OBJECTIVE LIMIT

It’s been difficult for me to write for this blog for a while. Perhaps, it’s because I couldn’t follow up on the heaviness of the previous post with my usual frivolous content. I started writing the blog because I felt I had this ability to see both sides of a situation and when you can do that, the absurdity makes it appear a little inconsequential. It lightens the weight of heavy emotions and makes objectivity a little more possible.

However, with my previous post, it seems I’ve found the one issue that I can’t be objective about!

So, as my attempt to move on, I thought I’d look at objectivity itself. To borrow a concept from art, it’s simply a matter of perspective. I feel what I feel because of where I stand and how the world looks to me from this perspective. If I were to move to another point, my view of the world would shift and my feelings would also alter to accommodate this new perspective. 

Source: Web Museum of Fine Art, "Perspective Box 1660-1680" - Elinga, Pieter Janssens

It sounds easy and usually the effort always feels worthwhile in the end. An emotion-heavy insoluble issue can become an objective problem that feels resolvable.

But there are some paths I’m afraid to travel. Finding my way there is so much more terrifying than getting lost on the way. And what journey can be accomplished if I’m always trying to look backward, not willing to move forward? 

Once I thought I could be objective about anything and now I’ve found the limit of how far I can stretch it. 

WEAK WOMEN

Is being vulnerable the same as being weak? I have been thinking about this the last month, when in the wake of the Delhi gang-rape and many subsequent rape incidents, like all other women I too have dramatically increased my safety precautions.

I still remember my first brush with the word ‘rape’. I was 8 years old and on holiday in Delhi, when I overheard my grandmother telling the story of a movie to a friend. When she said the word as it appeared in the fairly common revenge sagas of the Bollywood films of that era; she was unable and unwilling to tell me the meaning. A year later in the same city, I was standing by my father when news came of the ravaged body of a young girl my age being discovered near the “safe” neighborhood of Som Vihar. He was horrified and concerned but when I asked what had happened, all he said was “something very bad.” It would be years before I understood the meaning of the word and ever since then I have never felt truly safe.

I still remember the outrage I felt as a teenager at a Bollywood movie where the heroine is forced to marry her rapist and then gradually falls in love with him! Easy as it is, the blame does not wholly belong to Bollywood. The film industry creates stories about our society & culture as it is and those that we pay money to see. Marrying the victim to the rapist was considered a ‘solution’ by many! The current trend of popular box office winners is not so different than it was twenty years ago. It’s still the macho misogynist films which reduce worthy actresses to “items” that do well in pulling in the crowds and the money. The women are objects with hot bodies, revealing clothes and the shame is theirs when men are driven to lust. We see victims as vamps. As women, we must be careful not to provoke. To hold ourselves in, to hold ourselves back, to shrink into ourselves to avoid the lustful gazes we cannot avoid.

I still remember how violated I felt at every incident of sexual harassment I have suffered. The old man who groped me outside Dadar station, the young boys who brushed pass me on crowded streets, the elderly relative who hugged me a little too long as my family watched benignly, the classmate who thought stalking me would get my attention….they are all equivalent to rapists to me. They saw an opportunity to assault or threaten me and took it. What if the window of that opportunity was wider? Would they stop from going further? I wonder. Perhaps, they wonder too.

I understand the women who have bought guns in the last month. I had thought about it too. If the government can’t protect us, then the least it can do is turn a blind eye when we protect ourselves. Yes, I understand there is potential of misuse. In fact I would want to deliberately misuse this as would every other woman. Why should we not misuse our freedom as much as those who target us misuse theirs? I would pull the trigger at the slightest threat while perhaps prosecuting lawyers would prefer I wait until the narrow legal definition of rape is satisfied so they can agree that I was truly victimized. Perhaps they find it easier to deal with me as the victim instead of the vigilante who did the job that they were supposed to and quite unable or unwilling or most likely, both.

The truth is that while some men may be predators, it’s the so-called protectors I resent and rage against. Women are told to keep themselves safe but men are taught different. The same fathers and brothers who talk of honour are the ones who sometimes tell their daughters and sisters to let an incident go. Our fears and resentments are dismissed as ‘little things’ and if it comes to the big thing that no one likes to mention then often enough it’s the victim who is put to shame.  Everyone, whether family or friend or neighbor or colleague, feels the right to comment on how a woman looks and what she wears. If she’s going somewhere, there’s a huge discussion on the modes of transport. Is teaching us to live in fear the only way to keep us safe?

This is not a ‘woman only’ problem, as some journalists have pointed out. It is a social disease and its rampant spread is an indication of a sickness in society. From almost the moment of conception, females are treated differently. Yes some go so far as to outright reject and abort or abandon a girl child. Yet even those who keep her are not as kind as they might believe. She is fed less, educated less and constantly told that she cannot do all that her brother can. And even when she grows up and proves them wrong, she is consistently given subtle and direct messages that she is less of a person than a man. Either she is cossetted or she is neglected – in both situations, she is taught to see herself as something less.

