Another Rakshabandhan – without any suraksha

 

On the heels of multiple incidents making it clear how LITTLE raksha we have in this “traditional” society of ours, comes our very own "men promising to save women from other men Day"!!!!!

It has been a theme in all societies everywhere that men know what men are like. And while they go out and act like total degenerates to “other” women, they constantly police, restrict, and control “their” women in the name of protection, because “I trust you but I don’t trust men, I know what they want”.  The great Indian festival of Rakhsabandhan – the tie of protection – is but an extension of these age old hypocritical, patriarchal, misogynistic double standards.

So many people ask me whether I am an atheist because I am angry at god – how can I be angry at something I don’t believe even exists? The same lot of people will have a lot to say about my refusal to participate in most Indian festivals and “rituals”, especially the blatantly anti-women ones, with the excuse either of tradition or of reinvention.  They blame any resistance I show to the shameless belittling of women in these “rituals” and “traditions” on my excessive politicalness. And I agree. 

 Everything IS political, or should be. I don’t mean the typical Indian idea of politics, of blind adherence to this party or that, but of a worldview and a belief system, and living one’s life in accordance to those rather than just paying lip service.  We have a long history of very vocal secular and egalitarian “leaders” and others seeking caste match for their children’s weddings, and self-professed “communists” who scream their heads off about communal forces, holding upanayans for their sons and doing aratis in durga puja, while talking about how the “lower castes” are built that way. In short, hypocrisy is inbuilt in our traditions, and a part of our DNA.

So it comes as no surprise to me, or any thinking and rational human being, that some of the most celebrated and popular festivals in our extremely misogynistic society are the ones which either venerate female deities, seek long life and safety for male relatives, or are all about the protective relationship between female and male siblings. And when loved ones, cousins, friends, even random strangers, wish me “happy rakshabandhan”, I have to decide whether I want to engage, explain all the reasons why it is not so happy, or all the ways it demeans and belittles women, and adds to the all-pervasive rape culture, or whether it is just too much effort.

More than the clueless but well-meaning people who “wish” out of genuine love, are the ones who I can only call apologists. People who are into “reinventing” these rotten and stinking traditions, repackaging them, and making a quick buck or a mile or two of social media footage from them. The ones who do mutual karwa chauths and bonphota and …in this case… tie rakhis to sisters or teachers or whatever. If one is going to start a tradition or a festival which venerates or prays for life and health of all genders, all relationships, pick a random day, and more power to you. Why does the “reinvention” have to be on the day of a tradition that is steeped in treating women as less than? 

You want to fast for your spouse's long life and health, do it on a random date… 1^st January of every year, or something. It does not have to happen on a day which has deep roots and connections with the social stigma of widowhood, the conditions of widows, the way we STILL think of and treat them, and so much more. In the same vein… you want to ask for the protection of your sister, and pray for her long life, or treat the rakhi as a way of showing your appreciation for teachers, aunts, others in your life, great! But does it HAVE to be on the same day as this day? This day associated with such “helplessness” of women and need for male protection that a 25 year old sister is still supposed to tie a rakhi asking for the protection of her 5 year old brother! How is that any different from Saudi Arabian laws asking grown women to not leave the house unless accompanied by a male relative, even if he is a toddler?

Also, these reinventions are but a poor attempt to disguise, or distract from, the underlying highly problematic nature of the tradition. And, some of them, make it even more problematic. Being a Bengali for instance, I have long seen rakhi used as an easy way to access someone you are interested in “romantically”. So many married couple I know started as rakhi brother-sister, because that meant being able to come and go as one wanted and meet as much as you wished. Which, as a UP born, I frankly find distasteful. I mean making someone your “brother” so that you can romance them? A bit of eww there somewhere. 

All festivals like rakhi do, is to re-ingrain the traditions of dependence on male relatives, the lack of agency of women, the second class citizen status, and the bedrock of misogyny and rape culture that leads to “isolated incidents” like the R G Kar travesty, and all the incidents that have happened since, and will continue to happen, until we manage to actually change the way we think about and treat half of humanity. Until then, I shall just skip the performance, thanks. 

What they don’t tell you about having a female designated body

 I have always believed in the power and necessity of being open and honest about everything, with friends, family, child, partner, and whoever – especially taboo and uncomfortable to discuss things like sex, sexuality, and bodily functions. It’s all the hush-hush sweep under the carpet we do – as a species I have realized not just as a culture – that leads to so much misery, physical, mental, and emotional in our lives.

