Tibet

TT

The Uses and Misuses of Photographs

Media manipulation by police to create a distinct communalised imagery


(The below is reproduced from one the Delhi Mailing Lists)The Uses and Misuses of Photographs by Sadanand Menon
[Missing source]


Monday, September 22 was an extraordinary day in the annals the Indian media. I would like to call it a day of shame. For, on that day, our media collectively displayed its herd-like mentality and its entirely uncritical attitude to the use – and misuse – of the photographs it publishes.At least eight mainstream English language newspapers (including The Times of India, The Indian and The New Indian Express, The Hindu, the Hindustan Times, The Deccan Chronicle) and many more in the language press from North to South and East to West, uncritically published almost identical photographs on their front pages. The photographs were not generated by any single agency. They were neither taken by ‘citizen’ photographers nor were they official handouts. They were shots by individual staff photographers as well as professional syndicated photographers. What is amazing is what newsrooms across the country chose to do with the image.The photographs were of three suspects involved in the Delhi blasts, who were arrested from their residence in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar. Reports also claimed they were students of the Jamia Milia Islamia. What was fishy about the photographs was that they showed three totally unidentifiable people, their head and face completely swathed in generous length of cloth, flanked by gun-toting policemen in mufti and other hangers-on. Yet it seemed obvious that this was a photo-op provided to the media – not to protect anyone’s identity – but to precisely create a definite sense of identity.For all the three suspects, to mask their identity, were tricked up by the local police in identical ‘Palestinian Rumaals’ or kaffiyehs or abayas or cassavas as this piece of head-dress is variously known. Though none of their faces were visible, to any casual reader of the newspapers it would be abundantly clear that they were of ‘Arab’, ‘West Asian’ or ‘Islamic’ origin. A clear case of racial profiling!Some sceptical comments about this on the net, primarily generated by documentary film maker Yousuf Sayeed who lives in the same area, led to a small critical piece in The Hindustan Times two days later, raising critical questions. The sceptics wondered how it came about that the three arrested suspects came to be in possession of identical, brand new rumaals, which they could readily pull out of their pockets to cover their faces. As if, upon realising they might be arrested soon, they went shopping and bought identical scarves, so that everyone will recognise them as ‘Islamic terrorists’. Critics pointed out that usually suspects arrested on various charges mask their faces with their own handkerchiefs or borrow towels or black cloth to hood their faces; never before had it seemed like such a costume drama as the Delhi police had managed to stage.Then came the stunning revelation by the Delhi police commissioner. He confessed that it was his department which had dressed up the suspects in such a suggestive manner and, even more alarmingly, that the Delhi police had purchased these pieces of cloth “in bulk” for use by those arrested. Obviously, every arrested person could now be given a suggestive ‘Islamic terrorist’ look, thereby setting up dangerous subliminal propaganda within the media.Repulsive as it is, most people will agree that the Police and its dirty-tricks department are not beyond using such obnoxious methods. What is beyond explanation is how the media collectively fell into this trap and carried these images without a single question mark or doubt about what they so readily display on their front pages.For those not used to thinking about these things, the question can be framed a little differently. It has to do with conceptual issues related to the use (or misuse) of the image in the media. On any given day, hundreds of thousands of photographs are clicked. Of these, by common consensus, and governed by a largely abstract logic dealing with the received wisdom of ‘news-value’ or ‘news-worthiness’, about five hundred to a thousand pictures might be considered for use within the media. After that, it is quite chancy or dependent on strong editorial choices why a photograph makes it to the papers, in particular the front page.The front page photo, in the world of the print media, is usually associated with an iconic status. It is supposed be a quick encapsulation of what a paper or a region or a nation or a civilisation imagines as its primary concern. It frames the news of the day with a kind of visual evidence or back-up which then illustrates how it wants to set up the communication and how it wants the readers to enter the narrative.Very seldom, across 365 days in a year, do we find identical images on the front page. That is supposed to be the greatness and the strength of democratic media practice that editorial position and interpretation of events can vary. It is also part of the notion of healthy competition in the media that variety, diversity and contrariness are seen as virtues – that a news item or image which is used sycophantically by one section of the press, can as easily be used critically by another section of the same press.That is why, when you come across a substantial section of the national press use just one common image on their front page, and that too without an critical remarks or interrogative comments, one begins to smell the operation of ‘ideology’, which is nothing but a blind acceptance of certain ‘ruling’ ideas of a class or of a moment – ideas that indicate the power structures within which ‘information’ and ‘meaning’ are manufactured.To me it is shattering, that on the evening of September 21, across the newsrooms of the best of Indian newspapers, not one editorial discussion chose to evaluate the photograph of the three arrested youngsters draped in checked cloth and use their judgement to ‘read’ the picture in a dispassionate manner worthy of a free press. Instead the Indian media collectively behaved as they had not even during the period of the Emergency and its draconian censorship. They all fell prey to their own sense of prejudice and communal mindset. The Nazi propaganda machine could not have expected to produce better results.Obviously, Indian media needs to re-investigate the ‘frame’ within which it is presenting, colouring and analysing news. Such evidence of a collective cop-out is a serious failing, which it needs to critically examine and carry out correctives. In fact, this is a fit case for being taken before the Press Council.Shame, a little shame is all that the media needs. For shame as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment.

