BANGALORED IN BANGALORE

I thought Bombay was making me impatient and angry. I loved my job, I loved watching TV at home and I loved meeting my friends in great restaurants. But in between those places, everything sucked. The potholes and traffic, the crowds and the noise, the anger and frustration radiating from everyone.

So I guess, when everyone warned me about Bangalore, I couldn't really take it seriously. I knew the potholes and traffic, the crowds and noise would be the same or worse but I really believed that a break from the driven people in Bombay would be very welcome. Warnings like "people are slow and inefficient compared to Bombay" were brushed off by my over-enthusiasm, "great, I need to learn to take things slow and be more patient." This was the strain of conversations so you can see that I probably earned the wake-up shock I'm now enduring!

Here are some typical interactions in Bangalore to illustrate my experiences:

* Me to the employee at Subway: Can you speed up my sandwich, I'm in a hurry.

Employee: Ok (while he abandons my sandwich to take other orders)

* Cashier at Shoppers Stop: You want to upgrade your gold loyalty card to platinum? You'll get additional benefits.

My friend: What are the additional benefits?

Cashier: Uh...uh... (this goes on for about 5-10 minutes before he admits that he does not know)

* On Residency Road during rush hour, I have been stuck behind an Innova for a long time while the lanes next to me crawl ahead. When I finally manage to maneuver my way out and creep forward, I see the driver has switched off the car and is eating peanuts bought from a cart on the road. 

* On collection of a car from Renault (after 3 months of waiting and pressure posting on their Facebook page), I ask the salesman: Do I need covers for the seats?

Salesman: Yes. It will cost about 30-40,000 more and will take a week (which could easily be a month in Bangalore terms)

Me: When were you going to tell me this?! If I hadn't asked would you have told me?

Saleman: No (with a grin I could deck him for)

* In a car stuck in traffic on Old Airport Road, the driver has switched off the car and is leisurely cutting his nails out of the window.

* Carpenter who has arrived unexpectedly: Madam I have come to do your work.

My aunt: You were supposed to come 3 days back. What happened and why didn't you call?

Carpenter: My phone didn't work, Madam. I've come now (with a flourish) 

My aunt: But now is not convenient to me. I have to go out.

Carpenter: But Madam can you still pay me?

While I sometimes want to kill the Bangalorean who can't be bothered to do his job properly or hurry up, I sometimes also want to be like him. Somewhere, he has disconnected (or never connected) with the things that drive the rest of us crazy and prevent us from enjoying the other parts of our lives. While I carry home my frustration at the traffic, he seems not bothered by it even while actually experiencing it. Like the gurus of the old days, he seems to inhabit a different world which allows him to savour his life and not allow any interruption while he does so.

I might feel great if I were separated from the stresses of being on time or rushing my work but I shudder to think how it might impact my career. The discipline and efficiency drilled into me serve a purpose, after all. Would I be any good at my job if I didn't obsess and sweat over it? And would I be employable outside Bangalore if I decided to move?

I have discovered that it's not easy to answer these questions. A part of me, admittedly the larger part, is trying to light a fire under the Bangaloreans I encounter. Trying to get them to care about the things I care about like time and efficiency. This same part of me goes into overdrive when I visit Bombay, frantically doing chores I can't begin to figure out in Bangalore. Yet, there is a small part of me that wonders what it would be like to be free of the boundaries I have drawn for myself. To slow down, to taste an unfamiliar joy that remains impervious and invulnerable to external pressures.

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.