A Disillusioning Triumph

Yesterday was Aarshi: Mirroring Perspectives. Music, Dance, Recitations, Performances, and love…. No entry fee.

Being part of KRPF (Kolkata Rainbow Pride Festival), the organizing entity, I knew I had to be there (of course, I WANTED to be there, but increasingly these days want is just not enough to be able to do things). So, I left the institute early, travelled 2 and a half hours, and got to Gyan Manch at 6.

The program was amazing. Having not been a particularly active part of the planning and execution of this program, I came to it with a viewer’s eyes, and I was impressed. 

Mitali Sengupta and her classical/semi-classical renditions (including one of my all time favourite bandishes and another much liked one) were soothing and pleasing at once. 

Buddhi Edirisinghe opened a whole new world of Sri-Lankan dance forms to the audience. 

Our very own thespian and star Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee soaked everyone in emotions with a solid poetic performance. 

And the KRPF quartet of Jaydip Jana, Souvik Som, Dipankar Chanda, and  Anjan Ghosh came up with a fantastic performance of poetry, narration, Rabindrasangeet, and Ghazals.

We wound up the evening with the customary bear hugs and “keorami” (flaming, over the top behavior). All in all, it was a spectacular evening.

However, it left me disillusioned and depressed.  

The low turnout was quite depression inducing. And it just reinforced in my mind why I am increasingly pissed off and cynical about “the movement” in this city. Forget general public, forget allies and friends, if even the core community cannot be expected to show any support then what really is the point? All that expense, effort, energy, time, thought, and hard work…. Of so many people… and community members could not even be bothered to turn up and watch? For free? What would this do except demoralize the people making so much of an effort to showcase talents and arts within the queer community?

I keep seeing posts in various queer groups and forums lamenting about why queer people are not building a close community, about gay men only looking for “fun” and not love, about the lack of alternative support structures, about our talents not being recognized. If this was a party, I am sure the turnout would have been at least 20 times greater. So what does that show? The very people who are crying so incessantly about all the “lacks” are not ready to support an effort to make a change. The very people who say they want more “depth” in queer people and spaces are not willing to spend a few hours supporting an effort to create that depth. The people who go on and on about solidarity, equality, and “protests” cannot be bothered to make the minimal effort to actually show that solidarity when it is requested of them.

No wonder I feel less and less like participating in these politics.

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.

Devout Assault

Trying to work in the privacy and personal space of my own home-office is an impossibility today. Through tightly shut windows and almost-hermetically-sealed doors I am assaulted by wave after wave of loud, raucous, ear-drum-blasting waves of sound. It has been going on all night, and with most of the day gone as well, it shows no signs of abating. Four different sets of loudspeakers are playing four different – but equally loud and offensive – sets of something they think is music. The resulting ripples and cross currents and clashes are almost more than I can bear!

It happens to be one of the millions of pujas, or days of worship, of the Indian calendar. Given an estimated 33 million gods and goddesses, it is almost a miracle that it doesn’t happen twice a day, everyday. In addition to the major deities and their holy days that most of the country celebrates, there are the many smaller local or class/caste specific deities who come in for their fair share of adulation every year. Depending on where you live, this sort of public puja celebrations can be an almost daily occurrence.

And what does a public puja celebration mean? It is a bunch of people deciding to infringe on my rights to peace, the right to not be treated to inhuman levels of noise, the right to unblocked roads, the right to not have to deal with drunken louts dancing obscenely in the streets, all in the name of religion. And, because it IS in the name of religion, no one dare protest, the cops wont act, and the people having to bear the brunt have no choice but to go on bearing it.

In my lane, and within roughly three minutes of walk from my apartment building, there are some six of these shindigs going on full blast. This is a celebration after all, and in India what that means is loud, loud film music – often of the more raunchy sort – played to all willing and unwilling listeners via loudspeakers. There’s a little bit of actual worshipping going on, sure, but that’s hardly the most important thing. A lot of money has been collected, via door to door voluntary (read give or else…) donation collections, sponsorships, and more, and since a large part of it has been judiciously saved by the organizers, it is their right to spend it on what they want (read huge boom boxes and lots of booze).

