Some years ago, most newspaper offices in this city declared themselves to be peon-less. While that in itself was a brilliant idea, since people should really learn to do things for themselves, aspects of functioning like deliver of books for review, pick-ups of photographs for printing, etc etc etc were left rather hanging in the air with all those concerned spending more time worrying about the logistics than actually getting any work done. This was, you must remember, before the days of courier services and inter-office deliver systems, high-capacity email and such like. And while a lot of people – especially the old school types – were fairly unhappy with this situation, setting up their own private arrangements with the ‘assistants’ (as they were called, since they were available only to the top layer of management in any branch of any media company by then) to fetch and carry, all at a small fee and undiluted bonhomie.
But India is known for its system of minions. However ‘western’ an establishment may be, under the circumstances of climate and just sheer existence, it is the norm in this country to hire people to do a lot of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill routine work that ranges from cleaning the house and its accoutrements to driving the car to doing the cooking to fetching, carrying, polishing, filing, painting, ad infinitum. In the West, too, this is becoming popular, apart from just among the local Indian population – many of the Indian friends I have in the United States, for instance, tend to hire ‘help’ at least once a week to do everything from washing the patio furniture to doing the laundry. Very white American friends and relatives have now started doing the same thing, finding the ‘help’ so useful, almost vital, that they do almost anything to keep the person – very often of Hispanic origin and sometimes of rather uncertain immigration status – happy and working on.
Over the past few months, I have had problems more than joys with my own domestic help. Of course, much of it is probably my own fault, since I do not know how to treat the ‘minions’ and tend to overdo my niceness and accommodation to suit their needs rather than my own. There is no patronage involved, just basic ineptness, my friends who do it better tell me. When I give too much, they take more and then I get into the bind of not wanting to give more, but being pushed into giving more than I am willing to by inertia rather than a spirit of generous compromise. Everyone shouts at me about it, but I never learn to fix this particular mistake that I keep making. And I get into more trouble than the service I get is worth. This time was no exception.
It started with driver problems, as it always does. The young man who chauffeurs me around – I am very comfortable with the service, even though I hate the idea, I have to say – demanded more money. He was due for a raise soon anyway and he would have got it, no questions really asked…or not too many. But he went a tad too far in his demands and compounded his felony by taking a day off when he was really needed, without permission from the people who paid him: Father and me. When he was confronted, he cited a prior appointment. It did not wash. He was in deeper trouble than he needed. Now his job with us is debateable. We are still debating it.
The same sort of thing happened with the maid. Young, aspiring and very ambitious, she worked with us more because she got my clothes and make-up rather than because she was making good money – she has another full time job for that. But after a couple of months of slacking, when I finally lost my almost-infinite patience and got rather more firm than I had previously been, she left us. Well, not as gracefully as that sounds, actually. She just never turned up. So, after a few days of fuming and tiptoeing around the house to avoid disturbing too much of the dust that was fast accumulating, we managed to find another maid, an older lady, one who had previously been with us for many years. The girl turned up for her money on the scheduled date, and found a very cold reception indeed. She had pushed her luck a little too far and hit a wall. And she knows now not to try it again if she is ever allowed into our house.
The same thing happens with more close and meaningful human relationships. Sometimes you allow it to go further than you are happy with just because the other person is in some way important to you. Until they hit the aforementioned wall. Then it is all up to everyone’s power of negotiation and compromise.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Who needs a hero?
We all do. But perhaps not one who has feet made of the stuff that has been used for centuries to make pots to carry water – and other sundries – in: clay. All of us need someone to look up to, to aspire to, to dream about, even to hide behind on occasion. This is the man or woman who will is now what we will be tomorrow…or the day after, if we take too long about it, but we all know we will get there.
For many children – and indeed, an astonishing number of adults – in this country, Sachin Tendulkar is that hero. Or Sania Mirza. So is Shah Rukh Khan. And, of course, Sunita Williams, even though she is not Indian and has not been familiar to most people in India until she went into space and then came to this country in a blaze of media glory. There are so many others like this who are the stuff of dreams, the stuff of a Walter Mitty-esque life and world that stays in the realm of dreams and never really becomes actual fact.
Heroes change with time. If they didn’t, they would not be human, and most people that we look up to are very human. When I was a small girl and watching the shooting of a Hindi film in the enormous complex in which we lived, I thought the heroine was “very pretty”, perhaps even the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my whole short life. She was a popular actress then, and is a nicely rounded home-maker with a history of grief and tears today. Now when I look at her on television, where she makes the occasional appearance, I find her hardly inspiring. For me, now, from where I am after all these years, someone like Cate Blanchett or Rukmini Arundale or Anita Desai would do it, people who have worked hard and made it big in their own way, sometimes quietly, sometimes steamrolling the opposition with relentless talent and charm.
But where there is a hero of any greater than personal perception, there will be public recognition. And following that wave, public adulation. As is the case with Sachin Tendulkar these days in India and, it seems, in various parts of the world. While I do not profess to know anything about cricket (frankly, I think it is a fairly big waste of time, energy and money, but each to their own if it makes their cookies crumble), I do know that people who are enduring stars in cricket do not get there by sheer fluke, luck, fate, or the spin of a single ball. Tendulkar worked hard, long and often injured to get where he is in the whimsical world of sports, and well deserves to be seen as a hero, by his adoring fans and cricket buffs alike. He has earned his place in the echelon and is still young enough to be excited by the continued appreciation.
But a knighthood? Visiting British prime minister Gordon Brown suggested in a speech in Delhi that Tendulkar be knighted. And the media went mad. Which is typical of the whole machinery, but hardly something to be taken too seriously. First and perhaps most importantly, as a republic, India does not allow knighthoods. So Tendulkar cannot be called Sir Sachin, except in future headlines where sensationalism is the raison d’etre. Second, a suggestion by a visiting alien (which is really what Brown is, though perhaps not from the point of view of ET, Jadoo and others of their ilk) in this country for only a short time is not one that should be taken without a couple of tablespoons of salt. After all, he was honouring one of our own in his way, which sounded silly because of the context, not the intent to praise. Even though Sir Sachin sounds good, it is not likely to become reality.
Even in the unlikely event that is does happen, I wonder – will he, like others before him, return the honour with polite thanks? After all, that would be real hero behaviour.
For many children – and indeed, an astonishing number of adults – in this country, Sachin Tendulkar is that hero. Or Sania Mirza. So is Shah Rukh Khan. And, of course, Sunita Williams, even though she is not Indian and has not been familiar to most people in India until she went into space and then came to this country in a blaze of media glory. There are so many others like this who are the stuff of dreams, the stuff of a Walter Mitty-esque life and world that stays in the realm of dreams and never really becomes actual fact.
Heroes change with time. If they didn’t, they would not be human, and most people that we look up to are very human. When I was a small girl and watching the shooting of a Hindi film in the enormous complex in which we lived, I thought the heroine was “very pretty”, perhaps even the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my whole short life. She was a popular actress then, and is a nicely rounded home-maker with a history of grief and tears today. Now when I look at her on television, where she makes the occasional appearance, I find her hardly inspiring. For me, now, from where I am after all these years, someone like Cate Blanchett or Rukmini Arundale or Anita Desai would do it, people who have worked hard and made it big in their own way, sometimes quietly, sometimes steamrolling the opposition with relentless talent and charm.
But where there is a hero of any greater than personal perception, there will be public recognition. And following that wave, public adulation. As is the case with Sachin Tendulkar these days in India and, it seems, in various parts of the world. While I do not profess to know anything about cricket (frankly, I think it is a fairly big waste of time, energy and money, but each to their own if it makes their cookies crumble), I do know that people who are enduring stars in cricket do not get there by sheer fluke, luck, fate, or the spin of a single ball. Tendulkar worked hard, long and often injured to get where he is in the whimsical world of sports, and well deserves to be seen as a hero, by his adoring fans and cricket buffs alike. He has earned his place in the echelon and is still young enough to be excited by the continued appreciation.
