Bhopal Gas Tragedy....

Growing up in the 80s and 90s in India, we kind of grew up with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. It happened when we were in primary school, for me it happened the year my brother was born. Before that my association with Bhopal was through my General Knowledge class where I was taught that it was the capital city of Madhya Pradesh. So when the newspapers carried news about Bhopal I was naturally interested. It was a name I had learned recently and I wanted to know what the newspapers were saying about this city. I was too young to realize the full import of the incident, though I remember my mother explaining that many people had died. As a child I was fascinated by the fact that many animals had died too.  One newspaper image still lingers in my memory, of that a small boy curled up dead clutching a dead animal, probably a goat. What a tragedy it was...the nation was stunned, its citizens shocked...newspapers were full of it, whenever elders met they discussed it. Political parties made full use of it, indulging in blame game and the Communists blamed the US imperialism and  the central government to their hearts' content.

Years passed, the civil society movement around the tragedy grew as we were growing up... the anniversary was commemorated each year, there were rallies, candle light processions, gheraos, protests and people wore black bands to show solidarity and news papers carried articles to trigger public memory. NGOs mushroomed working with the victims and fighting for justice. So the incident lived on, sometimes ebbing away, sometimes coming to the forefront. The court cases started, and along came the controversies and the frustration at the long winded judicial system. Various studies started coming out, how the health of the population was affected, how the environment was affected. Two messages came out very strongly-- how government, bureaucracy  and Union Carbide were responsible and how people were pinning their hopes on the judicial system to bring justice.

Years later in college and then later in universities, I interacted with groups working with the victims,  watched theatrical  performances  on the disaster, art exhibitions. Studying human rights the case came up for discussion in the course of my study. For me it was reliving the incident. I got to know more facts about the tragedy which had happened years ago, an incident which was not personal yet deeply personal, a tragedy which did not touch me and mine, yet had an enormous impact on me.

Over the years I have followed the fight for justice, most times through news papers, sometimes by wearing the black band, or donating a meager amount of money or visiting a public meetings, lectures or debates.

It was not only the fight for justice for the people affected, for our generation this fight was to affirm our faith in our justice system. Some horrible tragedy had happened when we were kids and we had expected that by the time we grew up justice would be delivered! What a wrong expectation that was!

Way too many things had already gone wrong, too many mistakes by our bureaucrats and government, we thought that the judiciary would poke its finger in the right place and pin responsibility onto the guilty. The judiciary was to be our savior. Because otherwise who else was left? The next step is the dreaded 'rebellion' by the people driven by frustration and voicelessness. No we did not want that...we wanted to have  our faith in the Indian Constitution and the rule of law reaffirmed. Today's verdict is such a massive let down...I am not angry, I am disappointed. My first instinct was to ask myself whether the Chief Judicial Magistrate is under political pressure or God forbid taken a bribe? Then I recoil from my own thoughts, I do not want to reach that level of cynicism. I am part of young India, we need to take the nation forward, not give up on it.

Somehow in this rush to be developed, the poor has gone out of favour in India. The poor and the disadvantaged are considered unpleasant aspects of the nation who need to be swept under the carpet or pushed into another hastily patched slum which is more like a black hole. All we want to show the world is our IT engineers, our rich industrialists with unprecedented personal riches and our English speaking, accent faking youth working in call centres. Thankfully India is much, much more than that and we Indians are proud of our diverse background. So what if we are developing and riddled by multitude of problems, we have our dignity and our faith for better future. If only our politicians, bureaucrats and judiciary believed in it too!

The View from Garden City....

Just finished reading 'The View from Garden City: A Novel' by Carolyn Baugh. The novel is about a young American student's life in Cairo where she goes to study Arabic. She encounters Egyptian women and tells their tales of love, agony, pain, waiting, mothering.....the list goes on. In fact this book is more about these women than the narrator. The narrator just by being American seems to be mundane and not so exotic and the more exotic bunch (read Egyptian women) take over and fight for space in the book.

At the end of the book the author very clearly states her position. The stories of these women in no way is a reflection of Islam, rather is drawn from the tradition and culture within which these women function. Her narrating style is  gentle and she makes special effort to be non judgemental.