Weed and wine (HuMONEYING my work- a series on stories i can't tell at work

that morning cup of coffee you see drip down from the vending machine
you grab it careless when you walk in grumpily on a tuesday afternoon
on a way to a press conference at the hilton

that will have 14 cheesecakes for dessert that the journos might not even notice
waiting for soundbytes

from the man
now surrounded by a mob of reporters
with boom mikes

From the graying man who
‘s casual tuesday dinner with his annorexic fuckbuddy(my age) bottle of wine costs half my salary

that morning cup of coffee is blackened by the
black leathery hands of a lower caste man
Who picked the weeds
on the pesticide rich soil
on which the coffee grew

Blackened by the pesticide
That slowly coursed in through his veins


To die
because the 200 Rupees
He earned for picking weeds
in the pesticide Rich soil
with his leathery black
67 year old hands

didn’t pay for his
treatment

and the nearest shiny glass walled hospital
needed registration
Before he was warded to the ward
so he went straight
and Free to the morgue


(inspired by a coffee plantation worker I met in Coorg when travelling on work)

Brussels airport

Her haircut was like mine but slicker. She looked at me with her bright blue eyes as she groped my breasts for bombs and asked ‘’How old are you?’’ 21, I answered with my small honest voice.

Aunties in silk saris passed by alongside husbands who moved the trolley for them. But I waited there and she made me take off my belt. My button was broken so when my belt was removed,my jeans popped open. She untucked my shirt, she made me take off my boots touched my feet, my ankles and then asked ‘’Are you alone?’’ I said ‘’Yes’’
She did the round again, the feeling up and found no bombs and said I could go. She didn’t button me up. I did it clumsily in a corner.
The others who also logically deserved this treatment were software engineers in suits with rich wives and knew the techniques of international travel.

I was used to feeling sexy in Indian airports.

GreatINDIANmiddle class

Goes on holiday to a lovely place like Coorg, and goes to visit monasteries with a packed cardboard box of apples, chips and sandwiches

And stays in a resort that offers home style s/n Indian food
I never get why you'd want to go somewhere and not get your hands dirtied by the place
eat the local food, stay in nice lovely locally place etc


Anyway no cribbing.
I did travel show and stayed in one of these resorts hence observation

Sion

My neighbourgood in Sion in bombay reminds me of the India that i grew out of. Barring the stray
dominoes pizza, the coke ads and the vodafone ads that are like bombays skin now anyway, it has little evidence of the India i grew into.It has old Kirana shops, aunties in saris who think the only 24/7 job ust be for a brothel, melody toffees, old tailor shops, general stores whatnot




I cover retail for some business stories I do
Now , it some times makes me sad that even fab India has fallen into the 'retail trap'and has started looking more and more like west side type places with instore advertising.

Retail when I was young was a Tripti oil store in Bangalore where my mother had a montly account and I went there occassionally , five year old, alone only because it was so close to my house
it required no crossing.

And bought maggi pockets.
Once I crossed the road oppossite and a scooter hit me.
I had an Accident. There are two types of accidents
One:When some thing hits u
Two: When something runs over u

I am sure I have a memory of a scooter running over me but my mother shut me up and said i wouldn't even have been alive had a scooter run over me.



Anyway Part two of the India I was growing into was the Trinethra supermarket in Hyderabad. I then thought I could indulge in things aa long as they were below 20 Rupees. bags, chocolates whatever



And then my dad got a fancy job, we moved cities and gorged on foregn products in super markets, I'd pick up whatever i fancied and put it in the trolley,we'd travel abroad,



And then I kept moving for studies , to work

But then it's amazing because I finally moved back to bangalore after 12 years and NOTHING in the city reminded me of what it used to be.It was almost like a new ccity except Cubbon park and lal bagh.

And for someone who generally has a good memory its'sad, this change

Bombay

In the clinical confines of a news room being told that

if the blasts were in a slum area and only 3 people died ...why cover it?

And

One farmer committed suicide feeling sad for Ratan.He after all took his land and paid him back for it.

One out of ----

Reporting is fun sometimes

Marine drive is nice and my little cozy apartment crammed with 5 girls who can't afford bombay's crazy rents

Zenzi/ big town/things open late/everything so far

grown up and working

Tibet

An edited version appeared in The Hindu
A woman is downloading wall papers of Aishwarya Rai in her office. The only thing surprising about this is that this is in a hotel in Lhasa , once the capital of Tibet. The view from my hotel reveals that Lhasa is today like any other Chinese city. There are wide roads lined with Chinese restaurants serving spicy Sichuan food. This is an indication of the wave of immigrants from the Sichuan province coming in search of better opportunities. One wouldn’t guess one was in a harsh high altitude Tibet except in the monasteries and the Tibetan heartland of Lhasa , The Barkhor Square.

There is a flurry of red in the Bakkhor square as monks make their way to the Jokhang temple, circling their prayer wheels. Old women in chubas chant mantras as they drag themselves to the temple. In this human traffic are the white tourists, beggar children with runny noses( almost always) and the only Indian – me.

Above, the government watches carefully from strategically positioned cameras. A jolly man plays a traditional instrument to gather a clapping crowd. The police come and ask him to leave, threatening to confiscate the instrument.