And the longer I live, the more I come to realize just how much information we withhold from girls, women, and AFAB persons, about how their own bodies work, and all the ramifications of those secrets that society keeps from us. It begins from the cradle… and unfortunately continues very much to the day we die. Whether it is society in general, elders, other women in the family and around, media, or anything else, the sheer amount of information we are NOT getting is staggering. And if you think about the reasons behind it, and the results of it, it is scary as hell!

What I have also come to realize is that it’s not just a local cultural/ethnic issue. While we, as Indians, do have a huge cultural tradition of absolutely not talking about most of the really important stuff, whether it is money or illness or death or sex, I have found that we are – by no means – the only people to do so. Cultures seen to be much more open and progressive – including western nations – also have this habit of selectively excluding certain information from the general body of knowledge available to all – especially when related to female bodies.

Part of this, of course, is the sheer lack of knowledge that medicine STILL has about how female bodies really work. All medical research has always taken the male body as the default model for human, resulting in abysmally bad or totally absent information about female systems, from universal issues like PMS and basic menstrual health, to heart disease and more. But I have realized that that’s not the only conscious/subconscious planned/unplanned process going on here. There is also a universal blank-out on telling half of humanity about how their bodies really work and what they should be prepared for as common and what should draw attention.

It starts in childhood, when they don’t tell you about basic hygiene for fear that you might actually touch yourself “down there”. After all, all “female” people are supposed to exist with a vacuum below the waist in “those areas” until they get married to whatever creature their parents find to be fit and suitable. And after that, their only function is to be available at his beck and call, including sexually, whenever the lord and master commands, and produce tons of male offspring. So there is no need for the actual owner of the body to know anything about it, for fear that it might encourage knowing, exploring, and – (horror or horrors!) actual masturbation or sexual activity!

This black-out is SO powerful and all pervasive, that even the grapevine of peer groups is ignorant. Whereas boys (who also do not receive direct correct info either) have access to a host of – often bad and incorrect – info from peers, pornography, and guesswork, their female counterparts do not. Most girls grow up knowing nothing about personal hygiene, have no clue about the structure of their own genitals, don’t know anything about menstruation (except the need and ways to hide it from the world), have no clue about the female orgasm, or the possibility and normality of masturbation.

What really results, though, from this moratorium on information is not – as the stated agenda is – the purity (not even going into the massive problems with THAT) and safety of girls and women, but a massive list of health hazards and a rife environment for blind abuse. When people do not have the first idea of what is ok and normal and what is not, and are surrounded by a universal conspiracy of silence, they are in a prime position to exposure to a host of issues which the silence then prevents them from talking about or solving.

From urinary tract infections that become chronic and bloom into much bigger health issues by not being addressed and treated in time, to a myriad of reproductive health issues, also not recognized and addressed, exacerbated by the use of unhygienic methods of menstrual management, the medical issues are just the tip of the iceberg. The concerns of trans persons and other non-normative bodies are so far from being recognized or addressed that they might as well not exist. The ramifications extend to marital/domestic partner abuse, sadism, and regular rapes, which have long term mental, emotional AND physical results.

It can also manifest as underage pregnancy from a sheer ignorance of reproductive processes, and the inability to voice their need for protection to partners (because KNOWING about contraception proves that you are a BAD/LOOSE girl). Which, in turn, leads to a host of issues that are related to inability to access medical help, inability to access and the ignorance of the possibility of pregnancy termination, lack of proper counseling, and so much more.

Add to this the fact that most gynecologists are not just a part of the conspiracy, but also often seriously uninformed, judgmental, and bigoted, and the situation only gets worse. Most gynacs in India are even incapable of asking a patient “are you sexually active?” they ask “are you married?” instead. And if the answer is no, the patient is not likely to get ANY information or questions or diagnosis related to an active sex life. They will also insist on having a guardian/husband in the room, often just behind a thin curtain (if you are lucky), while examining and taking history. This makes it much more difficult, if not downright impossible to be open and honest about their issues or to ask the questions they need to. This just leaves them in the dark and at risk. And this is just the FIRST chapter in the ongoing systemic misinformation/ignorance foisted on them.

