Raghubir Singh: Catching the Breeze*

Photo taken in Hathod village, Jaipur, Rajasthan

The first reaction is disbelief. It takes time to absorb the simple, delicious freedom in the backdrop of an impoverished Indian village. Two teens are touching the sky. A faithful old Neem tree and a trustworthy jute rope is all it takes to forget that they are women.

As they race against wind, their neighbors, siblings and friends find no novelty in the dizzying heights these women have reached. They look disinterested, as if they cannot determine what makes this trivial breather so interesting to a city man.

But this is as high as the two women swinging on the makeshift swing will perhaps go in their entire life. For Hathod, in Rajasthan, India, is a village where strict caste and class rules still apply. Someone else – the society, their husband, or their in-laws will soon begin to dictate the heights they can reach.

Raghubir Singh took this photo in 1975. The girls, from an assortment of ages between three to thirteen, perhaps even their young mothers, might have yearned to go to schools. Their parents might have entertained the idea for some time, too. But, in such villages, where Hindu women of certain castes are still expected to follow the purdah system, dropout rates are high.

There is no money to buy the books and the shoes, teachers don’t teach, schools have no functional toilets or water, or if everything is in place, the nearest high school may be miles away. Public transport is often undependable, certainly risky for young girls. They do give it a try though, some brave ones. Many daughters walk their way to school, their parents grudgingly, but not without some faint beam of pride, allow. But it doesn’t last long, this pursuit of the dream of a better life.

After months of juggling dreams with duties, girls give up. Because they no longer have the energy to cook, clean, milk the buffalo, and take care of their armies of siblings after coming home. These are the tasks girls cannot wash their hands off in a household with a single earning member. Or sometimes parents cannot afford to teach more kids at a time, and the privilege of education is then is given to the male children. But these women are lucky. At least they are alive.

The government and the citizens (often even well-educated, so-called modern families) systematically ignore India’s female feticide epidemic because of misplaced cultural preferences, socio-economic factors vote-bank politics and illiteracy. According to Census 2011, Rajasthan has a sex ratio of 926 girls between ages 0 to 6 for 1000 males in the same age group. India’s overall sex ratio is 940.

A Unicef report says fetal sex determination and sex selective abortion by unethical medical professionals has today grown into a Rs. 1,000 crore industry (US$ 244 million). The act that targets doctors and technicians who offer illegal ultrasound tests gathers dust in legal jargon, social connivance and corruption. Till May 2006, as many as 22 out of 35 states in India did not report a single violation of the act. (1)

While they were waiting for medical science to catch up, they devised other ways to kill their infant girls. My grandmother told me that in olden days, a euphemism was used to identify people who killed their newborn girls. Gujarati for “Doodh peeti kari,” roughly translates to “We started feeding her milk.” This essentially meant a newborn girl child was drowned in a big cauldron of milk.

In India, if a girl is lucky to be born, she becomes a woman sooner than in any other part of the world. Till then, they let her swing on a tree and touch the rainbow.

Gauri Gharpure

* This is another assignment for Michael Powell's class, Writing about life along the poverty line. I loved this homework, it was to select (or shoot) a photo of a neighbourhood / person / process and write about what emotions, ideas and issues the image evokes. This piece is my interpretation of the visuals, it is personal, and may be completely different from Singh's rationale for taking the photo, or being drawn to the scene.

Links and References:

1) The Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act: UNICEF India: http://www.unicef.org/india/media_3285.htm
2) http://f56.net/kuenstler/raghubir-singh/raghubir-singh/
3) Raghubir Singh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghubir_Singh_%28photographer%29
4) International Humanist and Ethical Union: http://www.iheu.org/female-foeticide-in-india
5) Census 2011, India: http://www.census2011.co.in/states.php

Clarence Page: Giants at J-School

Clarence Page responded to the email within minutes and gave some suggestions for my notes. I have re-numbered the points he mentions in the email (excerpt below), but his message makes sense if read with the PDF.