Why they should assault their deities, and everyone within a 3 mile radius, with way higher than acceptable decibel levels of the trashiest of trashy music is beyond me. And if you have to have such inappropriate music… for whatever reasons… leave the rest of us out of it! Why must worship involve getting mindlessly drunk and dancing in the streets? Why must it involve misbehaving with women, children, the elderly? Is this what religion, devotion, spirituality is supposed to be? And even if it is… for you… leave my eardrum, my body, and my kid out of it!

Of course it is immature and unrealistic to expect them to think of others, that’s not how this nation works. We rather like rubbing our religions/devotions/beliefs/opinions in other people’s faces whether they want it or not. We like showing every reluctant neighbor and disturbed muhalla person how much we revere our gods, never mind the ill, the dying, the pregnant, or simple the lover of peace and quiet. And, what is more, with our cultural ethos and our strange brand of secularism, we have full rights to assault everyone within hearing range for 72 straight hours with ear piercing renderings of ancient hymns, mantras, or simply the worst songs from 10 yrs ago. And – and this is the best part for them, the worst for everyone else – no one else has the right to object. If you do, you are infringing on their rights to practice their religion! The cops are not likely to be very forthcoming controlling the noise either (half of them being part of the CELEBRATIONS).

This is a free country after all, and a secular one, and apparently everyone and their uncle has the right to bring their religion into the streets and parade it in your face, LOUDLY, all the time! This I do not get. To me, secularism would mean having the right to believe or not believe, worship or not worship, celebrate or not celebrate, within the confines of one’s own home, or place of worship. How can blocking traffic, encroaching on a public road to turn it into a temporary kitchen for the jagrata, keeping everyone up all night because I am up (saving their souls, making sure of their entry into heaven with so many bhajans), assaulting them with Sheila Ki Jawani, wolf whistling at them when they pass, surrounding them in a drunken wolf-pack and molesting them, and in general acting like a total SOB be a religious thing? How can it be celebration? How can it even be secular or democratic?

Take it home damn-it! And keep it there! 

Solitary by choice -- but not lonely

I have often been accused of overanalysing everything, including my own emotions and motives, and of being an insufferable know-it-all whose only aim in life seems to be to appear Different, and to be contrary to all accepted and received, traditional and popular, thoughts and opinions. It used to irk me, hurt me, bother me substantially, especially when a lot of people I cared for and loved seemed to be of the same opinion. Over time, I have come to realise that these accusations spring from places of blindness, weakness, and refusal to think, even in those whom I had thought of as fairly rational and “thinking” as human beings. As I grow older, and more assured, more sure of the basic rightness of using the brain I was given for the purpose it seems made for, I have come to take these accusations as badges of honour. To me, someone flinging this at me means I have made a dent, that I have made them uncomfortable with their “this is how it is because this is how it always was” lives, and shaken or at least made them question even if only in passing, their opinions gleaned solely from popular media or received from TRADITION (or both).

What it means, realistically, is that I am more and more alone, more and more often. My close friend circle has shrunk, from nearly 30 or 40 people, to a select handful, as I weed out the ones most persistently bothered by the fact that I have strong opinions on practically everything, and that I insist on being vocal about them. To me, disagreement, even healthy argument, is the elixir of life. What I do not, and will not tolerate is the twisted barbs, the sarcasm, and clear denigration, even from people I love very much. I know that it is very much a part of the Indian mentality, and especially Bengali mentality, to deal in what is called “friendly insults”. The closer friends or cousins are, the nastier they seem to be to each other. Now, while I am a great fan of honesty and straight forwardness, I do require (as I give) basic respect, and an absence of wilful nastiness and sarcasm from people close to me. If I care about someone, I may pull a leg occasionally, but will do my utmost to avoid being hurtful and insulting, and I expect the same from my people.