Chapter 2 is sex, whether within, before, or outside of marriage, which becomes a mine field dotted with serious dangers. Not knowing the first thing about their own anatomy, and only having the vaguest of ideas about that of their partners, the sexual experience varies from uncomfortable at best to extremely painful and abusive at worst. Most never feel an orgasm in their lifetime, not knowing it exists or not knowing how to get there because they have never explored themselves. They depend on their male partners to “get them there” and the abysmal lack of knowledge about what and how to do anything in that group does not make for a happy ending.

Since most men learn everything they know about sex and female bodies from bad porn, expectations are truly unreal, and the idea of good action is violent and misogynistic at best and cruel and sadistic at worst. The only people to profit from the situation are the sellers of fraud “remedies” to ignorant men trying to get bigger penises or last unnaturally long between penetration and ejaculation, people claiming to cure not just premature ejaculation, but also masturbation. The female body owners trapped in such a situation not only may not even realise that they are being abused, but also do not have any access to any social and legal recourse.

Chapter 3 is the concept and process of pregnancy and childbirth. The pressure for ALL women to conceive and give birth successfully is immense, socially, familially, and self-imposed through conditioning. The option to choose not to have children is a huge privilege enjoyed by too few women with a specific kind of background. The pressure starts from day one and just keeps piling up. If the event takes some time – from choice or just as a result of natural processes, the human incubator to be comes in for all sorts of intrusions and indignities. The guilt piles on too, and deep doubts and emotional issues with one’s own femininity, about being flawed, making others unhappy, and so much more.

Without adequate knowledge of the biological processes involved, the effort to conceive becomes more of a trial and error game of chance. IVF and fertility clinics, snake oil sellers, take expensive advantage of the situation to make bags of money while women get blamed not just by society and family, but also by themselves, about infertility and more. Most men will not even get tested for any problems because obviously it is always the woman’s fault. If conception does happen, neither older women who have been through the process, nor gynacs, will tell you what to really expect. The picture presented is always rosy and pink tinted, surrounded by posters of smiling babies and saint-like mothers basking in almost impossible bliss.

There will be some soft info on morning sickness and discomfort. But no one will mention the often insane bloating, the possibly constant nausea and gassiness, the extreme reaction to everyday smells that makes life a constant adventure of throw-up or just feel shitty. They don’t mention that while the doctors are on your case to gain healthy weight, you might just be stuck eating nothing but dry idlis for six straight months because everything else – with even a pinch of haldi or masala – makes you projectile vomit for hours. They will not talk about carrying around huge extra weight, being only allowed to sleep on one side which makes that entire side painful and often numb, not being able to sleep for months because the foetus decides to dance all night. No one talks about all the possible things that can go wrong, until they actually do.

If everything goes well, and one gets to the actual process of birth, that’s another can of worms. Most doctors, especially in certain Indian states, will pre-emptively decree a C-section, not giving the birth giver any choice in the matter. Not that the natural birth process is particularly dignified or painless, directly imposing a major surgical procedure on a person is just unethical and dangerous. Medical procedures are notoriously undignified, and hardly leave a person with any agency. And a C-section is no exception. From catheterising and enemas, to being cut open while unable to move from the waist down, it is no walk in the park.

Another thing no one will warn you about is after-birth fun. Everyone gossips and whispers about the fun of not having to menstruate during pregnancy, but no one tells you about the intense deluge of bleeding for some 45 days after the birth! All posters and ads tell you about the need and the experience of breastfeeding your baby, but hardly anyone will talk about baby not latching on, or lack of adequate lactation, or painful nipple cracks, or sores from the baby chewing on you, and the inability to use any medication or ointments to cure them because baby might ingest it.

Everyone “jokes” to expectant parents about no sleep for the next 2 years, but no one actually warns women beforehand of how much of a mental emotional and physical drain those first 2-3 years are going to be, how badly they will lose any independence, how they have to be practically attached at the hip to this creature, how exhausting it is going to be to be a food source, major caregiver, poop cleaner and guardian. No one mentions waking in the middle of the night to check for breathing for fear of SIDS, or post-partum depression, or just not being able to cope. And certainly no one tells you how the process is going to change your relationship with your partner, your sex life, your body, and even your basic metabolism. After all, the point is to make you WANT to procreate, not scare you off or give you room to think.