The temple- the holiest shrine for the Buddhists has dingy rooms full of lamps lit by yak butter. The flames sway gently in the intense heat typical to high altitude Lhasa. The magnificent brass Buddhas stand tall worshipped by thousands of pilgrims.
The pilgrims prostrate themselves repeatedly in front of the temple making scraping noises each time they get up and creating the faint buzz of mantras.

All around the Jokhang are rows of shacks selling yak butter, large red sides of meat, souvenirs etc. Women sell what are called street noodles- the equivalent of the Indian bhel puri? To assure you of the quality of the item they are selling you, shopkeepers always say’ Tibeti ..no Chinese’ . The ways to vent out frustration are few and subtle ways like this help.

Baptista , a Portuguese woman studying Tibetan tells me ‘This faith is one thing they cannot destroy’. Her pale skin flushes and her eyes crinkle as she talks about the Chinese people and the Christian missionaries who, according to her are determined to destroy Tibet’s religious heritage

Tibet is difficult to write about because it is all at once unimaginably beautiful and also heart breaking. The economic divide between the Chinese and the Tibetans is painfully obvious. They only English words that the poor Tibetans learn are ‘money’, ‘Please give me some money’ that they chant repeatedly to hapless tourists.
One night when we were walking back home, a mob of dirty looking Tibetans surrounded us and grabbed our packet of food with such desperation and rage that I didn’t know how to respond. The Chinese are very friendly and fascinated by Indians. I had groups of Chinese women come and have their pictures taken with me.


A few meters from the Barkhor , there are wide streets and shopping malls in the Chinese quarter. Shops sell everything from Kashmir carpets to leopard skins. One man offered me a leopard skin for 5000 yuan. The description of our hotel in last year’s edition of the lonely planet guide was that of a basic staying facility with pit toilets that smelt noxious. The hotel is by now like a business hotel with plush furnishing and bath tubs in the bathrooms. This only indicates the rapid pace of development in this part of China. The pit toilets however, it must be mentioned are a common feature in the rural areas.

In the city there are glitzy clubs and occasionally posters of Bollywood actors like
Divya Bharti and Salman Khan pasted on doors. People here barely speak English, they don’t even know the word ‘Indian’ . When they saw me they’d whisper ‘Indu, Indu’ , the word for India in Chinese .
In a restaurant a Tibetan boy searches me out and asks me if I am from India. He had been in India for many years before returning to Tibet to work as a tour guide. Tenzing is nostalgic about India and longs to return saying he is ‘grateful to (my) country’. He takes us to a sort of a Tibetan Opera house meets disco where Tibetan and Chinese youth dance to the latest Tibetan numbers. There are also traditional Tibetan dance performances in between. The Tibetans who have been to India are eager to talk to me in Hindi.
Getting to Tibet is difficult but it is worth it . The drive from Kathmandu to Lhasa has perhaps has the most dramatic landscapes in the world with charming hamlets and towns along the way. The Turquoise Namtso lake just five hours away from Lhasa is surrounded by the highest mountains is a must see.





And a few hours away from Lhasa, it is immensely desolate, determinedly barren.
There are vast stretches of mountains in harsh grey, brown and rust in the highest elevation in the world.

In the Barkhor itself it is impossible to imagine McDonalds even exists as you are drawn into a fragile world of faith.

CAPYOUCHENNAI MUMBAI BANGALORE

My dad is in a different city every other day and sometimes in diffferent countries. In my head there are no boundaries and it seems no big deal to me to just keep moving. I did the usual train journeys from Chennai to Bangalore saying a brief bye to Filter coffee, exploiting cheap booze and good weather in Bangalore and returning to weekdays and humidity. In between I'd speak Kannada to the Chennai auto drivers and each time, each time , feel relieved when I remember that in Bangalore , they use metres!

It is easy and even fashionable to hate Chennai. WHen I left two blog posts ago I was determined to hate it. It has the worst weather in the world, it is conserative, people are sleazy, clubs shut early, good booze is hard to get...etc are the many truths, hatruths, stereotypes about Chennai.

Hatruths are half truths are subjective statements.

Yet , I grew to love the city and to discover that you can fall in love with any damn place except some are faster infatuable with - Bangalore ( oops...will somebody agree please it has the best weather in the world for a traffic jam) , (NewYorkParisydneylondonice) .

INFATUABLE: Ability to get infatuated. Infatuation potential.

ANyhow , in the year I spent in CHennai I discovered more than the heavenliest coffee on earth at Saravanas, the Beasant Nagar beach in the evenings , the best South Indian food, carnatic music etc etc.

People in Chennai are so humble and helpful almost like a flashback from an old world when the market didn't rule us.

Anyhow so even though I am slightly afraid of this bizzare decision to go to mumbai for a job i have little expertise in , I know I can return to Bangalore , to gudang garam cigarettes sold lo(o?)se,to old friends in an old bar.

Moving again

This feels alien. Writing on this blog. But then I suddenly felt a wave of affection for my old self and decided to ressurect it. I tried approving the comments I got but rejected them all by m istake. Anyhoo, I am moving again to Bombay to work for a news channel. Will write more here maybe.