But a knighthood? Visiting British prime minister Gordon Brown suggested in a speech in Delhi that Tendulkar be knighted. And the media went mad. Which is typical of the whole machinery, but hardly something to be taken too seriously. First and perhaps most importantly, as a republic, India does not allow knighthoods. So Tendulkar cannot be called Sir Sachin, except in future headlines where sensationalism is the raison d’etre. Second, a suggestion by a visiting alien (which is really what Brown is, though perhaps not from the point of view of ET, Jadoo and others of their ilk) in this country for only a short time is not one that should be taken without a couple of tablespoons of salt. After all, he was honouring one of our own in his way, which sounded silly because of the context, not the intent to praise. Even though Sir Sachin sounds good, it is not likely to become reality.
Even in the unlikely event that is does happen, I wonder – will he, like others before him, return the honour with polite thanks? After all, that would be real hero behaviour.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Cold wave
It has suddenly turned chilly in Mumbai and people have brought out their warm woollies, much to my amusement. What is even more amusing is that I sit in this wonderfully plush newspaper office, gently minding my own business – rather like Pakistan occupied Kashmir, a colleague insists – wrapped snugly in a large rough woollen shawl, since the air-conditioning is so fierce that my fingertips slowly go blue and my goosebumps have goosebumps that have goosebumps. As a result, I drink only very hot water, never eat ice cream during the day and make sure that I am dressed to insulate, even with the fat reserves that should but don’t do anything to keep me any warmer than if I did not have them.
But it is a cold day today, as it was yesterday and we are told by the weather people, it will be tomorrow. All the papers have been talking about it, citing the cold front from the North, ice fall in Kashmir, sudden drop in temperature in the mountains, ad infinitum. The reporters at the paper – as in every other daily publication and media house, I bet you - have been rushing around in various directions trying to get semi-articulate and intelligent quotes from the Met Department, the climate experts, the environmentalists, the clean-air campaigners, the futurists, even astrologers. Everyone wants a substantiation of what the rest have been saying, so that they can get their own ‘exclusive’ version of why the city is suddenly, precipitately so much colder today than it was yesterday…or yesterday than it was the day before.
And, truly, it is. I had been complaining to Father that it was a dull winter this year in Mumbai, since I had not used my fuzzy blanket even once – which I do for about a week every December-January in the city, especially very early in the mornings, before the sun is out and the voltage fluctuates enough for the fans to whiz faster than they do at other times of the day. But yesterday, after all the household chores had been done and home and hearth were in proper order, enough to keep me even vaguely happy about my housekeeping skills, I decided I would indulge in my Sunday afternoon nap. Instead of being sprawled all over my bed when Father came in to wake me for tea-time, I was curled snugly around a pillow under a swathe of warm fuzzy blanket, only the tip of my nose and a shock of wild black hair showing outside. It was a chilly afternoon, yes.
And outside is where I want to be, basking in the sunny glow on the lawn outside, except that the wind is blowing rather strongly and I hate having damp toes from the wet grass. We drive to work with the car air-conditioner off, the windows open just a crack to keep the air inside as fresh as it can be. And I am tempted to sit on my hands so that my fingers stay as toasty warm as the arm I have in the sun that beams down into the back seat of the car.
But in all this, it is not really that cold in Mumbai. It just feels that way. For this city, anything below a balmy 25 degrees Celsius is freezing and people bring out their winter clothes even as the visiting knitwear sellers from the North make a killing on their wares at street corners. Watchmen sit at the gates of their buildings around small fires in the night, their torsos wrapped in thick shawls and sweaters, their heads nicely muffled in monkey caps and scarves. And the maid comes in every morning blowing on her hands and sniffing, her nose redder than usual and her grin even wider.
It is winter. I wish it would stay like this through the year.
But it is a cold day today, as it was yesterday and we are told by the weather people, it will be tomorrow. All the papers have been talking about it, citing the cold front from the North, ice fall in Kashmir, sudden drop in temperature in the mountains, ad infinitum. The reporters at the paper – as in every other daily publication and media house, I bet you - have been rushing around in various directions trying to get semi-articulate and intelligent quotes from the Met Department, the climate experts, the environmentalists, the clean-air campaigners, the futurists, even astrologers. Everyone wants a substantiation of what the rest have been saying, so that they can get their own ‘exclusive’ version of why the city is suddenly, precipitately so much colder today than it was yesterday…or yesterday than it was the day before.
And, truly, it is. I had been complaining to Father that it was a dull winter this year in Mumbai, since I had not used my fuzzy blanket even once – which I do for about a week every December-January in the city, especially very early in the mornings, before the sun is out and the voltage fluctuates enough for the fans to whiz faster than they do at other times of the day. But yesterday, after all the household chores had been done and home and hearth were in proper order, enough to keep me even vaguely happy about my housekeeping skills, I decided I would indulge in my Sunday afternoon nap. Instead of being sprawled all over my bed when Father came in to wake me for tea-time, I was curled snugly around a pillow under a swathe of warm fuzzy blanket, only the tip of my nose and a shock of wild black hair showing outside. It was a chilly afternoon, yes.
And outside is where I want to be, basking in the sunny glow on the lawn outside, except that the wind is blowing rather strongly and I hate having damp toes from the wet grass. We drive to work with the car air-conditioner off, the windows open just a crack to keep the air inside as fresh as it can be. And I am tempted to sit on my hands so that my fingers stay as toasty warm as the arm I have in the sun that beams down into the back seat of the car.
But in all this, it is not really that cold in Mumbai. It just feels that way. For this city, anything below a balmy 25 degrees Celsius is freezing and people bring out their winter clothes even as the visiting knitwear sellers from the North make a killing on their wares at street corners. Watchmen sit at the gates of their buildings around small fires in the night, their torsos wrapped in thick shawls and sweaters, their heads nicely muffled in monkey caps and scarves. And the maid comes in every morning blowing on her hands and sniffing, her nose redder than usual and her grin even wider.
It is winter. I wish it would stay like this through the year.
Friday, January 18, 2008
An art in violence
(I 'meet' a lot of interesting minds in the course of working for a newspaper. Artists are a great proportion of those and some of the minds there can be very interesting indeed. here's one...)
Artist Praneet Soi uses the central reference point of the ‘angel of history’, the mythic vision described by Walter Benjamin, German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator and philosopher: "His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet…The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." Soi has crafted work that uses a form of political documentary to bring together the forces of war and globalisation, history and the future and presents his vision in Juggernaut, his new show
You present the trauma of war/disaster. Why?
I’ve been living in Europe in the past five years and before that in California. Especially after 9/11 there has been a huge amount of media coverage of a specific kind of violence, of terrorism, telling stories that are all about fundamentalists and extremism. What is coming out of it is very particular kinds of images - unrest in Baghdad, in Afghanistan, the blasts in London and Madrid and, of course, 9/11 itself. When I was in California, I began comparing these images and how they were shown. A very distinctly different lens has been put on these subjects. We have a different take on fundamentalists in India, because we have dealt with it for centuries.
I began to have a very personal interest in the subject. For me, the paintings were a kind of investigation into what makes these images symbolic. So the series – The Disasters of War – became a way to investigate how to look at these images, how certain images might reach symbol-hood and some may not. I am referencing Goya’s black and white (Disaster) series that showed the kind of violence unleashed by Napolean in Spain; there was a lot of destruction. Violence can be caused by the enforcement of some kind of democracy. This makes the images interesting and evokes questions: What does democracy mean? Why is the West pushing for democracy?
Why not happy images?
I am extremely positive; I do not feel pessimistic. But I am ambivalent. There is something very beautiful about progress, something sublime. There are so many forces, how can you choose to talk about them? I did the series in miniature format. It’s about war, but there could be a beauty behind it too. I have done other works that directly address the notion of progress, not war, as in a big painting called Juggernaut – which is, of course, the unstoppable force or ‘juggernaut’ of progress.
Why does political documentary, as it is called, influence you so strongly?
I am from Bengal, a Marxist state, surrounded by a certain kind of ideology. I am not Marxist, but you come out of Kolkata aligned somewhat left of centre. Then I went to Baroda, which is very political; then there was my California experience. It is not just politics, but how to make a contemporary image that connects with the social context that could be considered political.
Your work is said to present questions but provides no answers…
I am not providing a point of view. I am not saying through my images that something is good or bad. Government can also be very cold and not very nice. My imagery does not ask you to take a side, but to examine the phenomenon. Again, there is a sense of ambivalence. The work is meant to draw the viewer into the argument. I am not presenting a one-sided argument, but hoping it would throw up opinions.