And if you manage to make it through, and survive to an older age without major complications and issues, you have the untold (literally untold since no one is going to tell you) joys of menopause to look forward to! Yes, it is indeed true that a lucky few waltz through the change without much trouble, far more are forced to suffer in silence for years, sometimes more than a decade, to various degrees, because no one can tell them what part of their experience is normal, what is extreme, or even what is part of the menopausal process and what is “imaginary”. Women used to a lifetime of tolerating symptoms and conditions any man would scream bloody murder at, of gritting their teeth and working through the pain because even basic pain meds are not available which are tailored to their needs, of never speaking of “such things” even if they are suffering, just continue to bear their symptoms in silence.

It is only if and when matters reach an extreme where the person can no longer function well, that they would garner any attention or intervention, and even then the care they get – or don’t get – will depend on the men in their lives – from deciding whether or not they get ANY care to deciding what course that care takes. Most doctors – and families - treat “women” like overreacting children without brains or agency or understanding who always complain and don’t know enough to decide anything for themselves.

It is an amazing and frightening thought that if this is the experience of fairly privileged, educated, urban women, what must others face, in far less privileged lives. 

Off The Cliff Travel Adventures

 

The thing I love about travel, especially road trips, is the sheer unpredictability of events and circumstances that can suddenly crop up even in the best of planned down to the minute expeditions. The things that happen, how we cope with them, and the sheer hysterical laughter later, make for some good stories and memories down the line.

This last January, bhai and Lisa were visiting from California, and we drove off for an extended visit to North Bengal, starting with Siliguri and doing Gorumara and Kurseong before we returned to the Metropolis.  The resort at Lataguri was nice, and we made it our base as we did different directions on different days. More than one trip into the forests, looking for birds for my avid birdwatchers; looking for elusive glimpses of the Indian Bison, Leopards, Rhinos, and what have you; driving off into the hills for the cool and the food/tea. The trip went swimmingly and while bhai and Lisa saw, heard, and catalogued dozens of species of birds, I got hundreds of shots and really loved the peace and the “time off”.

On the day before the day before we were to leave, we took the hotel car up to some place called the five-point tourist spot. Apparantly, you drive up to here, park your vehicle at this large ground surrounded by small gift/curiosity shops and food shacks, and then take one of “their” jeeps – some kind of local government tourism thingies – and they take you round to 5 different places including an old dam, a riverside forest bungalow, a hill “spot” and more. Since we had already done most of what we had planned, and Rishyap, Lava, Kurseong, and Margaret’s Deck to boot, this seemed like a good choice.

So off went the three intrepid travellers, the Indian, the no longer Indian, and the American, after a hearty breakfast. To go see what we could see. From the charts there, offering some 8 or 9 different combinations and destinations, and decided which five places we wanted to do on this particular trip. Now this parking place is quite a bit uphill from Lataguri, and being familiar with serpentine mountain roads from my childhood in the Himalayas, I was glad to have an expert and steady person behind the wheel of the hotel car on the way up.

 So, we arrive, we park, we get into the government jeep and off we go! We did some 5 spots and returned to the parking area about three hours later. It’s starting to get pretty late in the day, and night falls quickly in the mountains, so we have a quick cup of tea each… including the driver of the hotel car we came up in, and start back. And this is when things start to go horrible bad!

I always sit next to the driver at these things, since I want the windscreen clear for my photography, and I start to notice the guy is taking too wide turns and swinging the car across the narrow mountain road dangerously.  I keep talking to him, assuming he is tired and sleepy, since I can’t smell alcohol on his breath, but things just keep getting more and more precarious. He slows unnecessarily when there is no need and speeds up crazily at hairpin bends, almost driving us all off the edge and to our deaths. He keeps getting more and more erratic and the edge of the cliff keeps getting closer and closer, causing heartbeats to rise and blood pressure to spike.

 Fearing for our lives, and seriously worried about what is wrong with this guy, we breathe a sigh of relief when he actually runs the car into a boulder on the hilly side of the road, and comes to a stop.  He gets out to check on the damage, and bhai and I decide that the guy is definitely on something, probably opium or something else that I cannot smell, and that he should not be allowed to drive further.  So we tell the guy to get in the back and that bhai will drive us back to the resort.

