A date with myself

I have a date with myself, as in I am on it right now looking out through glass walls at scyscrapers on Barakhamba road bathed in benevolent Spring sunshine. Ever since I stopped being a carefree college student , which is way back in 2007, I have accumulated a toxic collection of fantasies of things I want to do on weekends. Invariably, these fantasies only involve myself - as self obsessed as I am. One of these was to spend a whole day in a book store with no agenda at all. It would be a quaint book store with a cafe attached with me alternating between reading parts of random books and sitting on my laptop and drinking coffee. The funny thing is, in all these years I haven't done it even once so here I am at the Oxford Book Store at CP. (I am the sort of crazy person who will make such a long journey to do this.) Unfortunately, and predictable my photon isn't working so I don't anymore see the point my indulging my luxurious attempt with having two internet connections- one wifi and one photon given that I do such things once in four years.

There are more things like this such as going for picnics, having wine nights at home etc etc.

So yes, I am in the crowded midst of a book store that has an ongoing 80% off sale. The people behind me are covering that nowadays dreaded topic of who is getting married. I am sort of still in denial of the fact that people my age are old enough to get married It can't be, really.

Yesterday CQ tried calling me a feminist so I told him I am not. I found myself performing laproscopy on a light bulb recently. So, to put it more simply, I fixed a light bulb and felt proud about it. And then, I felt so ashamed that a twenty something woman should feel proud about achieving a normal thing such as fixing a light bulb. To be fair to me, the socket was reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally high up so, yes, I was sort of performing laproscopy- I couldn't see what I was doing, only guess. The point is I wrote a long introspective mail that started with the light bulb and went to all sorts of topics. So there, that, according to CQ is what defines a feminist. Feeling proud of fixing a light bulb, then feeling ashamed and then writing an introspective piece about it.

 

 

Rape,irony,etc.

One doesn't know how tobe oblivious to irony. On the front page, of The Indian Express. the headlines tell us that after 49 deaths and much unrest, Omar Abdullah flew to visit the injured in hospital. And just there , below, is an ad that screams DHANTENAN , introducing Alto K 10.

 

Although, advertising is the bread and butter of journalism , I cannot help that jarring feeling I get.

Anyhow, everytime I read about a rape in Delhi, I am going to post it here. So here goes.

 

A 17-year-old Delhi University student was allegedly raped by a 50-year-old businessman in his car in West Delhi's Moti Nagar on Wednesday evening. The girl had accepted a lift from the accused, Mukesh Kumar, outside her college in Janakpuri, but the man took her to a secluded spot and forced himself on her, said the police. Mukesh was arrested after a passerby heard the girl's screams and informed a beat constable.

"She did not doubt his intentions as he was middle-aged and it was raining. He told her that he was going towards her locality," said an officer, adding that the accused, a resident of Ashok Vihar, runs a cardboard factory in Hari Nagar. Mukesh reportedly turned the car on to a secluded road near a petrol pump in Moti Nagar's Bali Nagar area. "The girl asked Kumar why he was stopping. He raped her despite her protests. Nobody could see inside the car as it had tinted glass," said the officer.

But a passerby heard the girl scream and informed a beat constable a few metres away. "When the policeman checked the car, he saw the girl crying," said the officer, adding that locals soon gathered at the spot and thrashed the accused.

The girl was taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for a medical examination, which confirmed rape. Mukesh was placed under arrest and the girl's statement recorded.

DCP Sharad Aggarwal confirmed the arrest and said Mukesh has been booked under Section 376 for rape at the Moti Nagar police station.

 

Read more at link given above.

dined at almost Italian trattoria , got robbed, filed an FIR.

Most people know me as disaster queen. Such weird things happen to me. Touch wood. But I just have to have to document it here but before I get there I have to say it was just a sweet Sunday. 

Anyhow, I have discovered Flavours in Def Col. It is a lovely restaurant , with an outdoor section facing a park that really reminded me of Rome. 

The food was fairly authentic. C had pizza with goat cheese and grilled vegetables ,which was fabulous although they were a bit kunjoos with the goat cheese. I had Rigatone or whatever tube shaped pasta is called. Competent. 