Living in the Netherlands and in Kolkata, has Dutch painting influenced you?
Yes it has – especially 17th century Dutch painting, which is not narrative, but very descriptive, presenting interesting arguments. But the light and the landscape somehow finds its way into your work, wherever you are at that point in time.
Living in various places as I have and continue to do, certain aspects of these spaces are collaged together and so enter the language of my work. This notion of the collage not only underlines my existence as an artist who lives in Europe and India, but also enters the work in how the imagery is collaged together. It is through the collaging and juxtaposition of various imagery that the story of the show reveals itself to the viewer.
Artist Praneet Soi uses the central reference point of the ‘angel of history’, the mythic vision described by Walter Benjamin, German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator and philosopher: "His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet…The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." Soi has crafted work that uses a form of political documentary to bring together the forces of war and globalisation, history and the future and presents his vision in Juggernaut, his new show
You present the trauma of war/disaster. Why?
I’ve been living in Europe in the past five years and before that in California. Especially after 9/11 there has been a huge amount of media coverage of a specific kind of violence, of terrorism, telling stories that are all about fundamentalists and extremism. What is coming out of it is very particular kinds of images - unrest in Baghdad, in Afghanistan, the blasts in London and Madrid and, of course, 9/11 itself. When I was in California, I began comparing these images and how they were shown. A very distinctly different lens has been put on these subjects. We have a different take on fundamentalists in India, because we have dealt with it for centuries.
I began to have a very personal interest in the subject. For me, the paintings were a kind of investigation into what makes these images symbolic. So the series – The Disasters of War – became a way to investigate how to look at these images, how certain images might reach symbol-hood and some may not. I am referencing Goya’s black and white (Disaster) series that showed the kind of violence unleashed by Napolean in Spain; there was a lot of destruction. Violence can be caused by the enforcement of some kind of democracy. This makes the images interesting and evokes questions: What does democracy mean? Why is the West pushing for democracy?
Why not happy images?
I am extremely positive; I do not feel pessimistic. But I am ambivalent. There is something very beautiful about progress, something sublime. There are so many forces, how can you choose to talk about them? I did the series in miniature format. It’s about war, but there could be a beauty behind it too. I have done other works that directly address the notion of progress, not war, as in a big painting called Juggernaut – which is, of course, the unstoppable force or ‘juggernaut’ of progress.
Why does political documentary, as it is called, influence you so strongly?
I am from Bengal, a Marxist state, surrounded by a certain kind of ideology. I am not Marxist, but you come out of Kolkata aligned somewhat left of centre. Then I went to Baroda, which is very political; then there was my California experience. It is not just politics, but how to make a contemporary image that connects with the social context that could be considered political.
Your work is said to present questions but provides no answers…
I am not providing a point of view. I am not saying through my images that something is good or bad. Government can also be very cold and not very nice. My imagery does not ask you to take a side, but to examine the phenomenon. Again, there is a sense of ambivalence. The work is meant to draw the viewer into the argument. I am not presenting a one-sided argument, but hoping it would throw up opinions.
Living in the Netherlands and in Kolkata, has Dutch painting influenced you?
Yes it has – especially 17th century Dutch painting, which is not narrative, but very descriptive, presenting interesting arguments. But the light and the landscape somehow finds its way into your work, wherever you are at that point in time.
Living in various places as I have and continue to do, certain aspects of these spaces are collaged together and so enter the language of my work. This notion of the collage not only underlines my existence as an artist who lives in Europe and India, but also enters the work in how the imagery is collaged together. It is through the collaging and juxtaposition of various imagery that the story of the show reveals itself to the viewer.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Sex appeal
I was sitting in the office waiting for the edits I needed to come in, when the always-on televisions flashed clips of actor Salman Khan at Madame Tussauds doing something or the other, his beefcake image on full show. One of the young women trainees gazing open-mouthedly at the screen sighed deeply and then almost shrieked, “He is sooooo sexy!” I looked up, saw Salman Khan looking at the wax model of his own starry self, and then went back to my work. But the concept of ‘sexy’ has been pinging in my mind for a while, more so after that squeaky sigh that the girl emitted, sounding vaguely like a cross between a fire-engine in a hurry and a very large bat.
What is ‘sexy’? To me, for years, it has been just one man, an actor I first saw on American television when I was in school. He played a detective-by-accident, a man with no clue what he was doing, but with a way of doing it that made women (and lots of other men) sigh longingly. He wore his designer suits with élan, smiled his way into more hearts and minds than he had any right to and wiggled his nicely shapes behind most enticingly when he ran, which I bet the scriptwriters wrote into each episode because they knew it would bring in the viewers. It certain kept me there, had Mother giggling girlishly and Karen looking more goofy-eyed than she would ever have done otherwise. The actor was Pierce Brosnan and the show was Remington Steele. We watched re-runs of re-runs of re-re-runs and never tired of wistfully viewing that wiggle. And because he was, to me, the definition of ‘sexy’, I even sat through screenings of dreary and dark movies where he played Irish terrorist, sidekick fiancé and much more.
And then came James Bond. Brosnan wiggled his way through all sorts of completely improbably adventures and stunts, enjoying himself (or so it seemed) while he battled the baddies and seduced the women, flew planes, drove stunning automobiles, blew things up and generally has a whale of a time. And we all sighed as he ran through the mayhem, his gorgeous face grimy but still gorgeous, his bottom still wiggling happily through it all. And we sat through The Thomas Crown Affair, where he rolled about with Rene Russo and we all looked on, green eyed and fuming, but still buggy about him. And we probably will stay that way even as he ages his way through the sequel to that film and more.
That is one version of ‘sexy’. Once upon a time, I was accused of liking some young man (I still don’t remember who) because he had long eyelashes that curled upwards. There was a dress I once fell for that I thought was ‘seriously sexy’, with a large and glorious frill that slid off my shoulders when I wore it. There is a design for a bracelet that I saw in the window of Gubelin in Geneva when I was a teenager and still believe to be the ultimate in ‘sexy’. The first Ferrari I saw on the autostrada just outside Naples elicited a fairly unanimous “Wow! Sexy!” from all of us in the family car in the next lane. And there was a certain chocolate mousse that I ate in a rooftop restaurant that echoes a softly luscious ‘sexy’ in my tastebuds even today….
But seriously, what is ‘sexy’ all about? Speaking as a woman, it almost mandates a male identity. Is it the way his eyes melt into warmth when he looks at you? Or is it the way he smiles as he reads your writing? Or even perhaps the way he argues passionately about why he needs a photograph of you in his wallet? Who knows. It’s all about what makes you go warm and fuzzy and smile idiotically when there is really nothing at all to smile about. And that’s what ‘sexy’ is...or should be.
What is ‘sexy’? To me, for years, it has been just one man, an actor I first saw on American television when I was in school. He played a detective-by-accident, a man with no clue what he was doing, but with a way of doing it that made women (and lots of other men) sigh longingly. He wore his designer suits with élan, smiled his way into more hearts and minds than he had any right to and wiggled his nicely shapes behind most enticingly when he ran, which I bet the scriptwriters wrote into each episode because they knew it would bring in the viewers. It certain kept me there, had Mother giggling girlishly and Karen looking more goofy-eyed than she would ever have done otherwise. The actor was Pierce Brosnan and the show was Remington Steele. We watched re-runs of re-runs of re-re-runs and never tired of wistfully viewing that wiggle. And because he was, to me, the definition of ‘sexy’, I even sat through screenings of dreary and dark movies where he played Irish terrorist, sidekick fiancé and much more.
And then came James Bond. Brosnan wiggled his way through all sorts of completely improbably adventures and stunts, enjoying himself (or so it seemed) while he battled the baddies and seduced the women, flew planes, drove stunning automobiles, blew things up and generally has a whale of a time. And we all sighed as he ran through the mayhem, his gorgeous face grimy but still gorgeous, his bottom still wiggling happily through it all. And we sat through The Thomas Crown Affair, where he rolled about with Rene Russo and we all looked on, green eyed and fuming, but still buggy about him. And we probably will stay that way even as he ages his way through the sequel to that film and more.
