Predators in safe spaces – The challenge of inclusivity V/S safety and comfort

Recently, a day spent at the Kolkata Rainbow Carnival 2018, brought home to me a fact I have been noticing for some time, a discomfort I have negotiated again and again in all kinds of spaces, online and off.

As a feminist, an LGBTQIA+ activist, and an Ally to all movements of marginalised peoples, everywhere, one of the first things I have always tried to find and create has been safe and inclusive spaces. Spaces and places where women, gender queer or non-binary people, trans people, asexual people, kinky people, fat people, short people, white, black, yellow, brown, mauve people, masculine women and feminine men, Brahmin and Dalit, Urban and Rural… everyone feels equally as comfortable and non-threatened as we are accustomed to making our masculine patriarchy affirming men.

Over the last two decades of my journey in political awareness, politicisation, and activism, such spaces have appeared, and multiplied. Organised under the “queer” umbrella, for example, there are now multiple events in a year where one can just “be”. My inner cosplay addict now has far more rein… as does my rainbow self… to indulge in a revelry of self-ness.

And yet, I’ve noticed something again, and again. And I am not talking here about the lack of presence of “female bodied” or AFAB (assigned female at birth) people which I have written about and discussed before, and probably will again. I am talking specifically about the issues created by the random, ever present predator and creep who crawls into these spaces taking advantage of the blanket of inclusivity, and then proceeds to prey on people (most often trans women and AFAB people who present more feminine).

I’ve seen this before in practically all LGBTetc events, and I saw it again at the carnival. There are always some people (overwhelmingly often – men) who come to these events simply as a hunting ground. And I don’t mean of the “let’s hook up in the restroom” variety but of the stalkerish, creepy, make my skin crawl variety (every AFAB person will know what I am talking about). They sidle up to trans women and feminine female bodied persons taking advantage of the friendly, open, we are all a big queer family here together vibe of the events, where everyone seems to be greeting everyone with hugs. They try to hug these complete strangers… and often succeed… because a lot of us are connected only/primarily on social media and it can often be difficult to place a face offhand, so we tend to be generous with hugs.

Then they hang around close by, jumping into conversations as if they belong, quipping and commenting, latching on to other transwomen, or feminine AFAB persons you may be talking to, and collecting phone numbers and information. I’ve seen this happen so often that I have realised this is a thing certain men do…. And I have seen the same man do this at more than one event.

At the carnival, I was the central target of one, while another was working around the event. The one who targeted me – I have never seen before. The other is a repeat offender.

Dialogues like “I am so addicted to this community (presumably meaning trans women)” are creepy as fuck… as is the blatant approaching of any “pretty” woman and flashy, decked up trans woman I spoke to. I noticed he avoided the more obviously masculine people … both cis and trans men as well as butch dykes or trans women in regular men’s clothing. The other one- the repeat offender- did his rounds and spoke to people who have probably become familiar with his face, were obviously uncomfortable around him, but equally obviously didn’t know how to deal with him.

And this brings me…every time… to what to do about these predators. Making the spaces less inclusive is not an option. We want more openness… not segregation. A person also cannot be “screened” or excluded from attending an event simply because he is cis, or straight, or attracted to trans women, or whatever. So, what can we do, as a community and as organisers, to make these spaces safer without being non inclusive?

This is even more difficult because these people are being creepy in the way that most sexual harassers are creepy… a way that cannot be quantified or – very often – even explained to people. It is a matter of feeling, knowing, long experience, and instincts, that tells me when a person is being creepy to me in a particular way, but I may not necessarily be able to explain it to others… especially to most cis-men who have no such life experiences to draw upon.

So… I really don’t know what the solution is… but I do think this is something that needs attention, something we need to think and talk about. Something we must try to figure out how to do… if we want truly safe and comfortable spaces for all of us. 

Organising for Utopia

I have always loved talking. As I often tell people, I started talking at six months old and haven’t stopped since. To me, words are my ultimate love, my passion, my tools, and my ultimate weapons. They define what and how I think (yes, I definitely do believe thoughts and beliefs are a function of language) and how I engage with the world and its people.

Getting involved in community building and activism enhanced this talk-love. Politicizing myself, clarifying and constantly reexamining the politics, learning more, exchanging so much with so many amazing people – everything is so wonderfully language-rich, so fantastically Adda demanding. And I love smaller, more intimate spaces for these conversations. Safer spaces, with a focus on listening and exchange, rather than a large set-up with listeners and a talker.

Increasingly though, especially in this city, but surely in others as well, I find these spaces privileged and limited. It is the same set of people, with the same or similar backgrounds. We are – most of us – upper caste, mid to upper middle class (social status wise, not in terms of the communist understanding of class), educated – from English medium backgrounds more often than not – up to a certain level, and with access to means of gathering a lot of knowledge, of reading, of acquiring the right political language to articulate our political stands… or even to have one.

A recent conversation with a friend brought this home even more clearly. “But I wonder

How do we get across what we figure to people less inclined to thinking for themselves?” she asked, “Or even say... Less equipped? Someone who does not have access to social media or the internet? The domestic help needs feminism too!” and this is a conversation we often have in these activist/social work (what a horrible phrase!) type spaces. One can’t help but, given everything that we avowedly believe in, from feminism to left leaning politics to caste justice, to blah blah. So, some of us, and I am glad to say the number seems to be increasing, always feel uncomfortable with how much space and visibility and voice we get, simply because of our privileges, simply because of an accident of birth.

When I first started collectivizing, getting (albeit tangentially) into organizing and activism, I was immensely lucky to be around some amazing people who seemed to be so damn sorted out! Totally green and wet behind the gills, all I knew was that I wanted to be around people like me, and that I believed in community support, in creating the alternative safety nets and support structures that most of us didn’t have with family and larger society. All I was looking for was a sense of belonging, some friends, and to help out a few people if I could. What I found instead (and blessed be the reporter who made it possible) were people like Chatura Patil and Vrushali Pendharkar and Shals Mahajan and Chayanika Shah who not only taught me pretty much everything I always wanted to know about identity and rights and activism and politicization, but also about reflexivity.

From the beginning, OLAVA for example, was about inclusivity and community in a much larger sense than just the urban English speaking group of women who got together and started it one summer evening. The process of trying to reach out, include, listen to, not co-opt, not appropriate the opinions and rights and presences and lived experiences of the “other”  was one of the most difficult, yet most rewarding processes of that whole experience.

More recently, when I reengaged with activism after a huge gap, the same issues jumped to the forefront in our planning of the Pride walk. The need to reach out to, include, and value people from rural areas, people who don’t necessarily communicate always in English, people who live in non urban areas, people who don’t have access to the internet – let alone social networking sites – was paramount. In the case of the Pride Walk, the systems were already in place, and community based organizations acted as points of contact and liaisons. However, more could probably have been done. Who knows.

As I begin thinking and working with caste issues, the same concerns raise their heads again. For various reasons, from ease of articulation to access to time, the most regular and vocal members of that group also end up being upper caste, educated, English speaking, urban, middle class people. And most of us are uncomfortable with that. Not having, in most cases, the lived experience of caste oppression, and all its intersectionalities with gender, poverty, location, and more, we feel like imposters at best, and appropriators at worst. What right do we really have to be saying this? And if we don’t, will this conversation not happen? How do we reach out to people with those lived experiences? How do we do that without exoticising, tokenizing or fetishising them? How do we make sure the space is safe enough and friendly enough? How do we step back and make space for their voices to be heard? Is this kind of thinking elitist too? Are we suffering from savior complex as well?

I think it's an important conversation to have. Amongst ourselves as well as with everyone else we can think of. How to reach more and more people, to acknowledge and give up our privileged spaces and voices to those less privileged, and to bring lived experiences to centre stage. To make visible the invisible experiences and oppressions we glance away from on a daily basis. As my friend said, everyone from the lower middle class downward on the class spectrum, even in urban settings, seems to be invisible to these groups, and it is the caste privileged, class privileged, educated, urban

“activists” who are the most vocal in them. It is very discomfiting how much appropriation we are doing, and yet we seem unsure of how to fix it.

Maybe as of now we can’t really help it too much (although we certainly can make the effort and try to a large extent). These conversations are starting over social media sites or in friends circles after all, and a lot of us, I am ashamed to say, don’t really have that many contacts outside of or beyond a certain circle. But we HAVE to find ways to change that. If we really believe in everything we say we do, we have to build alliances and go to people with lived experiences to let THEM tell us what they want and how to go about getting it. I don’t see the point of being in the position of speaking FOR them, it just doesn’t make sense.

In my opinion, the trick is to do more, try more, to begin working consciously and actively towards that utopia where we no longer have to appropriate, or be center stage, or be the most vocal or easily heard. Where we would, as we should, fade far, far into the background and let the affected tell us the solutions, whether it is issues of caste, class, gender, sexuality, or whatever else we want to stand with.

Me and my pink unicorns!

Conditioning Conundrum

On the way home from a particularly intense and meaningful session of the Sunday Adda, I hopped on to a bus. Normally, on a Sunday evening at 8ish, I would just take one of the many autorickshaws plying the fixed route between the Adda spot and close-to-home. But, this is durga puja season, and all the Bengalis and their uncles have gone ape-shit crazy. Normally deserted, horror movie setting streets have looked like middle of the day at a busy shopping destination for the last couple of weeks. Traffic, non-existent to the point of scariness under normal circumstances at that hour, has been standstill and crawling it-will-take-forever-to-get-there over the last few weeks. So, not chancing waiting another hour in the insane auto queue, I just jumped into the first bus I saw that was headed in the right direction.

Miracle of miracles! There was a seat! So I parked my more than ample behind, and settled in to ruminate on the fantastic session we had just had talking about male gaze, comfort levels, policing of women's bodies and clothes, movies, books, feminist theories, Freud, Woolf, and SO MUCH more. In the intensely slow crawl to where I was going, many people got into and off the bus, of course, some noticed, some not, in my post adda zen state.

One pair I did notice consisted of a young guy and a girl, probably in their mid 20s. They got in, and seeing the crowded, standing room only, state of the bus, chose a corner near the doors to stand. I sort of vaguely, peripherally, noted the animated conversation they were having, and concluded – probably erroneously – from the body language and particular nyakami of the woman, that they were a couple or at least romantically interested in one another.

Soon, a seat opened up across the aisle, and the young man promptly rushed across and took it, leaving the girl standing where she was. The first reaction I had was anger. A clear, knee jerk, what a creep, he-should-have-let-the-girl-sit, what’s-wrong-with-men type of reaction that came from some lizard brain conditioned part of me. And that, the reaction I felt, that spurt of anger, immediately made me uncomfortable.