For a non Egyptian, the book beckoned. Being interested in Egypt ever since those history lessons long back in school, a fascination for the country grips me. When I started reading the book, I was ready for a flavour of Egypt and its foreign and exotic culture. In my eagerness I was ready with stereotype visualizations of a sexy belly dancer, smell of shesha, the hustle of a busy souq and of course those eternal pyramids shrouded in mystery. I was seeking the exotic, I found the known.

The stories of these women span emotions, relationships, experiences and   sufferings. First the positive bits-- the mother-daughter and the father-daughter relationships abound in the book, the love and care lavished on the young sometimes to the point of suffocation, over protective parents, the family support system, the humour and the rebellion. The author seamlessly weaves them into Cairo and its various landscapes, the nooks and the crannies and those inhabiting these spaces. The city provides a wonderful backdrop with its unique nuances-- the hustle, the bustle, the fights,  the colour, the smells and of course the chaos and the confusion. Now the sufferings of the women-- poverty, early marriage, the desperate pressure of marriage on young women and the eventual bowing down to a compromised loveless marriage, subsequent acceptance of the marriage as the 'ideal', female genital mutilation, inability to have children, miscarriages,  infant mortality, multiple marriages, domestic violence etc. But these women are in no way pitiful, they are feisty ladies who have long ago maneuvered the art of independence within their constricted spaces. The have the key to the mystery of being happy in the face of loss and sufferings. In their own way they scorn the Western, bemoaning their lack of caring for their young. Soon my glee of knowing about Egypt vanishes and I meet realities and oppression of my own culture.

Replace a few things here and there, take away the genital mutilation, introduce dowry deaths and Egypt gets replaced by India, Cairo becomes Delhi or Kolkata all too vividly. Suffering of women across cultures, traditions, patriarchies, religions and countries are so similar that they take one's breathe away.

These sufferings are nothing new, women have been inflicted by these for ages. In fact the more old a civilization (read patriarchy) is, more polished is its mechanisms of inflicting torture on women. Even at the risk of adding fuel to the smug sneer to those who oppose any kind of feminist thought, it is the women who perpetuate and perfect these tortures in name of tradition. To my surprise the scenario is exactly the same in Cairo. It is the mother who goes mad when the marriageable daughter is not married off, it is she who ushers in unsuitable suitors, who approves of lame men. Why you ask yourself? Why does she do it? Why is she forcing her daughter towards the same compromise that she succumbed to so many years ago? The fathers look on helplessly, fleeing their shrews of wives. Why, why are these men helpless? Are they not part of patriarchy, the ones who oil the system and lays down the sweeping dos and do nots?

I answer my own question. I think the great thing about patriarchy is that it is omnipotent, it lays down the same rules for all men, if men weaken, or grow sensitive, they automatically fall out of the system, new men are eager to take their place. And women they are the biggest catalysts in the hands of patriarchy. The work on these women start early in their lives, they are made to learn the rules, all rebellion is carefully got rid off, the victim is carefully branded as the criminal, fears of society's derision is strongly implanted. Little by little generations and generations of women are perfected by the machinery to convert younger women, to nip their rebellion, to mutilate their genitals, to need them at home, to feed them less than the sons, to withhold love and affection, to stop them from going to schools, to demand dowries, to kill women if need be for more dowries, to torture the daughter-in-law, to pressurize for a male heir, to force female infanticide................. These women, are more convincing then then men when they say ' Years ago I had to do what I am asking you to do today. This is life!'. In fact these women in my mind resemble the militia in a dictatorship. Their skills have been honed to perfection, and never having known any better alternative, they think the reality is the best option and fear that if the order of the day passes then whatever little power they have been able to accumulate over the years would slip away.

I grew up in an India where stories of dowry death were dime a dozen. Being from the east my parents would sigh with relief that such things do not happen in our part of the country. But just because Bengalis were progressive enough not to take dowries, do not mean that there is no patriarchy and its other instruments of torture like domestic violence,  torturing mother-in-law, no pressure to produce a male heir, no random violence, no rape.

Women are speaking out, taking on the mighty patriarchy...but the perfect order is far too far way. There are still millions of women being crushed...