That is one version of ‘sexy’. Once upon a time, I was accused of liking some young man (I still don’t remember who) because he had long eyelashes that curled upwards. There was a dress I once fell for that I thought was ‘seriously sexy’, with a large and glorious frill that slid off my shoulders when I wore it. There is a design for a bracelet that I saw in the window of Gubelin in Geneva when I was a teenager and still believe to be the ultimate in ‘sexy’. The first Ferrari I saw on the autostrada just outside Naples elicited a fairly unanimous “Wow! Sexy!” from all of us in the family car in the next lane. And there was a certain chocolate mousse that I ate in a rooftop restaurant that echoes a softly luscious ‘sexy’ in my tastebuds even today….
But seriously, what is ‘sexy’ all about? Speaking as a woman, it almost mandates a male identity. Is it the way his eyes melt into warmth when he looks at you? Or is it the way he smiles as he reads your writing? Or even perhaps the way he argues passionately about why he needs a photograph of you in his wallet? Who knows. It’s all about what makes you go warm and fuzzy and smile idiotically when there is really nothing at all to smile about. And that’s what ‘sexy’ is...or should be.
Monday, January 14, 2008
And a car to match…
(The Indian media is all excitement about the new 'people's car' that represents a dream that industrialist Ratan Tata had. The Nano has finally been unveiled and will be available in a few months. Until then, there is one aspect of it that is not being talked about....)
After all the hype and with lots of hoopla, the new Tata small car is finally here. Well, not quite here, but by the end of the year it should be. And it will be a very good thing when it does get here, since it is perhaps the one accessory that my rather extensive fashion statement was so sorely missing. After all, it is small, neat, rounded, portable, with nice proportions of glass to paintwork, an ideal shape and size to tote around town on the occasional jaunt to look for new carpets or an artist to interview. Best of all, from my point of view, it comes in a nice range of hues, which means I can colour-coordinate my automobile to my shoes to my dress to my earrings.
This is not a new need for me. In fact, my family knows it well. Many years ago, when I was a mere child, the story goes (albeit perhaps apocryphally), I refused to ride in the car belonging to a family friend since it did not match with my sandals, which would have been a vivid red. Many years later, as a grown up who was gainfully employed in another city, I drove a car that was a nicely elegant pale gold, a colour that went so well with the gold-brown of the Indian skin, I explained to someone who wanted to know why I had not chosen my favourite red. And for our new family car, hopefully to be acquired this year, I fondly hope that it will be available in the delicate champagne (a lovely gilded peach-rose) that is the perfect offset for both wardrobe and complexion.
But this need to be matched has nothing to do with style; more with genetics. My mother, bless her chic soul, always wore accessories that toned with her clothes – from sandals to bangles to bindis, she made sure it presented a total harmonic picture. And she taught me to be that way too, making sure I had footwear in every possible colour to coordinate with the vast wardrobe that she accumulated for me. It is now an automatic response, almost a duty, for me to make sure that I – and Father with his socks and even Small Cat with her collars – am as properly turned out without her help.
So the Nano is just another feather in my cap…or accessory in my closet. I can ask for the car of whatever colour that matches with my slippers of whatever colour that match with my watchstrap of whatever colour for that particular day. And I can have the whole spectrum of those colours in my garage, since it will all be so affordable, easy to run, eco-friendly and, fabulously, easy to access.
After all the hype and with lots of hoopla, the new Tata small car is finally here. Well, not quite here, but by the end of the year it should be. And it will be a very good thing when it does get here, since it is perhaps the one accessory that my rather extensive fashion statement was so sorely missing. After all, it is small, neat, rounded, portable, with nice proportions of glass to paintwork, an ideal shape and size to tote around town on the occasional jaunt to look for new carpets or an artist to interview. Best of all, from my point of view, it comes in a nice range of hues, which means I can colour-coordinate my automobile to my shoes to my dress to my earrings.
This is not a new need for me. In fact, my family knows it well. Many years ago, when I was a mere child, the story goes (albeit perhaps apocryphally), I refused to ride in the car belonging to a family friend since it did not match with my sandals, which would have been a vivid red. Many years later, as a grown up who was gainfully employed in another city, I drove a car that was a nicely elegant pale gold, a colour that went so well with the gold-brown of the Indian skin, I explained to someone who wanted to know why I had not chosen my favourite red. And for our new family car, hopefully to be acquired this year, I fondly hope that it will be available in the delicate champagne (a lovely gilded peach-rose) that is the perfect offset for both wardrobe and complexion.
But this need to be matched has nothing to do with style; more with genetics. My mother, bless her chic soul, always wore accessories that toned with her clothes – from sandals to bangles to bindis, she made sure it presented a total harmonic picture. And she taught me to be that way too, making sure I had footwear in every possible colour to coordinate with the vast wardrobe that she accumulated for me. It is now an automatic response, almost a duty, for me to make sure that I – and Father with his socks and even Small Cat with her collars – am as properly turned out without her help.
So the Nano is just another feather in my cap…or accessory in my closet. I can ask for the car of whatever colour that matches with my slippers of whatever colour that match with my watchstrap of whatever colour for that particular day. And I can have the whole spectrum of those colours in my garage, since it will all be so affordable, easy to run, eco-friendly and, fabulously, easy to access.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Festive cheer
I went to the temple this morning. No, it was not a visit to do any praying, since that doesn’t do the trick for me, but it was to make sure that the traditional rituals of this time of year in the South Indian home – ours, actually, which is modified in every which way – are not neglected or ignored or forgotten. I did this last year as well, but far more successfully. This morning, it was a bit of a scramble, linguistically and time-wise, since I had little control over schedule, procedure and, unfortunately, it seemed my own tongue.
Next week it will be Pongal, the harvest festival. We have no fields to harvest, and do no harvesting, except perhaps from the pots of wheat grass grown outside the kitchen window for the edification (literally) of Small Cat. But we make sure that we follow the festival calendar, at least gastronomically, since that has always been the norm in our home. For Pongal, food means two kinds of the eponymous pongal – the ven-pongal, or savoury, ghee-laced blend of dal and rice punctuated with cracked pepper, mustard seeds and cashewnuts, and the sakkarai-pongal, the same dal and rice mixture cooked with milk and jaggery, aromatics like cardamom and saffron and lots of cashewnuts and raisins. I can make the former with little effort; the latter tends to daunt me somewhat, which means that I have never tried to do it myself at home because the labour-intensiveness makes me rather nervous.
So Father suggested last year that we get the sweet stuff that we both relish from the temple in central Mumbai known for its prasadam of sakkarai-pongal. I called around, got the number, managed to battle my own linguistic deficiencies and ordered enough to keep us happy and nicely rounded. It all worked out fine, everyone was happy and my spiritual conscience was assuaged, since I did a small prayer for Mother in the process of getting it all done.
But this time I was defeated. I called the temple yesterday, well in time I thought, since the festival is only mid-next week. A rather gruff gentleman who refused to speak anything but Tamil answered and demanded to know what I wanted and who I was. All this during a very long day at the paper, page-making interrupted by constant phone calls and queries and a tummy that wanted me to commandeer the dreadful offerings of junk food that drift past in the corridors after 5 o’clock in the evening. My Tamil completely and ignominiously failed. I was left stuttering incoherently, wondering how to get past the subject of who I was to what I wanted. I felt, in fact, a little like Oliver Twist, asking for more of something that I knew was a commodity that could be easily bought.
That is where Father came to the rescue. While his Tamil is perhaps only fractionally better than mine, he had the leisure and the mindspace to think about what he was saying and how to phrase it. He was also rather more compos mentis, less hassled and frazzled by the world at large and the sounds, sights and stresses of production time at a newspaper. So he made the appropriate arrangements, told me what to do and left me to it. This morning, I drove up to the temple in air-conditioned comfort, said my set-piece in Tamil that was decent and comprehensible, if not completely accurate and classical, and collected my prasadam after paying in my money and stating what my birth-star was. There seemed to be some kind of ceremony in progress, which had me running a little scared, so I did a quick round of the shrines, sent a thought up to Mother and fled.