Some people, who genuinely care about me, are getting worried at my seeming sanyas. Here’s a woman, they seem to think, who could hardly survive without being constantly surrounded by hordes of people; someone who was constantly throwing or going to parties; someone who HAD to get out of the house every evening, even if it was for an adda at the neighbourhood cafe, or would go mad. And, over the past few years she has become increasingly home bound. Parties have become less and less frequent, the huge numbers of friends have dwindled to just a very few, and pubs and going dancing and coffee addas are nonexistent. Surely she must be unhappy? And this perceived unhappiness makes them want to FIX things; to draw me out of my shell, to get me to DO more again.

Do I miss that life? Those evenings? Sure I do, sometimes. It’s all a lot of fun. But it is a question of choices now. I’d rather have a quiet evening with a few people with whom I can talk and exchange ideas and argue and debate in respect and without acid, than have a roomful of people bent on proving how much superior they are to everyone else, mainly through the twin alleys of denigration and sarcasm. This, obviously, means less contact with the outside world in an attempt to avoid all the sheeples in it. So, do I miss the intellectual stimulation of searching for, and finding, other people with half a brain and a conscious and rational approach to life? Nope, I don’t, because the internet has filled in quite efficiently. Blogging is a fine way of letting off the steam I would otherwise have let off in ranting to so-called friends, and I have found far more interesting people on chat than I seem to meet face to face these past years.

After all, when one is in college, or at the university, the very nature of campus life ensures a certain amount of worthwhile contact. People from all over the country, sometimes from all over the world, from various backgrounds, socio economic strata, upbringing, all in one place – it’s like having a specially created pool of people likely to provide some new opinion or experience. Also the fact that they are young, at a stage barely – if at all—out of their rebellious phases, and many of them are likely to be as open minded and iconoclastic as one would wish. Ten or fifteen years down the line, unless you have emigrated, chances are that no such pool is available to you any longer. If you work outside the home, things are marginally better, for you at least get to see a few new people every once in a while, and there’s always your colleagues. With luck, you can have almost the same kind of a group as you did on campus. I say almost because by now everyone has work and personal commitments, significant others, spouses, kids, bills, mortgages, and so on, all of which tends to drag even the most “interesting” of people into the morass of living, thinking, and being like the “typical” bunch.

If you work from home, like me, or are a stay at home wife and mom, access is virtually zero. The only new people I am ever likely to meet at this stage in life are nosy neighbours and the obsessive, helicopter parent mothers of the other kids in my daughter’s class. I could strike up a conversation with any of them at the daily pick the kid up from school vigil, get pally, introduce the men to each other, and for a “social circle”. Truth be told, the idea horrifies me. From what I have seen, the only thoughts these people seem to have is “school school school-work test exam exam books notebooks marks” interspersed by “in laws in laws” and a little bit of clothes, popular movies, and so on – none of which is my idea of regular brain food. I am totally un-obsessed about schooling and exams, (she’s five for god’s sake!) and none of the other topics I have heard bandied about so far has left me anything but totally disinterested.

Me? I’d rather be searching for, reading, and commenting on interesting blogs that I can share with my fellow searchers after meaning and thought in the cyber world. Come to think of it, I’ve met  lot of people really worth knowing, people I m proud to know, people who help my own mind keep evolving, right here in cyberspace, over the last few years. The chances of meeting them in my limited day-to-day circumscribed life would have been impossible. They r spread all over the world, some new acquaintances, some friends of friends, and some total strangers I’ve bumped into through their blogs. I feel a lot more connected with most of these people than I do with many of the people who surround me every day.

The flock mentality, the flock lifestyle, and the common and daily concerns of the flock, whether small or large, leave me cold. And while I may have the occasional passing pang for a wild night of partying and pub hopping, I am much happier with the fellow non-sheeples, some of whom I have never met, and may never meet.

Random musings – of anti feminist ads, valentine’s days and other nonsense

Ok…so many pet peeves…so little time…. Haven’t ranted in a while… today…taking the things foremost on my mind…one at a time.