I am not saying

Blogging after ages, at one fifty eight AM , i do not want to be typically negative. I have a presentation tomorrow and I stole ideas from it from my recent trip to Kashmir. I have to promote a state as a tourist destination. Using all my photographs to make pretty slides, I am trivializing , hiding reality because my aim is to promote. I am not mentioning how the military man posted to sand with a gun on a certain spot near the Dal lake, all day , everyday, said 'There is no such thing as safety in Srinagar. Anyone may shoot anytime. I've learnt to accept I may die any moment.' I am not saying how there were attacks on th Mughal gardens when I was there or that we cold count the number of tourists with our fingers as groups of shikaras floated, lonely on the Dal lake. That the people think the conflict is manufactured by politicians, fueled by the media and they are merely caught in between , only wanting to make a living driving taxis, rowing shikaras for tourists who are rare now. They only want peace in their homeland, to be able to trust people again. I cannot say that while a military men is friendly to me and we chat for almost half an hour, he suddenly says that I might have a gun in my pocket and he does not trust me .I am not mentioning that a friend was molested in Gulmarg when she was skiing on the higher slopes. She was told not to complain to the 'Indian girls'.
I am saying some truths like that Kashmir is so incredibly beautiful . I am not saying how much it troubled me to be there in a bubble, as a tourist who takes and leaves. It makes me think that this is the type of journalism I don't want to do.
I am typing badly I know will do grammar check tom. Because I am typing in a dark room ok so forgive.
I

Kashmir

Rootlessness

Well, I don't know where to start. I am sitting here and all around me my house of about two years (incidentally, the longest I've ever lived in one place in remembarable memory) is in a mess. I am moving houses. I am feeling scattered , slightly scared about what I am going to be doing after i graduate in a few months. I have just been living in a daze partying too much, sleeping too little and not thinking .
That's fun but I want to shake myself up and figure out. I wish it was like school where after 7th std , you just go to 8th. I actually don't wish that.

I feel sad that whenever I settle down I suddenly pack up , tear all ties and leave. Again, I get bored of things easily, even places so I guess it's OK. Apart from my boarding school I don't think I felt a sense of belonging to any place than this little part of Jayanagar in Bangalore. Where I know all the auto drivers and they know I have french at 7 AM and have to go to Lalbagh Double Road Gate to be picked up by a friend at 7pm and college at 8:52, hurry up I need the 9AM attendance. I can take back change for five hundred bucks later from them. Where I can run to shoppers stop and pick up a sweater before a trip, and maggi noodles for dinner down the road. Where I can find my way back perfectly even if a tad too tipsy at 11:30 . I'll now have to start over with my new house and of course from wherever the hell I am going to go next year.

Oh and also..
********************************************************************
Third month no smoking mark
********************************************************************

Rootlessness

Well, I don't know where to start. I am sitting here and all around me my house of about two years (incidentally, the longest I've ever lived in one place in remembarable memory) is in a mess. I am moving houses. I am feeling scattered , slightly scared about what I am going to be doing after i graduate in a few months. I have just been living in a daze partying too much, sleeping too little and not thinking .
That's fun but I want to shake myself up and figure out. I wish it was like school where after 7th std , you just go to 8th. I actually don't wish that.

I feel sad that whenever I settle down I suddenly pack up , tear all ties and leave. Again, I get bored of things easily, even places so I guess it's OK. Apart from my boarding school I don't think I felt a sense of belonging to any place than this little part of Jayanagar in Bangalore. Where I know all the auto drivers and they know I have french at 7 AM and have to go to Lalbagh Double Road Gate to be picked up by a friend at 7pm and college at 8:52, hurry up I need the 9AM attendance. I can take back change for five hundred bucks later from them. Where I can run to shoppers stop and pick up a sweater before a trip, and maggi noodles for dinner down the road. Where I can find my way back perfectly even if a tad too tipsy at 11:30 . I'll now have to start over with my new house and of course from wherever the hell I am going to go next year.

Oh and also..
********************************************************************
Third month no smoking mark
********************************************************************

The thought of Goa always comes accompanied with stubborn clichés. The sea, the laidbackness, the raves, freedom, colour, the joie de vivre of people determined to let go and just be.

In the Arpora Saturday night market, I was caught up in all that when I suddenly hear some screams. A group of bouncers scream’ KILL HIM, bastard, kill him’. A small scrawny dark man was being dragged violently on the ground and taken outside the gates where he would presumably be ‘taken care of’. Everybody around just stopped and watched. I heard snatches of conversation in a sort of hodgepodge of new accents.

‘Yeah I heard these sort of fights are common this part of the world’ and everything else to that effect.

That scene disturbed me. It tainted the energetic sort of rhapsody of the place. He might have been a pickpocket but it scared me how people could have so much violence in them. That’s not the only thing however which scared me.
My friend kept pointing to people and remarking how they were so out of place in the scene. People like punju aunties, men in dhotis watching in amazement at the foreign trance like rendition of Sanskrit slokhas, Goan locals.
I noticed too how they stood out amidst the typical goan tourist crowd that dominated the place. Who are we to say however that they are out of place?

N was telling me about the ‘Malleshwaram type’ of Hindus who are scandalized by women in sleeveless tops. The Hindu community in Goa is not so prominently represented on these tourist brochures where the now much commercialized carnival, Christmas and the churches are important mentions. I wonder if in this entire attempt to market Goa to foreigners much of the Goan culture is unrepresented.