People who know me can vouch for how vehement I am about equality, about the abilities of women to negotiate this world without being constantly infantalised and babied (as chivalry does), and so on and so forth. The woman was not older, physically differently abled in any way that I could see, or pregnant (that I could see). Any of those would have made me ok with my anger, because I would be angry with anyone, of any gender, not giving up their seat in those cases.

But here were two similarly aged, similarly abled people, and yet my first reaction, my instinctive (conditioned?) knee-jerk had been of anger simply because the “man” had taken the seat. Putting myself in that situation, if one of my male friends had dared to offer me a seat “just because I am a girl” I would probably have beaten the shit out of them, or at least handed out an extensive and caustic tongue lashing laced liberally with feminist theory and egalitarian rhetoric. I DEFINITELY do not want a world where ANYONE gets special treatment (either good or bad) simply because of something like gender.

So, time for introspection I guess. About conditioning and its effects. About how successfully I have been able to resist conditioning. About how many of my received notions I have been able to ditch. About why/how I have seemingly retained some (unconsciously or consciously). And so much more.

The OTHER

An apparantly homeless, possibly mentally ill, middle aged man walks into one of the chain cafe outlets that are all the rage with a certain section of the young and hip, and the older but cooler crowd. He walks straight back into the little atrium area where the smokers like to hang out. He looks around, and plonks himself on a chair at one of the tables, an occupied one.

The change in atmosphere was electric. The change from light, fun adda to massive discomfort and distrust was so sudden it was like the physical slam of a huge wave bashing into us. A thick, viscous wall of all the nasty possibilities, of instinctive cringeing, caused the worst case of “chhondo poton” i have seen in a long, long time.

He sat next to me, at the table behind me, and leaned over to ask for a light. I am ashamed to say i felt the creeping discomfort too as i handed him the box of matches off our table to light his biri. Conversations, taking place at each table and across tables; vivacious and effervescent, had come to a grinding halt by now. The odd word muttered under the breath, and a lot of looking at each other and at the man was going on.

An employee of the cafe walked out to the atrium area, and i shook myself ready. With all the recent cases doing the rounds on facebook of poorer or homeless people being mistreated by employees of various establishments, i had no cause to expect anything else from this one too. My friend and i exchanged glances, and stiffened our spines to intervene if things went too far or if the employee got obnoxious.

He started with asking the man “what are you here for? Have you come here to smoke?” Something he would never ask any of us, regulars, dressed a certain way, appearing to be from a certain class,even if we had sat there for hours without placing a single order, as my friend P pointed out later. And yet, a couple of minutes into this man's appearence, and here he was. The man replied he was going to order some coffee, at which the employee asked another employee (who had come out in the meantime to offer moral support or something) to get the man a menu card. The promptness of service in the arrival of the menu card to the table would have impressed the most jaded of customers. Luckily, i didnt need to intervene, and the employees went back to the counter, presumably to give the man time to figure out what he wanted.

There were four tables in the outdoor area, two occupied by pairs of people (including ours), one had a young woman sitting alone and one, the one behind me with a young man sitting alone. Mr X (as i shall call him for easier referral) had looked around when he first arrived and sat down with the unaccompanied young man rather than the woman which i thought was rather good of him, and unusual in this country. Plenty of men i know or have had the misfortune to run into would take the situation as an excuse to inflict themselves on the solo woman, and then use that as an excuse to strike up a not- so-wanted conversation or try to instigate unwanted “friendliness”.

The palpable discomfort and mistrust of the other customers (myself included in the discomfort i am ashamed to say) continued, peaking in the young man sitting at that table getting up and walking across the atrium area to join the solo woman at her table rather than share a table with Mr X. While we were all fidgeting, hemming and hawing, and quite unable to relax and enjoy ourselves solely because a particular person is sitting in the same space, Mr X asked me if i would share my coffee with him, “i dont have any money for these coffees, you see”. Given that these coffees start ar 100 rupees, that is quite understandable. I had a couple of inches left in the bottom of my glass of black iced coffee which i told him he was welcome to if he didnt mind the taste (no milk no sugar is not a very Indian way of drinking coffee). He was fine with it, i handed him my glass.

Thinking about wanting to buy him a coffee of his own, i had almost made up my mind to get up, tell him i was going to get him a coffee, and go order, when Mr X said “must go and meet xyz today! Oh! I had forgotten! He'll leave soon!” to general space, and got up to leave. As he passed the solo wioman's table (she was inside at the counter at this point) he reached over to stub out his biri in the ash-tray. The young man who was at that table, having shifted there to avoid Mr X, lunged across the table as the man reached out to SAVE a pack of cigarettes lying on the woman's side of the table, presumably her property.

Mr X simply smiled, said “i wasn't going to take those” and left. The whole thing must have lasted hardly 10 minutes.

The atmosphere changed palpably again instantly. As if the lightness came back, but with a darker edge. Everyone started discussing Mr X. The table next to ours was occupied by a female friend of ours and a man of her acquaintance who we had met there, at the cafe, a couple of hours before, and had the sort of conversation with that you tend to have with strangers in cafes. We spoke of books and music and movies and such. This man now began to talk about how he hated random people just talking to him, and how he was not normally a violent person but “today” he wanted to be violent to Mr X. They left pretty soon after, too shaken i presume to reclaim the jolly night they were having before this rude interruption.

The young man of the chaged tables shoved his oar in a couple of times to the conversation the three remaining women, (me, P, and solo woman) spontaneously started having. Getting not much response, and feeling some disapproval (i personally felt really weirded out by his move of tables), he left too. The three of us talked for a while about how we were thinking of intervening if the employees had misbehaved (all three of us), how we were thinking of buying him a coffee (me and solo woman), how all of us found young man's action extreme (turns out he was the one who summoned the employees to “deal with” the man. He told solo woman he was a counsellor! And claimed that he could tell at a glance that the man was not a “druggie” but simly mentally ill! And then proceeded to inflict himself on her despite her very apparent discomfort with the conversation – which i could see from across the atrium – and tried to get very friendly), and how we felt about everyone's reactions, including our own.

After all, he hadn't done anything the slightest bit out of line. He hadn't misbehaved. In fact he had been more polite and well behaved than a lot of people we deal with on a daily basis. We are all self identified libertarians, liberals, often with a leaning to the left, involved in or in favour of activism and all of that. So, not surprisingly, it was a blow to our self images to see our own reactions, and we could not get away from a feeling of guilt and ashamed-ness.

What was it about a mild mannered, decent acting, middle aged man that rubbed us all the wrong way so quickly and so violently? Just because he looked scruffy and unwashed? Just because he looked down and out? Just because he didnt dress the way we are used to seeing people there dress? (not true since he was in pretty standard clothing, jeans, a t-shirt) What was it about the arrival of this one man that had such an effect on a whole bunch of people? What caused that knee-jerk, almost instinctive, conditioned, instant discomfort? 

And --- at the end of the day --- what does that say about me?

Reliving Childhood Memories ….. Almost

It has been roughly 25 years since I last went to the circus.

As a child I remember visiting often, and loving every minute of it, until around the time I was 13 or 14. That was when various kinds of activism eliminated all animals from the circus, and – for kids like me – took all the fun out of it. Yes, there are great circus shows worldwide without animal performers, but India of the late 1980s was not the place to find any of them. So circus watching died a natural death, and the heart pumping excitement of seeing the tents or a random poster disappeared. Soon, the tents stopped appearing and the posters were no longer put up. Nationwide, at least in the larger cities, circus troupes quietly disappeared never to be heard from again for the next quarter of a century or so.

I grew up, and the whole idea and excitement of the circus faded into the background of more grown-up pastimes. Until very recently. In the last couple of years, I have been seeing posters and billboards advertising the odd circus troupe in some remote section of the city or another. Steadily toying with the idea of going, especially now that monkey is old enough to enjoy it, I made up my mind to take her to one, one of these days, before she became addicted to technology to the exclusion of all else. And still, somehow or the other, we never quite made it. Time was never right, distances were too long, traffic too unbeatable, or the tents had packed up and left by the time I got around to it. Something always got in the way. And then, two weeks ago, one pitched its tents right here in my neighborhood!

Before a single coherent thought could form, I found myself walking back to the car clutching a handful of tickets! For the couple of weeks that it has been here, monkey has passed the grounds everyday with a sigh. She was marveled over the lights in the evening, and wondered about the big sleepy tents in the day. And every day, every single day, she has asked her father, or me, “Can we go one day?” so when I woke from my trance with enough tickets for a whole bunch of people, I knew my little one would certainly be pleased. But what I was looking forward to, more even than her excitement at knowing that we were going, was the wonder and awe I was sure to see on her face during the show – the same wonder and awe I remember feeling every time I was taken to see the circus – from as far back as roughly nine years of age (about as old as my daughter is now).

We didn’t tell her about the tickets. Being the weekend, I picked her up from her “dance” class (which is essentially an excuse for a bunch of kids to behave like total nutcases and go crazy with music) and told her we had to go somewhere. Now, strangely, my little one doesn’t like surprises, and when told something like that assumes that mommy is dragging her to some relative/friend’s home where she may or may not find company (given that most people we know are either childless or have much older kids), or to some boring grown up activity like shopping. So when the car turned into the fairgrounds, it was quite amazing to see her go from morose and protesting to lit up and bursting out of her skin in a split second.

Walking in, sitting down, I could see all the stars in her eyes that I had expected. She saw the incredible trapeze artists flying overhead with so much awe. She loved the little trained dogs, and birds (yes, SOME animals are back), she rolled around in laughter when the clowns did their thing, and shrieked with joy when the elephants worshipped an idol or played cricket. It was like being nine again for me too. The sheer vicarious pleasure of seeing all this for the first time through her eyes brought back all the memories of my own magical first time at a circus. I could feel all the awe, the surreal feeling.

And then, I looked around. I could see all the broken equipment, the dilapidated chairs, the holes in the tent and in the mats, but most of all, I could see the emptiness of the tent. For a weekend primetime show, the tent was terribly empty. Hardly 40% of the seats were taken, and we were the only people in the more pricey seats. Seemed strange at first, until I noticed the expressions on the faces of the kids that were there. Most of them, as young as my own or much older, looked bored, uninterested, and uninvolved. Many were fidgeting with their “latest” phones and tabs, and seemed hardly to be paying any attention to the action in the ring, except when they shot videos of it….presumably for facebook.