My duty is done for the year. It is not likely that I will be at another temple again until that time comes around for me to start having menageries about tradition and ritual. And, in that hiatus, I could learn to relax and practice my language skills.
Next week it will be Pongal, the harvest festival. We have no fields to harvest, and do no harvesting, except perhaps from the pots of wheat grass grown outside the kitchen window for the edification (literally) of Small Cat. But we make sure that we follow the festival calendar, at least gastronomically, since that has always been the norm in our home. For Pongal, food means two kinds of the eponymous pongal – the ven-pongal, or savoury, ghee-laced blend of dal and rice punctuated with cracked pepper, mustard seeds and cashewnuts, and the sakkarai-pongal, the same dal and rice mixture cooked with milk and jaggery, aromatics like cardamom and saffron and lots of cashewnuts and raisins. I can make the former with little effort; the latter tends to daunt me somewhat, which means that I have never tried to do it myself at home because the labour-intensiveness makes me rather nervous.
So Father suggested last year that we get the sweet stuff that we both relish from the temple in central Mumbai known for its prasadam of sakkarai-pongal. I called around, got the number, managed to battle my own linguistic deficiencies and ordered enough to keep us happy and nicely rounded. It all worked out fine, everyone was happy and my spiritual conscience was assuaged, since I did a small prayer for Mother in the process of getting it all done.
But this time I was defeated. I called the temple yesterday, well in time I thought, since the festival is only mid-next week. A rather gruff gentleman who refused to speak anything but Tamil answered and demanded to know what I wanted and who I was. All this during a very long day at the paper, page-making interrupted by constant phone calls and queries and a tummy that wanted me to commandeer the dreadful offerings of junk food that drift past in the corridors after 5 o’clock in the evening. My Tamil completely and ignominiously failed. I was left stuttering incoherently, wondering how to get past the subject of who I was to what I wanted. I felt, in fact, a little like Oliver Twist, asking for more of something that I knew was a commodity that could be easily bought.
That is where Father came to the rescue. While his Tamil is perhaps only fractionally better than mine, he had the leisure and the mindspace to think about what he was saying and how to phrase it. He was also rather more compos mentis, less hassled and frazzled by the world at large and the sounds, sights and stresses of production time at a newspaper. So he made the appropriate arrangements, told me what to do and left me to it. This morning, I drove up to the temple in air-conditioned comfort, said my set-piece in Tamil that was decent and comprehensible, if not completely accurate and classical, and collected my prasadam after paying in my money and stating what my birth-star was. There seemed to be some kind of ceremony in progress, which had me running a little scared, so I did a quick round of the shrines, sent a thought up to Mother and fled.
My duty is done for the year. It is not likely that I will be at another temple again until that time comes around for me to start having menageries about tradition and ritual. And, in that hiatus, I could learn to relax and practice my language skills.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Battle with the bank
It is that time of year again, and I don’t mean anything to do with celebration. People are running around with furrowed brows and glowers that would rival a hungry alligator’s. and the papers and television commercial breaks are all about scams – aka investments – that can help you make some money instead of paying most of it to the government in…hold your breath…taxes. Even after having complained for years that I paid more in tax than I actually made, I am still fairly honest about declaring to the authorities the amount of money that I earn and allowing them to take what they need to out of my paychecks before I get to even see them. Which means a nice dent in any budget that I may dream of, be it vacations in Manhattan or new carpets that Small Cat can shed on, a Rolex for Father or a diamond the size of – if not the Ritz – a nicely sized pea for me. And by the time I have enough saved up for any of those, it is time to hand a good proportion of it over to the Tax Man. But I remain honest…more or less.
As a result of all this, when the office sends around a notice about investments, I jump to it. And jumping means forwarding the email to Father, who painfully works it all out and tells me where to sign what. Which I do, like a good and dutiful citizen who pays taxes even though she grumbles a bit about them. And to be a good daughter who does not want to tax (ha ha) her male parent too much, I volunteered to go to the bank to do at least a part of the aforementioned investing. It would not take that long, I said with greatly misplaced confidence. I could do it easy. All that had to be done was to hand in a form or two, sign in various places, smile sweetly at surly clerks and swish nonchalantly out of there without a care in the world since my conscience would be clear and my taxes paid…almost.
As I said before, HA HA!
If life were that simple, I would be in Manhattan wearing my diamonds and asking Father for the time as seen on his Rolex while Small Cat burrowed under new silk carpets looking for her toys.
I went nice and early to the bank. Or tried to. It took a while, since everyone and their cousins were going in the same direction that I was and all of them wanted to get there first. So in good Mumbaiyya driving style, they all crowded and pushed into the same lane and honked madly as they inched forward in the rather futile hope of realising their unilateral ambition. By the time we got to the bank, I was more than a little frazzled and the driver was falling asleep at the wheel. I told him I would be about 15 minutes and walked in.
It has changed. The bank that I had been a customer of since I was about 11 years old had become all modern and futuristic. I was stopped at the door that had never been there before and asked to take a token by a security guard who needed to either learn some manners or understand that I was not the child he addressed me as. I punched the button he demanded and took the token he asked me to. And then I looked for someone, anyone, who looked as though they could help me. No one would, maybe no one could. Finally, a sweet short stout gentleman who had been most kind on a recent visit rescued me and told me what form to fill in how, which check to make out to what account and where to sign. I did all that and then was shown to a line I needed to stand in.
I stood. And stood. And stood. Then I sat, since I was wearing heels and my feet started hurting. And I sat and sat. Finally, after I glared at the Chief Manager, he came out of his cabin and asked me what I was waiting for, in a very polite and vaguely oily tone. I told him. He offered me a chair. And another. Then bustled off to see what the hold-up was. On his way there, he waved me to yet another chair. Then some minion came bustling up with a chair I had never met or seen before and asked me to sit down. The Chief Manager came past again. Another chair was shoved in my general direction. And, just when I was stepping forward to finish my work at the counter with the very bad-tempered clerk behind the glass, a security person (a woman this time) rushed up wheeling another chair that she made valiant attempts to shove beneath my bottom.
My work was finally done. By which time Father had got into the act, and called the Chief Manager, who was back in his cabin and bowing and scraping desperately, sweating slightly at the edges as he listened to Father’s most acerbic best over the fibre optic cable from the other end of the city. I popped my head into that same cabin, handed over my business card and said that ever since I had become a customer at the bank, it had gone gradually from decent to awful. I then smiled sweetly at the most uncomfortable Chief Manager and left.
It was only when I was in the car that the thought struck me: I could have collected all the chairs and sold them. The money would have paid my taxes, even though it would probably not finance a vacation in Manhattan.
As a result of all this, when the office sends around a notice about investments, I jump to it. And jumping means forwarding the email to Father, who painfully works it all out and tells me where to sign what. Which I do, like a good and dutiful citizen who pays taxes even though she grumbles a bit about them. And to be a good daughter who does not want to tax (ha ha) her male parent too much, I volunteered to go to the bank to do at least a part of the aforementioned investing. It would not take that long, I said with greatly misplaced confidence. I could do it easy. All that had to be done was to hand in a form or two, sign in various places, smile sweetly at surly clerks and swish nonchalantly out of there without a care in the world since my conscience would be clear and my taxes paid…almost.
As I said before, HA HA!
If life were that simple, I would be in Manhattan wearing my diamonds and asking Father for the time as seen on his Rolex while Small Cat burrowed under new silk carpets looking for her toys.
I went nice and early to the bank. Or tried to. It took a while, since everyone and their cousins were going in the same direction that I was and all of them wanted to get there first. So in good Mumbaiyya driving style, they all crowded and pushed into the same lane and honked madly as they inched forward in the rather futile hope of realising their unilateral ambition. By the time we got to the bank, I was more than a little frazzled and the driver was falling asleep at the wheel. I told him I would be about 15 minutes and walked in.
It has changed. The bank that I had been a customer of since I was about 11 years old had become all modern and futuristic. I was stopped at the door that had never been there before and asked to take a token by a security guard who needed to either learn some manners or understand that I was not the child he addressed me as. I punched the button he demanded and took the token he asked me to. And then I looked for someone, anyone, who looked as though they could help me. No one would, maybe no one could. Finally, a sweet short stout gentleman who had been most kind on a recent visit rescued me and told me what form to fill in how, which check to make out to what account and where to sign. I did all that and then was shown to a line I needed to stand in.