People sell things from all over the world in the flea market. I found this beautiful dress made of an old sari in a shop owned by a foreigner, I think an English woman. She said it cost one thousand three hundred bucks and I politely remarked that it was expensive.
She started one whole bitchy ramble ignoring our existence with another white woman.
‘Dude this is designer stuff that could fetch twenty times more in the Europe. I am sick of Indians complaining about the prices. It is SILK... And etc’ Fuck the bloody euro. To me it’s just a very sexy dress made out of old cheap silk saris that is not worth more than a hundred bucks.
My point is that how is it justified for foreigners to come to sell things only their kind can afford and sort of be blinkered to local sensibilities in every way . I wonder also if my argument is justified because in today’s world of blending cultural identities, who are we to say Goa belongs only to the locals? Is the software engineer from Delhi living in Bangalore less bangalorean than a Kannada teacher?
People from all over the world have made goa their home, permanent or temporary. How important is it for them to be accessible to the locals? Can they live within their seemingly impenetrable bubble of sand, sea, wealth and their essentially western lifestyle?
Terribly hungry, V and I decide to buy this tiny piece of strawberry cake which looked delicious. When I asked the local guy working in a firang stall, he said it was two hundred rupees for a piece and burst out laughing immediately as I did too. The prices were just bizarre.
Another thing which comes to mind is the exploitation of the relatively lax laws in India. The other Goa , an article is here.
(To be continued)

Here is an article on Mcleodganj on a similar topic that I wrote.

tis the season to be jolly fa la la la la la la la la

I was back from Goa on Tuesday night but am still hangovering from it! And the only useful thing I have done since then is attend about three classes in college and the usefulness of that is highly debatable.
Goa was wonderful ..I think I'll never come back from there satisfied. Though it was the tourist season and crowded it was amazing.I loved the Saturday night flea market especially coz of the diversity of people, the sheer energy and exuberance of the bands playing there and the festive mood. Ofcourse there is the joyous walk into a shack and order cheap delecious kings beer and be whatever the hell you want to be and wear whatever the hell you want to excitement and new years and all that..
I want to go back............

Oh while we were travelling ot Goa we played this song only once I think but its still stuck in my head. Me believes its embedded and singing in my subconcious


Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar
Oh don't ask why
Oh don't ask why
Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar

.................



I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die

pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa
I would post pretty pictures of swarms of exotic people in the coolest clothes, with dreadlocks, the sea, the beautiful architecture, GOA, blah but I didn't take my camera on the trip and what freedom it is once in a while to be free! To not worry about getting the best pictures , about it getting stolen etc.

Oh and while I was away some $#%@$%#$ #$%#$ (person, software? , ? ) did someting to my blog where the spam from my inbox was getting posted on my blog. If they have access to my spam folder they could post my mails as well. Freaky!!

Last night was V's birthday and we went to this beautiful( i need to go buy myself a vocabulary) place called fireflies. Arty type place ...eco friendly architecture, red oxide floors,stone walls, pillars from chettinad, real , organic non oily non masalafied food, bon fire, pansy alcohol and much fun was had.
You'll must go .How I'd like to run away for a bit somewhere like that , ead, write do my own thing and be relieved of brigade road/traffic/college/bangalore madness.
I know my post is one big mess.
bye

HELPPPPP

Does anyone know why this is happening to my blog??

I think I am off to Goa. I wasn't sure if it would work or not till now so yeah think I am going.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!!

 

Tra la la la tra la la la la tra la tra laa

Dum Dum Dum Dum
















tra la la la la la la la la la la



















*************************************************************************************
The one month no smoking mark
*************************************************************************************
(Though I still don't know which adults read this blog I am tired of nicotinous and intoxicant censorship, please to be understanding. besides this is pressurizing myself to stick to it. Not for komal twacha or komal lungs but simply to challenge myself. :)

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

'War is Menstruation Envy.'

Hungry Kya?

I totally totally have to tell you 'll about this awesome site called www.hungrybangalore.com.
It has a database of all the restaurants in bangalore that deliver home , listed area wise, along with the menus.All you have to do is add whatever you want to your cart and they call you in five minutes and confirm your order and then bring you your food.
Awesome no? These are times when I feel like being in love with the modern world.

add words tise ments

I love being a substitute
I love my commute to work.
I love the company.
I love missing the last bus home.

Duh!
So Sony erricson plays with the sentiments of its target market-the corporate world? - plays with the sordidness of an urban life .


With the samsung blah blah phone, you can live two lives at once. Do two things at once. On an exoticised boat in Kerala AND in a board meeting. Helping an old wrinkly woman sleep on a dirty crowded bus and ..
In the inch of target audience that I am.
Be a travel writer and earn like an investment banker.
Be a trekker and not sink your youth in the flat foreboding screen of the computer.(caffeine aided,air conditioned)+perks ***

'I always wanted to quit on Monday Mornings.'
RECLAIM your damn life man with some bloody car.
even if all you can do is chug chug your car through traffic adventures.
'But I swear that monday morning husky voice sticks in my head whenever I am loaded with work and want to run off to some godforsaken part of myanmar.