Incompetent Vodafone....

Well I am definitely at the end of my steam here. Vodafone has been successful of driving me up the wall. The list of woes is not one.

• Ever since I have taken the prepaid connection in December my international sms is blocked. After several customer care calls and smses I have stopped asking for activating my international smsing facility. It seems like they would be doing me a big favour by activating the sms service.
• I topped up my pre paid connection for Rs 444 and the shopkepper sent the top up to another number. Hre immediately called up Vodafone, they asked to send some sms with promises of money refund within 10 days. That was beginning of April, in the middle of June nothing has happened. I am being bumped from retalior to customer care to distributer and God knows who else. You write them an email and get auto answers saying we will get back to you. I am so tired of waiting. pay my money back, let me make some calls (if you dont blunder and deduct randomly) and spend my money and I shall promptly switch to another service.
• Yesterday for an international call, I was charged the exact double. So far I have spoken to 4 customer care officials and 1 manager, been kept on hold for an hour approximately by the 5 of them, learnt that stupid song of theirs by heart, but my money? Oh no sir, that has not been refunded. Apparently their system is down! And when you ask them to call you back, they have one standard line "I know Ms Majumdar that you must be busy but we cannot help it". Finally the manager after making me wait for some 15/20 minutes have promised to call me back. Lets see when that happens.

Zoozoos were fun. But I wish the company spends a little less on advertisment and made a little effort to retain their customers. They are frankly worse than a government office and the whole lot of them are bloody incompetent and inefficient.

They say the consumer has the ultimate power in today's materialistic world, where is that power I wonder?

Is it too much to expect efficiency for a service for which I am paying? However many zoozoo advertisments you make they have stopped impressing me long back. But then who said anything about retaining customers, getting the new ones is the motto, right?

Hopelessly clueless...

Are we the so called modern women who grew up focusing on getting an education and building a career, become out of touch with reality that is society? I remember when other mothers were urging their daughters to beautify themselves, my mother would be urging me to study more. When other mothers would be getting hyper about their daughters not getting married, my mnother would get hyper because me, her daughter is not finishing her Ph.D. Most of my girl friends had similar kinds of mothers. Grew up in such an environment, blessed with liberal and understanding parents who never limited my sky or my ability to reach out for that sky. I dont ever remember any discrimination between my brother and me. Along the way I started to believe that this is how the whole world is. Everyone in it is like my parents, they encourage women to be self sufficient, to have careers. In the long run never learnt some of the traditional skills which are important tools of womanhood in our culture. One stray example. Never could sing, tried learning once or twice, then gave up. My parents did not force me irrespective of that fact that everyone in my family is a superb singer. Never ever in my life did I feel the need to sing. I mean somewhere deep inside me I wish I can sing. But it is not a major regret that I cannot nor has my life stopped because of it. My definition of my self does not have a singing component.

Suddenly I meet people for whom traditional skills are way too important. They want to fit me to the box that is traditionally meant for Indian women. I was never kept in that box and all my life I have grown further and further away from it. I do not want to go to it, dont want the restrictions and the impositions. If in the process I lack some skills so be it, but in exchange I am a survivor and a fighter. My open space and my freedom is way too dear to me. Am I being naive or do these people need an update about the changing times?

Why is it always the onus of the woman to change? Why?

* This picture is a result of google search.

Jingle Bells Redux

Breaking every law
The mobs came asking blood
O'er the fields we ran
And very few got away
The police stood and watched
While Bajrang Dalis torched
Our houses by the night
And people by the day

Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the Sangh Parivar
Would let us live and pray

Not so long ago
We thought we would be fine
But soon these Sanghi goons
Came and stole the shine
The plot was mean and dark
A swamiji was shot
We were blamed for it
And a massacre we got

Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
It's no fun to be a minority
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
All we want is the government
To ensure some fair play

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what future do we have
In Orissa today
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
We will fight and we will win
And keep the fascists AWAY!!