Here is what Page said:

I'm back!
I read through your notes and congratulate you on your good job.
I would only make the following suggestions for clarity:

I would replace lines 10, 11 and 12 with this:

Politics is all perception, in that sense, all political speech is code. Liberals, for example, like to speak of “have’s and have-nots.” But the conservative governor of Indiana told the nation, in his State of the Union address, that America is “a country of haves and soon-to-haves.” The nuances of difference speak to their different perceptions of opportunity in this country and what government’s role should be --or not be—in reducing income inequality *..........
......... Let me know if you have any other questions and, please, enjoy your weekend!
Best,
CP*

How can you avoid marginalizing yourself, pigeon-holing in a certain niche?

1) Try different things. For example, I wrote a lot of obits. Obits have the essence of everything and you have the last word! Get the name right, get the age right
2) Once you are recognized as good, you have very good chance of not being pigeon-holed
3) Then you have a platform, start writing about politics, social change, then move to Op-Ed
4) When I started out on general assignment, I really wanted to be an entertainment writer. For a year in my early days, I covered the religion beat by day and reviewed rock music concerts at night. I used to say that I was the only “rock-and-religion reporter in Chicago.”
5) Always be curious, always be ready to see

*Point 4 above is in Page's words, as sent in the email.

How important is it for a reporter to be an extrovert? Or can an introvert be a good journalist? I asked this question :)

Like anything else in life, like cliff diving, with journalism, know your own capabilities. We had an excellent reporter. She was not just an introvert, she was timid. She once went to cover a story on elephants in the circus. And in all the photos, she was visibly scared. She wrote a story about how difficult the assignment was for her. But the editors wanted something fun. They asked, “Did you not enjoy at all?” “NO!” But she eventually wrote a happier story and we found a photo where she seemed to smile. She was never comfortable being a reporter, she hated talking to strangers, calling up people. But she was excellent. Eventually she asked to be moved to the desk and she’s doing great. So, it doesn’t hurt to be extrovert, but if you are not, be true to yourself.

Do not use photos, drawings or text on this blog without permission.

Chief Logan's Lament

A moving piece, worth sharing, worth being re-read and being passed on.

Reference: Edited excerpt, information and complete speech from Chief Logan's Lament, page 30, The American Reader, Words That Moved a Nation, Perennial Publication (2000) edited by Diane Ravitch

Background:

In 1774, there were violent clashes between Indians and whites in the Ohio River valley. Whites were reportedly enraged after a series of robberies assumed to be commited by the Indians and white soldiers wiped off a large number of Indians, including the family of Logan, the chief of the Mingo Indian tribe.

Logan was known as a friend of the whites, but the massacre, and the murder of his entire family at the hands of the whites, prompted him to retaliate. Led by Logan, the Indians went on a rampage, killed several till they were finally defeated by the Virginia militia in October 1774. After defeat, Logan refused to join the other chiefs as a supplicant before the victorious whites. Instead, he sent the following speech to Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson included Logan's speech in his Notes on Virginia (1784-85) ... as proof "of the talents of the aboriginals of this country, and particularly of their eloquence."

The speech:

Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.

I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat: if he ever came cold and naked, and he cloathed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, "Logan is the friend of the white man." I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance: for my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? - Not one.

Catfish

A film about identity, and how freaky easy it is to manipulate, fantasize and deny that what we are born with in today's virtual age.

I love Vince's words towards the end of the film. Yes, there are some people in our lives who are like catfish, constantly nibbling us and keeping us on our toes. We need catfish. Then the film makes you think about the confusion that comes between acceptance and wants, between desires and reality, between love and lust. But most of all, as you see the drama unfold, it makes you feel here you are seeing real people, good people. The bottomline, I guess, is that you have a chance to be yourself and be happy with your true self if you choose to be. Catfish (2010) leaves you with a sad, inexplicible doubt about the Facebook generation of which all of us are becoming integral, unwitting participants.

I am not giving the Wiki link as it is a spoiler.