Tragedy unfolded though when we decided to go to the Red Fort. Bright old me decides to take the metro. I haven't used the damn thing in like two months.I get on at Mandi House and before the inevitable security check, I zip my bag shut feeling so proud of how careful I am. As usual, the train is really crowded. Just before i was about to get off, I notice that my zip is a wee bit open. My heart freezes but I courageously walk out anyway. MY wallet , which is a fat 2 year old stuffed with silver earrings, thousands of business cards, cash , old bank receipts, kajal, store membership cards ,driving license, PAN card, photos, free movie tickets to a cinema in Noida, memories is gone. 

I have to gather myself. Just the previous day, I was admiring my lovely red wallet and marvelling at how long it had survived. Sufi slut dropped sambar on it  I just really love this allet so I was thinking about keeping it till it really falls to shreds. 

Now it was gone. I felt so sad and tried telling myself all sorts of LET GO , it is only material anyway lines but it didn't help. I called my dad and he asked me to go to the police station not because the Brilliant Delhi Police will find him but because the proof of loss will be one piece in the long Red Tape I have to sumbit to get a  new license/pan card. 

I vowed to do it later but I just needed a break from the crowds and since Red Fort was shut by this time, we made our way to Lodhi Gardens. I am continuously impressed by how SOME public parks are so well maintained in Delhi. It was great to see real wild life in abundance . Squirrels chasing each each other, parakeets at close quarters, parakeet pigeon wars for the perfect perch on that gorgeous mounument's window, the lush green and the picnic-ing families and making out couples. 

I had to of course finally confront my fear of the police station. We decided then to go to the Paharganj police station. My mind filled up with stories of custodial violence, and of an interview I did some years back with a dalit man ,Deliraj, who was randomly accussed of murder and beaten mercilessly and left with life long injuries. You know , how police stations are, they are stagnant , pregnant with ineffeciency, lethargy, the smell of urine, and Torture. 

I am instructed to write , with a pen , the details of my complaint.When I did so, I was escorted by the constable to meet the inspector. The constable asked me if the white boy with me was my companion(saathi), where I lived, what I was doing at Paharganj etc. 

When I reached the inspectors' office, he asked me to wait and I waited in all for about an hour. 

We were waiting in the waiting room which also doubled up as the office of fat , ununiformed constable,Parveen Chand, who in the whole duration of my stay there ( and I realise this in retrospect after C told me) didn't take his eyes off me. He kept asking me personal questions about where I live. I kept telling him that I live in South Delhi, not wanting to give details, obviously. 

In between, I got into a long conversation with him about the 'atankhwadis'' photos pasted on the bulletin board, Abu Salem etc. I asked him so many questions that he asked me if I was a journalist. 

He asked me again(in retrospect flirtatiously) where I live. I said that I live in South Delhi. He said "ok , ok , but here in Paharganj , where do you live? Which hotel?''

I was kind of exasperated now because none of this has anything to do with my FIR. I told him for the last time that I came to Paharganj to shop. 

During this whole process, the inspector walked in and out with very minor questions on my CLEARLY filled out application form, each time, promising that I will get my report copy in ten minutes. 

So this man , the fat constable, tells me that he will give me stories and that I should take his number. You never know when such a thing can be useful, so I agreed. This man, Parveen Chand,then told me a long elaborate story. " I found a coke bottle , sealed with flies in it." Confused look from me. " See , there was a seal , and there were two mosquitoes in it." Confused look. 

"Haan so , I had gone to the Videocon building and I told them about it, " Confused look. " You know, the Aaj Tak office is there?"

So , that was his idea of a news scoop. But it was all getting really surreal for me now, coated with the commonwealth of dust from the Paharganj market, the silent Hindi less C next to me. (Yey Russian hain?)

"Give me your number , he said., Parveen Chand." I lied about not having enough balance to give  a missed call. He insisted about 5 times that I give him my number anyway. I was so exhausted by this point that I had to will to fight. I said ok and read out number carefully like it was dictation at school . ( I don't remember my number, I have it saved as 'Me'. 

At this point, C , starts screaming at me asking me why I gave him my number in front of Parveen Chand. 