But just as we are starting to think we are possibly going to make it back alive this time, the guy jumps back into the driver’s seat , and takes off again while bhai is still hanging out of the car with one foot on the road, dragging him along and wrenching his back (nothing worse thankfully), only to drive headfirst into an oncoming car, while all of us are screaming at him to step on the goddamn brakes and stop the car! Luckily for us, neither our car nor the oncoming one was going too fast, or that would have been the end of the road for the lot of us. Instead all we had was bhai’s wrenched back and a severe muscle pull in my side from trying to wrestle the steering wheel away from the madman’s grip. 

People pile out of the oncoming car, a young doctor and his old parents, who are also – luckily – shaken but not hurt. Lisa taps me on the shoulder from the backseat and tells bhai and I to get out of the car before the madman decides to do something else. The guy is sitting ramrod straight in the driver’s seat with a death grip on the wheel. Before they can start the mandatory road accident argument tending to fisticuffs, we explain the situation to them, and we all call the owner of the car rental company. The owner agrees that bhai should drive the car back, and leave the guy by the side of the road if necessary, but three strong men are unable to pull him out of the seat or get him to let go of the wheel.

Some boys on a couple of bikes pass by, and stop to check out the altercation. They promise to find us some help. In the meantime, it has gotten seriously dark, and I am basically stuck in the dark, in the middle of a forest, with 2 foreign tourists. Prime recipe for possible disaster for anywhere in the world, never mind a developing nation.  And it is DARK! No human habitation for miles in either direction, and street lights are not a concept in the mountain forest reaches. The only light for as far as one can see are the headlights and our mobile phones.

Some elders from the village just down the road arrive, to check out what they can do. They are severely miffed at the driver, for his state of inebriation and his behaviour of putting all of us in danger. “We are a tourist destination,” they say, “all our households earn from tourism, our entire region works on it, it is one or two people like this who give all of us a bad name and affect the entire economy.” They are NOT happy, to say the least, and another round of try-to-extract-the-high-as-a-kite-driver-from-behind-the-wheel ensues, with an equal lack of success.  The driver admits he is high, he took something while we were sight-seeing, admits he is in no shape to drive, but absolutely refuses to relinquish the wheel, even when asked to do so by his boss, and is stuck to it like a limpet.

Anyway, the elders arrange for one of their local car owners to drive us back to Lataguri, and truth to tell they are a shining memory of my trip. Rarely have I encountered such kindness and helpfulness from total strangers in dangerous situations. Off we run, as soon as transport arrives, leaving the madman and his car to the tender mercies of the local humans and wildlife, and make our way back in one piece.

Needless to say, in the light of the day that dawned the next morning, it all looked like a great adventure and by now, six months later, it is one of those hilarious stories to recount to friends. At the time, though, it was not a laughing matter by any means. The thing about near-death experiences is that they do lend a whole new perspective to life.

But is something like this going to dissuade me from more travel? Will this experience prevent future road trips in any way? Highly unlikely!!!

Driving movements and drawing community – friendships will make all the difference

As I prepare a speech for my panel appearance for a celebratory event commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the 1999 Friendship Walk in Kolkata – the very first Pride Walk in India and South Asia, I cannot help but muse a bit on what friendships have meant to me over time. I have always believed that friendships are the way to build any kind of community and movement, and I have always practiced my activism accordingly.  

My focus for activism has – from the very beginning - been more on community building and support, creating safe spaces and groups, where queer people can find the sense of safety, support, and love that we are so often denied at home. We have no space to celebrate being in love or mourn the end of a relationship, no support when faced with violence – within a relationship or from the larger world, we have no space to even simply discuss and be who we are. And this is exactly where community, friendships, and peer support take on so much importance.

My own journey as an out queer person, an activist, and a parent has been robustly supported by my various friendships within the community as well as across movements. I am, after all, old enough to have grown up before the internet, before access to easy information and quick anonymous entry into subcultures and marginal  communities. The first time I ever actually met another queer woman was through a journalist in Pune, during my masters’ degree. She had come to take my interview for some random piece for her magazine, and we got to talking about various things. I hadn’t realised that the friend, through whom she had approached me, had outed me to her as well. During the conversation she told me she knew of a lesbian couple, and would I like to meet them? Never mind the privacy and consent issues; it was like being given the moon on a silver platter. DID I want to meet them? Of course I did! So off we went, that very evening, to visit the women who would go on to be not just my conduit into the queer scenes of Pune and Mumbai, but would be lifelong influences, and philosophers and guides.

