Bharat humko jaan se pyaara hai

There is so much wrong in our country that celebrating independence seems odd. But all the gloom and doom in the world cannot suppress the Indian love for celebration of any kind, and that is one of the reasons I love this mad country. Yes, there's a lot we can't do much about – slow growth rates and falling currencies and other things that I don't quite understand. Today, though, I think of what we can do to make good on that pledge of long years ago.

Actively fight any kind of embargo on non-violent freedom of speech or expression. Refuse to sign a form that only asks for your father's or husband's name. Speak up when you see someone being abused or discriminated against. Argue when someone makes an offhand remark about how women should stay at home to look after the kids. Argue when someone says women who stay at home are weak and anti-feminist, too. Before calling someone a woman writer, stop and think whether you'd call anyone a man writer. It's not okay to be a fence-sitter and rely on habit/tradition/ease as any kind of defence for what you do/don't do. Let art and literature and theatre and cinema flourish. And above all, have a sense of humour and don't take offence at every tiny thing. India is a difficult enough country to live in; the least we should be allowed is the freedom to laugh.

We can't all join politics, the defence or civil services, and we can't all become teachers; it's silly to say that we have no right to criticize unless we do those things. But we can do our bit, small though it seems, to make our freedom count.

The politics of protest

When I read about the ghastly rape of a 5-year-old last night, I will confess, my first reaction was of exhaustion. So it wasn’t an iron rod in a 23-year-old but a bottle of hair oil and some candles that were found shoved inside the baby. Does that make it more or less horrifying? Should that even be a question? Didn’t this just happen a few months ago? Didn’t we go out and protest, didn’t we pour our anguish out in blog posts and op-eds, didn’t we sign every single petition we could find on Change.org, didn’t we send recommendations to the Justice Verma Committee? Why should we have to do this every single time? What is the point of sweating it out in Delhi’s searing 40-degree heat for change that never happens?

But as I read more, as I watched the video of a woman being slapped by a cop at the hospital where she was protesting against the negligence and subsequent corruption of the cops involved, my reactions changed. I wept so violently that I almost threw up, and I knew that despite myself, I was not jaded. Not yet. No, I do not think that protesting outside the hospital was in any way a good or ethical idea. Doctors need a calm and peaceful environment to work in and nothing will be achieved by anyone, civilian demonstrators or Aam Aadmi Party workers, invading that space and demanding resignations of police topdogs, or to see the victim, or whatever the hell they were demanding. A hospital is not the place for this kind of protest. But that still doesn’t justify the complete brutality of the police that we all saw yesterday. Yes, inquiries have been ordered to examine allegations of both bribery and brutality, and the slap-happy cop has been suspended for now, but we know that this is not enough. We cannot expect mindsets to change and patriarchy to be rooted out if those in positions of authority are allowed to behave like this and get away with only minor punishment.

With this in mind, I attended this morning’s rally outside the police headquarters at ITO. My friend had very generously offered me a ride along with a colleague of hers, and when we got there at 10:45 in the morning, we were the only women there. The entire protest had been taken over by the Aam Aadmi Party, and because they were the single largest political presence there, the media thoughtlessly began calling it the AAP protest, completely ignoring the fact that there were other people there who did not want to be aligned with the party, who were there as individuals who felt strongly about what had happened. Who did not agree with the mindless AAP chant “Choodi pehen ke dance karo, dance karo”, which was meant to highlight the weakness of the police force but ironically ended up being as misogynistic as the crime that was being protested against.

There were many such chants that I disagreed with – the murdabad one being the most popular. It started off against Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, but soon turned into a slogan against the entire government and police force. Neither helpful nor tasteful, and not something I could bring myself to say. While I have no moral problem with death penalty to rapists, I do not wish death to any of these people, and I do not see the point of demanding it using this platform. Demands for resignations/arrests of certain cops, swifter punishment for rapists, and for Kumar, Shinde, and Sheila Dikshit to speak to the public (by which I mean say something meaningful and concrete, not spout useless clichés) – those I yelled for till I was hoarse. Unfortunately, the murdabad ones are the ones that people seem to like the most.

