from the perspective of the rest of the world: it’s about bloody time.

He had a dream

Monday (January 21st) was Martin Luther King’s birthday; it also happens to be the only public holiday commemorating and celebrating the life of an African American in the USA. It seemed appropriate for CommonDreams.org to publish his speech of ‘independence’ from the war in Vietnam, called ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’, delivered in April 1967. It speaks to all of us, across the world, as we watch this nation debate wars that affect us, an economy that affects us, and a future President who will affect us. Let’s hope they choose right.

0121-06a.jpg

An excerpt:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ” This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

Image from CommonDreams.org

My heart is in Nairobi…

Rally32.jpgThe only downside to having lots of friends across the globe is that you worry about them when things fall apart. In Gujarat, for instance, or Pakistan. Or Kenya. A few of us have been trying to contact friends there over the past few days, but it’s been tough. I’ve been reading Global Voices and Ethan Zuckerman’s blog, and watching Al Jazeera’s coverage on YouTube.

For those of you who came in late, violence has broken out across Kenya over the disputed election victory of President Mwai Kibaki, though ethnic tensions are believed to underlie much of the violence. As The Economist puts it:

THE decision to return Kenya’s 76-year-old incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to office was not made by the Kenyan people but by a small group of hardline leaders from Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe. They made up their minds before the result was announced, perhaps even before the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, had opened up a lead in early returns from the December 27th election. It was a civil coup.

According to the BBC, over 180,000 people have been displaced and more than 300 killed.

This is today’s news update from the Kenyan blogger M., writing at Thinker’s Room:

  • Official death toll is now 300. Unofficial death toll is much larger
  • Yesterday there were skirmishes in Bahati, Maringo, Kangemi, Arwings Kodhek, Industrial Area and Thika Road
  • A man was killed on Thika Road when police fired in the air, severing an electrical cable that fell on him
  • ODM rally was moved to Saturday
  • At long last Mwai Kibaki addressed the nation in a lackluster speech long on hot air, ambiguity, vagueness and lethargy and short of concrete solutions
  • Archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived and met with the ODM leadership. The grapevine has it that Kibaki initially refused to meet with him. Subsequently it turned out that a meeting was indeed scheduled for this day.
  • Again proving that no matter how low the bar is, stupidity will always find a way to slither under, Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua, rose eyed lens firmly on, castigates the international community for interfering.
  • Flies on the wall allege that Kibaki himself is pretty amenable to negotiation. But as is the hallmark of his regime other elements in his administration are taking hardline positions.
  • Same flies say that Kibaki is willing to form a coalition government with the opposition. This I have to see to believe.
  • Nairobi water company allays fears that the city water supply is poisoned.

Blog aggregators for Kenya can be found at Kenya Unlimited and Mashada. Reading bloggers’ accounts on them seemed horrifically akin to reading stories of communal violence in India; substitute ethnicities for religion and caste identities, and there you have it. Stupid, unnecessary, maiming horror. As they say in Swahili (or at least I hope this is correct), we need wakati wa amani; a time of peace.

***

Update: in an extraordinary combination of technology and activism, Kenyan bloggers have created an amazing website to track the violence in Kenya, at Ushahidi (in fact, I want to check with them if we can develop something similar for India, and elsewhere). Add serendipity to that: Ashwin saw this, and suggested to his friend, Nick Rabinowitz, that this was the perfect place for the timeline tool he’d created. Sure enough, a few emails later, here it is, an extremely useful addition to the Ushahidi site: the timeline of events. Yay for all those who put this together, and a special yay for Nick!
Image from the Thinker’s Room.

A message from Pakistan

187px-Benazir_Bhutto.jpgFarida Shaheed, one of the founders of Shirkat Gah (a women’s resource centre in Pakistan) and WLUML (the network for women living under Muslim laws), wrote in from Pakistan. With her consent, I share this. It seems clear that despite her shortcomings, Benazir represented a hope for Pakistan that has been horrifically snuffed out.

Dear friends thank you for all your notes of concern,

As a new year starts, I sit here still numbed by the events, paralysed by the events that seem to have shut down our ability to think and act, unable to concentrate (like many others).

Only after her assassination have we come to realize just how many of our hopes were pinned on Benazir, her presence and leadership of the only mainstream party that consistently speaks of the federation, of the poor, the peasants, the workers; spoke of equality for all, especially the minorities and women. The one party with supporters until now across a deeply divided and troubled country, who gave us hope that, maybe – just maybe we could turn this nightmare around, if elections were held and if they were not entirely rigged, and if we received some breathing space…so many if’s and still we dared to hope.

I met Asma [Jahangir] on the 29th and thanked her for having inviting Benazir that night last month as soon as they lifted the house arrest on Asma and Benazir both. Asma said ‘but no, I didn’t call the meeting. Perhaps she was meant to meet us all that last time because it was she who phoned and asked for a meeting with civil society’…A meeting we were pleasantly surprised at, that left us commenting on how much she had matured. She listened to all of us with great patience and grace, answered with patience and good cheer, even some of the sillier points made/questions asked. She reserved her fire for a short passionate intervention on how the fight with the extremists was our own fight not someone else’s agenda and on how precarious Pakistan’s situation was, and how it was time to act.