But , honey , real life is not being advertisement.
real life sucks slightly more
and those bastards know that.

copywriter me become?

picture caption: Underexposed pictures of hot monks in coorg that i took even as the boat i was on was speeding away. And am not the only one guilty of finding them hot! What connection the pic may have to this post is open to postmodernist/Freudian intepretation. ANd i cant seem to upload it so later ok?
Im getting better at writing crap, I know.

To sell or not to sell?

Things that make me forget that I am a wannabe saver of the world and tempt me to sell my soul to a corporate job.


nice shoes,TRAVEL,alcohol and its cousins,food,ridiculously expensive clothes that I want to buy anyway,
Europe-( ah, well the idea of it, I've never been there), cover charge,
books-beautiful big ones with wowwwwwwwwwwwwwww photographs,books,
cameras and lenses!
SILVER jewellery,
an AC,


Antiques of all kinds
gadgets
pretty much a lot.
A semester before college ends,career confusion remains constant.

haven't slept a wink for some twenty six hours.And all sorts of Hydroxide molecules float around in my blood.

Everything in my mind seems to have deconstructed itself from conditioned , accepted norms.

When the cop says we're making a big deal out of 'normal girl boy teasing', I want to spit at this simplistic bloody view of life.

And I hand some woman one of the blogathon testimonials and she rushes back to me an hour later, finds me amidst the oppressive Brigade Road crowd, Today littered with the shocking presence of girls just leaning over the railing..

Some conversion pamphlet that says God loves me. Umm sorry religion doesn't work for me. All religions have some absolutely beautiful wonderful things about them. They ALLlack something somewhere , have gone utterly preciously ,ruining humanity type wrong with sometings and perhaps, perhaps , they all have most core ideas in common.
They just evolved to give humanity a feeling of security . Thus they varied in places acrss the world.

yeah so this woman felt bad for me that i handed an eve teasing testimonial? and tried to convert me?

Update:

Still haven't slept much. Having nightmares of a little ghost girl called Barbara.
Sylvia Plath- it's her fault- I've been reading too much.

Umm yeah thaats all, spelling grammer mistakes included

You are wanted

Savita: age 22 - I was walking down the road. Unknown hands 'accidentally' brushed against my crotch. Time 9 pm.

Mohini: age 25 - A stranger man in his rubbed his erect genitals on me. Time 3 pm.

Farah: age 16- I shouted at a man who was making sounds and looking at my breasts and the public started laughing at me. Time 12 30 pm

Sujata: age 13- I was waiting for my mother to pick me up after school. A man in a car stopped "How much for an hour?" Time 1 30 pm

Pinky: age 11- I was taking the bus to tutions. A hand up the back of my skirt. I was numbed. Time 4 pm

Sonal: age 13 - On the scooter with Appa. Two boys pinched my breasts as they speed by on their bikes. Time 8 20pm

Piya: age 27 2 men above the age of 50 passed comments about my breasts. I spat at them and hit them with my chappal. Time 5 pm

Niti:age 18. an unknown groped my breast and disappeared in the crowd. The hand is yet to be identified. Time 3 pm

Jaysree: age 19. I was walking home and a guy in a car tried to pull me inside.
Time 6 pm

Garima: age 16 was stalked for 1 hour and had to hide in a phone booth. Time: 7 pm

Laxmi: age 37 I was constantly 'accidentally' elbowed in my breasts by a man in front of me. Time: 4 pm

Alka: age 9 A man I don't know whistled at me when I was going to school. My mother did not let me go to school that day. Time 8 .05 am

Nupur: age 32 I was waiting for the bus. 4 cars with men stopped by and asked me to come with them. Time 8 15 pm

Radha: age 50 I was enjoying my daily morning walk until I saw a van kept following me and asking, how much? Time 7 am

Priya: age 17 He held me from the back and tried to drag me into a lane. I bit him and ran away. Time: 6 45 pm.

Meetu: age 7 was getting inside an auto. A man put his hand between my legs.
I am speaking about it after 20 years. Time 5 pm

Gayatri: age 53 I was getting inside a bus. A man put his hand between my legs. I reacted. I slapped him hard. The public also joined in. Time 6 pm

Anusree :age 21 Man on a bicycle rode past and spat on me. Time 6 35 pm.

Mansi: age 17 Anonymous man kept mumbling, whispering that he wanted to 'fuck me'. Time. 4 45 pm.

Sushma: age 31 A man squeezed my breasts hard and disappeared. Time. 9 pm

And you?


Who we are, where we go, what we wear, how we sit, stand, talk, walk in our very own cities. When we demand the need to make our cities non threatening , I don't expect anyone to think of me as their sister or mother, but to really look at women as citizens who have every right to be out on the streets, without any explanation. Sometimes we just love to walk, stand around, hang around, without looking 'available.'

We experience eve teasing, a sexual violation on an everyday basis but we ignore it, by justifying it as 'normal'. The impact of 'eve-teasing' on the victim is often discounted when it is popularly perceived as a joke or a prank. Blank noise feels that this is also damaging and has severe long term consequences on the mental health of most women. Blank noise seeks to enable women to reclaim their space. The idea is to form a collective, confront the issue by raising more questions, deny denial and heal. Blank Noise works with people through performance, blogging, and street interventions.