The advantage of being part of a small group of women was that the news channels actively sought our views, which worked for us because we had genuine and concrete things to say. We also had perfectly pleasant exchanges with a few cops on duty, who offered us water and discussed yesterday’s slapping incident with us quite freely. Within an hour, a few other small political parties had joined the demonstration, so even though there weren’t too many individual protesters, the crowd was sizeable and only growing. So far, so peaceful. But after about two hours of perfectly civilized protesting, we were suddenly, violently pushed and shoved aside by an army of crazed AISA workers who ran up to the police barricades and began to upturn and break them, climbing on top of them and yelling for absolutely nothing. We managed to get out of the crush of people, holding the hands of strangers as we tried to help them escape as well, and eventually, all the women protesters were standing at the back or to one side, continuing their demonstration, while the guys from AISA jumped and yelled like animals up in front.

We continued to protest for a fair while longer, but when we saw a new deployment of cops arriving with lathis and rifles, we knew there was no point staying. The protest had officially been hijacked. The media had got its story and the police and politicians, their excuse to justify brutality and clampdowns and Section 144.

But despite all this heartbreaking, frustrating mindlessness and political hijacking, there were enough people there who really cared about what was going on, whose demands were genuine and whose anguish was heartfelt. And the media, cops, and politicians would do well to remember that those people may leave the protest venue but they are not going anywhere.

Boston or Baghdad, we are all one

Since last night, when the news about the Boston marathon bombings broke, I've read and heard countless expressions of either shock at the attacks or outrage that other terror attacks the same day didn't make that kind of news or elicit such expressions of heartbreak. Then people started talking about other countries that face terrorism routinely, and of course, all discussions, especially online, end up in ma-behen abuses and Indo-Pak issues. Always. But I just had a few things to say:

1. The Daily Mail article about 30 people being killed at a wedding in Afghanistan is a 2002 article that has been repackaged; please stop spreading the rumour that it happened yesterday.

2. I can understand criticizing the media for not giving enough coverage to other terror attacks that actually did take place yesterday (notably in Iraq) – the media is supposed to be objective and fair and all that. But please stop judging people for expressing their shock at what happened in Boston. For one thing, while both events are equally tragic, both are not equally shocking in the strictest sense of the word. Attacks on a super high-profile, globally watched sporting event (with tight security measures in place) in a city that doesn’t face terrorism regularly are obviously more shocking, although not more tragic, than attacks in Iraq, a country that, sadly, faces more terrorism on a daily basis than many other places in the world. Also, posting/not posting something online is no indication of a person’s empathy or apathy.

3. Let’s just think of things that restore our faith, like the runners who crossed the finish line and continued to run – to hospitals to donate blood to the blast victims. These are things that matter, not which attack got more tweets/fb updates.

Hypocrisy of the versed kind

Dear Kapil Sibal, 

I know you thought you were making all the right noises by reciting your poem about the Delhi bus gangrape victim at tonight’s Jashn-e-bahar mushaira at which you were chief guest. And I know you were there as a poet and not a government representative. But I find it difficult to understand how you can write poetry that asks why patriarchy exists and is allowed to exist when your government didn't even have the guts to back one Verma Committee report in entirety, a report that actually did more to attack the roots of the patriarchy you claim to abhor than your government has done in years. I fail to understand with what integrity you can lament the breakdown of communication and cite, as an example, how the protesters in December refused to talk to the government. When did they refuse? Do you mean when they heckled one politician who bothered to show up at a protest venue only after several days of complete silence from everyone in power? They were angry, but all they had wanted was for their government to talk to them. To be fair, you also expressed your sadness at the government's unwillingness to talk to the people. But aren’t you part of that government? If you wanted to talk to the people, or even just express your solidarity with them even if you couldn't make an official statement, what did you do to make that happen? Did you go to India Gate even once? And then, after an entire poem on women's rights, you end by asking men how, despite their role as protectors, they can do this to women, who are their mothers. Because THAT'S not patriarchal at all. 

So yes, you thought you were making all the right noises. But really, you just answered your own questions about why this happens.

Sincerely,

A person (because all my other identities should be irrelevant to you).

Belated birthday wishes to Pride and Prejudice

January 28^th, 1813. The day the world changed. Not because of a major political event, no outbreak of war, no massacre or bombing. In fact, the change wasn’t even noticeable then. But it happened. Because that was the day Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published.