,

The Inspector finally walked in and asked me to write my address. I promptly wrote down my entire address, complete with landmarks , like for an invitation to tea. Half an hour passes and then the inspector walks in again to say that the computer isn't working so he cannot give me a FIR copy. 

I instead write down my whole complaint with pen on paper and get him to stamp it. 

Ultimately, the scariest thing, which C put in my head is this. The police know everything about me.  

Images from Getty Images

Paying girls to stay in school

Sam (Virendra Singh) retired as one of the top bosses at DuPont. But instead of settling down in a shiny happy American suburb, he returned to Anoopshahr, a small village in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district, to start a girl's school that pays girls to stay in school.  

"I never did social work in my life. I was born in a feudal family and did 'macho' work all my life," says the septuagenarian founder of the Pardada Pardadi vocational school for girls.  

After 35 years in America, Sam realised he was never one of them; he was always conscious of his identity as an Indian.  

In 1984, Sam was in charge of DuPont's Virginia plant. When the Bhopal gas tragedy happened, he had the uneasy feeling that his employers would trust him less as manager of a chemical plant because he was Indian. He couldn't deal with the India that was portrayed in the West -- poor and underdeveloped. He wanted to transform that sense of shame into something productive.  

So when it was time to retire, Sam knew he wanted to go back to the village where, for generations, the women in his family weren't important enough to be mentioned in the family tree; they were invisible wombs to bring male heirs into the family. 

The literacy rate for women in rural Uttar Pradesh is 43%. In a strongly patriarchal society there is little incentive to send girls to school and, in 2000, when Sam started Pardada Pardadi, many girls were marrying at the young age of 13.   More here.

Of made up women and women who made my day

(Pictures at Sunai when parents protested children being hit at school)
Yesterday we went to the Sunai village to find out why all students from the village were absent. It turned out that all the parents were upset that one of the teachers was always hitting children sometimes so hard that it resulted in minor injuries. I know that hitting kids in school is pretty commonplace.When I joined in class 6 the school I would pass out from the incentive was ''no exams, no one hits you and no uniforms''.

The parents started screaming at the community mobilizers Neeta and Deepak who tactfully calmed them down by saying they were on the parents' side. They urged the parents to go to school and complain.

 

The parents also said that this teacher made the muslim students stand up on the bus when a Hindu student didn't have a seat. The Sunai village is predominantly a muslim one and the whole village predictably gathered demanding to know why a school that doesn't believe in caste/religion allowed this to  happen. Obviously ideologically it doesn't but it is impossible to completely remove it from the minds of all the local students and teachers over such a short span of time (10 years).

 

 

Interestingly, the muslim parents also said that they trusted this school so much that they sent even their older daughters(Class 6 to Class 10) to school- something they don't do otherwise. However they didn't approve of the fact that this 'beating teacher ' put on make up in the bus while accompanying kids to school on the bus. They asked first of all why she didn't know how to treat children and what sort of a mother she was. We told her that the teacher was unmarried. Then they asked why unmarried women should wear make up and essentially began to assassinate her character. The community mobilizer explained to me later that it was unacceptable for unmarried women to wear make up.

 

Obviously this woman has to face the consequence of violating the school's policy against hitting children but it makes me sad that ultimately the questions asked about her or fingers pointed at her all relate to her sexuality or her future role as a mother.

 

I told CQ about this and he was like (insert American accent ) ''Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan , single women have to wear make up coz they have to get a husband ...it's only married women who don't...''

 

I had to guide him gently from the sex and the city Manhattan of his imagination and habitation to this world.

 

I also met Mamta who has four kids and an absent migrant labourer husband who never sends money .Mamta lives in a small clean one room house with a yard in front plastered with cow dung.  She makes money by tailoring and is hoping to get a job at the school. A) She was so beautiful man ..I couldn't believe she had four kids with her super model body and all.

B) She was basically way below poverty line but she was so spirited and bright and smiley and confident and enterprising that it made my day. C) She charges fifty rupees for stitching a Salwar Kameez. My friend Panty Padmashree( original nick name) who now lives in Miami would pay $$$$$%@@@ times the price for that service in Bangalore.

Also there is this American volunteer who came with me. Mamta offered us water and the volunteer was asking me if it was safe to drink. I don't usually drink the water in the village because it's made me sick before.Chai and fod is fine - I usually have thirty cups of Chai a day. Mamta thought that he was asking about her caste before he could drink the water.