I wondered if it had always been this way and I had merely been too small or too enraptured to notice, or if things had really gotten that bad. Speaking to my father later cleared things up a lot. He was grown up and cynical enough even when he took us to the circus as children, but he does not remember it being quite so pathetic. Sure, circus has always been a little shabby around the edges, in India at least, but the abysmal situation we found on this trip is far, far worse than anything we could have even imagined. The entire enterprise seemed to be hanging on by the barest of threads, in danger of having to give up at any moment.

Somehow, we have managed to get our children to lose that sense of wonder that I remember so well. And more than that, we have managed to kill any desire to experiment, try something new, or be interested in anything outside their own narrow spheres. No wonder then that circus troupes all over the country are struggling so badly. Even under the best of circumstances, with packed shows, they are difficult and very expensive enterprises to run. All those people to feed and pay, animals to buy, feed, and take care of, equipment to acquire and maintain, lights, travel, setup, and on and on. Given that even a primetime weekend show has such dismal occupancy, one can imagine what the “not so popular” shows must be like. It is a miracle they are even making enough to continue to stay in the business at all!

It makes me sad though, the fact that my daughter, one of the few children I know who would rather play outside or go to the circus than sit in her room with her PS2, may not be able to enjoy this wonderful display of human skill for much longer. 

More evidence of complete lack of manners in Bengalis … or is it politics?

It has always fascinated me how what I consider basic manners seem so alien to most Bengalis I know. For a long time I considered this lack to be because of the kind of bongs I was looking at. Admittedly none of the people I was noticing was anything to write home about, educationally, socially, and in manners and etiquette, by any stretch of the imagination. First generation displaced, most of those people were the first from their families to leave the villages they hailed from, and venture out into the larger world. Back in the 80s, these people were eminently forgivable for their gaffes and lapses of social niceties, especially of global good manners. However, in their children, born into the information age, highly educated at the “best” schools and colleges, and growing up exposed to the way the world lives and behaves via TV, movies, books, and the internet, it is not so forgivable.

Add family relationships into the mix, and I would expect more consideration, better manners. But, I have learnt that’s just me, and I am in a very, very small minority. From twisted hindi/regional film logic of “no please and no sorry in friendship” to the feudal/filial structure of allegiances, our culture systematically teaches us to be rude, rudest to the people close to us. I may find this counterintuitive, after all, if I care about them, it is even more vital to show them that I appreciate or value everything that they do for me, but most of us just don’t bother to think it through.

So, something like this happens. First, a little background. My little family unit, my parents, my brother, and my man and I, have recently “divorced” a particular branch of the larger extended family. There has been no ongoing feud, no war, no screaming/ranting in public, no putting-others-at-a-discomfort, and no asking-others-to-choose-sides. We have simply, calmly, quietly, and after a lot of deliberation and consideration, decided to cut ties with a particular set of people.  Although the rest of the clan is aware of the rift, (we are not the kind to keep things a secret – especially when we don’t have anything to hide) they are not caught in the middle. We do not expect any of them to choose or take sides. And we have not the slightest expectations of them dropping their social correspondence simply because we have.

A rare confluence of people is taking place in the city at the moment. Cousins who live in the US, the Middle East, and off and on in other cities in India are, coincidentally, all here at the moment, as are my parents, who are the sort to never be in one place for very long. Given this happy turn of events, my mother decided she was going to have all the “kids” over for dinner. People were notified, preparations began in earnest, the relative merits of home/restaurant, cook/cater/order, were hotly debated, and a final decision arrived at. We were pumped up, happy, excited, looking forward to a really fun day.

And then, the legendary bong manners struck. My mother received a call saying her inviting all the kids other than the ones from “that particular unit” does not “look nice”, and hence no one was going to turn up, and she should cancel the party. Much as I am happy to be spared the expense, and the headache and hard, work of planning and executing the event, (given that my mom is particularly infirm at the moment and not much help other than in great ideas), I find this WRONG and RUDE on so many levels!

First off, if I am invited to a dinner, I would never even think of asking who else was on the guest list. I would consider it none of my business, I would consider it rude to ask, and I would trust that the host had his/her own reasons for asking everyone they had/hadn’t asked. Secondly, if I did know the guests list, I would not make the attendance of three separate but related family units dependent on the presence/absence of one person. Actually, presence…maybe… as in I personally may not attend a function/event where I know someone I intensely dislike or wish to avoid might be present, but absence, no. It is none of my business why the hosts have not asked x, y, or z to the same party as me. It is THEIR event, and it is THEIR right to choose who to ask. No one else has the least right to edit their guest list – No one – unless that person is a special friend/family member who has been ASKED to help with the arrangements and to SPECIFICALLY trim the guest list.

What happened here was more sinister. My mother was basically DICTATED to. She was told that she cannot choose who she wants in her home, or who she can/cannot ask to dinner on a particular day. She was actually asked to CANCEL an event by people who had absolutely no right to do any such thing! And coming from our “culture” that puts so much emphasis on respecting our “elders”, it is doubly rude!! To call up an aunt and say you have to ask X to dinner or none of us will come so you better cancel the damn event?! I cannot imagine EVER doing something like that.

Also, I have to consider the other side of the issue. When these same cousins will be invited to the house of the “particular unit” for something, as is inevitable (in fact a large event is expected next month or so), will they refuse that invitation as well? Will they make THEM cancel the event also? Somehow, I don’t think so. And if they don’t, then essentially they are creating a war where none existed. Just coming and having dinner at my mother’s invitation would not have been choosing sides. If anyone could be accused of partiality/unfairness, it would be my mom. But choosing NOT to come, and to have the event cancelled, puts them firmly in the OTHER camp, especially when (as I expect) they accept invitations from there, which don’t include us.

So, essentially, this part of the clan has decided to PLEASE, APPEASE, and side with the “particular unit” that too in a very clear, unequivocal, and in-your-face way. Well, good luck to them. But I would really have appreciated some better manners.

Basi Kapor – Yet Another Example Of The Double Standards Of Indian Culture

Talking and laughing about a good friend’s ma-in-law’s horror at her attempting to cook in basi kapor (stale clothes), I have to wonder again at the huge and constant double standards of this culture I belong to.

What is basi kapor then? Literally, it means stale clothes, the clothes you have slept in. But, hold on, why does this apply only to women, and only to married ones? And how does sleeping in some clothes make them so totally unsuitable for anything the next morning? So much so that the first thing you have to do is change out of them before you contemplate tackling your household chores and duties? Why can you not step into the kitchen, or the place of worship, in these stale clothes? It is when you begin to think about these questions that the truth strikes you. They are not the clothes you have slept in, they are the clothes you have had sex in, or put on after sex.

Given the overpowering, all exclusive emphasis that Indian culture places on getting and staying married, serving “every need” of your lord and master, and on being a mother (that is giving birth to offspring, preferably numerous, preferably male), it is quite amazing how much we denigrate, hate, abuse, and hide everything that has anything to do with these aims.

Be fertile the culture tells you. Being unable to produce children is the biggest sin a woman can commit. The baanjh, or barren woman, is the most inauspicious creature in this culture, excluded from all good/auspicious occasions and rituals for fear of her infertility blasting everything her shadow touches. Whether she is infertile or not is decided merely by the fact of her not having any visible kids, regardless of whether her husband is impotent, or infertile, or simply not interested (because a man cannot be at fault after all). And no…this is not some middle ages, long-outgrown-in-the-modern-world syndrome that I am talking about.

This mentality is so ingrained that when my partner and I chose to wait four whole years before reproducing, we got numerous enquiries, and offers of help and medication for me, not just from extended family and nosy neighbours but from almost strangers. I have friends in similar situations whose husbands get random colleagues coming up to them, people who they hardly even speak to more than once a year, to recommend some gynaecological magic worker they know.

As for women (with supportive partners, of course) choosing to be childless! OH MY GOD! Every stranger, every chat contact, every relative, friend, family member, (none of whose business it is) will argue and persuade and try to convince her and her partner that a woman is incomplete unless she is a mother, that every woman dreams of being a mother (how would you know what she dreams, asshole?), that it is every woman’s greatest joy/pleasure/duty/desire to bear children. They will be called selfish, weird, unnatural, and so many other things.

And this is ONLY if she has a supportive partner, because without one, she has no choice in the matter. Her body, her womb, and the choice to use those as an incubator, are not hers at all, and pregnancy and childbirth will be forced on her by her husband, in-laws, and society at large. If this is how much our society wants each woman to breed, why do we feel such disgust, shame, anger, at everything that makes women breeders? Why is everything leading up to and contributing to fertility and pregnancy such a hush hush, hide hide, ugh, dirty, nasty?

From the day she first starts to menstruate, the girl feels the brunt of this shame. In milder form, she cannot let anyone become aware that she is bleeding. Not even her father or brother. Personal products (not surprisingly called SANITARY products) must be bought shamefully, in hushed voices, and wrapped in newspapers so no one, familiar or stranger, can know what it is. Staining is a matter of life or death, not because it ruins a good dress, but because people will KNOW that you are now bleeding, at this time. She cannot call it period, or menstruation. It must be euphemized as “shorir kharap” (being unwell), chums, that time, those days, or anything that does not directly reference the actual process or name.

The undergarments, that touch the sanitary products, even when washed and clean, cannot be hung out to dry in any place where they touch a growing or fertile plant. If they do so, the plant will supposedly stop fruiting/blooming. (Let me get this straight, the mere touch, at second hand, of something which is a sign that I am fertile/fruitful, will kill the fertility of something else? What kind of sense does that make?). a girl/woman who is having her period must not step into the kitchen or the place of worship in her home, because she is impure. How the evidence of her greatest power, that of bearing life, can make her impure, I have no idea. She cannot enter a temple. Even goddesses are not exempt! For HER menstrual period, the Ambubachi, the goddess Kamakhya has to endure days of no worship. Why? Because goddess or not, if she is bleeding, she is too impure to give or receive worship.

And these are the milder forms. In more severe forms, the first period, the onset of a girl’s menstruation is marked by a huge feast, for which she is dressed up like a bride and paraded around the village/neighbourhood (to display to prospective grooms and their families that she is now of breeding age and hence marriageable), and then confined to a “menstrual room” for the rest of the duration. I remember how shocked I was the first time a classmate of mine – in Chennai – first told me of her experience. This menstrual room, or menstrual house is a fact of life in many states and communities. All the menstruating women of the house/village are sent there for the duration of their period. These houses are badly constructed, and most often lacking basic amenities like running water, sanitation, and even decent bedding.