From here, this introduction, this friendship, grew the first support group for lesbian and bisexual women in Pune – OLAVA as far back as 1999. As a fledgling organisation we had no space, no money, no real presence to pull together or make ourselves visible in any events, let alone organise anything. It was friendships again, with the women’s movement, with women’s resource groups, with organisations like Open Space, and with gay collectives like Samapathik, that we even had places to gather and talk, to hold meetings, and a visibility in events like protest marches, conferences, and more. Those spaces, those friendships, and the resulting strength we gathered, took us to enough strength and skill to eventually organise the first ever queer film festival – LARZISH  - in Pune, and many more events after that focused on gender sexuality and visibility for queer communities. Unfortunately, as often happened back then, in the melee of the anti-377 campaigns and the birthing pains of the queer movements, OLAVA disintegrated in just about a decade, due to various personal stresses and problems of the members. However, the friendships that we formed way back then, have persevered to this day.

In my parenting as well, it has been friendships that have played a large role. I have, of course, always known that I wanted to be a parent, and always had a pretty clear overall idea of what my parenting “plan” or approach would be, inspired by some superb parenting I was fortunate enough to receive in my own life. However, one can always use reinforcement, feedback, and advice. Some amazing people, fantastic parents in their own right, queer or otherwise, have thankfully always been a part of my emotional support structure. We discuss, we troubleshoot, we exchange notes and advice, we talk about best practices that have worked for us, and the mistakes we have made, hopefully making all of us better parents. Eventually I met fellow queer parents or parents of queer children, started participating in parental support groups, all in the hopes of creating a better life for our children.

Through these many and varied friendships in my life, I have met so many wonderful and amazing people, in Pune, in Mumbai, across the country and the world, and learnt so much. Emulating some of my amazing friends has led me to gather more knowledge about issues, take much more of an interest in fighting for rights, and become a better activist and community “elder”. I firmly believe it is friendships that will make us stronger as a community or network of communities. Also, I believe it will be our friendships across movements, with various other marginalised or oppressed communities that will truly build any change in the world. There is strength in numbers, as we all know, and allyships and friendships across movements are the surest way of building the numbers we will need to affect change. One voice – or a few voices – garners no response from the jaggernaut of an established status quo. But call out in unison, gather all your friends together and scream for your rights, and the rafters might shake and the system be forced to take notice. 

The war cry that failed to ring out, and other peeves of an evening at the theatre

 The more I live in this city, the more it shocks and irritates me. The evening of Saturday, 2^nd March was no exception. What promised to be an evening of superb, if expensive, theatre, turned out to be just another nail in the coffin for my never-present love for the great cultural capital and metropolis.

My mother and I, and the occasional friend, try to catch as many plays as we can around the city –which still has a bunch of them happening regularly – as often as we can. Being long-term fans of the art form, the name Nandikar is almost like a sacrament. The veterans and intellectual giants of the Bengali theatre scene, one expects a lot from them, more so when shelling out a thousand bucks a pop for the privilege of seeing them strut the limelight.

 

When D managed to score tickets for the play which was running to multiple sold-out venues, mom and I were thrilled. This promised some intellectual stimulation, some well-spent hours, some fun, even! And “Panchajanya”! The Mahabharat is one of our favourite epics, and we spend a lot of time talking about it, analyzing characters, deconstructing storylines and themes. Add to that the fact that the play is named after the celestial conch shell of my absolute favourite character ever – Krishna – and expectations were, expectedly, running high.

 

Armed with an e-ticket on my phone and email, and escorting two senior citizens, one of whom is osteoporotic and not very athletic, to say the least, I arrived at the great Kalamandir about an hour before the scheduled start time. Now, this is one of those “high class” intellectual venues, a watering hole for the who’s who of the calcatian glitterati – literary and otherwise – where every visit promises sightings of celebs in the wild, so to speak.

 

While waiting for the hallowed gates to open and let us into the inner sanctum, I overhear a conversation between a senior gentleman seated to my mom’s right, and another passing by who stopped to speak to him. Turns out both were, at some long past point in their lives, professors of chemistry in two elite Kolkata institutions. Starting with “oh quantum was such an in thing in our time, we thought if you knew quantum you knew everything”, the conversation quickly moves to last names and caste. Which one is the Bodyi (vaidya) and which one is the Kayostho (kayasth). Doesn’t surprise me, but it does depress me, that “communist” intellectual Bengalis have caste so high on their list of must know information about new acquaintances. That’s peeve number one for the evening.