 

This crushed my heart soo badly ..I was feeling so paaapa for her. ( Should I start blogging in English or is this fine?)

 

She said that she was going to educate her daughters for sure because she couldn't afford  a dowry. I told her that maybe an education itself is a dowry.Actually I was quite proud of that line. A lot of times, I can't think fast enough in Hindi to say exactly what I want to say so I feel really inadequate because there is so much I lose out on .

 

Apparently the cheapest dowry here is 50,000 Rupees and it can go up to four lakhs. Her monthly income is 1500 Rupees and she has three daughters.

All you ladies..

 

 

A structured discrimination system against women has taken thousands of years to become a rigid tradition. It takes many generations to plant a belief in ourselves and our ability to live a beautiful life and nurture the seed within our hearts before it can take root in society.

 

For those of us who are free to do as we please, picking out a day to call ours may not seem as relevant .However , I embrace this day in solidarity with the men and women who are striving for  a better world and those who are bearing the brunt of the harsh unequal world, Happy Women's day.

'Aukad'

It is so important to have an imagination assistant when you are a village girl who has never seen a woman do anything other than to aim to get married and have children 

and look after the house.  

Photos of Medha Patkar , Indra Nooyi and the others are hung on the walls throughout this school. Yet it's always a case of 'unki baat alag hain'. 'Their case is different.'

 

Perhaps it will take generations. If a girl from here finishes class ten , hopefully her daughter will graduate from college . Social context is so important it can sound exaggerated to an outsider.

 

I just cannot imagine that an 8 year old girl has to wake up at 4 AM , finish her chores attend school adn return to the same routine in the evening in a dark one room house shared with five brothers, her mother and the usually absent migrant labourer father slaving away with his bare hands to build a mall in some distant city.

The entire village has no electricity . The animals live inside the houses of the families more often than not.

 

Within such a context, for her to be able to pronounce an English word takes so much courage , let alone intellectually questioning the deep rooted boundaries of caste, class, gender , and an 'aukaad' accumulated over generations of power games.

 

 

 

Back to school

You know that feeling of dread when the invigilator walks around the classroom handing out exam papers. You are so close to knowing what is going to be asked and yet so far way.

Our education system being what it is , takin gthe ICSE (10th ) and the ISC (12th) pretty much determined our lives. A whole year or for some people a whole education spent in anticipation of one exam killed us all!

 

 

I am working in the Pardada Pardadi school in Anoopshahr , Uttar Pradesh where the femal literacy rate is 43% , ten percent lower than national average. Very often, girls get married at 13 and people are randomly killed and their bodies abandoned in the mango grove outside the school.

 

Dinner conversation yesterday was about education. The driver here haas an alternate career option. A 10th Std graduate, he gets paid to write exams of students in the village who are not confident of passing. Passing however is no big deal.

 

More often than not, in government schools where there are no teachers, on exam day, the invigilator comes and writes all the answers on the board form the students to copy.

They all pass.

 

Employers think twice about hiring anyone who has studied under the UP State board. Sure they've all passed and occasionally they even obtain university degrees, but there's no point really .

 

Strangely even to me this is shocking. The South really seems more developed, actually the North is a far cry from the South is a better way of putting it.

 

Here it is a big deal for girls to go to school after puberty. When I went to my grandfather's village in Tamil Nadu, a man was excitedly telling me about how his daughter just obtained a Masters in physics from a reputed university!

''bound to titillate the senses''

Statement made in response to the 9 year old being raped in Goa
"You can't blame the locals; they have never seen such women. Foreign tourists must maintain a certain degree of modesty in their clothing. Walking on the beaches half-naked is bound to titillate the senses," New Delhi's Mail Today newspaper quoted Pamela Mascarhenas, Goa's deputy director of tourism, as saying Friday.


Action Heroes respond:

No woman of any colour, dress, age, character deserves to be sexually violated or what some might lightly call 'eve teased'.

By making the statement above you are blaming women instead of taking responsibility of the issue. If you believe a person's dress is culturally inappropriate, you may continue to believe so, but you cannot defend any act of violence. A person inappropriately dressed according to your idea of 'Indianness' does not deserve to be attacked, assaulted, molested, raped or even whistled at.