Critics will argue that the novel is nothing but a series of fluffy portraits of posh women and poor women and in-between women – all interested only in finding husbands. That despite living in the hardest of times, despite having brothers in the army and navy and a brother-in-law guillotined in the French Revolution, Austen remained oblivious to the plight of the world around her, and her mind and writing remained confined to household and marriage. A criticism as silly and limited as saying Tolkien lived in a make-believe world and did not address real problems.

Because those who want to look beyond the obvious will see that beneath its resolutely fluffy, frothy surface, Pride and Prejudice is equally resolutely real. That it is as much about, and rooted in, the grim reality of Austen’s time – the military regiments and their movement, the economic disparity, land laws, social and legal gender discrimination, social mobility and the lengths to which women had to go to secure their and their children’s future – as it is about relationships – friendship, family, the importance of a companionate, loving marriage founded on shared values and equality. That it is a sharply observed study of human nature and failings, and one in which men and women are treated with an equal hand.

Even within her limited scope as a woman in what was essentially a male bastion, Austen manages, in Pride and Prejudice, to defy stereotypes and present men and women that aren’t the norm. Elizabeth Bennett is not the most attractive or the most domestic of her five sisters – two qualities that men would have looked for in a wife. She is, however, intelligent, self-respecting, with a mind of her own and the courage to speak it. She is also well-read, a point that Austen makes more than once. And even though her sister Jane is described as beautiful, Austen makes it clear that her beauty is incidental, and is less important than the fact that she radiates goodness and warmth. The other sisters are described as not particularly worthy either because of their behaviour or their limited intelligence – never because they aren’t attractive or “accomplished” in the way that women were expected to be.

Darcy has all the trappings of a catch – yet he isn’t immediately portrayed as one. Far from allowing him to remain a surly, uncommunicative hero, Austen ensures that he sees the need to change, to realize his mistakes and have the humility to apologize for them. If I were to receive a marriage proposal like Darcy’s first one to Elizabeth, I would not think twice about saying no. Except that this is two centuries ago, so when she rejects him, it is a much bigger deal. Especially since she has already rejected the odious Mr. Collins. Both rejections are vital, since they send out the message that women do have a choice, that marriage should never be seen as a way out of other problems no matter how limited one’s options. The rejection is also necessary since it shows Elizabeth’s own great flaw, her inability to see Darcy outside of her own prejudices. She, too, needs to realize that first impressions are not always the last. Not just women, even men deserve better.

Feminist, satire, chick lit, progressive, regressive, populist, niche. Pride and Prejudice refuses to be pinned down and stuffed into any one box. Which is why, 200 years after it was published, it still evokes the most heated debates on topics ranging from gender literature to irony and narrative form. It still gets pride of place on every bookshelf, is arguably the most popular choice for book club discussions, routinely tops best-book-ever-written polls. And continues to spawn innumerable fan fiction revisions and sequels, TV movies and shows, Hollywood movies, Bollywood movies. From vampire romance to crime thriller, no genre has been unaffected by it.

So as it turns 200, this is my humble, adoring tribute to a novel that has become the inimitable gold standard for wit, for love and equality, for everything that matters. To a novel that is, itself, a truth universally acknowledged.

Movie review: Inkaar makes you think

Basic plot: Ad agency National Creative Director and board member Maya Luthra (Chitrangada Singh) lodges a complaint of sexual harassment against her CEO and fellow board member Rahul Verma (Arjun Rampal), which he portrays as an attempt to take over his job.

At intermission, when my friend and I went to the snacks counter, we talked about how we felt that Maya’s allegations were baseless and that her own behaviour was unprofessional, even if not sexually inappropriate. But the minute the second half started, we realized how wrong we could be. And that is the beauty of Inkaar, Sudhir Mishra’s film that tackles a host of issues including sexual exploitation at the workplace, professional rivalry, romantic jealousy, and the glass ceiling. It is not a perfect film at all, but its success lies in the fact that it offers no judgement and paints its lead characters very decisively in grey.