·         “ladakh ki barfili wadiyon me hum teen akeli ladkiyan (in the frozen valleys of Ladakh, three girls alone) …we were lost”  …anyone else see the GLARING grammatical error and the problematic thought process here? First the grammatical….TEEN ladkiyan AKELI kaise ho sakti hain? It is impossible for three girls to be ALONE. By definition three people means none of them is alone. So, let me get this….this is the bharatiya ABALA NAARI (helpless woman) syndrome right? Women…even if there are three of them…are alone, and helpless, without a man to take care of them and protect them? Even if that MAN is a 14 year old boy….and the women are (supposedly) more mature 20 somethings….right? hmmm… and MAGGI is shamelessly selling its crappy noodles with this. And what REALLY gets to me is I am probably the only one whose teeth are set on edge every time I hear it (in my immediate circle at least)! Am I overreacting? Probably…. But I think it is symptomatic of how little things have changed in the India of feminism and women’s rights that copywriters come up with such a line, editors and clients pass it, it is aired, repeatedly, and no one even notices! “Must we take umbrage at everything?” I can hear the detractors moaning. No we don’t. me…I don’t care if we spell it wommyn or wimmin or just plain old women. I don’t care too much if someone calls me a poetess instead of poet (simply shrug and think they don’t know better). But this one grates on my nerves because of how subliminal it is. It is just SUCH a big example of the mental processes of the writer, as well as everyone else… YES YES YES it irritates me.

·         On another track… this V-day hoopla just seems to get more and more all pervasive every year. And I can’t seem to explain to most people (thank god I know some who feel different) why I don’t CELEBRATE valentine’s day. Theories range from me being a loveless/lovelorn bitter loner to being heartless…. And unnecessarily trying to be different. Whatever man. The way I see it… I would prefer to express my love for anyone… parents, brother, friends, significant other, child, every day of my life. Would also prefer the same in return. What’s the point of not acknowledging what someone means to you for the rest of the year, and then, on a day decided and hyped mainly by greeting card companies, deciding to buy flowers and chocolates? Flowers that cost about 20 times the normal price mind you. Why not just do nice things everyday? Things that don’t cost a shitload of money, but say very clearly and loudly…I care? Like a cup of tea at the right time, or doing the washing when she’s not feeling too good, or sharing a quiet moment, or holding hands in a sad film? One “gyaani” gave me the historical defense. There is a historical context to the day, to the celebration. That’s why we should celebrate. ….don’t necessarily see that…first of all, whatever historical context there supposedly is, is from an early Christian martyr ….relevance to moi in today’s day and age?....zero. also…there is no evidence that there is any historical fact behind the ROMANTIC associations of St Valentine of Terni. Most of the current legends about secret marriages and patronship of lovers seems to be either a product of Chaucer’s imagination (quite the imagination), or extrapolation by 18^th century antiquaries. So….whaaat? I’d rather not make impossibly rich greeting card companies richer thanks. I’ll just say a quiet “love you” everyday instead.

·         With a five year old at home, I end up watching a lot of cartoons, as can be imagined. Hating, as I do, all kinds of things dubbed in Hindi, its painful for me that a lot of the cartoons are Hindi-dubbed, at least in the area I live in. I could switch language and choose the English versions, of course, but monkey kind of prefers the Hindi versions because she can understand all the dialogue, and until her English gets better, looks like I am stuck with this. It’s irritating enough to have Tom, Jerry, Bean et al spouting dialogues in Hindi. But what’s worse is things like Oggy and the Cockroaches, which in the original version has no dialogues whatsoever. In deference to the much lower IQ of the Hindi audience, or some such, the Hindi version comes complete with a voiceover and dialogues, forced into the action. And, to top it all, these are done in spoof voices which sound like certain ham actors of the Bollywood echelon. So…what is this about? Are we afraid that Hindi speaking kids are not smart enough to decipher the action from the extremely broad physical comedy going on, on the screen? Do we think they need a roadmap to find their own behinds? What? I just find it extremely patronizing and irritating. And what’s with these dubbing companies anyway? They can’t look up a dictionary if they r unsure of a pronunciation? Can we please not pronounce orchid the way it is written? It's ORKID you idiots…and its sets my teeth on edge to hear or chid or chid. And its Wilbur and Orville Wright… pronounced Or vil ….not or wi le. GOD!