Blogosphere month to write about Child Sexual Abuse

Posting an email that IHM forwarded. Please take up the cause if you have the time and commitment.

Dear Friends,

As we all know and can vouch for, sexual abuse of children is not an isolated instance, in fact I can ( thanks to informal discussions with friends and family) aver that 90 per cent of all of us have in some degree or the other experienced some form of sexual abuse as children.
In most families, the abuser is always someone known to the family or even an immediate family member who has unrestricted access to the family and the child. Very often the child does not say anything to his or her parents, and if the child does muster up the courage to do so, often everything is brushed under the carpet.
I'd like us all, as social commentators, bloggers and parents, to take the initiative to communicate to the world that child abuse is more common than you think and that parents need to be alert and watchful before some warped soul robs their child of their innocence.

I propose a month (April) of posts on the topic of Child Sexual Abuse (Prevention/Signs/Help) across the blogosphere.If you remember, I see this as a similar exercise to the one on Food Allergies and Learning Disabilities we had done a while ago.

All you need to do is post one post (or more if you feel like it) on anything relevant on the topic. It could be a personal experience, or what you do to protect your child, or tips from experts or teaching a child good touch/bad touch, anything you can share. We will have a badge relevant to this topic and all posts participating in this awareness month should carry this badge. We will do a round up of all the posts at the end of each week on a common blog so that the blog is there in perpetuity for anyone to refer to.

I have discussed this informally with most of you, and am delighted to see such an outpouring of support. Those I havent discussed it with yet, but have included in this mail, do let me know if you would be keen to participate. Once I have a final list of participants, we can go about deciding posts, publishing order, etc. Please do feel free to forward this mail to anyone you might feel would be interested in contributing/participating.

Thank you so much for your time and effort in advance. We owe it to our children.

Cheers
Kiran


--
My blogs:
www.thirtysixandcounting.wordpress.com
www.karmickids.blogspot.com
www.indiahelps.blogspot.com
www.kiranmanral.wordpress.com

Learning

Today was a day full of learning. Learning to deal with emotions of people close to you, learning to empathise with emotions of those you have just met. Learning in many different ways.

My calling is such that puts me in touch with people from varied backgrounds. Today, I met three special women. All of them strong in their own special, God-sent ways.

It will take time to digest what I heard at the first meeting. Evening gloom has set in and I wonder what might she be doing now in her dingy room? She would most definitely be in the same pain she walked in when I first saw her...


This is a pessimistic song by the 13th-century poet Amir Khusro. Sad that hundreds of years later, at some point in time, most of us may have had this thought.

Attempting to translate part of the song:

You have done this once, don’t do so the next time;
Don’t make me a daughter again.
What is this fate that each girl gets?
The ones she believes her own turn out strangers instead…
She leaves her father’s abode, her mother’s bosom
To become an innocent bird caught in snares;
Only to be counseled at the top of it all:
“Don’t complain.”
Discarded like a child throws away a new toy after his fancy flies,
Where do we go?
You have done this once, don’t do so the next time,
Don’t make me a daughter again.

If I have the same parents and the same friends, I would like to be born a woman again. May be even if that's not the case. But does she, in her dingy room, think the same?

Translation (C) Gauri Gharpure

Teacher is decisive in class

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It's my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power
to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides
whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and
a child humanized or de-humanized."

~ Dr. Haim Ginott

My teacher regularly sends me inspirational quotes. Some of these have been extremely providential. They were right in my inbox when I needed them the most, sometimes reassuring me that I was on the right path, sometimes giving me a direction that I was unable to see due to the smog of apprehension.

The above quote was also sent by email. He also asked his students to share how he is in class. So, this post.

Joseph Pinto is a taskmaster. He is the one who insists on moulding us to the best of our capabilities. So demanding was his insistence on precision in editing and writing, that we, most of whom were fresh graduates with nothing but starry dreams about journalism, had a tough time trying to live up to these academic expectations barely a few months in the course.

