Sleepless in Hegemony

April 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Last night, I slept for twelve straight hours. This morning, I feel like a new person. And amazingly, the world feels like a better place.

Probably the best tool of dominance the current labour (and market) system has devised for its choiceless participants is systematic sleep deprivation. We have to work too hard — hard work is a virtue, after all, unless it was done by the Soviets (in which case it was near-slavery) — and have too many errands to run (we must be independent to the point of being socially disconnected stand-alone humans, musn’t we?) to ever sleep to our bodies’ content. To sleep so sufficiently that we wake up on our own accord in the mornings is a dream so distant that waking up sleepy has become the default human resting pattern.

And such wondrous zombies this makes of us, that we seldom have time to stand a while and take stock of why our lives have changed so drastically over the last few decades. And thus do the masters of our destiny thrive, lording over a populace too desperate for mere surival to ask the big questions.

We have our gods right here on earth, we just don’t recognise them*.

[This is a privileged middle-class rant, although working conditions have worsened across the social strata]

*Probably in part because they make sure the religious right in every culture is whipped up into a frenzy to keep us distracted.

Filed under Anecdata, Development, Institutions, Politics, power violence, Riminess Tagged with , , , ,

Woman’s Face Smashed With Beer Bottle at Posh Market

March 12, 2013 1 Comment

That’s India’s capital city for you. Or, let’s be honest, that’s India for you.

Here’s the news:

KhanMktAttack

Went out with her husband and EIGHT other relatives, and still had five ‘youths’ smash a beer bottle into her face and then successfully run away. Why? Because she protested against their ‘lewd’ verbal assault of her. Had I been the woman, I’d have turned around and smashed the faces of every craven bitch who sit back and watch this sort of thing, then congratulate each other on having the ‘civility’ to stay out of it.

As I told my local friends via Facebook, you’d better protest if you ever see me being harassed, people. Or pray that the vultures get me completely. Because if I survive the assault, I am going to come after you, come after you bleeding and studded with shattered glass and iron rods.

And it won’t be pretty.

Take the easier route. Stand up to bullies. Stand up for each other. Stand up for your own bloody safety.

 

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A Memo to Your Academic Husband

February 16, 2013 3 Comments

You think you want an intellectual wife, who can discuss your work with you. But it wouldn’t last. After a while you’d start expecting apple pie instead of articles, and then you’d want me to quit work, and if I got promoted and you didn’t, you would sulk, and then if we had a baby you wouldn’t get up in the middle of the night and change its dirty diapers.

Of course, if your academic honey is peaches and cream — or happens not to gender-identify as a ‘husband’ — don’t look daggers at me. Elizabeth Peters said this stuff, not me.

Me, I’ve just started reading her Vicky Bliss series in the middle of chasing yet another deadline. It’s the sort of thing you get to do when you don’t have a husband lying about, tripping you up and gobbling all your unfree time.

Thank god for singledhood. Go (slightly historical) mysteries!

Filed under Anecdata, Books, Institutions, Obligingly Flippant, Politics, power violence Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Bloodline Whoring

January 12, 2013 2 Comments

Willie the Pwince and his wife Kate have been at multiplying! Hallelujah to another generation of tax-leeches.

Yay you, UK!

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‘Servants Can’t Rape’

January 7, 2013 3 Comments

Or so the sentiment appears to me.

My FB buddy Siddharthya posted this tweet from Madhu Purnima Kishwar, who is the director of the Indic Studies Project, housed in the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. In other words, she’s an academic, and a self-proclaimed feminist. This is the tweet:

I feel safer among men of conservative values and villages who establish “didi” “mausi” relationship than among Leftists, westernized males and others who preach equality.

Of course, Kishwar may have been quoted out of context, and indeed this may not have been meant as a denigration of ‘Leftism’, westernisation, or gender equity or urban, ‘modern’ men at all. Neither was it meant as public entertainment, which is sadly what it is (for a given section of the public). We are probably reading it wrong.