And when the woman is treated as an equal in her home and/or her workplace, the self-esteem & confidence she builds is respected only in her home and/or her workplace. In commuting, she encounters the ‘other’ society that still claims she is less and is eager to remind her of it and put her ‘in her place.’ Cab, bus and rickshaw drivers, fellow passengers, random people on the street – with their indifference, disrespect and lewd behavior make her aware of her vulnerability. It is in these public spaces that she needs to feel safe – to know that she can travel to and from home, safely without threat.

Today many companies are taking their own measures to protect their women employees. Tomorrow there’s a fear that they might decide that it’s easier not to hire or promote women at all. Broader changes in the work culture that apply to both men and women might serve us all better.

Today, we need to accept that it is not the “dented and painted women” who are leading the country astray but the demented and tainted politicians, self-styled ‘godmen’ and other self-appointed ‘morality keepers’ who care more for pointing fingers at others for political mileage than actually doing something actually useful for society.

Today, the public blame and shame is shifting as it needs to. It’s not the victim but the villain who needs to be identified and shamed. Nirbhaya/Damini fought bravely for 13 days and gave her testimony twice before she died. The villains have been identified and hopefully, they will not escape the full weight of justice in a maze of loopholes and technicalities. Let them not get away with a light sentence. And have much harsher punishments for all the degrees of verbal and physical harassment and abuse that women face. Let the intent count more than merely the window of opportunity in deciding the punishment.

Today, with widespread media coverage and finally, an outburst of public outrage, I doubt any of my nieces and nephews will ever enjoy the innocent interlude from the concept of rape that my generation did. Hopefully, this means that they will also not be the vulnerable prey we were to sexual harassment and abuse; which we found uncomfortable but didn’t know enough to complain about. We were bound into a conspiracy of silence because we didn’t have the vocabulary to break it. Today the silence is broken. It is a step forward.

Today, we need to understand that the weakness of a woman does not make a man strong. Strength is not just physical brute force, strength also means the courage to look at oneself and control one's behaviour.

And if every woman is vulnerable, then by the same logic, is every man a potential predator? Just as most strange men look at me as if I am a ‘thing’ not a person, should I look at them as ‘potential rapists’ not people?

Behind this body

That you leer at,

There is a person.

Behind this face

That you stare at,

There are thoughts.

Behind this chest

That you follow with your eyes,

There are feelings.

I am more -

More that you’ll ever know.

I don’t know

If behind the letch,

There is a person?

If behind the obvious

Pop-eyed fantasies,

There are thoughts?

If behind the creepy

Looks that molest,

There are feelings?

I don’t know you &

You don’t know me -

So why do we act as if we do?

FASHIONABLE DISSENT

This is the age of dissent. I don’t mean to imply that people have not expressed discontent before. They have and there have been several revolutions that have been successful enough to bring us to this point. Where for one, everyone has relative freedom to express disagreement and even more importantly, it’s so easy to do this and broadcast one’s opinion without too much personal effort or risk.

One does not have to be a Julian Assange and paint a target on oneself for the superpowers of the world to aim at or be an Anna Hazaare and endanger one’s life to get attention to one’s cause. One does not even have to leave the house. A simple ‘like’ on Facebook is all it takes to have an opinion and declare it. Twitter and status updates, online petitions and blogs – technology has made it easy to participate, so even the lazy and politically disinclined can create the illusion of a political stand.

It seems as if everyone is for or against something today. And the canvas spreads all the way from the larger issues like environmental concern to the seemingly trivial like the appropriate age for drinking. Today nothing is trivial anymore. Nothing is small enough to brush aside. Every issue is important because it seems to have enough passion both for and against it. A political stance is the must-have accessory for the fashionable and the unfashionable alike. And having one doesn’t mean that you have to really care to be consistent with it.

I happened to be on D N Road when Sunday’s protest turned violent and my brush with the incident was nothing like I might have expected. There was little anger or fear emanating from the people around and the people fleeing. Instead there was a palpable excitement. A thrill to be part of something so out of the ordinary. Rather than seek safety, many were clicking away on camera phones and composing their versions of the incident to be shared and dispersed.

It seems as if we don’t know how to protest without adding to the problem. We protest a riot with a riot, an economic slowdown with a bandh that leads to further loss of productivity, lack of political action with an opposition movement that only serves to further distract the government from the real issues at hand.

It’s time to question our own motives – do we really want something to be done or do we just want to act out and ensure that we will always have something to dissent against? Do we want India to emerge victorious and claim its place as one of the leaders of the world economy? Or do we want to bask in the prospect of it, while making sure that we get something out of the process even if it is got by standing in the way?