Maya, a brash, ambitious, talented girl from Solan meets suave advertising legend Rahul at an ad awards party, and he eventually offers her a job at his agency in Mumbai. He mentors her, trains her not just in copywriting, but how to pitch ideas, how to present herself, groom herself, and soon she becomes the star of the company. Meanwhile, their palpable chemistry turns into more, but insecurity and different expectations turn their equation sour and Maya moves to the agency’s Delhi branch. When she returns to Mumbai after a stint in New York, she is promoted to National Creative Director and made a board member, and suddenly, things go from tense to out-and-out antagonistic.

While the plot itself is interesting, what’s more noteworthy is the way the narrative is structured. The story moves back and forth within the framework of a closed-door hearing, with both Maya and Rahul giving their versions of past events to a panel consisting of their colleagues and a human rights worker. Both of their versions are so believable that it is difficult to take sides. Rahul constantly undercuts Maya’s story by presenting an equally convincing one of his own, and raises questions about the blurry line between friendly banter and harassment; he also shows us a Maya who is hysterical, almost unhinged. Likewise, just when we think Maya’s totally playing her gender card to get sympathy, she recounts events that really make us want to throttle Rahul. The one big flaw here is that what could have been a watertight narrative sometimes gets derailed by meandering arguments that veer into emotional territory and take away from the actual complaint. There are also some flashbacks to Rahul’s own childhood and even his current personal life, which seem to be an attempt to explain his motivations and lead the film to its somewhat populist, but very believable, ending.
 

Performance-wise, Arjun Rampal has finally done a truly great job – more than Rock On!, this movie shows what he can do with the right direction. And Chitrangada, while not terribly powerful, manages to hold her own despite being stuck with clichéd and repetitive dialogue (when will Bollywood realize that repeating something in English and Hindi doesn’t make it sound more heartfelt?) The supporting cast is also solid, with Vipin Sharma doing particularly well as the standard office chauvinist.

My biggest problem with Inkaar? The distracting gorgeousness of Arjun and Chitrangada. I actually have no recollection of the first few minutes of the film because I was just gazing unblinkingly at both of them.

Selective amnesia or selective equality?

It’s been a month since India rose in protest – against not just the one horrific bus gangrape, but against gender disparity as a whole. Apart from laws and punishment and safety measures, there was a lot of discussion about how we’re part of the problem if we do certain things in our own lives. Serving our sons food before our daughters, letting our sons go out at night but keeping our daughters at home, dancing to Honey Singh’s songs at parties, worshipping Krishna – who molested women and stole their clothes – and Rama – who made his wife take a fire test to prove her fidelity. Cheering Salman and Aamir on in Dabangg and Dil, as their characters stalked and harassed the female lead until she capitulated to their dubious charms. We all agreed that change must begin at home, social mores need a complete overhaul, pop culture needs to be more responsible, we all need to introspect.

So how come the same doesn’t apply to our views on Pakistan’s Foreign Minister? I don’t see any male politician being so mercilessly ripped apart – in the media or in drawing room chatter – because of his clothes, his briefcase, his shoes, his watch. But with Hina Rabbani Khar, it’s always less about what she says or does and more about the Birkin and how it somehow makes her a less capable minister. I remember the same criticisms levelled against her in 2011 when she became Foreign Minister, and I remember wondering why people spent so much time bitching about her appearance when what we should really have been concerned about was the abysmal standards of journalism in our own country.

Even Firstpost, which usually carries fairly balanced and thoughtful articles, has just such a piece today, which can be read here: http://www.firstpost.com/world/why-its-hard-to-get-excited-about-hina-rabbani-khars-peace-offer-591138.html. It’s about why Khar’s proposed peace talks in the wake of ceasefire violations by Pakistan are unlikely to lead to anything concrete. That, of course, is a separate topic, but what’s disturbing is how the writer, devoting the opening paragraphs of the article to her looks and sartorial choices, first calls her “a victim of her own artfully cultivated image”, and then goes on to absolve the media of its role in the propagation of that image by saying it is one she herself has “assiduously fed”, and that her clothes and accessories seem intended to draw attention – effectively saying she asks for it. Not so different from statements by Asaram Bapu, Mohan Bhagwat, and others like them – statements that, rightly, come under such strong attack from all thinking quarters.

Are our memories that short or is it because Khar’s a Pakistani so all bets are off and it’s okay to be nasty about her? Neither thought is particularly comforting.