I stood. And stood. And stood. Then I sat, since I was wearing heels and my feet started hurting. And I sat and sat. Finally, after I glared at the Chief Manager, he came out of his cabin and asked me what I was waiting for, in a very polite and vaguely oily tone. I told him. He offered me a chair. And another. Then bustled off to see what the hold-up was. On his way there, he waved me to yet another chair. Then some minion came bustling up with a chair I had never met or seen before and asked me to sit down. The Chief Manager came past again. Another chair was shoved in my general direction. And, just when I was stepping forward to finish my work at the counter with the very bad-tempered clerk behind the glass, a security person (a woman this time) rushed up wheeling another chair that she made valiant attempts to shove beneath my bottom.
My work was finally done. By which time Father had got into the act, and called the Chief Manager, who was back in his cabin and bowing and scraping desperately, sweating slightly at the edges as he listened to Father’s most acerbic best over the fibre optic cable from the other end of the city. I popped my head into that same cabin, handed over my business card and said that ever since I had become a customer at the bank, it had gone gradually from decent to awful. I then smiled sweetly at the most uncomfortable Chief Manager and left.
It was only when I was in the car that the thought struck me: I could have collected all the chairs and sold them. The money would have paid my taxes, even though it would probably not finance a vacation in Manhattan.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Gem of a day
It happened during the week that my friend Karen came to visit us from Denver. It had been a few years since we had met, but had we kept in touch off and on – more on than off – ever since we first met through a bathroom door in the college dorm so many years ago. My visits to her home had been nicely balanced by her visits to mine, and our holidays together, albeit brief, had been memorable. Since this was the second time she was coming to my city and she had little time to spend in it, leave alone to wander around the country, we decided to concentrate our energies and attention to what we could do during the day, coming back home to roost every evening. A lot of the travel time we had in the car, waiting in traffic jams for the lights to change or bouncing about while the driver negotiated potholes, was spent in excited chatter about everything new and familiar, each of us learning something from each encounter and relearning a lot that had slipped into the recesses of time and memory.
One day Father took us to see a gem dealer, one that I had heard about for years and had even spoken to, but never met. He had a small office deep in the old part of the city, very close to where the presiding deity, Mumba Devi, had her abode. Karen and I walked there to meet Father after doing some desultory shopping in the main market, and dodged cows, people and sleazebags alike, doing agile twists, turns and side-tracks to avoid being bumped, felt up or just plain commented at. Every now and then – to her disconcernment, she insisted – I would grab my friend’s arm or hand and yank her in the direction that I wanted her to go; only later, after I explained, did she understand that it would have taken a while for me to explain and it was far easier and quicker to just hold and pull. We did want to go into the temple and say hi to the Goddess that Karen had met on her earlier visit, but were daunted by the crowds of loitering young men who insisted on trying to attract our attention and make comments that were descriptive, to put it mildly.
But finally we found the place we had to rendezvous at. It was in a not-too-high and very dilapidated building, one that I would never have imagined to be holding so much of such high value. After some hesitation and my carefully asking the person who seemed to be most respectable and least lecherous, we walked in. The entrance was narrow, almost like a dingy alleyway between two walls. The elevator was the old fashioned kind, one with sliding doors that had to be pulled open and shut. We walked up uneven, dirty, slippery stairs to a small door in one wall. The place was dimly lit and dank, smelling of stale food and perhaps a rat or two. I rang the doorbell and vaguely felt someone staring at me. From the seemingly fragile wooden door an electronic eye looked sternly at us, deemed us fit for entry and buzzed us in. In a very small and narrow foyer that was a-drip with laminate, we had to take off our sandals and wait a second or two before we pushed open a heavy door into a room where Father sat across a long desk from three other men.
The Big Man had a seat near the window. He and his obvious junior, a large and smiling-faced moustached gentleman, beamed fondly at me and stared curiously at the orange-haired visitor I had brought in. we were offered water, something cold, something hot, something to eat perhaps? But we had other business there; it was getting close to lunchtime and I was set on finishing what I had come for and then heading food-wards. So it was down to the wire. The Big Man emptied packet after packet of the most exquisite gemstones – emeralds, rubies, tanzanite, alexandrite, pearls…He practically flung ropes of preciousness at me and I looked and felt and wondered. It was a bewildering embarrassment of riches that made my head spin and my acquisitive instincts long to run helter-skelter out of there. So much was frightening. And all I wanted was something small, something – on the scale of what we were being shown – so minor that it would be like one grain of rice in the plenty cooked for a feast. I saw, managed to ask intelligent questions, and made my decision as fast as I could. And then, we left, sweating slightly at the stress of the whole deal and excited at the results.
One day Father took us to see a gem dealer, one that I had heard about for years and had even spoken to, but never met. He had a small office deep in the old part of the city, very close to where the presiding deity, Mumba Devi, had her abode. Karen and I walked there to meet Father after doing some desultory shopping in the main market, and dodged cows, people and sleazebags alike, doing agile twists, turns and side-tracks to avoid being bumped, felt up or just plain commented at. Every now and then – to her disconcernment, she insisted – I would grab my friend’s arm or hand and yank her in the direction that I wanted her to go; only later, after I explained, did she understand that it would have taken a while for me to explain and it was far easier and quicker to just hold and pull. We did want to go into the temple and say hi to the Goddess that Karen had met on her earlier visit, but were daunted by the crowds of loitering young men who insisted on trying to attract our attention and make comments that were descriptive, to put it mildly.
But finally we found the place we had to rendezvous at. It was in a not-too-high and very dilapidated building, one that I would never have imagined to be holding so much of such high value. After some hesitation and my carefully asking the person who seemed to be most respectable and least lecherous, we walked in. The entrance was narrow, almost like a dingy alleyway between two walls. The elevator was the old fashioned kind, one with sliding doors that had to be pulled open and shut. We walked up uneven, dirty, slippery stairs to a small door in one wall. The place was dimly lit and dank, smelling of stale food and perhaps a rat or two. I rang the doorbell and vaguely felt someone staring at me. From the seemingly fragile wooden door an electronic eye looked sternly at us, deemed us fit for entry and buzzed us in. In a very small and narrow foyer that was a-drip with laminate, we had to take off our sandals and wait a second or two before we pushed open a heavy door into a room where Father sat across a long desk from three other men.
The Big Man had a seat near the window. He and his obvious junior, a large and smiling-faced moustached gentleman, beamed fondly at me and stared curiously at the orange-haired visitor I had brought in. we were offered water, something cold, something hot, something to eat perhaps? But we had other business there; it was getting close to lunchtime and I was set on finishing what I had come for and then heading food-wards. So it was down to the wire. The Big Man emptied packet after packet of the most exquisite gemstones – emeralds, rubies, tanzanite, alexandrite, pearls…He practically flung ropes of preciousness at me and I looked and felt and wondered. It was a bewildering embarrassment of riches that made my head spin and my acquisitive instincts long to run helter-skelter out of there. So much was frightening. And all I wanted was something small, something – on the scale of what we were being shown – so minor that it would be like one grain of rice in the plenty cooked for a feast. I saw, managed to ask intelligent questions, and made my decision as fast as I could. And then, we left, sweating slightly at the stress of the whole deal and excited at the results.
Friday, January 04, 2008
A violation
The world is a shocking place to live in and I am reminded of it every so often, when something happens that creates a buzz of major proportions. Like has happened in Mumbai over the past couple of days. Photographers from a newspaper (not ours) took some horrendous pictures of four people being pushed around by a large group of unruly men just outside a multi-star hotel in the western suburbs of the city. There was a married couple and another woman and man, all fairly young, all non-residents from the United States. The men were shoved aside while the women were heckled, then felt up, then their clothes disarrayed. One of the photos - perhaps the most awful of the lot - showed one of the girls on the ground with her skirt pulled up, her underwear on display for all the paper’s readers to see. These images were picked up by various media all over the country and the matter dissected and discussed to the point of boredom.