The same double standards, unhealthy attitudes, and woman shaming occur in anything to do with sex or sexuality. A girl is supposed to not exist from the waist down until she is married. After she is married, her body is merely the vessal of “service” to her husband, her lord and master. She cannot and must not have any desires or libido, and must actively dislike all sexual activity while willingly submitting to her husband every time he wants some, never enjoying it, but considering it her duty, and a stepping stone towards fulfilling her ultimate duty – the production of offspring.

And this is exactly where the concept of basi kapor comes in. Having sex with her husband makes a woman and her clothes impure. It does not do the same to the man…of course… for men are built for sex and have no control over themselves (the excuses given to rapists all the time). For the woman however, it becomes essential that she change those “sex” clothes, and bathe, before she participates in something as important as cooking or worship.

So, a woman can and should menstruate… because she has to have kids, but to menstruate is a sin, is dirty, is shameful, and a fact that must be hidden from everyone (presumably not the husband, because he has to know when to schedule his baby making activities, and god forbid an Indian male should wade the red tide. Come to think of it…that’s a good thing too, or she would have to bear the brunt of cleaning up, probably hearing scathing judgmental things while doing so.)

Being repeatedly pregnant in her effort to produce as many male heirs as she possibly can is her sacred duty, as is pleasing her husband in bed (like a prostitute as some of our scriptures and our marriage rituals famously quote), but she can not only not enjoy the act, she must be shamed for allowing it to happen (beaten and raped if she doesn’t allow it though). She must feel so unclean, impure, and ashamed that she must clean herself immediately upon rising, before she can do anything auspicious.

And then we wonder why women have such a bad time here, why we are such a rape culture, almost celebrating rape rather than condemning it, and considering marital rape to be nonexistent (obviously…since she is NEVER supposed to want it, so how can doing it when she does not want be a crime???) and why most Indian men grow up to be such misogynists, sexists, and chauvinists. It is a miracle that ALL of them don’t!

New and growing obsessions – age old impulses

For the last few years, I have found that I am hardly ever without a camera. Whether I am at home, dropping monkey off to school or fetching her from it, shopping for vegetables, paying bills, going out, working, or at an event, some form or another of photographic equipment is never far from my fingers.

I used to be, until comparatively recently, one of the “occasion”al photographers who make up about 90% of total camera sales around the world. When we travelled, and we did travel a lot, we took a lot of pictures, or when there was an occasion – like a birthday or a wedding – but that’s largely how it was.

Part of the reason, back then, for not being a totally obsessed shutterbug was cost. Film photography is expensive. Cameras were expensive too. Add to that the cost of film, as well as the cost of development and printing, and the recurring expense became almost prohibitive, especially for a student, or someone just starting out in life.

At this stage in life, photography was mostly event based, whether that event was a trip or an occasion, a party, wedding, or Durga Puja. Like with most people, the albums were filled mainly with the pictures of people and monuments. Although, as early as age 12, the odd still life had made its way into the shots I took, by necessity, most of the shots were of the relevant occasion.

Over the last 15 years or so, the frequency and type of shots have both changed. As I became more able to afford development and printing costs, I took more pictures, outside of the structure of events. As I took more non-event pictures, I clicked more of the everyday things – skyscapes, still life, interesting faces, anything that appealed on the spur of the moment. But still, it was not a constant activity. I didn’t walk around with a camera all the time.

Digital storage, and photography studios making CDs of the pics I took added another layer. Now I didn’t have to worry about printing costs, and I didn’t have to get shouted at, all the time, about how much space my negatives and pictures took up. I didn’t have to worry about damage to the negatives, I didn’t have to worry about fading quality, I didn’t have to stress about losing all my pictures every time we moved. I could just dump them all on to a hard disk, put all the CDs into one of my massive CD tins, and forget about it.

Then came digicams. What a boon! Now I didn’t have to worry about any development at all! Click and download! The small digicam became an almost regular companion, but for occasions or trips, things I particularly wanted to record photographically, I still reached for the big guns… the EOS, loaded with film. Until I could afford a Digital SLR (not the cheapest thing on the planet).

Today, there is the cell phone camera, that always travels everywhere with me (obviously), and can be whipped out at a moment’s notice to record anything that catches the eye… from an interesting cloud formation to a bird drinking out of a discarded tyre by the roadside. Then there is the little digicam, a much more advanced version compared to the first one I once owned, with numerous interesting settings, and much more chance to tinker. This sits in my purse, constantly. Wherever I go, it goes, and is reserved for those shots where I feel like I need a little more precision, resolution, or more pixels.

And, of course, there is the big gun. The digital SLR which travels on opur trips, participates in our occasions, and yes… gets whipped out of its case everytime something interesting catches my eye out of my bedroom or living room windows. From catching every nuance of expression on my little one’s face, to freezing the egret on the neighbouring rooftop for posterity, it serves all purposes.

Unsurprisingly, I find myself more and more behind a lens, at everything, almost to the point of actually experiencing discomfort, and vague distress, when I am without a camera. And I can trace that distress, maybe, to a theory advanced by one of my favourite thriller writers. Photography is a distancing mechanism, he says, a way of putting something between you and the world, of becoming the observer rather than a participant. It is also an exercise of ego, putting yourself in the position of commentator, albeit a silent one, of the beauties as well as the foibles and ugliness of the world.

As I have grown older, and progressively more cynical and disillusioned, my attraction to photography has increased exponentially, keeping perfect pace with the growth of this disillusion. As I find myself more and more withdrawn from the world, from the grating ugliness, selfishness, and sheer stupidity I see around me (there's the ego again, thinking I am any better), I also find myself more and more constantly behind a camera. My frequency of taking pictures has gone from one roll of film (36 shots) per trip to over 6000 shots on my recent US trip (not counting the ones from my cell phone cam). I am so much more comfortable now when I am just recording rather than reacting, making my silent comments – nasty or nice – rather than saying it all out loud.

Silence is becoming so much a larger part of my life, that words are no longer enough of an outlet. I engage too much when I write, put too much of myself into it, words are too from-the-gut. Photography is more my “meh”. The coment I toss out, the things I say not-so-emphatically. But it is also where I probably unwittingly and even unwillingly reveal more of my real personality, my soul, things even I don’t know about myself.

Maybe that is why I am comfortable sharing my words with the world so easily, through books, blogs, and more, while I cringe at sharing my photographs with people I don’t know and trust. 

Strange are the times

The last year and a half or so have been a strange kind of time. Beginning with a really happy peak, when I was so thrilled with developments in my personal life that I could almost believe I was floating, through the abyss of great personal loss and physical pain, to this place I am at now… with so much gone for good, so much lost in the personal, while so much great stuff is beginning to happen in the professional sphere; it’s more than I can do to wrap my head around everything that has happened, and continues to happen. Thinking about it, in a broken-record, destructive-cyclic, vicious circle kind of way doesn’t seem to be doing anything other than set me on the path to being clinically insane, and while books and work and life provide some much needed breaks from my own head in the daytime, nothing seems to prevent my nightly dreams from being one long horror movie fest.  

If I could ever write down my dreams (or is it nightmares?) accurately, if I was a good enough, powerful enough writer to be able to catch the eerie, macabre, blood freezing stuff my brain throws at me every single night, I would make a fortune as a writer of horror movie scripts. Trouble is, I am not. I am not a good enough artist to capture even the tiniest essence of what I live through in my dreams. Neither am I able, nor willing, to make such an attempt. That would mean having to consciously revisit all those things, feelings, fears, depressions, that I am so firmly, and mostly successfully, pushing so far into the background, that I am so resolutely ignoring, that I am so obstinately keeping from ever floating to the forefront of my mind. So… thanks a lot but no thanks. Given the way my head is, and has been for the last 20 odd months, I think I will have to give up trying to be the next Roald Dahl or Stephen King.  

One of the theories about why we have nightmares says that they are a tool our mind uses to work through our greatest fears and traumas. It replays your biggest phobias, the worst times of your life, the craziest suppressed pain you have held on to, and it does so again and again and again, apparently until the event, incident, or anticipation no longer holds any trauma for you, until you stop fearing it. If that’s the case, I am not sure my mind has quite managed to get it right yet. Considering that I am not much prone to nightmares even at the worst times in my life, and yes there have been times I’ve sauntered through hell, it is strange that I should suddenly find myself having them almost daily, and for this long. It’s been bad, yes, but not as unmitigatedly awful as some other patches I have lived through. So why all the technicolour spookiness of somnolence, all of a sudden? I don’t really know. Given that I am much older, and presumably a lot more mature, since the last stint of awfulness. And, as I think about it, there’s a lot more of the good stuff in my life now – to offset the bad – than I had at some of the worst times.

Maybe it’s a cumulative thing. Stuff has been presumably piling on for a while now, directly for some 20 months or so, building on a foundation of some pretty dark stuff from years and years ago, and maybe the combination was enough to set the whole edifice shaking. After all, therapy or no therapy, maturity or no maturity, medication or no medication, the basic truth is that some stuff just never goes away. It just gets a little bit easier to handle it on a day to day basis, and to continue functioning as a member of society or a “normal” human being or whatever, but the darkness, the pain, the monsters, it never, never completely disappears. And sometimes all it takes is a word, a smell, a sound, a tiny little incident to bring it all rushing back. Maybe that’s what’s going on here.

Or maybe, as some people tend to think, including my man sometimes, its just imagination. If I hear “apne aap ko dukhi mat samjho to sab theek ho jayega” (stop thinking of yourself as unhappy and it will be fine) one more time, I am liable to break something. The closest people in my life, at least, should know that the last thing I am is obsessed with pain. I don’t imagine myself unhappy, even when I actually might be. I’ve been known to party hard, laugh out loud, and enjoy every small happiness in my life even at my worst times. In the last 12 years or so, I have also worked hard at, and become good at, working things out in a steady and mature way, for myself as well as for others. And I am trying to be that person now as well. Neither friends for family can claim to have seen a long face in months, or tears, and although dad did notice the dark circles, that’s easily shrugged off as something physical, or ignored altogether.

So what would make someone imagine I am wallowing in self pity I have no idea. But it seems to be the popular opinion in certain circles, including the recently disowned relatives. Now these very disowned people, at least one of them, is one of the major contributors to the angst in the first place. After all, when you have loved someone like a sibling, like a best friend, for the best part of your life, sudden unexplainable coldness, sarcasm, thinly veiled insults, and sniping on public forums tends to be disturbing and hurtful. Having spent years on getting my self esteem back to a healthy state, and yes, as some people would say, being egotistical (my ego is my shield, my badge), I made the decision to cut them out of my life, permanently. I’ve done this before, since I prefer the pain (and yes it does hurt) of a clean cut to the daily stress and hurt of being ill-treated by the people I love. This cutting out has, unfortunately, dragged a little longer and taken a bit more time than I would ideally have liked, because certain events were impending which everyone wanted to go off without any unpleasantness. And this protracted tearing of the bond has created more pain, in addition to the sense of betrayal and the anger and the hurt of having someone so close to you turn on you so comprehensively.  