·         And what’s with the movie channel subtitles these days? Is crap really a better word than shit? And how is intercourse a more polite/less vulgar word than sex? And does son of a witch fool anyone? And ass is just missing…so you smartass becomes you smart, hardass becomes hard, etc etc….that’s plain retarded man. Just bleep out the words and leave them out of the titles why don’t you? I can lip read them fine thnx…and I don’t have to spend half the time and attention of watching a serious thriller or drama laughing at your inane transmutations.

Is everyone ageing prematurely?

If you look around you, look at the TV ads, and at all the Indian women (and a large percentage of the men) who have gone nuts trying to stop age from showing, you would think that suddenly, everyone has begun to age prematurely. After all, much as I hate the idea of any artificial age hiding product, I can remotely imagine a 20-something with a premature ageing problem wanting to use them.

If a 23 year old starts to show a serious amount of gray hair, there is some little justification for using a hair dye, for example. But could there be anything more ridiculous than a 70 something person, hardly able to walk due to arthritis, clearly showing age in posture, skin, and nature, with completely jet-black hair?? I think not. Yet that is the road most people seem to be on! In any large gathering of Indians these days, parties, theatre, or whatever, you would be hard put to it to find a single natural salt and pepper head. Even if the average age of the gathering is above 50!! One or two of the men might be going the natural way, but chances are you won’t be able to spot a single woman, no matter what her age, with a single strand of gray.

Do these people really think they are fooling anyone? Does a 72 year old grandmother of three really expect people to take her for a 20 year old because she has dyed hair? All she is really doing is making a rich cosmetic company even richer. What on earth can be more dignified, more attractive, or more sexy, than a naturally salt and pepper head? There is nothing more horrible, to me at least than an obviously older person who has the “polyester” hair that regular dyeing gives you. Puts me in mind of Vincent Price and old silent zombie movies. It’s so inhuman! And frankly so disgusting!

Doctors, lawyers, professors, talented actors… why would you demean your position in society and the dignity of your profession in such a cheap way? Does anyone really think Shabana Azmi looks better today, with her dyed hair, overdone make-up, and over the top clothes, than she did even five years ago? I would much rather see her back in her sober, arty cotton sarees, understated make-up, and natural grace. And that goes for everyone, man woman other.

And what’s with this huge thing with anti ageing creams, lotions, slaves, gels, and what have you? Seems to be part of the whole “stay young forever” thing that average humanity is so mad after. Of course what no one seems to be telling these women (and it is largely, almost exclusively women who buy these products) is that none of them work! Any competent dermatologist will tell you that wrinkles are cause by the lower layer of skin, the dermis, shrinking and coming loose from the subcutaneous layer underneath. The slowdown in the production of collagen and elastin at the border areas of the dermis and the subcutaneous layers also adds to the effect. The same doctor would also tell you that no matter how many, and how much of, creams, oils, lotions, etc your apply, nothing can reach deep enough to get to the problem areas, or change anything.

Essentially, all you are really doing is making a lot of money for Ponds and L’Oreal, and that’s all. And what really gets to me, and makes me pity the insecure, spineless seekers after the fountain of youth, is seeing a DOCTOR buy anti ageing cream! How priceless is that!!!! As for me, I am proud of every single day and minute that I have lived here on this planet. I have lived more in my almost 34 years than many do in a lifetime. I have seen, felt, experienced, tested, tasted, been through, and done a huge lot, and every minute of that is precious to me. I am proud of how old I am.

If, 15 years from now, someone told me that I look like an elder sister to my 18-year-old daughter, I would take it as a serious insult!!!!!!! And I am sure she would not be too happy about it either. I am proud to be a mom, shall be equally as proud to be a grandmom, whenever that happy day arrives, and trying to seem younger than I am is something I JUST DON’T GET!!! Hell, I threw a party when I found the first strand of gray in my hair!