But it is an interesting statement nonetheless. Because, y’see, if we agree for the sake of shutting dissenters down that Kishwar did indeed mean what she appears to mean in this tweet, then she is far more in need of a re-acquaintance with ‘leftism’ and ideas of equity than victims of gendered violence are in need of her wisdom. The reason she feels ‘safer’ amongst village-folk who establish didi/mausi [sister/aunt] relationships with her, after all, is because she is an urban upper-middle class ‘connected’ academic, possessed of far greater social capital than them. She bears all the markers of prestige that upwardly-mobile Indians (or Indians who wish they were upwardly mobile) wish for themselves and their children: a degree-enabled education, fluency in English, possession of a ‘government job’ [read: security, pension, allowances, perks, possible path to power], a city address in the nation’s capital. Consequently, provided she doesn’t ruffle feathers too much, she’s less of a generic woman for these men (and women) she mentions, and more of a figure of consolidated power, and a conduit to all those elements of prestige. Why should they then treat her with violence and scare her off?

Of course, had there been no rural-urban divide between them, no socioeconomic gradient, I doubt she’d have felt this cuddled and secure. She would then have been at par with them, and her ‘modernity’ would then no longer have been a distant aspiration for her rural neighbours, but a possible index of her outsider status.

It is this same illusion of safety, born of the belief in the ‘simplicity’ and ‘loyalty’ of the little people that leads people-like-us, for example, to have resident domestic help that they bother to find out very little about. After all,  poor ‘village people’ may be conservative and loud and ‘unsophisticated’, but they’re also sweet and meek and obedient — and hardworking, and not ambitious and lippy and money-grubbing like these urban bustee chaps. When we go to the villages, they just come running out to greet us, ask after our families, do so much of our work for us! When we leave, we give them hundred rupees each, and they’re SO happy with it! Really, to experience pure humanity, you must go to our villages!

Of course, this imagined innocence and confidence doesn’t stop the occasional domestic help from slitting throats, and making off with the cash and kind she or he is surrounded by and made to serve each day, but never allowed to access. A point, I think, that supporters of ‘ye olde Indian culture was cosier than global modernity’ would do well to consider.

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…and on earth peace

January 1, 2013 1 Comment

And goodwill towards all people.

***

I’m not known for my spirit of mellow fluffiness, but I concede to no one in my steadfast loyalty to plain common sense. Therefore, love as I have always had this particular sentence from the Christmas service, I’ve also often been discomfited by certain translations of it, which insist either that there be goodwill only amongst ‘men’, or that it rest exclusively with those that god ‘favours’.

Now, that’s a recipe for fractiousness if I ever heard one. (And living in India, I’ve heard plenty.) If there must be goodwill — and really, there absolutely must — then let us have it, unequivocally and without the slightest shadow of doubt, towards every kind of person there is. Let the point of goodwill not be defeated with silly clannishness. Amen.

Have a wonderful new year, everybody. Let us all be people we will have no qualms looking in the mirror at. Much love to you all <3

Filed under Anecdata, Culture, Institutions, power violence, Riminess Tagged with , , , , , ,

US 2012: Progress, Elections and India

November 12, 2012 3 Comments

I only just noticed it today, but one of my friends posted this on Facebook right after the election was declared in Obama’s favour this last week. It has too rosy a view of the Democrats and their politics, but even without that, what he says about India is all too viscerally true.

So Obama won. The Democrats won, for the second time in a row. And the ones who lost are the ones who held on to archaic, outdated traditions and ideas. It’s might not be true that all Republicans are conservatives but they are the people who still think Russia is a threat, abortion is wrong, homosexuals are an aberration, women are half people, science is hogwash…

One of the more conservative countries pledged their support to a liberal, progressive government today and what have we done lately? We of ‘secular’ India, India, whose history is a chaos of forward thinking, inclusive leaders like Ashok, Akbar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy… who are our leaders now? Chowmein rape panchyats, child marriage Chautala, everything is a conspiracy Mamata, Marathi fetish Thackerey, Saffron seduction RSS… well played India!