For your information, women from across age groups be it 3 month old babies of 90 year old have been raped. They have been raped in saris, burkhas, salwar kameez, school uniforms, bikinis, jeans, skirts, shirts,lungis. Women have been molested, assaulted, raped at all times of the day, and in public places.

We hope this will direct you towards taking responsibility of these incidents by actually addressing male behaviour and men in Goa, for which you will first have to address yourself by accepting this truth.

We have evidence even though we don't really need it.

No woman of any colour, dress , age, character deserves to be sexually violated or what some might lightly call 'eve teased'.

Thank you for your attention,
An Indian girl who loves her saris and her hot pants.


A detailed letter to the Deputy Director of Tourism, Goa is here:
http://blog.blanknoise.org/2010/02/to-deputy-director-of-tourism-goa.html


Support this campaign by being an Action Hero:

1. taking a photo of a garment you wore when experienced
street sexual harassment, street sexual intimidation, street sexual violence, or think you were 'eve-teased'.

2. upload the photo on this event and also make it your facebook profile photo for 1 week start Monday Feb 8.

3. Feb 13 onwards will witness clothes collection drives in different cities, starting with Bangalore. More information coming up. You can help organize one. You can be the Blank Noise agent and collect clothes from women around you. Take the word where you can. Be an Action Hero

4. we want out BN guys to propose ideas via which men can be involved, addressed in the issue of street sexual harassment.

5. tweet it #blanknoise
http://twitter.com/blank_noise

I am sorry I can't help having a right arm

I just went down the road from my house today to get change, sleepy , in a skirt and spaghetti. This woman saw me and said something to the effect of ' Shameless,vulgar,blasphemy'..I don't know exactly what but judging from her tone and facial expression -that.

I was so disheartened. Because of years of patriarchy blah blah it has become an unquestioned thing that women have to be apologetic about their body. People who I think are rational in every other aspect of life still don't find that weird.

R was saying that day that she hates stoles and dupattas because they are modesty garments. It is bizzare though isn't it that from the dupatta to the hijab , garments have evolved to shroud women's bodies and somewhat asexualize them.

I am not however saying that it is compulsory for supposedly progressive women to go about wearing as little as possible. The opposite stereotype also is true.For instance if I turn up in this extremely loose kurta I'd be said to look like a cow/old whatever.!

Also what is feminine or 'chicky' would automatically be associated with being 'ditsy' or blonde or whatever. That is because it is stereotypically feminine and hence that is dumb??!

Why ? It's just as simple about whatever you are comfortable with isn;t it. It is seemingly trivial but reflects a lot about societal attitudes.My maid always instructs me to not even go to the corner shop showing extra bits of arm or leg!

Now to talk about blank noise

What really is the point of randomly hanging out at the railings, being yourself, not fiddling about with your phone or bag but just standing around coz you want to.

It is so empowering to reverse the gaze, be unapologetic about yourself and that feeling transcends into daily life.

Once you've overcome physically shrouding your body 'protecting' yourself with your elbows and stoles when you navigate through crowded streets, I supposse you begin to shed the mental inhibitions too and start questioning gender stereotypes with more confidence.



One night at about 12. R and I walked into this really shady tea place called Kohinoor where they were shocked to see women so late at night confidently walking in. I really wouldn't have done that two years ago unless we had guys with us or something .

A bunch of women walking around in the middle of the night is not exactly sanity as many of our self appointed male protectors told us on our night walk.

Male spaces and times are so rigidly defined that to rebel against it is regarded as bizarre naivete.

'It's not practical yaar, night time , you know Bangalore na?'

Spaces like shady bars are so restricted to males and women would be labelled if they went to one of those.
I am also more confident about shedding euphemisms even if it means risking the wrath of my maybe fundamentalist male chauvinistic university exam corrector.

--




Photos from the blank noise blog

lechometer

You must've seen these seemingly useless mirrors in the inside of autos. They are called lechometers. Apparently one auto man confessed to some guy i know can't remember who that it is meant for looking at skirts and beyond.
So i finally manage to see what one actually can see through them. hehehe.