Dissent has become so important to the political process in India that it seems to be all that has survived from the legacy of Gandhi. We forget his self-discipline and commitment to getting things right. So let’s participate in a rally, add a Facebook like to our profile and tweet our opinions to the world. Let the Baba Ramdev’s come out and exploit our boredom to bring down the government. It will be replaced by another of our choice and that one too will be stuck in the quicksand of our dissent till another self-serving politician comes along to manipulate us into bringing that down too.

The freedom that previous generations fought so hard for is actually the freedom of choice. To have the ability to make a choice on anything that concerns us – from the choice of religion and political views to the choice of clothes and lifestyle. Even the choice of which soap or shampoo we want to use. This is the part that we all celebrate and support. But we forget that with a choice, also come consequences which belong as much to us as the choice that led to it. If we buy a soap we don’t like, we made the wrong purchase decision and are quick to correct it the next time we shop. But if we choose the wrong politician, we don’t accept responsibility. If we choose an expression of dissent that actually compounds the problem, we don’t see that.

There is an important role that dissent has played in our history. But we need to face the fact that we have things pretty good despite our pettiness. Now it’s time to do some hard work if we really want to move forward. And this calls from some real introspection when we choose a political stance. Why do we want one? Is it to make a difference to the country or just to have something to say? When we disagree, is it to solve the problem or compound it?

UNCOMMON COURTESY

Bob Biswas (from Kahaani) has become a cult figure. As the media notices this trend they also seem puzzled by it. He is neither young nor styled to be good-looking. Badly-fitting obvious wigs are not the latest fashion trend. The 6-pack abs, tough guy stance and smart stunts are missing. So what gives? How does a character become this popular without the obvious ingredients required for popularity, as defined by Bollywood pundits?

Notice the popularity of Dexter and there seems to a parallel trend on TV. Dexter Morgan’s vigilante status and better looks aside, he seems a kindred spirit to Bob Biswas. Both are unassuming, not likely to stand out in a crowd. Yet the simmering undercurrent of violence is easy for the common man (or woman) to identify with. The likelihood of being overlooked, underestimated or dismissed that might enrage the rest of us is what these men use to their advantage. Rather than make them feel ordinary it reinforces their sense of being different, and therefore special.

Bob & Dexter deal with everyday insults and onslaughts with humble ease because they have an outlet for the anger and impatience engendered by the stress of modern living. The rest of us seem incapable of shutting off the frustrations of daily toil in overcrowded, polluted, high speed cities. Few of us have opportunity to vent in the right direction. So rage at being overlooked for a promotion is taken out on a hapless domestic employee or family frustrations are relieved by aggressiveness at the grocery store. For those who drive, the most common outlet are the roads – dangerous maneuvers to get ahead of everyone, honking irrationally at the slightest delay and refusing to ever give way to another driver, a pedestrian or even a red light.

Perhaps the fact that we are not psychopaths is excuse enough. Or is it?

While Bob & Dexter are the kind of people we might not want to encounter in an isolated setting, the adulation we feel for them suggests we do not fear them. They do not fit with our conventional beliefs on what makes someone a villain. Violence itself is not sufficient to determine villainy. Bob & Dexter bring us that rare quality which is increasingly disappearing from our daily interactions – courtesy. If someone treats us with unfailing politeness we’re ready to forgive them almost anything. Villains are branded as such by their failure to be polite. The lady who elbows past you in a queue, the driver who cuts you off on the road, the retailer who is unnecessarily rude – these are the real villains in our lives.

That’s why we love characters like Bob Biswas or Dexter Morgan. Even if they do kill us, at least it will be done with kindness.

JOBS WITHOUT WORK

There is an overlooked epidemic sweeping the country. I’d call it the Indian Flu but it doesn’t quite fit the requirements to be a noveau-vogue disease like Swine Flu. It is not new, not fatal and definitely not something that can be cured or warded off. In fact, once afflicted one may as well abandon hope. And the one fact that especially distinguishes it from other diseases is that the suffering is almost exclusively borne by other people, those around the afflicted rather than the afflicted themselves. The effects produced by the illness include frustration, anger, anxiety, stress – in other people, of course. In the case of the afflicted, the biggest and most telling symptom is an extreme reluctance to do anything even remotely of use to anyone.


And anyone, absolutely anyone is at risk! It could be the cab driver who refuses to actually drive anyone anywhere. A waiter who quite literally makes everyone wait forever. The contractor who frequently goes over-budget but is nowhere close to finishing the job. The bank teller who is always on break. The executive who never returns a call or replies to e-mails. This disease like death does not spare anyone. Lofty parliamentarians and humble construction workers are equally likely to fall prey.