 

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US 2012

November 7, 2012 3 Comments

You may continue to call Mr. O. Prez.

Yay.

[Although really, my happiness is about Rom. not winning, not Ob. not losing]

However, on a FAR sweeter note… Elizabeth Warren wins! Massachusetts is wrested back from the inexplicable Scott Brown! Oh, sweet sighs of relief. I’d have hated to have gone back to a Republican United States, however little actual difference there remains between the Reds and Blues policy-wise (especially health and foreign policy-wise).

But. Senator Warren. Now there’s someone I’d much rather call Madame P.

(But alas. That darling day is never to be :( )

 

Filed under Development, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

How Not to Clear American Customs

September 21, 2012 14 Comments

This anecdote is from an email-blog my friend M sends out on days we are lucky. M is a delight to read, and I want to quote his posts frequently, but my native lassitude gets in the way of all that onerous copying and pasting.

The anecdote he recounted this morning, however, was far too amusing — and terrifying — not to share. Especially since it fulfils the prediction he had made about his return to the US exactly.  “If I land in a kurta”, M had said, “I will definitely be pulled out for further questioning”. And he was.

Indices are scary things.

[For reference, M is what is colloquially referred to as 'white', and has grown up to a large extent in the United States.]

Reached Boston airport Tuesday evening, walked into the customs hall. The two people on the plane selected for extra enquiries were me and the one brown-skinned man in the crowd. Agents plying the queue swooped on each of us. Mine asked for my documents, then, “Where’d you get that shirt? India? Pakistan?”

“I got it at Gariahat in Kolkata, India.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge.” This is nominally true, as I do hold a visiting appointment there – and trying to explain the whole truth that I recently completed an appointment in India and have an offer from Uni X but have been shortlisted at Uni Y, well, such complexity would only get me into trouble. One of the practical facts that I learnt in India is that the story most consistent with appearances can be more important and more effective than the actual facts – especially when dealing with the authorities.

“I thought it had to be some kind of government work,” said the agent, handing back the passports.

Welcome to America, where if mainstream behaviour isn’t your ambition then there’s something wrong with you, because to be truly democratic is to be truly average.

 

(I should add here that as a brown woman in jeans and a kurta, I’ve never been held up.)

Filed under Anecdata, Culture, Institutions, Politics, power violence Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Stench of the Uniform

September 7, 2012 29 Comments

I have never had a single positive experience with the police.

Mostly, however, they’ve had minor — though pivotal — roles in my misfortunes. Like the cop outside Shyambazar metro station, who restrained me physically while the molestor who had slipped him a fifty sprinted away*. Or the local treasures, who demanded fifteen thousand rupees in exchange for a ‘clean’ police verification report when I applied for a passport**. Or the protectors of peace at Jadavpur and Lake Thana, who kept tossing the victim of a motorcycle crash back and forth, refusing to record the FIR that would clear him for medical treatment. The poor bastard died in my friends’ arms.

*I wasn’t objecting to the molestor on general ideological grounds. In fact, his constant pawing of school-girls on the metro had nothing to do with his final running away. Neither did his punch on a frail elderly woman’s bent back. Our trouble infraction was based on pure self-defence. He shoved me flat onto the platform, and then tried to push me down the metro stairs. I finally hit him when he rammed me against the iron rails outside the station and tried to slap me.

** When I refused to pay, the enraged inspector said he would show me what’s what. The station then reported that no one by my name lives, or ever lived, at the address provided. It took me eight months, ‘connections’, and hours of waiting to sort through this spiteful, juvenile trip-up.

But what I heard today would make even these shining standards look like the beacon of public-spirited efficiancy.

The friend of a friend and her colleague were pulled over by the Bangalore police for possible drunked driving. This inexplicable horror then followed:

Being the conscientious Bengali that he is, without any attempt to bribe the policeman, [my friend] offered to pay the legal fine and get his bike back. [But] Sub Inspector Govindappa of Shivajinagar Traffic Police Station, Bangalore (he refused to tell me his full name) and his badge was hidden behind a clever jacket, said the driving license was invalid. Why? Because “this Bengal license is not valid here”.