Today’s headlines announced that the perpetrators had been caught, or at least identified. But the likelihood of them being released and not indicted in any way is high, since the people who were molested have flown back to their own homes. They refused to file an official complaint with the police, since all they wanted to do was forget about it and get on with their own lives. It has been the righteous – sometimes even self-righteous – citizenry of the Mumbai who has followed the whole sorry incident up, mustering up evidence, pushing the police to work on the case, making sure the media relentlessly covered it and doing their best - and worst – to bring the ‘criminals’, as they in a way, to book.
But overall, with all the clamour of the story, the question remains: Whose fault was it? The story goes that these four came out of the hotel and were wandering down the road to where they were staying. They were obviously drunk, say the journalists. A crowd of men, also reportedly rather happily high, started heckling the women, making comments that were of a sexual nature. One of the women retaliated. And there it all began, progressing to utter humiliation and very public pain for the two girls, one newly married, while the men – one of them the husband - could do nothing to help. The public at large took over, with little help from the lone policeman in the vicinity and none from the staff of the hotel, though there should have been some security guards at the entrance, one presumes.
The reaction of readers and watchers – since the story has been on television all through – has been fairly clear. The women feel that they should have the freedom to be what they are and if they are in any way provocative, they should be responsible for their own actions and willing to face the consequences. The men are almost unanimous in their opinion that men are creeps, badly behaved, to say the least, and should learn how to treat women. Both are right, I presume. Or perhaps neither is.
I have my own views on this whole matter, as will anyone who wants to bother to think about it. For me, it does not make sense to behave in a manner that invites trouble, though I have done my share of it. Whether it is dressing provocatively and unsuitably in context or whether it is saying what should not be said in certain circumstances, violating that mandate will only result in unpleasantness. A woman must always remember that she is under a constraint in this country, however modern and liberal a city like Mumbai may be. To wander about on the streets while not completely aware of the situation and yourself is just asking for nastiness. And to attract the attention of a group of people who are ready and willing for a fight is sheer stupidity. I wonder if the young women who went through a traumatic end to a new year’s celebration and a very new set of relationships have understood that yet.
Today’s headlines announced that the perpetrators had been caught, or at least identified. But the likelihood of them being released and not indicted in any way is high, since the people who were molested have flown back to their own homes. They refused to file an official complaint with the police, since all they wanted to do was forget about it and get on with their own lives. It has been the righteous – sometimes even self-righteous – citizenry of the Mumbai who has followed the whole sorry incident up, mustering up evidence, pushing the police to work on the case, making sure the media relentlessly covered it and doing their best - and worst – to bring the ‘criminals’, as they in a way, to book.
But overall, with all the clamour of the story, the question remains: Whose fault was it? The story goes that these four came out of the hotel and were wandering down the road to where they were staying. They were obviously drunk, say the journalists. A crowd of men, also reportedly rather happily high, started heckling the women, making comments that were of a sexual nature. One of the women retaliated. And there it all began, progressing to utter humiliation and very public pain for the two girls, one newly married, while the men – one of them the husband - could do nothing to help. The public at large took over, with little help from the lone policeman in the vicinity and none from the staff of the hotel, though there should have been some security guards at the entrance, one presumes.
The reaction of readers and watchers – since the story has been on television all through – has been fairly clear. The women feel that they should have the freedom to be what they are and if they are in any way provocative, they should be responsible for their own actions and willing to face the consequences. The men are almost unanimous in their opinion that men are creeps, badly behaved, to say the least, and should learn how to treat women. Both are right, I presume. Or perhaps neither is.
I have my own views on this whole matter, as will anyone who wants to bother to think about it. For me, it does not make sense to behave in a manner that invites trouble, though I have done my share of it. Whether it is dressing provocatively and unsuitably in context or whether it is saying what should not be said in certain circumstances, violating that mandate will only result in unpleasantness. A woman must always remember that she is under a constraint in this country, however modern and liberal a city like Mumbai may be. To wander about on the streets while not completely aware of the situation and yourself is just asking for nastiness. And to attract the attention of a group of people who are ready and willing for a fight is sheer stupidity. I wonder if the young women who went through a traumatic end to a new year’s celebration and a very new set of relationships have understood that yet.
A violation
The world is a shocking place to live in and I am reminded of it every so often, when something happens that creates a buzz of major proportions. Like has happened in Mumbai over the past couple of days. Photographers from a newspaper (not ours) took some horrendous pictures of four people being pushed around by a large group of unruly men just outside a multi-star hotel in the western suburbs of the city. There was a married couple and another woman and man, all fairly young, all non-residents from the United States. The men were shoved aside while the women were heckled, then felt up, then their clothes disarrayed. One of the photos - perhaps the most awful of the lot - showed one of the girls on the ground with her skirt pulled up, her underwear on display for all the paper’s readers to see. These images were picked up by various media all over the country and the matter dissected and discussed to the point of boredom.
Today’s headlines announced that the perpetrators had been caught, or at least identified. But the likelihood of them being released and not indicted in any way is high, since the people who were molested have flown back to their own homes. They refused to file an official complaint with the police, since all they wanted to do was forget about it and get on with their own lives. It has been the righteous – sometimes even self-righteous – citizenry of the Mumbai who has followed the whole sorry incident up, mustering up evidence, pushing the police to work on the case, making sure the media relentlessly covered it and doing their best - and worst – to bring the ‘criminals’, as they in a way, to book.
But overall, with all the clamour of the story, the question remains: Whose fault was it? The story goes that these four came out of the hotel and were wandering down the road to where they were staying. They were obviously drunk, say the journalists. A crowd of men, also reportedly rather happily high, started heckling the women, making comments that were of a sexual nature. One of the women retaliated. And there it all began, progressing to utter humiliation and very public pain for the two girls, one newly married, while the men – one of them the husband - could do nothing to help. The public at large took over, with little help from the lone policeman in the vicinity and none from the staff of the hotel, though there should have been some security guards at the entrance, one presumes.
The reaction of readers and watchers – since the story has been on television all through – has been fairly clear. The women feel that they should have the freedom to be what they are and if they are in any way provocative, they should be responsible for their own actions and willing to face the consequences. The men are almost unanimous in their opinion that men are creeps, badly behaved, to say the least, and should learn how to treat women. Both are right, I presume. Or perhaps neither is.
I have my own views on this whole matter, as will anyone who wants to bother to think about it. For me, it does not make sense to behave in a manner that invites trouble, though I have done my share of it. Whether it is dressing provocatively and unsuitably in context or whether it is saying what should not be said in certain circumstances, violating that mandate will only result in unpleasantness. A woman must always remember that she is under a constraint in this country, however modern and liberal a city like Mumbai may be. To wander about on the streets while not completely aware of the situation and yourself is just asking for nastiness. And to attract the attention of a group of people who are ready and willing for a fight is sheer stupidity. I wonder if the young women who went through a traumatic end to a new year’s celebration and a very new set of relationships have understood that yet.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Going forward
Over the past few days I have been getting a lot of text messages on my mobile phone wishing me and my family well for the New Year. These have ranged from simple greetings for 2008 to screen-loads of text to make sure all bases are covered, from my health to my wealth, my love, my life and, in one funny one, even my eating habits. And all along there has been a general air of bonhomie and a surety that each one of those smses are forwards, none original and custom-composed for me. In fact, I got quite a few repeats, with the same message from different people just seconds apart, showing how what goes around inevitably comes around again within a very short span of time.
Forwards are like that. I get plenty of them on email, too, and have set up a nice filtering system that weeds out many of the ones that send me a little non-compos with their text and even their pictures. Today, in fact, a colleague sent me a mail that showed a rather strained gentleman contorting his face to bite his own nose. I never thought it was possible. More important, I never thought that anyone would even want to try it. And why would they do it with people watching long enough to photograph each stage of the seemingly very painful process? It has me wondering why people do things like this. And wondering even more why people would expect me to be even remotely interested in seeing it happen.
Perhaps the more common forwards in this country are the religiously referenced ones. At almost any time of the year a picture-heavy mail – usually a Powerpoint presentation - will clog up my official inbox and prevent other more important communication coming through. It is most irritating, but since it invariably involves one or the other of our 33 million or so gods, one cannot protest too loudly or too vehemently without upsetting someone along the way. But I really am not religious, I say mildly, and then delete the mail after a cursory scan. Sometimes, when it is my favourite God, Ganesha, I might just open the mail to check what the pictures are; they can be really cute and I occasionally will lower my strictly retained walls and forward them to close friends.