He did not tolerate vague elongated sentences that stretched basic information worth eight words pulled to 25. We got half a mark straight for IDK (I don't know) and serious flak for beating around the bush in an attempt to fill the answer sheet. The teacher is decisive in class and the teacher cannot be fooled.

Thank you for the support, the guidance and for being the demanding teacher you have always been. We need more such teachers. Teachers like Joseph Pinto who steer the direction of your professional and personal growth by just being themselves, by not mincing words and by not compromising on what they have stood up for. May be, in the time to come, their wisdom will give us the courage to go 'against the tide.'

Playing for Change

Between wrongness and rightness there is a field. I will meet you there.

Rumi

Something Inside So Strong

Thanks Atul, for this.

Something Inside So Strong by Labi Siffre says it all.

Year-end post 5: Sharmila Irom

I read a powerful, passionate piece on Manipur's Sharmila Irom. She is fasting for ten years now to demand the repeal of the AFSPA- Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.

You will find details of the misuse of the special act in this Tehelka article, but let me tell you something I remember.

On the desk, we selected stories from North-east editions of TOI published a day before for our early edition. I distinctly remember the stories following the killing of Sanjit Singh and a pregnant woman. The follow-ups, the spate of protests, police rebuttal and anger, violence went on for months. My job made it necessary for me to read through all these stories, select and present it to readers in the districts of West Bengal. Ironically, we did not have enough space in our main edition to include even these culled, subbed versions of North-east mayhem. These stories, the continuous stream of violence and unrest in a part of my country unsettled me extremely. Some editions were so moving and so screaming for attention, it seemed as if our early and late editions too should have more space dedicated to this very real, sad and on-going conflict in the country. But no, the paper has a set pattern for various reasons.

Sharmila Irom, to me, is the epitome of feminine gentleness, strength and gumption. I have been hearing about her ever since I was in high school. She's the same frail woman, defying age and medical science with her grit. Ten years, the article says, has finished her. On a physical level, that is. It is something in her steeled psyche, something in her beliefs and goals, something about her consciousness that's keeping her alive. Sharmila, I want you to see the end of your battle and I pray. May 2011 bring you what you want.

Sharmila's protest is dignified with its silent, subtle plea for attention. We read about her, get moved and forget about her for a year or two when again her frail face catches out attention in a daily. It is then that we realise that we have moved on, but this woman is where she was. Alone and hopeful.

What Sharmila wants is not a qualified, select request. If her decade of going without food and water were to shame the state into concrete action, it would send a poignant message to both parties, the armed forces and the rebels, to give peace a chance.

Sharmila on Wikipedia

Photos of Sharmila

None

I am too happy today and i won't tell you why. :P

Can widowed women wear gajra?

Lijit shows interesting statistics of searches that land people on my blog.



Can widowed women wear gajra? (Gajra = small floral garland worn in hair)

Several questions come to my mind when I come across similar seemingly trifle choices that are burdened with societal or religious stereotypes. I had written a post on the subtle social insistence of Nirmamish* food for widows in Bengal in some educated, forward families even today, in a post titled The Politics of Food. Now, when I read the keywords of this search, I asked myself:

1) Who is this reader?

2) Whom is he/she trying to find the answer for?
a) A relative b) Herself?

3) Why does the person seek an external justification / denial?

4) Who is qualified to answer the controversial 'Can' of the question?

a) Religion? b) Society? c) Family? d) an unknown blogger like me???

5)Is there any specific mention in a religious text to deny a widow such trivial pleasures?

6) If any such mention has been interpreted from the texts, is that fair? Or still applicable in the present context?

6 a) Can't human rationality question certain antiquated religious/societal diktats?
7) What significance do flowers and a gajra carry in an Indian woman's life?

8) Do flowers convey any specific romantic or spiritual message that makes daily life more enjoyable?