The disease is contagious but no one knows how it spreads. We just know that it does spread. Entire organizations from the BMC to the Indian Parliament have been afflicted. Why else would Mumbai roads be in the condition they are despite an annual spend of hundreds of crores of rupees over the last 20 years? And why else would critical debate on the Lok Pal Bill be adjourned in favour of a discussion of what the Russians may choose to censor in their own country? Anyone who has ever awaited a Tata Sky repairman in a building other than Bakhtavar (where Ratan Tata lives) knows what I’m talking about!
This insidious disease is doubly dangerous! It does not seem to affect those who make up the high unemployment figures in the country so much as it affects those who are effectively employed. Once the disease strikes, the income continues even though the work becomes negligible.


Is there a cure? Well, we haven’t even understood the causes yet! Is it an infectious attitude of helplessness, hopelessness or despair? An inborn inertia, inefficiency or incompetence? Or is it simply an act of deflection, opposition, defiance towards the progress of the nation or any of its citizens? The truth is that we just don’t know!


All we know is that despite the general optimism in India and the world regarding Indian achievements and prosperity, there is a large part of India intent on dulling this shine and negating the progress. These afflicted are determined to hold onto jobs but do no work. Since they do not directly suffer, they have no motivation to seek treatment. It is then, up to the rest of us, those not yet afflicted but suffering all the same, to understand the causes and seek a cure on their behalf. If more of us succumb to the epidemic then there is no hope for us or the country or our rosy expectations of the future!

THE JUDGE AND THE JUDGED

Like many others, I am angry at Kapil Sibal – the current minister for communications & IT, who recently suggested censorship of content posted on the Internet. Unlike many others, I don't think the issue is just about freedom of expression. A related freedom is at risk, one that is rarely acknowledged. I want to retain my freedom to criticize and judge!

Indians can be justifiably accused of being a judgmental people. We pass judgments on everything - from a person's race & culture all the way down to his clothes & accessories. No wonder "what will people say" is such an important consideration in our own lives. Every decision we make from life-changing ones of careers and marriages to seemingly meaningless ones like Facebook status updates is driven by this.

When other people's judgment is such an overwhelming presence in my life, my judgment of them is a hard-earned perk of putting up with it. It's a never-ending game of tit-for-tat where unwritten scores are being constantly tracked. When we say offensive things we mean to offend. There is no nice diplomatic way of provoking the reaction we intend.

We are a culture of clashes - our 'unity' doesn't come despite our diversity but out of the resulting clashes. Each of us judging and metaphorically putting each other in place are simultaneously being judged and shifted. This constant chaos is the energy that drives us and makes us who we are.

Coming back to Mr. Sibal: who is he to break out and say he will not be judged while casting his own judgment on the rest of us? No one is exempt from judgment, not even those who think they are. Especially not 'public servants', a term politicians like Kapil Sibal choose to use only when seeking election. Once elected, he may see himself as a Maharaja with the right to judge his public but come the time for re-election, he will humbly need to seek and submit to the public's judgment. I suggest he remembers that!

Everyone may pass a judgment and offend anyone he chooses provided he understands that the same rules apply to him. Better a war of words on the Internet than a war of bombs and guns. If Mr. Sibal succeeds in censoring our words, we will have to resort to other ways of criticism, like slaps and shoe-hurling. Our right to judgment cannot be taken away - it will find an outlet of expression. I'm sure the honourable minister must have realized by now that in seeking to escape, he has effectively painted a bulls-eye on himself!

COMMUNISTS SUPPORT CAPITALISTS!

Ever since Anna Hazaare's crusade against corruption gained momentum, India's politicians have injected renewed vigour into exercising their right to protest. They believe that if they create a noise big enough, public support will materialise from nowhere. Instant legitimacy for whatever cause has caught their fancy.

The cause in vogue today is retail FDI. The government is for it so by definition, the opposition must oppose. Regardless of ideology or the people they claim to represent. The opposition's most vocal protesters are from the 'left' parties, with communist leanings but whose interest are they really serving through this protest? Not the common public for sure. Retail FDI and big chains like Walmart expanding operations will provide many benefits like better access, cheaper prices and greater job opportunities, all of which will benefit most of the population. Those already employed in the retail sector will not be threatened. Their employers will be forced to treat them better as the risk of attrition becomes stronger.

Who, if anyone, will suffer when retail FDI opens up? A handful of traders who own retail shops and home-grown retail chains who will face competition in retaining their customers, employees and profit margins. This too is a short-term prospect if they have the willingness to adapt. International retail giants will bring more than just money to the industry - there is a real opportunity to learn from them and improvise, which is the key strength of Indian businesses.

So why the hue and cry? Communists are trying to gain political mileage by supporting a handful of capitalists, who have inadequate faith in their ability to handle market forces...as the saying goes, "it happens only in India!"