But there ere other mails that will never wing their way through cyberspace to my friends, family and assorted acquaintances. These are the ‘send-this-to-at-least-seven-people-to-see-a-favourable-change-in-your-life-in-just-five-days mails that have come through a convoluted series of forwards into my mailbox, usually sent to me by someone who not only should know better than to believe this kind of guff, but also should know that I hate getting it. What I truly deplore, however, is the kind of mail that tells me about the courage of some little girl who died, or some little boy who saved his world from sure destruction of some kind. For some odd reason I could probably explain if I wanted to dig into my own psyche, I can never resist reading these stories and, even as they make me feel a kind of ‘awwwwwwwwwwwww’ feeling, I am disgusted at myself to check out what is blatant emotional blackmail of sorts.
And then there are the sms forwards that I abhor with every synapse. These are the incredibly male chauvinistic, sexually loaded, often smutty messages that purport to be funny. They are far from it. Just horrible reflections of minds I prefer not to know exist in my life.
Forwards are like that. I get plenty of them on email, too, and have set up a nice filtering system that weeds out many of the ones that send me a little non-compos with their text and even their pictures. Today, in fact, a colleague sent me a mail that showed a rather strained gentleman contorting his face to bite his own nose. I never thought it was possible. More important, I never thought that anyone would even want to try it. And why would they do it with people watching long enough to photograph each stage of the seemingly very painful process? It has me wondering why people do things like this. And wondering even more why people would expect me to be even remotely interested in seeing it happen.
Perhaps the more common forwards in this country are the religiously referenced ones. At almost any time of the year a picture-heavy mail – usually a Powerpoint presentation - will clog up my official inbox and prevent other more important communication coming through. It is most irritating, but since it invariably involves one or the other of our 33 million or so gods, one cannot protest too loudly or too vehemently without upsetting someone along the way. But I really am not religious, I say mildly, and then delete the mail after a cursory scan. Sometimes, when it is my favourite God, Ganesha, I might just open the mail to check what the pictures are; they can be really cute and I occasionally will lower my strictly retained walls and forward them to close friends.
But there ere other mails that will never wing their way through cyberspace to my friends, family and assorted acquaintances. These are the ‘send-this-to-at-least-seven-people-to-see-a-favourable-change-in-your-life-in-just-five-days mails that have come through a convoluted series of forwards into my mailbox, usually sent to me by someone who not only should know better than to believe this kind of guff, but also should know that I hate getting it. What I truly deplore, however, is the kind of mail that tells me about the courage of some little girl who died, or some little boy who saved his world from sure destruction of some kind. For some odd reason I could probably explain if I wanted to dig into my own psyche, I can never resist reading these stories and, even as they make me feel a kind of ‘awwwwwwwwwwwww’ feeling, I am disgusted at myself to check out what is blatant emotional blackmail of sorts.
And then there are the sms forwards that I abhor with every synapse. These are the incredibly male chauvinistic, sexually loaded, often smutty messages that purport to be funny. They are far from it. Just horrible reflections of minds I prefer not to know exist in my life.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
HAPPY 2008!
It’s that time of year again. I say that every time something date-worthy happens, which is almost once a month, if I calculate right but, being rather number-dyslexic, I could be way off the mark I am really aiming at. It is January 1, 2008, which will take some getting used to, as it always does. For almost 12 months now, I have been dating things 2007; I say ‘almost’ because it took a little while to get used to the fact that it was 2007 and no longer 2006. At work, it doesn’t really matter, since other people do most of that date stuff and anyway the computers do it automatically. And at home, why would I need to know what year it is, except when I am filling in checks, which I rarely need to do since everything became direct debit.
But 2008 is, as Father pointed out, a leap year. Which means that various friends who are born on February 29 will have a birthday – disconcertingly, they seem to be somehow younger than me, even though they actually came to this planet (this is assuming the extra-terrestrial origin of life theory) many years before I did. It also means that women have that traditionally (albeit a western concept) conferred freedom of being able to ask men for what they want in the whole man-woman thing, be it marriage or a date. I have seen many leap years come and go and no one that I know, even myself, has ever done anything like that. In reality, we do not need a special year that comes just once in four to ask for what we want; we are of a different ilk – we just take it, most often than not doing the polite thing if we feel like and saying a cursory ‘please’ just before we reach out and grab hold.
But in this new year, I am told, I am supposed to decide to do something. In other words, make a resolution. I never bother, because I never keep to it more than for a day or two, be it to never again play Solitaire when I am at work (of anywhere else, since it is a perniciously addictive game that should never have been invented or loaded on to computers) or to stay far away from that favourite shoe shop where I know my friend will create exactly the heel that I have always wanted when I want it. I rarely remember what the resolution is, never mind keep it, since I cannot be bothered to search my memory for a clue or four to figure it out. And since that aforementioned resolution is often made as a huge and giggle-some joke when I am chatting online or on the phone or across the lunch table with a close friend, I never take it all as seriously as perhaps I am supposed to do. Which means that any resolution I could make under those circumstances would inevitably be broken before the last fullstop is added to the sentence in which I make it.
But this year – surprise, surprise! – I actually do have a resolution. It has nothing to do with fibre, let me assure all those who believe that that is the sole obsession of my existence. It has nothing to do with getting back into shape and fitting into those extremely to-die-for floral-printed jeans, though that is part of my great plan for the next few months. And it has absolutely nothing to do with being more polite to people I do not like and gnashing my crocodile pearly whites at all those who believe that they should know me or, better yet, that I should know them. Those are incidentals. My resolve is more my own, nothing to do with anyone else, not really. I am going to grow up, at last, painful though the process has been and will continue to be. I will become less accepting, less trusting and less forgiving, more responsible, more proactive and far more analytical before I do anything, be it buying diamonds or frying fries or letting people into my life.
I think it’s called looking before I leap. And in this particular year, it seems moot.
But 2008 is, as Father pointed out, a leap year. Which means that various friends who are born on February 29 will have a birthday – disconcertingly, they seem to be somehow younger than me, even though they actually came to this planet (this is assuming the extra-terrestrial origin of life theory) many years before I did. It also means that women have that traditionally (albeit a western concept) conferred freedom of being able to ask men for what they want in the whole man-woman thing, be it marriage or a date. I have seen many leap years come and go and no one that I know, even myself, has ever done anything like that. In reality, we do not need a special year that comes just once in four to ask for what we want; we are of a different ilk – we just take it, most often than not doing the polite thing if we feel like and saying a cursory ‘please’ just before we reach out and grab hold.
But in this new year, I am told, I am supposed to decide to do something. In other words, make a resolution. I never bother, because I never keep to it more than for a day or two, be it to never again play Solitaire when I am at work (of anywhere else, since it is a perniciously addictive game that should never have been invented or loaded on to computers) or to stay far away from that favourite shoe shop where I know my friend will create exactly the heel that I have always wanted when I want it. I rarely remember what the resolution is, never mind keep it, since I cannot be bothered to search my memory for a clue or four to figure it out. And since that aforementioned resolution is often made as a huge and giggle-some joke when I am chatting online or on the phone or across the lunch table with a close friend, I never take it all as seriously as perhaps I am supposed to do. Which means that any resolution I could make under those circumstances would inevitably be broken before the last fullstop is added to the sentence in which I make it.
But this year – surprise, surprise! – I actually do have a resolution. It has nothing to do with fibre, let me assure all those who believe that that is the sole obsession of my existence. It has nothing to do with getting back into shape and fitting into those extremely to-die-for floral-printed jeans, though that is part of my great plan for the next few months. And it has absolutely nothing to do with being more polite to people I do not like and gnashing my crocodile pearly whites at all those who believe that they should know me or, better yet, that I should know them. Those are incidentals. My resolve is more my own, nothing to do with anyone else, not really. I am going to grow up, at last, painful though the process has been and will continue to be. I will become less accepting, less trusting and less forgiving, more responsible, more proactive and far more analytical before I do anything, be it buying diamonds or frying fries or letting people into my life.
I think it’s called looking before I leap. And in this particular year, it seems moot.
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