That’s been going on for a couple of years now. The drawing back, the turning bitter and acidic, the preferring jibes to straight talk. What made is worse was that with the recent shrinking of the friend circle, this person had become one of my mainstays in terms of socializing, especially as he was intelligent. And yes, the shrunk social circle probably has something to do with the screwed up mind too. For someone who is used to having up to 20 people around all the time, and regularly having parties with two dozen people at least, to be down to two couples for Christmas or new years’ can be a huge change. There are weeks, even months now that I don’t go out other than to bring baby from school or to go visit my mother when she is in town. When my brother was here recently, we went to get coffee, and I suddenly realized that that was the first time I had done that in over a year! And this is me! Who not so long ago went to get coffee and conversation EVERY SINGLE day!

What this essentially means is that I also have a famine in the conversation department. I miss spending hours just talking with people of similar or superior intellect. I miss the all nighters or late nighters with the mad bunch, or with bhai. Lately I don’t seem to even have meaningful conversation with anyone other than family for weeks on end! And, and this was quite a thorn, even when bhai was here this trip, we didn’t manage to get a single one of those in, for one reason or another. Come to think of it, we barely managed a single conversation! Well, that’s not helping the overall feeling of unease, malaise. After all, this man is my best friend in the world, and I saw him after a gap of three and a half years, and I didn’t get to have a single meaningful conversation. Almost beginning to forget what those feel like, and they way they get my brain fizzing. This endless domesticity, something I have never been particularly great at, this ROUTINE (dreaded word), this constant being of mother, partner, daughter, to the exclusion of all else is not helping whatever ails me.

Add to that the constant pushing and prodding I have had to do on the matter of adoption. Considering this is something that was a given, something I have been wanting to do for at least 15 yrs, something that I was emotionally promised (at a moment of great pain and loss) would happen by last December, it is amazing how mush pushing I was having to do over the last six years. I HATE poking, I HATE nagging, and I HATE having to maneuver. And I have had to do all of those, with increasing frustration, hurt and anger, as nothing, but nothing got done. And when we finally managed to even find the time to walk into an agency, we were made to feel like criminals. Our crime? We want to adopt even though we have a biological child! Hold on! Isn’t that a GOOD thing? Don’t we want more and more people to choose adoption as the way to have kids? And being able to and choosing not to is the real choice right? Not being able to and choosing to adopt is good, but its also desperation. Right? Apparently not in India. I was practically told flat out that my chances of actually getting g a kid are nil. Seems there is a chronic shortage of kids for adoption in the country, never mind the hundreds of thousands languishing in badly run, unhealthy, and terrible orphanages. So, if and when a child does become available, they will – of course – give preference to childless couples. In short, the adoption counselor, in not so many words, basically told us to go home and try to make a baby instead of trying to adopt one.

That’s presumably the end of that. And given the traumas I have been through last June, I am not likely to be trying to Produce another offspring. Also, with everything that’s going on in the professional sphere, I won’t have time to, even if I had any wish to. So, effectively, that’s the end of any chance of my ever having a second, let alone a third, child. While this may not seem like a big deal to most people these days, who choose to be unencumbered with children or to have just the one, to me it is an untenable loss. Especially since another loss is still fresh enough, and will always be fresh enough, to bring unbidden tears to my eyes every time something triggers a memory or an emotion. It’s like a solid fist of pain in the gut and the throat, all the time. And the loneliness I see in my daughter, the complete lack of a social life that her generation faces, and the thought that she will never know the closeness that bhai and I share, that can be got only with siblings, makes me sadder.

Strangely, this is also a time of unprecedented things in the work sphere. The business looks on the verge of exploding in size, which means that already things are moving fast and will soon move much faster. I might soon have to make a full time commitment to an office bound life. With big things in the offing professionally, I am going to have even less time for the things that make me feel alive. With the way the head feels right now, and with how things are going with the dreams, I have no idea how I will handle less personal time and more sensory and cerebral deprivation. There is no hope of working through what’s already going on in the head, and the near future promises fewer opportunities and much less time for it. So, I guess the demons will have to go back into the closet, the maelstrom will have to continue to be ignored, and the nightmares will continue… ah well!   

OH! Calcutta!

After spending a considerable amount of time in Kolkata, over the last four odd years, and trying recently to organize a 300-plus event here, I have observed some peculiarities of the city which – frankly – irritate me no end. While some of my local Bengali friends will see the need to notice, talk about, and change these things. Others, less open minded and more immature, will see this as just an outpouring of my supposed hate for Bengal and all things Bengali. Either way, here are the facts as I have observed them …

·         I could not make an electrician do some basic work in 4 years. Call call call, they don’t arrive. When one finally arrives, he takes a look at the work, says “parts niye kalke ascchi” (I’ll be back with the spare parts tomorrow)…and never comes back…. This was repeated with 6 or 7 people. Finally I have given up. I now prefer to buy a new fan for my flat rather than go through the stress of trying to find a kolkata electrician to repair it. I later realized it is this way for all professions in this city. Professionalism is not just lacking, it is ABSENT.

·         Haven’t found a single tailor yet who knows the meaning of “delivery date” and can follow instructions. As for western wear, forget it! They can manage salwaar kameez provided you don’t want anything too fancy or unusual, and maybe a short kurti or two, but talk about shirts, trousers, and fitted tops and they are all blank. Even if you give them a sample they cannot reproduce it. Does one have to go to a Gents tailor to get women’s shirts made? I wonder. Am still waiting for a set of clothes I had given to the fifth tailor I have tried here, FOUR MONTHS AGO!

·         A buffet dinner in Kolkata means something totally different from a buffet anywhere else in the world. When I was trying to decide about how many plates to tell the caterer to provide, I was told (by the caterer as well as friends and relatives) to budget for at least 10 to 12 plates more than the number of heads. Seemed strange to me, being used to ordering 10 less in case of last minute cancellations etc. why more? I asked. Well, they said, you have to plan for the packages people will take home. TAKE HOME? What? From a buffet? Yes, apparently a Kolkata invitee will ask for a packed dinner to take home for any member of the family who was unable to make it to the event! How ridiculous is that? I have to say, in my long and varied life in so many cities in India, and from my acceptably limited knowledge of the rest of the world, I have never come across this practice anywhere else. When you are invited somewhere, you either show up and eat, or don’t show up and don’t eat. What’s all this take-away business?

·         Oh! And a lot of people change plates in the middle of a buffet meal! Not the usual, rest of India dinner plate changed to dessert plate, but multiple dinner plates, one after each course or so! What? Why? Because how can a Bengali eat mutton on a plate tasting of fish (HUH?) and so on. What the duffers fail to realize is that caterers count dinner plates to decide what to charge. So every time some idiot, completely uninformed about global manners, changes his plate because it tastes funny, the host ends up paying for an extra, non-existent person!

·         No one chews with their mouth closed! At every single event I have been at in Kolkata, no matter what the class or education or age of the people there, I have not seen anyone chew with their mouth closed! My enjoyment of typically catered Bengali food was low enough to begin with, but now it has completely gone, because every time I raise my head or look around I am treated to the sight of wide open and cavernous mouths in various stages of masticating food! Ewwwwwwww!

·         Home delivery is a new concept in Kolkata. Pan Indian chain stores like Spencer and Big Bazaar can be credited with bringing the concept to this city, barely a half decade ago. Still, the idea only exists in the context of groceries, packed goods, and a VERY FEW restaurants. The concept of vegetables, raw fish, fruits, and stuff from the neighbouring grocery store coming home at the end of a phone call is still very far away, let alone something like Dial A Meal where you can call ONE number to order from ANY restaurant in the city. Although all of this was personally experienced by me in Chennai in 1986, in Mumbai in 1991, Hyderabad in 1999, and Pune 1995 onwards, Kolkata still does not have all this.

·         Dominos does not deliver in half the city! I had the shock of my life upon calling the hunger helpline and ordering a large pepperoni! Having lived in so many Indian cities, some of them much smaller and less important than KOLKATA, I have no concept of Dominos saying “sorry ma’am we do not deliver in your area” (and I was in an area like PATULI at the time, not even my neighbourhood which is lowbrow)! What planet is this????? Oh! And there are only two MacDonald’s in the entire city! KFC used to be 2 branches, until they opened a couple more recently.  

·         People almost faint when they see a woman buying alcohol or cigarettes, although I know plenty of Kolkata bong women who smoke and drink!! Two faced gawaarness. They even look like they have seen a ghost when I try to buy birth control for heaven’s sake! How VILLAGE is that?

·         There are a number of huge malls here now. The malls open at 9 AM. Great right? No! Because most of the shops In That Open Mall will not open until 11, and so you wander around like a ghost. Want to get something to munch on? To pass the time? What a laugh! The god forsaken food court does not open until 1pm!!! I’ve never seen this before…mall opens, all shops open, and food court definitely opens! That’s logical, that’s how you make most sales! Only apparently this simple logic does not apply in kolkata.

·         People still don’t use pressure cookers for their daily cooking! In the 21^st century, with India reeling under a chronic LPG shortage, 99% of educated, modern, progressive, cultured, Bengali homes in Kolkata use pressure cookers only for the once-a-week mutton cooking (many not even for that)! Everything from rice and dal, to the raw bananas for a kofta, and even fish, chicken, (mutton too in some cases), its ALL cooked in open vessels! That’s not just regressive, and rural, it is CRIMINAL! It’s a miracle they even moved from wood burning stoves and chulhas to gas! What’s the logic behind wasting 3 hours, and liters of gas on something that should take 20 minutes? That food does not taste good when cooked in a pressure cooker. This is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard in my life! Not only does it taste BETTER, it is also a lot more nutritious, and the process wastes a lot less of the fossil fuels we are running out of so fast! And the proof? The very people, who NEVER use a cooker at home for fear of loss of taste, almost eat their own fingers and cant stop complimenting the food at my home, where there are 6 pressure cookers. I NEVER cook ANYTHING in any other way if there’s the remotest chance of using a pressure cooker.

·         I couldn’t get a roll at Howrah station…one of the busiest in Asia, and possibly in the world, because they were selling dinner… at 5 pm!!! Any other station, VT and Churchgate in Mumbai are of comparable size, would have a parallel process serving snacks while some serve dinner. And what is worse, the counter guy was incredibly rude, and almost shooed me off like a pariah stray dog.