And yes, it was important that she was a woman, a woman of great courage of defiance and of passion who led from the front foot (as they say in cricket). I am old enough to remember the day she became Prime Minister in 1988 and how immediately – and I do mean immediately – after eleven years of brutal and increasing oppression of women (and others) under Zia, the atmosphere shifted the sense of oppression in the streets lifted and women felt the burden lighten. And if she didn’t always deliver (and often she didn’t), as peasants said of her father, at least she made us the promises, and gave us hope.

Right now, it is difficult to foresee the future, whether and when elections will take place – what will happen during Muharram and ashura, around the corner, when nerves are ragged anyway and the menace of potential violence lurks.

We can only hope that some sense prevails somewhere, that elections are held as quickly as possible and that we find a way out of this spiral descending to madness…

Farida

Image from the Wikipedia entry on Benazir Bhutto.

A prayer for 2008

A poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (translated by Agha Shahid Ali), from the site Indian Muslims, via Shivam Vij.

du’aa

aaiye haath uThaayeN ham bhii
ham jinheN rasm-e-du’aa yaad nahiiN
ham jinheN soz-e-muhabbat ke sivaa
ko’ii but, ko’ii Khudaa yaad nahiiN

aaiye arz guzaareN ke nigaar-e-hastii
zehr-e-imroz meN shiiriini-e-fardaa bhar de
voh jinheN taab-garaaN-baarii-e-ayyaam nahiiN
un ki palkoN pe shab-o-roz ko halkaa kar de

jin kii aaNkhoN ko rukh-e-subh ka yaaraa bhii nahiiN
un kii raatoN meN ko’ii shamaa munavvar kar de
jin ke qadmoN ko kisii rah ka sahaara bhii nahiiN
un kii nazroN pe ko’ii raah ujaagar kar de

jinkaa diiN pairavi-e-kazbo-riyaa hai un ko
himmat-e-kufr mile, jurrat-e-tehqiiq mile
jin ke sar muntazir-e-tegh-e-jafaa haiN un ko
dast-e-qaatil ko jhaTak dene ki taufiiq mile

ishq ka sarr-e-nihaaN jaan tapaaN hai jis se
aaj iqraar kareN aur tapish miT jaaye
harf-e-haq dil meiN khaTakta hai jo kaNTe kii tarah
aaj izhaar kareN or khalish miT jaaye

Prayer

Come, let us join our hands in prayer.
We, who can not remember the exact ritual
We, who, except the passion and fire of Love,
do not recall any god, remember no idol.

Let us beseech, that may the Divine Sketcher
mix a sweet future in the present’s poison
For those who can’t bear the burden of time,
the rolling of days on their souls, may He lighten

Those, whose eyes don’t have in their fate, the rosy cheek of dawn
may He set for them some flame alight.
For those, whose steps know no path
may He show their eyes some way in the night.

May those whose faith is following falsehood and pomp
have the courage to deny, the boldness to discover.
May those whose heads wait for the oppressors sword
have the ability to push off the hand of the executioner.

This secret of Love, which has put the soul on fire,
may we express it today and the burning be gone.
This word of Truth that pricks in the core of the heart,
may we say it today and the itching be gone.

Faiz, 14th August 1967

Is there anything of cheer from 2007?

It’s been a rotten end of the year for us South Asians. Modi is back – and unsurprisingly – from all accounts of friends working on the ground in Gujarat. Most activists said that the Tehelka expose of the 2002 genocide – horrific, remarkable and courageous as it was – was bad timing; it polarised the polity further and strengthened rather than weakened Modi’s hand. However, Tehelka also explores what Modi’s victory might mean: for his party, his state and the rest of India. My 2008 hope: that Moditva cannot work anywhere else in the country. My 2008 worry that belies the hope: Can Karnataka be next on the hate list? There are many reasons to fear that it might well be, and I will explore that in another post (and one of my 2008 resolutions: when I tell myself I will do a blog post, I must *write* it, within… er… seven days??).

And then, in Pakistan, Benazir’s assassination. As Tariq Ali put it:

Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.

However, there is some cheer left in the year yet. As we look back, Medea Benjamin provides a list of ten ‘good’ things about 2007, which include the elections in Australia, where Labour Party’s Kevin Rudd beat the Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and the one defiant stand of the Iraqi government and people against the US, which was to vote against its nationalised oil system becoming open to foreign corporate control.

She also celebrates – but not enough, methinks – my favourite politician of the year: the Papua New Guinea representative at the UN climate conference in Bali, Kevin Conrad. In the Telegraph’s account of it, the Indian ambassador (yes!) had begun by saying that the draft ‘road map’ did not clearly indicate the responsibility of industrialised nations to supply developing countries with clean technologies, finance and support to deal with the problem of climate change “in a measurable manner”. Paula Dobriansky, the chief negotiator for the US, replied that India’s proposed change was something “we are not prepared to accept”. With frustration mounting, the killer blow came from Kevin Conrad.

He used James Connaughton’s (Bush’s primary climate change advisor) diplomatic gaffe of earlier in the week to humiliate the Americans. Mr Connaughton had said: “We will lead. We will continue to lead but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”

So therefore, at this impasse, when Papua New Guinea was called upon to speak, Kevin Conrad said this to the American delegates: “We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.” The audio of this remarkable statement is here.

Perhaps that is the wish we need for all politicians across the world in 2008: if you are not willing to lead with integrity, justice and courage, listening to the voices of your people, then please… Get out of the way.