Courtesy :http://blog.orissaconcerns.net/2008/12/jingle-bells-redux/

The Background: I don't know how many of you know about the Khandamal violence. Don't get me wrong I do not think that you are ignorant, but the incidents got very little highlight in the media. Well like the poem says a swamiji was shot and then Christians,mostly dalits who got converted were attacked on the Christmas eve 2008. Ever since violence has been going on. There has been immense loss of human lives and systematic destruction of Christian owned property. I am not putting in facts and figures here, you can checked http://blog.orissaconcerns.net/about/ for more detailed information. Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), the previous organization I worked for is heavily involved in providing legal aid to the victims. Some of my colleagues who had gone visiting the Khandamal district of Orissa have very grim stories to tell.
My uncle was in Bhadrak at that time, he said in his neighbourhood there was a Carmel Convent School for Girls which has been giving quality education to girls for the last hundred years or more so. Since that was the only standard school for girls, girls from neighbouring areas used to attend it. One night the mob came and torched the school and now it is no more than a burnt down building.
Has the Sangh Parivar ever done anything constructive than brainwash ignorant fools? I think as moderate Hindus time has come for us to seriously protest against these kinds of fundamentalist cruelty. Though Khandamal never got that kind of coverage, it is no less heinous than the Gujrat riots.
With the politicians, terrorists and fundamentalists working in tandem to destroy the country, future seems rather bleak, even to a die hard optimist like me!

Domestic Violence

Just beneath our terrace house lives a family. The husband is alcoholic, does not work and basically lives a parasitic life and is extremely violent, the wife still believes that her husband is some dashing knight or circumstances make her so deluded. There is also a mother-in-law who works in a gurudwara (sikh place of worship) and is the sole bread earner of the family. There are two children.

When we initially shifted, this man had come up one day with his baby and tried to chat with us. All three of us felt he is a slimy looking no-good fellow without even knowing his background. We cold shouldered him and later asked our landlord and got the full version. Our landlord seemed really fed up with the never ending marital crisis of his neighbours.

Ever since we hear sounds from downstairs on an on and off basis.

Yesterday night we went out for dinner, while climbing the stairs heard a huge commotion. The husband was roaring and he was hitting his wife so hard that we could hear her hit against the wall. The children were crying, muffled sounds of the mother-in-law could also be heard.

The neighbours were all quiet. We stood in our terrace and could see other heads peeping from houses but no one said anything. Anubha wanted to go and ring the bell. There is a campaign against domestic violence, whenever you heard violence happening just go ring the bell, that would put a stop to it at least temporarily.

Jayshree was not happy with the idea, neither was I. So on Jayshree's suggestion Anubha called the police. As usual there was jurisdiction problem. In India I think administration and police are more bothered about their jurisdiction than anything else. If only they put that much effort in their work. Anyways, about 15 minutes later a police man did turn up. But he could not locate the house. We did some mad and silent waving from our terrace to indicate the house. He climbed up and knocked. The man said it was his personal matter, in flats even if you make a little sound (banging your wife is making a little sound) it escaltes. The wife said her husband is a good man and has supported her through and through (by of course turning her into a pulp) and that she has no complaints against him. Only the mother-in-law said that she was a heart patient and that such episodes make her feel really sick. The police man then asked them to lower their sound and went off with a warning.

Thankfully after that, the sound from that house stopped coming.

Who is at fault here? The husband who beats his wife up or the wife who keeps supporting her husband and would till finally he injuries her so much that she will die. She must be dying a little everytime he is so violent. Why does she take it? Why do parents raise their daughters up to take such shit? When will we stop giving this crap about private matters being outside the jurisdiction of the public? Violence is violence, whether it is happening on the roads or inside houses, right? Why is such a simple thing so difficult to understand?

I know of women who have been in such violent situations and they have emerged out, though the process was long and draining. But women do come out with their family's support and lead healthy and normal life.

Cant Get It Off...

Yesterday a series bombs blasted in Delhi. I guess you all know that by now. I was out with my sister-in-law and three year old nephew. We were out shopping in Lajpat Nagar Central Market. After finishing our shopping we had just entered Mac Donalds when suddenly I got a call from my eldest mama (uncle) that television news says there has been three blasts in Delhi. Then within 5 minutes he called to say that there has been another blast.