Blank Noise Project Bangalore calls for women/ girls/ ladies/ of all ages, languages, colour, and shape to be participate in a street intervention on Sunday Nov 12th. Venue: Brigade Road. By participating you will be celebrated as a BNP Action Hero.

We guarantee that this performative action won't ask you to be acrobatic, but to be yourself, and experience the site you act upon transform. Be the stimuli, be an action hero.

Confirm /ask us questions at 98868 40612. This street intervention will be approximately 1.5 hours

I've been instructed to blog and the only ting I feel like saying is in memory of all the plans I've cancelled because it's too late to enjoy an evening without worrying about being raped, robbed, hurt in anyway on the way back.

The Afghan Women

Come ok?
This Friday, 27th Oct , 7 PM , Good Sheperd's Auditorium , Brigade Road

'You are just another invader. You think you bring us a wonderful gift. You call it freedom. Free from God. Free from family. Free from all restrictions.'


'There is a yearning for a day when one person will be as good as another.When laws, not men , will rule us'.


'You live in another Afghanistan'.

To quit or not to quit

is not a question anymore..


You know things. Ofcourse you do.


But do you know that exact feeling when you realize what you've known all along and completely feel and understand it?
Wait, don't go away.. I will explain.
You use polythene bags all the time. One moment in a high school chemistry class you realized that the notorious thin material is made of ethene. Poly ethene. Many ethene molecules.
And your like oh yeaaah!

Or hmm.. more examples? Tell me.

Today I realized what it really means to be completely unfazed by constant discouragement, criticism . How to do your thing and to not give up when it is expected that you will.
I am a sucker for discouragement. I bend , break and QUIT. Stupid as it might sound , I've never really felt the urge to carry on when it becomes untakable.I move on and then feel overburdened by the load of half done QUITS. Invisibly haunting me and following me tainting other paths.
It 's a precious thing to have that tiny pocket of confidence within me though it might be a tad too late in my life. Like duh! it is. To rely on that little stream of confidence .


Today I felt that exact feeling.

  

WHEN I've had ENOUGH sleep ....

isn't it the best feeling in the world to go to sleep after reading a book a true book..not some thing remotely connected to education!
and then to wake up in the morning when i want to.
Not forcing myself out of bed with coffee shots and dazing myself through a million things each day. THAT's why i deserve to bunk college today . and do all these deleciously velaaaaaaaaa things like waste my time on orkut.

I found a friend who I knew in primary school!! wow! we were besttt friends then. We had sleepovers and picnics and played all these dream childhood games !
We went to farmhouses and learnt karate. (I have a blue belt in karate but I don't know what it means anymore) .We went to watch hum aapke hain kaun , a bunch of unaccompanied kids and felt very cool about it. In the pre multiplex era in some sidey theatre , that too. There was a whole gang but I only found one on orkut.Make that two actually. The other one joined my new school and have more or less kept track of her.

I found some others who remember vaguely as well. When I went to boarding school I completely lost touch with everyone and here they all are , gown up and living their lives all over the world . What did I expect? For them to be short and thin with baby voices , ready to run out after the lunch bell rang?
For a rootless nomad like me , it's even nicer to find someone who has the same memories as me. I sometimes think my memories are only mine and they were made in places I am unlikely to ever go back again. It's funny how nice it is to look at the past and the relevance it has to your present. What can i possibly have in common with these people though after seperate lives in different schools , colleges, cities , countries? Just that we knew each other in the first few years of our lives , I guess and that's nice , ain't it?

heeeheehaahaaaheheehhaaahaaas sorry heheeehahaha sorry no i swear hehehehe

Assuming I have an audience and a sensible mature one at that, I don't expect any one to emphatize with me in this post. Because I am not sensible and mature at all.
To get to the point , I always find myself in situations where I have crazy laughing fits in the most inappropriate contexts!
Today , at rehearsal ( serious , tense scene ) and every person on stage is in splits!

Delivering violent dialogues and laughing! How I pity my director but silly as it might sound , it's hard to control laughter when as much as a look from another person can have you in splits!

Most often, the situation won't even be conventionally funny much to the dismay of the mature spectator! And I especially feel like laughing when it is completely quiet and serious. In school we had this thing called astachal where the whole school goes and sits up on the hill in the evening to watch the sunset for fifteen minutes. I've excluded words like introspection , self reflection , meditation.....add it all ok?

Umm so yeah, once I saw this kid piling sand into her mother's lap with great dedication during astachal and my friend and I burst into a bizzare fit of uncontrollable laughter!That got us into so much trouble!!
And another time I die half way through the play and am carried on a stretcher . I used to laugh like crazy then ! !! a dead body covered with a white sheet shaking with laughter. unintentionally intended spookiness. When the real show happened I didn't laugh..THank god for that!And I hope I don't this time too!

Technology means to me
mailing my accounts to my dad's friend in New Zealand on Sunday night ,when morning just begins for them and then having it ready on Monday morning to submit.

Asking my brother in Malaysia through google talk about how to make rice.
..

and i like this poem

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy _something,_ to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

Rumi, 'We Are Three', Mathnawi VI, 831-845

Six o clock on a fresh new Monday morning with the promises of turning over a new leaf ...(in RJVOICE)

Wake up at five thirty to make sense of financials that I got my dad to do for me so I appear slightly intelligent in front of teacher.