·         I ordered tandoori chicken for the clan from a really famous Kolkata chain of moghlai and tandoori items. They have outlets all over the city, and are famous for their food. I was out shopping, and at around 6 pm I called them to order the chicken, expecting it to be at home by the time I got back. They took the order, my phone number, etc. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the house to find an absolute absence of any tandooris of any kind. It was 8.30 pm by now, and not only had the food not arrived, no calls had arrived either to let us know the cause of delay. I rang up the restaurant, only to be told that “tandooris have not been coming for a couple of days madam, not sure I can fill your order, but let me see…” this is when I lost my temper and yelled at the guy. Why the hell did he take my order in the first place, given that the supply of chicken has been down for 2 days. If he did so expecting things to miraculously change, why didn’t he call me when it became obvious that there was no change? What the hell kind of unprofessionalism is it that made me set out at 9pm to find dinner, when – with the right warning – I could have just bought the stuff on my way home?

·         Something similar is going on with my mother’s backup washing machine as I write this. The stand for the machine, ordered something like 10 days ago is arriving today. The store we got the machine from called to say that the guy has been dispatched with the stand. Great news we thought, and have been waiting for the past 3 hours for the guy t arrive, covering the 1 km from the store to this flat. Then the shop calls to say that they have told him to take a certain price, but he might try to get more so we have to haggle. What does that mean? Doesn’t the store have a fixed price? and why does the delivery guy get to decide? And why does the customer have to haggle with the delivery guy rather than the store? This in itself is totally incomprehensible. However, what is more interesting is that he has not arrived in 3 hrs, and when I called the store right now, they were surprised. They called him up, he said he had gone off for lunch (for 3 hrs????), and will come in the evening. What is amazing to me is that the store calmly passed this message to me. No penalty for not doing the job on time, no penalty for not informing the store OR the customer of this change in plans, nothing?

·         You cannot get breakfast outside the home in kolkata. There are no little udipi joints (which are present EVERYWHERE else in India). If you want to eat out in the morning you have two choices. Leather like puris with a really spicy potato curry, or equally leather like parathas  (which the vendor will squash before selling to you for some reason, with a horrible pea and potato curry. Nothing else is available, not even the rolls and moghlai parathas that kolkata is famous for. Those are EVENING foods, you see. As for dosas, vada sambhar, upma, or other stuff that I can get at every 10 steps in any other city (including NAGPUR), you can just forget it! This is Kolkata…you eat what the vendor feels like selling to you, not what you feel like eating.

·         We wanted to have lunch. So we went to a mid range restaurant in the city. Knowing what the city is like, and seeing that the watch only said 12.18pm, I poked my head into the place and asked “khabar pawa jabeto?” (can we get food now?) I was confidently told yes, at which point I asked my brother to go park the car while I got us a table. Bhai left, I walked in, was about to sit down when the guy, one of the three people lounging there, asked me “parcel to madam?” (takeaway right?). I said no… we were going to eat right there. Then he tells me parcel can be given immediately, but if you sit there and eat you have to wait for an hour! Makes no kind of sense to me, so I ask him why. Apparently the “dishwasher” hasn’t arrived. Now, there are 2 aspects to this ridiculousness that are beyond insane. One, the “dishwasher, whose job it is to arrive at 9 and wash the dishes before the restaurant opens, has not arrived at 12.20. secondly, the staff, the waiters, manager, etc, would rather turn customers away than do the “menial” chhota job of washing a couple of plates! How unprofessional is that?

·         We went to a fairly posh restaurant for lunch the other day. There was practically no one else there, it being a weekday afternoon, and one could see from the lazy attitude of the waiters that this was not going to turn suddenly into rush hour. We are a little crazy in my family, and we have unrealistic (by Kolkata standards) expectations when we go out to eat. We care about ambience, cleanliness, absence of that all-spices stink, and yes, a view – if we can get it. None of these seems to be on the priority list of the average Kolkata diner, who will eat anywhere, no matter how stinky, dirty, and claustrophobic, as long as they serve large portions of what the Kolkata resident considers good food (another thing I don’t agree with, but that’s another story). So, here we are at a place that meets our approval in many ways, and it even has a large window wall! This is by no means a common sight in most mid range restaurants in the city, which seem to actively avoid having a view, and even have blinds drawn on any isolated miniscule windows they might have. There were five of us, and a large table at the window, an eight-seater. So we headed for it happily, expecting to have lunch with a view. But no! this is Kolkata! We were rudely headed off by a waiter who insisted we take a 6-seater table instead, far away from the window. The whole bloody place was empty! His logic was “niyom nei” (it is not allowed) which is the favourite fall back of all in this city. When faced with logic, such as there are five of us, the place is empty, you can always push together two 4-seater tables in the remote possibility of a party of eight actually arriving, etc, he just parroted this “niyom nei”. As a result, the entire meal, the table stood empty, and the restaurant remained as vacant as it was at the beginning, and we ate at a non-view table. I find this amazing. Anywhere else, yes, they will try to convince you to occupy a smaller table, but would have given us the one we wanted since the place was empty. Elsewhere in the world customer IS king. Apparently the customer is a serf in Kolkata and will bloody well sit where we tell it to!

·         I have been unable to find tofu here. I happen to like tofu, and cheeses, and so-called exotic vegetables. In my five year hunt, I have not managed to find either tofu or cheeses here, and although broccoli, gherkins, red and yellow bell peppers, and purple cabbage are officially available at the Spencer’s and Big Bazaars, they are intermittent and irregular. So it’s a matter of luck on any given day, and you cant plan a menu or a dinner on that basis. Cheese is not a concept here except maybe among the very “hi-fi” crowd, whose lives I have no access to. For the normal middle to upper middle class Kolkattan, cheese is made by Amul or Brittania and comes in cubes or slices. Thanks to those companies, a few have actually heard of concepts like cheddar, mozzarella, or gouda, but those are the processed and packaged versions as well. I have no hope of finding good fresh Emmental, Gruyere, or blue cheese, or even Brie here. Tofu, available at every single neighbourhood supermarket in Mumbai, pune, etc, is something I haven’t seen yet in this city. Even Chinese restaurants don’t offer it on their menu, and those that have tofu dishes on the menu never seem to have them in reality.

·         Chili chicken, that all Indian janta chines favourite, was a major shock. The first time I ordered it, at a middle rung restaurant in Kolkata, I got a bit of a jolt. Instead of the chicken strips I am used to eating everywhere else in India, largish pieces of chicken arrived, WITH BONE! Whaaat? I thought the restaurant didn’t know what it was doing, and gave them a lecture about how chili chicken is supposed to be strips, cubes, or thin slices of chicken processed in corn flour, friend, then stir fried with chillies, capsicum, and soya sauce. It was only later, after going through several of these, that I realized that that’s what chili chicken means here. If you want the normal all-India version, you have to order the BONELESS chili chicken!

·         You can’t buy veggies, fresh chicken, or fish when you want in this city.  Yu have to do it all when the BAJAR is open, early in the morning, with a consolation run in the evening (when only half the stuff is available. There are no all day veggie stores, fresh fish outlets or chicken sellers. If you want to do something as unnatural as buy your produce in the middle of the day, you  have to make do with the 3 day old greens and frozen chicken at the Spencer’s or Big Bazaar (thank god for these chains). As for fish – you can buy it when the rest of Kolkata buys it, or forget about it. Again, I cannot buy when I want, I have to buy when Kolkata insists I buy!

·         For the last 4 years or so, one has finally been bale to rent a car or just a driver in Kolkata. For many, many years, I would come in from Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Nagpur, etc and be shocked that I could not get a temporary driver or a rented car. Finally, a few years ago, the service began to be available. And yet, four or five years later, they are still ONLY available for the 7 hour slots. In all the other cities I have lived in, there are multiple options. Yes, the standard unit is the 7 or 8 hours/70 or 80 km. However, if I don’t need one for that long, I can rent it for four hours, at a slightly higher hourly rate. Same for the drivers. However, I don’t have this option in Kolkata. Here, even if my work is for a couple of hours, I HAVE to get the car or the driver for 7 hours!

         

·         I was unable to find a single writer with decent American, British and Australian English in 6 months and more. Most Kolkata people seem to use the “70 years out of date” over verbose, over formal, over “textbook” British English that even the British no longer use. As for American or Australian English, it might as well be Greek or Latin. They have no clue such things exist, let alone knowing them enough to write in them.

·         Moreover, I could not even get replies or CVs of Kolkata based writers from online classifieds and jobsites, because the locals don’t seem to know how to search the internet, which is an essential skill for this line of work. With large projects in hand, office space and machines in place, I had to give up on the idea of a Kolkata branch for lack of workers.

·         When looking for a home to buy in Kolkata I noticed another strange thing. Most of the apartment buildings in the city, even the brand new ones, don’t have adequate parking facilities! Say a society has 2 buildings, with eight apartments each; one would expect 16 parking spots in the complex, one for each of the owners, right? Wrong! In Kolkata, you are lucky if it has four! There’s even a fairly good chance it might not have ANY!! The only thing I can conclude from this is a lack of car culture, and a more rural mindset which tries to maximize living space but sees no need to earmark space for such LUXURIES as cars or bikes.

·         Until very recently, (like a couple of months ago), one could not book a gas cylinder on the phone here. For the last five years or so I have seen people call and call the numbers given on the little gas books, the numbers of the dealer, and get the same messages. “the number you are calling is temporarily disconnected”, “the number you are calling is not responding”, “the number you are calling is busy”. Now, while I have occasionally gotten all of these messages when calling my gas dealer in Pune or Mumbai or Nagpur, it was by no means a constant thing, and eventually I got through and booked my cylinder. In Kolkata, in five years, neither my mother nor I have been able to get through EVEN ONCE! Every time a cylinder had to be booked, it had to be done by going to the agency in person, standing in the line with other unfortunates, and booking the damn thing at the counter! Thank god they implemented centralized voice activated booking a couple of months ago!

·         Office timings here are 10 to 5 when the rest of India works on a 9 to 6 schedule. This does not include the inevitable lackadaisical attitude of the people which makes the real office time around 11 (even though dawn happens here around 4 am, and 11 is practically afternoon). Which is why, unlike every other metro in India, rush hour in Kolkata is between 9.30 and 10.30, instead of 8.30 to 9.30 am. As for end of day, officially it is 5 instead of 6 (why no one knows), so the evening rush hour starts getting underway from 4.30 pm onwards. Yes, the work ethic sucks, this is but a small example of it.