I have a West Bengal driving license myself and know fully well that Govindappa was in the wrong.

My friend, by now, harassed, angry and helpless, lit a cigarette… This is when Hitendra M.S. (Sub Inspector, Shivajinagar Traffic Police Station) showed how he is the “boss”. Shoving my friend he demanded the cigarette be stubbed. My friend asked why, and that it was not an offence, especially when there were other people around there doing the same.

Feeling every bit of the humiliation that my friend did, I chose to… tell Hitendra that he could not be behaving like that. I raised my voice and before I knew it, he was warning my friend about how I should not dare to tell him anything because, “ladki hai. Isko bol baat nahin karegi”. “(She’s a girl, ask her not to talk”. At this point, my friend outraged to the point of confrontation told him to stop involving me… this sentence remains unfinished because… he was hit. On the head, his face, his already broken jaw. Hitendra M.S., then R.T. Raju (Head Constable, Shivajinagar Traffic Police Station), then Govindappa and then, to my utter shock, some stray civilians. I call them civilians because they were not in uniform. I have no idea what kind of a nexus they are in with the police.

Blinded with rage, I tried to stop the policemen. At which point, all three of them and more, turned all their attention from my friend to me. Shouting abuses like “benchod” and “bhonsdike” (both very popular “north Indian” abuses”) they had their hands in the air, ready to strike the daylights out of me.

No female police officers, no offense, just power. Naked, routine, ugly. Power. They tripped on power.

7 hours and 3 police stations and many, many policemen later, we could not get a complaint written. 4 hours after the incident, we were handed a report written in Kannada (a language both my friend and me do not know) and asked to sign. When we refused, we were forcefully put in a jeep and taken to a hospital. It is only then, from the hospital in-charge, a retired Army doctor that we found what was in the report. It was a charge on me. For, “causing nuisance under the influence of alcohol.” I did not understand. What? I was the pillion rider, I was assaulted, and I went to them to file a complaint against their fellow policeman. How could I be the defendant in a potential case when I was the complainant?

I was told to make a choice. Either my friend and me gave them blood and urine samples which would prove we had consumed alcohol, a legal substance (we were told by the doctor that it didn’t matter. Drugs and alcohol were treated the same way) and be sure of being taken into judicial custody and eventually to conviction… Or, the other option was to drop charges, write an “apology” letter for creating nuisance and save our asses. I cried a little, at the gross injustice I thought we were treated with. But we chose to save our behinds. Right there, then, under pressure, fighting “them” instead of having “them” fight us… I chose to “apologize”.

This morning, Friday, September 07, 2012, my friend went back to the Shivajinagar Traffic Police Station to pay his fine and get his bike back. For the second time. Yesterday afternoon he was sent back because Hitendra wasn’t in. And my friend was not given a receipt with which he could get it back.

Hitendra made him wait. A long time. And in full view of the rest of the officers in the police station asked him about “woh ladki” (that girl)”. Told him “uske jaisa bees ladki mai palta hoon” (I have 20 mistresses like her). And that he was doing my friend a favour by returning his bike with just Rs.1,500 fine (for which my friend did not receive a receipt) and that they have so much power that they could have shot us then and there. I’m sure he could have.

Why, in a nation so apathetic about its own development — unless it involves shopping malls and brand-consumption — do we even bother writing about these blatant abuse of power? What use is it, after all? The victim of the incident above has made it clear that she does not wish to pursue legal recourse in a system as rotten, abusive, unregulated and self-protective as this. Then why bother?

Sentimentality, I suppose. After all, as the author above concludes, “You know how we are… We hate this country, but we love this country”.

And hope. I hope. The first stage of public accountability is shaking the public out of their cowering passivity and indifference. If people stop telling each other, “Oh well, you know, that’s how it is with the police” and instead start filing complaints, writing to the papers, blogging, and demanding judicial intervention, we just might make something of this country yet.

Filed under Anecdata, Culture, Development, Institutions, power violence Tagged with , , , , ,

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