My brother called asking where we were. By then we had come out and was trying to get an auto back home to my sister-in-law's place. There were loads of panicky people on the road, few policmen, those lucky enough to have their own transport were zooming out, shops were closing, shutters were coming down, police were announcing on the microphone how not to panic and not touch any unknown object etc. We did not realise it that time there was evacuation going on. There were a handful of autos which were being fought over. Usually there are loads of cycle rickshaws. That day there were none, those who were there were all going away. We walked for sometime, my sister-in-law was totally in a panicky mode but thankfully nephew was calm and quiet and walked with us, without making any fuss. Finally we got a rickshaw which took us till the main road. It was utter choas in the main road, my sister-in-law was literally jumping into empty auts with her son. But autowallahs were refusing to go. Finally found a man who was ready to take us and that too for the right amount of money. This is Delhi on normal days you get autowallahs who are ready to rip you off and then on a crisis you meet this nice man who wants the right money, is cool headed and zigzaged his way through crazy traffic and got us into relatively empty lanes and reached us home safe and sound. By then I have had 4 calls from my mama, 2 calls from home, three more from my brother and some other assorted ones. The network was totally jammed and I just could not call anyone. All my Delhi friends were scattered everywhere around the city but there was no way I could reach anyone. It was a pretty helpless feeling.

After switching on the television at home the full extent of the tragedy hit us and also the realisation that how easily it could have been Lajpat Nagar market istead of GK1. We sat watching television reporting all gory details for a long time. Both my sister-in-law and me, we realised that the situation was bad and it was scaring us but we just could not take our eyes off the news.

It was a very shaky day of my life. A perfectly normal and happy evening turned into a nightmare. Also my three year old nephew was there with us, had it been just us, two adults, the equation I am sure would have been very different. But with us being responsible for his well being it added to our helplessness and panic.

Why September????

They did it on 11th September.
Again they did on the 13th of September.
Why September?
What is so inauspicious about September that they chose September again and again?
I was born in September, hence it was always special to me, but now they have spoiled that feeling.
Now all I feel is "wake me up when September ends"...

Why? & Who? & How?

I am angry, I want to talk;
But who will listen to me?
Who wants to listen?
Who cares, who bothers?
Does anyone?
Where is our protector?
Is She sleeping?
What will happen to the family of those who died today?
What will happen to those mothers who lost their children?
Would those fathers be able to forget the trauma ever?
Who will go and get the medicines from outside shops?
Are the shops even open?
Did anyone check before asking?
From where will the blood come?
Would I be able to walk those roads again and feel safe?
Whom am I bothered about more, me or them?
Those who died and those who got injured?
Or it is just me that I am bothered about?
I was not even part of it, then why?
Why am I angry?
Why do I have the urge to cry out loud?
Why do I want to lash out?

Blast All Away...

GK 1 Market is a cool place to hang out with your friends on the weekend...Jayshree loves going there;
Connaught Place (CP) we keep going there and Central Park is a lovely place right in the middle of CP; we all love going to CP, went there just last week;
Gaffar Market-- never been there, sometimes passed it on my way to somewhere....busy, bustling place;
All three places in the heart of Delhi had bomblasts today evening. It started around 6 and went on for the next 45 minutes. Bombs errupted killing people, injuring some more, demolishing property and panicking everyone around. Some group of people wanted someone's attention? Who are they and whose attention did they want? More to the point did they get the attention they wanted? Did they want the attention of those who died? Or that 25 year old boy whose one leg is gone forever? Or that little boy who saw the bombs being kept in the plastic dustbin?
Ok, so you have got our attention...what is it that you want to say? Tell us, let us hear...you have been going on and on...it is like the India Bomb Blast Series...have you not got enough attention? When will you stop? What is it that you get from killing and demolishing?
Can I ask you a question when was the last time you did something constructive/creative, if ever, of course other than planning and carrying out demolition of life and property?
I dont want to know all the theoritical details...today I am angry enough to want to know the real details...today I want justification....I need to know how you justify killing people? Who sanctions you? Who gives you the authority?
You kill and move away...send emails and videotapes taking "credit"...You say same thing happened to your people. You know what when you start replicating your enemies you no longer deserve sympathy even from people who were actually sympathetic to you to begin with.