·         Shops open at 11.00 am. Which is ridiculous in itself. Shops open at 9 or before in most cities, even the ones which do not claim to be a metro. Then the shops in Kolkata close at 1pm!!!!!!!!!! Till 5 pm!!!!!!!!!!! This is unimaginable in any other major city. Then, shops close again by 8.30, or if you are lucky 9!!!!!!!! How is anyone supposed to go shopping in this city? I get out of the house at 9am, before it gets insanely hot, and would love to get my shopping finished before the scorching starts….but NO! Can I wait until later? Until after I finish some work? NO! It must be precisely timed between 11.30 and 1, and 5.30 and 8.30. Because unlike REAL metro cities, shops are NOT open till 10 or 11pm here.

·         For the nth time today I walked out of a store in disgust. Kolkata store keepers just will not serve you! You walk into a store and it’s a competition of nonchalance. A contest of wills between you and the shopkeeper to see who cracks first. A Kolkata shopkeeper will NEVER, NEVER ask you what you want. We’ve actually tried this, dad and I. In an empty shop, the person behind the counter will resolutely and fixedly stare over your head, or do something else, instead of glancing at you and asking “may I help you?” or even a simple ”yes?” Once you manage, of your own initiative, to attract their attention, the storekeeper, like today, will insist that you tell him EXACTLY what you want so he can fetch just that item out of storage. Unlike Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Nagpur, Pune, where they show you 200 sarees, and 25 upholstery samples before they expect you to pick one, here you better know precisely what you are looking for before you get into the shop. DO NOT expect them to show you more than MAYBE a couple of items (if you are lucky).

·         We went to buy shoes for my brother. Walked into a huge swanky shoe store in a major market area of the city. After having checked out a number of other stores on this shopping trip, and not having found anything we wished to buy, we were really glad when this store had some lovely chappals and shoes that we all liked. Bhai asked the salesman for a couple of the better designs in size 9. The salesman, being the magical expert of all things footwear, insisted bhai hold his foot out, examined it from afar with his micrometer eyes, and declared that a size 8 is more than enough. “8 I apnar size”. Now these are not the first shoes my bro is buying. He is 32, and has been wearing shoes for some 30 years of his life. Presumably, having had the same shoe size for the last 10 years or so, he knows what it is? Also, even if an 8 “will do” for him, but he wants a 9, it is his choice. But no…. in Kolkata you cannot buy what YOU want, you must buy what the SHOPKEEPER wants you to buy. So the salesman insisted on selling us the size 8, refusing to even get the 9 out of storage!    

·         Most of the stores STILL don’t accept credit cards. If they do, they expect you to shop for a certain minimum amount, or charge 100 rupees extra! This is true even of jewelry stores!!! We shopped with cards in Chennai in 1986… almost all large and medium stores accepted them, and many small ones as well. Mumbai, since 1991, we have shopped with plastic. In Pune, even if I went to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall shop in Tulsibag, they would take plastic, for any amount, without any extra charges!

·         Looking for a HATKE saree for my family wedding, I went through ALL the major saree stores in Kolkata with no result. 4 floors of sarees, and all they have are endless repeats of the same old tired designs. I asked for something in purple and was met with sullen comments like “how is it possible to be so specific madam”. In entire stores with thousands of sarees, they could not find me 10 pieces in purple! I miss the mega stores like Shagun in Pune and even the small stores like Man Mandir in Malad, Mumbai which had endless variety. End of the day I had to go to a NON Bengali store, called Jaylakshmi, where they displayed one piece after the other, with the smiles never leaving their faces, saying “just take a look ma’am this is new, don’t buy, just take a look”, and found me EXACTLY what I wanted! Reminded me of nicer cities.

·         People here are unbelievably rude, all the time! Especially people in the service industry! From waiters, and sales staff, to storekeepers, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, tailors, you name it. None of them has ANY clue how to talk to a customer, and has never heard of the politeness principle of the English language. Thank you, please, may I help you, smiles, soft tones, none of this computes with them. THEY are the rulers, the great ones doing you a favour, and the customer is the beggar, the beholden one who is being blessed with this favour. Even national and international chains seem to be unable to train this out of their staff! The staff remains sullen, perpetually angry, offensive, and combative!

·         Kolkata used to be renowned for its helpful and caring folk, and how well it treated its women. Recently, in the run up to the family event, my father and I were running around getting stuff done when the car broke down on us. For close to an hour and a half, in the blazing summer sun, in one of the hottest days in the last five years, I pushed the car down kolkata streets, ALONE, while my old father steered and tried to get it started, without a SINGLE offer of help from any KOLKATA resident. Were the roads magically deserted? No. was I invisible? NO. hundreds of people stopped to watch, craned their necks out of buses, autos, cabs, cars, almost caused accidents by turning back entirely on bikes to see this fun sight, but no one, NOT A SINGLE PERSON, offered to help or asked what was wrong. Finally, when I came upon a bunch of men sitting outside a shop, passing the time, I asked for their help. They REFUSED! They made excuses like there are no labourers, who will push now…. Four strong young men sitting around… pushing a car is beneath them I suppose.

·         I haven’t yet seen a doctor here who prescribes antacids with pain killers or recommends vitamin b-complex with antibiotics. This routine, and necessary pairing, seems to be an absent concept here.

·         Gynecologists have never heard of using a curtained off area, or cover sheets when they do an internal pelvic exam. They expect you to just pull your pants down and sprawl on the rubber examining table, without a sheet over you, while they poke and prod at your private parts. And this is true even for the best known ones in really good clinics! The only place I have seen, which was worse in this matter than Kolkata, was Nagpur. But Nagpur is a small town, this is a METRO city proud of its CALCHAAR and education. So why this absence of basic dignity   at a doctor’s office?

·         My brother was taken ill with food poisoning like symptoms, runs, extreme nausea, frequent vomiting, in the middle of the night. At 3 am we rush him to this fairly large hospital in the area. Turns out they have no emergency room, no doctor on duty! Where to go now? At this point bhai is so sick he can hardly sit up. So we ask them which hospital to take him to. Turns out none of the hospitals close by…including some of the big ones on the E M Bypass, have emergency rooms or intake facilities!! Finally find one behind Highland Park which will admit him at 4 am.

·         So kolkattans cannot fall ill in the night? Or on Sunday? All the doctors I have come across in this city in five years are unavailable on Sundays.

·         Bhai was diagnosed with food poisoning, and the doctor very clearly told the nurses that he was to be given nothing to eat or drink other than the oral rehydration solution called Electral. Four hours later he was sent a bowl of cornflakes in milk! Milk! For a lactose intolerant person with food poisoning! When we protested, we were told the nutritionist has sent it. Apparently the nutritionist thinks he/she knows better than the doctor. We, of course, sent it back, refusing to make bhai worse by feeding him such stuff.

·         As for the oral re-hydrase, it didn’t arrive. For six hours after the prescription, we kept asking for it, and kept being told “ante gecche, anle debo” (someone’s gone to get it, we’ll bring it when it arrives). It never arrived. The only thing a seriously ill patient (serious enough to have been admitted) can eat or drink, and they can’t get it to him in six hours?!! Finally, when I arrived, I went out and bought some.

·         There was no water in the taps or in the cisterns or flush tanks. This was not a fleabag hospital. This is one of the better known ones, plus bhai was in the best room, AC single deluxe room, which cost a serious bit of money. And yet, there was no water, the AC sounded like a bunch of pebbles was being tossed around inside it, and the place looked pathetic. Compare that to any hospital in pune/Mumbai/Hyderabad/Chennai/etc, and you can see the huge difference. My father was in Lilavati for a couple of weeks. The hospital to the stars, more like a five star than a treatment facility, they are courteous, efficient, professional, and surprisingly inexpensive! My mother’s knee surgery cost more, at a pathetic dump, which cost much more than Lilavati, but didn’t give even one percent of the service.

·         One cannot get a doctor’s appointment over the phone in Kolkata. In most places, you have to go in person, or send someone, to go and “naam lekha” (have your name written) on the day that you wish to be examined. Best case scenario, some places may allow you to call for the privilege of having your name written, but only on that day, only at a certain time, and there is no time estimate attached to it. So…no matter how many names there are on the list before you, everyone has to get there at the same time, before the doctor arrives, and sit around waiting their turn.

·         Alternatively, you can have your name WRITTEN, and arrive there, AFTER which they will give you a sequence based on who has arrived and who has not (taking the fee in advance. Ensuring you do not leave). Then everyone gets to hang out till the middle of the night while the doctor goes through some 30 patients. This happened to me when I broke my foot. I was forced to sit there, with a broken foot, and painkillers wearing off, for four full hours while people whose names had been written before me got looked at. Having paid Rs. 400 in advance, I was stuck. And they have no provision for an emergency! I finally left the clinic, with the long awaited plaster cast, at 11 pm, six and a half hours AFTER I first arrived there!  

·         We couldn’t find a single petrol pump/fuel station, on the left side of the road, between AJC Bose Road and Patuli. Our mistake? We crossed this large chunk of the city and decided to use the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass for a large part of the distance. Naming something Metropolitan doesn’t make it so, and this is a prime example of that. Its equivalents in other cities, like the western express in Mumbai, are teeming with fuel stations, as they should be. The very purpose of a bypass is to relieve the pressure of traffic on city roads, giving long distance commuters a fast way to get where they are going. How am I supposed to do that if I have to keep going into the damn city, and taking u-turns, to get to a fuel pump?

·         Kolkata drivers will not turn on their headlights in the city, especially on street which have decent halogen lighting. What the reason behind it is… I have no idea. Maybe it saves on wear and tear on the headlights? It is not only spooky, but unsafe to face down these thousands of cars running at me totally without any lights on.

·         All Kolkattans seem to walk at half speed, all the time. I feel as if I am perpetually on fast forward mode among people who are all walking in slow mode, and I don’t even walk that fast! In fact, among my friends from everywhere else, I am probably amongst the slowest. Everyone here though seems to amble through life as if strolling in their own back yards. A sense of purpose seems to be totally absent in all of their gaits.

·         This above is true at all times except when crossing the street. They wait while the cars are stopped at the red light, gabbing, and passing the time. at the very moment when I am given a green signal to go, they jump purposefully in front of me, plunging into the onrushing traffic, to cross the major roads. Maybe they think the red light is aimed at them? And that the green light for the cars is actually to invite them to cross? There are some idiots in every city who act in this way, true, but here, it is EVERYONE! Whole masses and hordes of people, ignoring the pedestrian crossing signal, and surging across the intersections at the exact wrong moment!