 
 
  

Are you a girl with brains and do you burn bras??

R and I have this problem of reading gender issues into everything.
Ads, attitudes, conversations well...!!
I will try not to make this one big feminist rant but yeah...as she says recreating space: I can't get over this. If i think a gunshot sounds fun i am boyish, if i think it sounds dangerous i am girlish.">here about the test I've posted below.

I did the test anyway because I am self obsessed and I love taking these tests even though I don't take them seriously.
In the cantonement station , I saw this ad for a newspaper where the woman is shown reading the supplement and the man reading the main paper. Why? Because she is the one who is suppossed to sit at home and is likely to be interested in curtain sales in west Bangalore.Whatever!
I remember when I went 'trekking' outside Hyderabad with a bunch of friends they all said I was as good as a boy. What is that suppossed to mean?
Besides why is it a compliment when a girl is like a boy ( that is , according to society resourceful,independent whatever) and not vice versa?
Infact vice versa would mean pansy, loser etc.

It being a compliment negates the very idea of feminism. That equality is about being man enough.
Man I know I am being very inarticulate and this is a subject that I will write a long well thought out angsty post on but for now you are spared!! Ya another thing that baffled me is this community on

orkut

for girls with brains
Huh? That's an exclusive minority group among females ??

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

The world's oldest profession

A prostitute to her daughter - K. Satchidanandan


Dear child, say without shame
that I am your mother
and this city is your father.
Go, tell the chaste wives,
I teach their men how to love.

I offered myself
in place of a thousand women,
and became a saint.

Man, my child, is endless Desire,
you should cross that sea
the way I rose above my body.

Raise your head;
be my survivor, grow to be great.
You should have a tryst with tomorrow:
you should see the sun
that I could not.

I do not want to weep before Jesus
nor do I want Upagupta to weep before me.
Every night I turn red hot,
every morning I become gold.

I conquered lust;
you should transcend greed.
We are the bountiful Earth
and we, the giving Nature.


(Translated from Malayalam by the poet with Rizio Raj)
R was doing a project on violence against sex workers. I went with her to a dingy little room in K.R market, a group of sex workers working against HIV chatted with us there. On their profession, the challenges, the ostracization, life.



From Rio to Rome, from Dakar to Darwin, laws on prostitution are illogical and contradictory. They reflect the confusion felt by lawyers and by the general public about work so clearly connected with sex.

An estimated three million women do sex work in about 400 red light areas in India, approximately 30 per cent are children; a majority are dalits and tribals - issue.

‘My husband doesn't know I am a sex worker. I work by day and go back home by night. I tell him I am working in an NGO spreading awareness about AIDS'.

'My children are made fun of because I am a prostitute. They resent me.'

'Legalization will expose our secrets to an unaccepting society.'

'I hadn't heard about HIV, condoms, AIDS even years after joining the profession.'

'I am much better off living this life, earning a living than in my husbands house where I was beaten up, and our earnings were used for alcohol. My daughter is in the second year of Bsc . I can't afford it anymore. Tell me what opportunities she has.'


'At least now I have this support group of other sex workers. It helps me deal with it.'

'You are paid less when you insist they wear a condom. Out of four fifty rupees, I am left with hundred. The rest goes to the lodge owner, the police or the 'pimp'.'

The 'pimp' refers to the role that is inevitably played by a blackmailing male presence in a society where a man less woman is nothing. To rent a house, they need a man who pretends to be married to them.. Revealing the details of their profession will mean they will be vacated. These men constantly blackmail them and even threaten to break into their house. Hence trapping them into a vicious cycle.

'We can't complain to the police because they will say that we as 'lose women' deserve it. They will go to the other prostitutes when they want sex.'

'I need to drink to forget that I have to sell my body to earn a living.'
'Only they drink. (Disapproving). We are Muslims. We don't drink.'

‘HIV workers don’t care about sex worker welfare.’

'In my next birth I don't want to be born as a woman. That is the worst fate.'

We asked if they would mind alternate employment like sewing, working in a factory etc.
They said that if they were paid at least three thousand five hundred rupees a month, they wouldn't.

'We are sex workers. We are still entitled to a life of dignity.'

(Translated roughly from Hindi and Tamil) Photo from flickr.