 

Lining up begins…. Snaking queues of old and young, athletic and infirm humans all awaiting entry, but wait! What is this!? Another line snaking to the ticket counter? Mom gets all anxious and paranoid – go check it out, see what it is – but I assure her it must be last minute seekers looking to score a ticket or two. Why worry? We have our e-tickets after all. Until “eta kolkata” (this is Kolkata, normal rules don’t apply) strikes again. Someone mentions that e ticket holders much go to the counter to show the QR code and have their booking “validated”. Why this cannot be done by one person with a scanner standing at the gate… well, no one knows. Normal laws of the universe and physics are seldom found to apply in Kolkata.

 

So off I go, phone in hand to validate my few grands, and, after a long enough stint in line, and conversations of how ridiculous this is for a venue like Kalamandir and in comparisons like Mumbai and Pune, I finally get to the window. Turns out me and my phone and my proof of purchase is not enough for them. They need to physically look at every single viewer on my tickets and STAMP them!!! Frantic back-and-forth calls ensue, and senior citizens are forced to hobble up to the counter to get stamped like cattle. That was peeve number two.

 

Then another round of queuing up, stairs that are steeper than Mont Blanc and elevators that crawl slower than snails, and we finally get to our seats. As one may imagine, after all this winning of herculean tasks, the desire for a good theatrical experience is even higher. Having seen other excellent adaptations of the Mahabharat, I am looking forward to what such stalwarts will do.

Stage décor is nice, sparse and tasteful, and the lighting is fluid.

 

The first shock comes in the form of recorded dialogues while the players on stage are “emoting” in silence. Multimedia and fusion notwithstanding, I get plenty of canned content all day, every day, thanks very much. Why would I come to see a play by such big names only to watch a pantomime to some canned dialogue?

 

The second shock is the appearance of the young Krishna. He’s basically a pumped-up Ranbir Kapoor with Salman Khan’s muscles. And so fair! What happened to the Shyamala sundara nawala kishore of the Indian epics? Could they not find a single darker actor who could do the job? And the guy is not even a good actor and has no stage presence to speak of! Then comes the Bollywood. Song after song, dance after dance of the “dahihandi” and raas lila variety, punctuating an interminable love narrative of Krishna and Radha. Where is the consummate diplomat and “kuutnitigya” who perpetuated such a massive war? Where is the warrior? The philosopher? The “sakha” whose heart was so much taken with his Sudama is on stage beating, insulting, bullying, and singling out Sudama for one atrocity after another! This schoolyard bully is not how Krishna can behave!

 

The third shock is that Jarasandha is the main villain, and he constantly berates, curses, demeans and even physically beats up Kansa! The fourth shock is the simple ineptness of the actors, where no one has any voice projection or personality at all… dialogues are delivered a la OTT serials, and hardly audible due to a terrible sound system and overloud music. Jarasandha, Kansa, Krishna, Arjun, none of them seem possessed of any kind of stage presence, and even the character of Parashuram, the scourge of the Kshatriya, the humongous personality everyone fears for his wrath and powers, is nothing more than a mumbling, insipid nobody in this great presentation.

 

By the time the interval rolls around, both me and my mom are disgusted and irritated, and Krishna has not even managed to get out of Vrindavan! Still romancing the now married Radha, and doing kung fu (that’s right, every once in a while he and his cronies break into very Shaolin-like moves for minutes at a time!) when is he planning to get to Mathura? When to plan and implement the plan to free Aryavarta from the tyranny of the Kauravas? When to perpetuate his epic war? No sign of that Krishna has emerged yet. Halfway through and he is still busy tugging at the odhnis of the gopis.

 

Second half begins, another half hour passes, and Krishna is still singing and dancing and romancing, and the only reference to the machinations towards the epic war is through a few gopinis in Dwarka talking about how he is travelling the subcontinent gathering allies, followed immediately by another garba dance. At this point, I am seriously considering stepping out for the rest of the shenanigans to sit in the lobby and read a good book, when we are rescued by two urgent messages from work and home.

 

Needless to say, we left happily, and in a hurry, vowing never to try another play by any big name in Kolkata.