·         There is a unique concept known as the Semi Western Commode which I have never come across anywhere else in India, at least not in posh buildings like in Kolkata. And what is this amazing invention? It is a commode type thing, lower than a normal western commode, raised about a foot and a half from the floor. However, and this is the strange part, it has foot rests for squatting on it!!!! And the toilet seat is especially designed to cover those foot rests! Essentially it looks like an Indian latrine raised a foot! What the hell is the point of it? Everywhere else in India, you have the western loo and the Indian loo. It is only when trying to buy a home in this city that I first encountered this strange creature called the semi-western loo! The ridiculous mental picture of someone squatting a foot and a half high is just too funny! And this is high end flats, not rural or semi rural!

·         My flat is in an Old area. Not a newly settled one. It has been part of Kolkata at least since the partition and independence of India. Yet, in 2012, it does not yet have water pipelines or direct water supply. This is true of large parts of the city, and groundwater seems to be the only option in those places!

·         This area also does not have fixed line Broadband! I couldn’t believe it! I have lived in out of the way crannies like Sanghvi and Baner Gaon in Pune, and never had to ask twice about internet. This is a metro city, larger and more important than Pune (if you ask the locals) so why is infrastructure so pathetic? Is this how a metro is? I think not. In such a populous and old area I am still forced to work on half speed dongle!

·         Hotel bookings for Bengal tourism or other hotels, for weekend destinations around kolkata cannot be done online or on the phone! One has to go to the office…in some remote locality of the city, and book in person!!!

·         Computer printout and DTP shop owners do not know how to paste pics in a wordfile, do not know how to change font, do not know how to reformat a basic file or pic. In fact, none of them seem to know anything beyond the basic open file and give print command. I miss pune net cafes like hell…those guys are EXPERTS!

·         Invitation card printers cannot do anything other than their own catalogue of set patterns, cannot do digital prints, cannot provide good card stock. I had to search through half of Calcutta before I found one who would. 11 yrs ago in pune, a small town, non metro, I found the same in 5 minutes.

·         I had some paintings framed here for the first time, last week. They came home, I drilled the holes, put the nails and hooks in place, and went to hang them up. Imagine my surprise when I found that they had no chains to hang them by! There were hook on the edges of the frames yes, but no chain connecting them which would go over the nail in the wall to hold the picture up! Neighbours, helping me hang up my stuff, asked me “why didn’t you tell them to give the chains?” Apparently people here bring them home, then attach their own string or twine, and then hang up their paintings! How was I to know? I have had stuff framed in so many cities but I have never had to mention this. They ALWAYS came with chains attached, ready to go on the wall. I had no concept that someone had to ASK for them to provide what the rest of India considers a part of the basic package!

·         Schools in the city take no responsibility whatsoever for their “school buses”. These are all operated by private operators and all dealings are between the parents and the bus operators with the school having no say, no control, no hand at all in the running of them. Which means, if the bus doesn’t arrive, arrives late, drives badly, has an accident (which they very frequently do), or kidnaps or molests my child, I have no recourse, and the school will take no responsibility at all!

·         Most of the city has no underground sewage system. Huge open drains by every roadside are common, and calmly accepted. On stating this to some Kolkata dwellers, I got the reply “but where will the waste go?” “Uh…..into the SEWERS, under the ground like in all other major cities????”

·         The state of the roads here is frankly pathetic. Although South India has the best roads, nowhere in any major city or around it have I seen such a pitiful state of major arteries, national and state highways. Being more accustomed to driving everywhere, we feel the difference strongly, which kolkata people who have never lived anywhere else or travelled much by car do not seem to notice. It takes forever to get anywhere, and the wear and tear on the car is unbelievable! Apparently one cannot expect such basic infrastructure in a METRO city!

·         The Kolkata metro was the first of its kind in India. However, 30 yrs later, it is exactly at the same place, no expansions happened in 30 yrs (work has only now begun to build a network that should have been in place 20 yrs ago), and what exists is falling apart due to overuse and lack of maintenance. Delhi, arriving on the scene 25 years after Kolkata, has overtaken it by acres in connectivity, comfort, efficiency and quality. I am sure the Mumbai metro will too.

·         The first train of Kolkata metro on weekdays is at 7am, a solid two hours behind Delhi metro’s first train at 5am. The last train in kolkata is at 9pm, a solid 2.5 hours earlier than Delhi metro’s 11.30pm. So… even though Kolkata is so much to the east, and gets its dawn about 2 hours before Delhi, it works 2 hours behind, essentially wasting 4 hours. Then there’s the 2.5 hours lost at the end of the day. A metro city? I think not. Oh! And on Sundays the Kolkata metro does not work in the first half of the day, and services begin only after 2 pm! That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!

·         The entire city still has wires strung everywhere. Neither the electricity nor the telephone wires are either optical fibers or under ground. Feels very strange when I compare it to Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, or even Pune.

·         The lack of GK in the average, on the street, Kolkata person is APALLING! Their store of knowledge seems to stop at something like 50 years ago. Tech, social, cyber, professional, no updates have happened since then.

·         Literature for the reader in Kolkata seems to have ended with T S Eliot, and reading means Shakespeare or the Russians or Wordsworth. Anything after the 1970s is anathema. Not worth reading, etc etc.

·         Many highly educated and frequently travelling Kolkata Bengalis I know cannot even load film into their automatic cameras. The studio loads and unloads the film for them. No wonder the studio people look at me as if I am from Mars when I take my film in and tell them exactly how to develop and print, what effects I want, what format to store the digital versions in and so on!

·         There is no real industrial presence in Bengal, let alone in Kolkata. In the last 30 years or so, hundreds of thousands of small, medium and large industries have actually CLOSED down in the state, never to come back. As a result, jobs are few and far between except for highly educated people and in the new IT sector. Maybe this is the hallmark of a METRO city to locals, it is not so to me.

·         There are 3 whole pages of Jyotishi. Bashikaran, tantric, advertisements in Ananda Bazaar Patrika everyday. If they didn’t get business from it they would not spend money to advertise. This is educated, intellectual Bengal? This is not a pulp paper for the rickshaw wallahs, this is high brow daily for the intellectual artsy crème e la crème! So why are such people calling these quacks and frauds?

·         I have never seen so much of the population wearing so many, so visible, astrologically significant rings, amulets, taga, tabeej etc. I have lived in states like UP, and Maharashtra, that the average Bengali loves to deride as uneducated and superstitious, but none of them seem to be as much into these superstitious and magical “aids” towards improving their lives. Is this what superior education, superior culture, high thinking, and communism gives? And do they really think a blood-flow-restricting, cycle-chain-resembling tabeej on the upper arm goes well with skin tight jeans and a halter top?   

·         Proud, educated, cultured, polished Bengal shows DISMAL statistics in human rights and safety. It is Number 2 in Illiteracy in The Nation, it ranks at Number 3 In Sex Selective Abortions Of Female Fetuses, and it is second from last in the matter of safety for women. In addition, this educated and long term communist state ranks among the lowest in terms of organ donations and blood donations. However, it ranks very high in human trafficking, ranking as number one in the country. Also, a UNICEF study has found that 53.9% of girls in the state are married off before the age of 18. It also ranks number one in India in suicides, especially among young people ranging from 14 to 25 in age.   

·         Polio continues to be a problem, and Bengal is one of the worst offenders, only behind UP and Bihar in the matter. A mere two weeks after the WHO took India off the polio-endemic list an 18 month old child was admitted to a state hospital in Kolkata with polio. The child hails from Indrabala village in South 24 Parganas district. The last detected case of polio in the country was also from Bengal, in January last year, when a child from Howrah district was afflicted with the virus. There have been no reports of other polio cases in any other state in the 12 months between these two cases in Bengal.

·         My brother will be here for 1 month, and needs to have some clothes dry cleaned before he leaves. Since the 3^rd  of June we have been shuttling from one cleaner to the next, one laundry to the next in search of someone who can do the work in 22 days. No luck no one in this city seems to be able or willing to clean 3 kurtas and a dhoti in 22 days! And what’s the reason I am getting? “It’s raining now madam, how can we guarantee anything?” what has rain got to do with it? Is it that the DRY cleaners here charge dry cleaning rates and then get the clothes WASHED by the neighbourhood dhobi?

·         My brother wanted to write personal thank you notes to all the guests who had come to the reception. So we have spent the last four days scouring Kolkata for blank cards that can be used. You know … a box of identical greeting cards that say thank you at the top and are blank inside? The kind I can get at any card shop in Pune? Turns out Kolkata stores have never heard of such a thing! Even the greeting card stores in the biggest of the malls looked totally blank and then slowly shook their head “no”.

·         Kolkata is the honking capital of the world. I have lived in much more congested, far larger cities, with much worse traffic conditions, but I have never seen one where people honk so much! Everyone seems to always have one hand on the horn while they drive, and don’t care if they are near a school or a hospital. They play their horns compulsively in situations where any one can see it is quite useless… not likely that the 200 cars in front of you in the jam will magically disappear because you are honking at them!

·         It took me 4 months and 4 mistrials (with 300 US dollars lost each time) to finally get the online transfer of money from my Paypal account to my local bank account sorted! Something that took me 10 mins in pune! Not only can the employees at the banks here NOT know how to use a computer, they don’t know NEFT processes, give wrong NEFT numbers, botch up entries! They cannot grasp why I would want to receive money from non Indian sources when I am not an NRI!

·         Kolkattans still firmly believe that you should NOT drink water just before you step out of the house into the hot sun. I was actually told I would not only get fever but actually die if I did that! And contrary to medical opinion (oh these doctors don’t know what they are talking about) they wil not let you have water when you arrive from the hot sun! they will torture you by making you sit for five minutes by the clock before they bring you water (to prevent pneumonia), and when they do… 80% of the time it will not be cold or even cool. That’s right, 80% of the calcatians I know never store water in the fridge in summer! What’s up with that!!!???

·         The great Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport is a major joke. First of all, no real direct international flights either take off or arrive here anymore. The only ones that use the terminal are the Mumbai Kolkata, Delhi Kolkata, tail end legs of international routes. The facilities are totally hilarious. The terminal is more like a dairy yard than an INTERNATIONAL airport. Even the PUNE airport (which we laughed at all the time) had better facilities. The loos are disgusting in both the international and domestic terminals, help desks are nonexistent or uninformed, food stalls etc are badly stocked with stale items.

·         The Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport has a website which manages to provide NO information AT ALL to passengers or family and friends. The last time it was updated was in 2008, and although there is a phone update service advertised on it, that doesn’t work either.