Go to french class, all the way know that the metre is fast and consciously tell myself it's more important to enjoy the morning air, the empty roads, the green trees


but scream my nostrils off at the auto drive
and make myself sound like a martyr saying I didn't want to fight 'subah subah'.


Discover there is NO french class and nobody's been told.

Come back with auto fight routine and get bizzare mails such as this.


itz tru i dnt kno u bt i feel tht every beauty n sexy feature f ppl shud b told n thts me thts y my frnds call me hash!!!!!!!! wanna b frnds???????
dnt say no or else ill go on d top f forum buildin n thro a paper as if throin a memory frm d top..... i m waitin 4 a reply




Ho Ho merry christmas!!

Bangalore Central Central Bangalore

 
  

 
 
  

Random Bangalore pics

 
  

 
 
 
  

 

whose Bangalore is it anyway?

 

 





  

You suck!

I like constructive criticism . I really do. But sometimes I feel criticism is unfair and it buzzes in my head like an unwanted shadow clouding over everything else I do, making me rethink the basis on which I have ANY confidence in myself.
I think we should really think about what we say to people because you might end up saying something that will affect their self concept for ever and it's stupid especially coz you didn't even really mean what you said. Especially to children


How does one react to unfair criticism ?

old friends..

It's so nice to meet old friends after years and pick up just from where you left off.K , my friend from school who lives in Kenya came down and I met her just for a bit .frst time since school. Just for a bit because of my uncharecteristically busy schedule these days..
Anyhow, ya the thing with old friends is you don't know what to expect. They might come back looking completely different with the usual differences - accents, straightened hair, tatoos ,whatever ..but either they are essentially the same and you are chattin away like you don't have drastically different lives.
or you are all awkward and your desperately digging up memories to make conversation. Fortunately for me its mostly been the former and that is nice, no?


Anyhow , I seem to have lost my ID card again ...and the RED TAPE involved to get another one is headachy..for a non proactive fool like me..

What are we free from? Who are we? We meaning , the nation? What is a nation? People living within the space confined by political boundaries. Should I feel proud and patriotic about this fair skinned small eyed , mongoloid featured north eastern Indian soldier more than I should feel proud of a scientist in Sri Lanka who looks more like me?
I've never questioned what a nation is while wearing white kurtas with pretty chunnis , singing the national anthem when someone hoisted the flag.
Ok so we are celebrating our freedom from the British over 59 years ago.

But what a strong word freedom is?

Today I was happy I could get to Vasanthnagar really fast with less traffic for a holiday. That's what it means to me today.
Fine.We are free from the british. But are we really free? Isn't it bizzare. Colleges closed yesterday in Delhi because of a security threat on Independence day and before? Isn't that terribly ironic? What do you think we are free from?
But apart from the questions ...Happy Independence Day everyone. We're free in some way.

picstory

 
 
 


My name is Zarar. I am ten years old.
I hate school. I dropped out.I help these people with work.

'What do you want to do when you grow up?'

scrap


(He comes from an area whre the main occupation is recycling e waste/computer waste used to obtain heavy metal components , work that involves acids , heavt metals and is obviously dangerous.) Smart kid he is but . 

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.




 
 
  

Statistics clutter a corner of

our morning newspapers while we put our legs up

on a couch and read lazily...


(first two links via indianwriting)


When your happy and you know it clap your hands.


58,000 rape cases pending trial in India.


la la la la la la la la la

China slaughters 50,000 dogs.


'sing a song of six pence pocket full of rye'



50 million girls in India are missing because of female infanticide.

tring tring tring old king kole had a merry old soul.........


In 1999, a total of 1,35,771 cases of crime against women were reported.


'Mary Mary Quite contrary how does your garden grow?'

The Bombay Blasts killed 44 people.
The Delhi Blasts killed 59 people.
The Varanasi blasts killed 20 people
The death toll in Lebanon is 800.

AISHWARYA RAI INJURED HER LEFT TOE.
This is another story about the alleged war going on between Bachchan and SRK, there’s nothing official about this war and the stars in question, Bachchan and SRK have always gone all out to deny it.

Source :Apunkachoice



So,

what

do

statistics

mean
to
YOU?

d e l u r k

Those who read my blog and have never commented are requested to ahem!
Delurk. Comments are fun.



Today the staff at Landmark must have fainted. I ACTUALLY bought a book . Me who plonks for hours and hours ingnoring sarcastic questions about whether I plan to finish the book there.
Yeah so I bought a Murakami book..Sputnik sweetheart. And a pack of catridges

Then there is a huuuuuuuuuuge line so i wait to bill.

An Arab woman comes with a daughter and a basket of( I am not lying) handbags.
When my turn comes , she quickly stretches and puts her stuff for billing. I put on my sugar coated can't be rude voice and tell her I have only TWO things and that I was BEFORE her.( I didnt say that) she whispered something that sounded like ' yeah go ahead but shoved her things for billing.

Sometimes I can't be rude to people even if it means waiting another 10 minutes for her to bill her million handbags. Why why why?

At Forum they didn't let a bunch of visibly poor women in on the pretext that one of them wasn't wearing chappals.

It's so sad , they were so excited and eager to look around Forum.


I've joined a semiotics class which is really interesting. Opens your mind to so much.Should I switch back to my old template?
and BLOGDOG where are you?