Many of the above questions are subjective and will have a different (and justifiable) solution each depending on each individual's set of beliefs... My concern is what happens when we stop making distinctions between personal thoughts and societal parameters. When we are unable to pinpoint our real feelings about a certain issue in juxtaposition to the 'accepted' social or intellectual norm...

Let me try and understand the rigid regulations imposed on widows in an early social context. Imagine India in the 1800s.

Girls were married off before 10, became mothers as early as 13 or 14. The British, whatever their imperial oppressions may be, did try and modify some such counterproductive social structures. I was shocked to read that Lokmanya Tilak vehemently opposed the progressive 1891 Age of Consent Act arguing that the British had no business interfering with an accepted "Hindu" practice. Today, intercourse with a 10-year-old girl is considered an unspeakable, loathsome crime.

So dejected was Raja Ram Mohan Roy when his reformist articles in Sambad Koumudi were booed down by the powerful Brahmin lobby, that he gave up publishing his newspapers. Though he was monumental in getting the *Sati ban implemented in Bengal, the practice continued for many years to come.

Every society hides skeletons in its closet. Because of the grace of social and religious sanctions on many immoral and unfair past practices, we are uncomfortable discussing the injustices meted out to Hindu widows. In my understanding, food restrictions for widows were meant to restrain a widow from eating 'tamasic' food that might rekindle her worldly desires. Drab clothing and tonsured heads served to make her look as unappealing as possible. Seclusion ensured that she was not violated. All these measures to safeguard a vulnerable woman from the lust of society and predators even in the immediate family invariably failed. And so the *Sati system. There is logic in each of this restriction which is a consequence of the previous. But in general, all such restrictions boiled down to this : One less mouth to feed, one more woman to manipulate. A simple solution was widow remarriage and this reform took gargantuan efforts by a brave few to be socially relevant.

Jyotiba Phule and his wife were ostracized and abused when they tried to educate girls in the mid 1800s. And yet, the seed of reform Jyotiba and Savitri sowed was instrumental in slowly removing orthodoxy from Maharashtra's lower and middle-class, as opposed to the state of affairs in Bengal where intellectual stimulation, debates and reform largely remained a prerogative of the elite.

Discussed above was a larger picture of society and how it dealt with widows in the 1800s. Coming back to 2010 and the specific question of wearing a gajra. In those times, a widow thinking of wearing a gajra would have been beaten black and blue. My surprise is that you, my dear reader, are prodding the question almost 200 years later, in an age virtually suffocated by individual freedom. What is wrong with you??

Let me put it thus: Flowers, kumkum, colourful sarees, ornaments are all a woman's means of expression of happiness, vitality, joy and hope. Mirra Alfassa even believed that flowers are a means of delving into a divine, spiritual nature. When a woman is widowed, it is but natural that her grief causes her to reject these on her own for the immediate period of loss. But should her initial expression of sorrow continue to dominate her life ever after? Who has the right to decide what manner of grieving is suitable and accepted for a widow? Not me and you, not at least in this time and age.

Regulation and restrain is central to a civilized society that must function smoothly. But equally important is freedom of thought and deed. A woman is infinite times more vulnerable than a man and so she needs infinite times more understanding and support from the society. Within the ambit of the topic of this post (gajra or not) I think it's high time that we shake ourselves off from the hangover of irrelevant social and religious codes of conduct.

If you ask me, yes, a widowed woman can wear a gajra. For even if she is a widow, she doesn't stop being a woman. And like my father once said, to look beautiful is a woman's birthright...


* Niramish: Food made without onion, garlic and non-vegetarian ingredients

* Old custom of a widow immolating herself (with consent or forcefully) on the pyre of her husband. As many as three Sati cases were reported in India after 1987, the latest as recent as in 2008.

Edited to add on October 10, 2010

Have you seen Water (2005)?

An attempt by Canadian filmmakerDeepa Mehta to portray the inhumane restrictions on Hindu widows in this film met with stiff resistance from Hindu political activists. Following violent protests, the filming was banned in India. The production was delayed for five years. Mehta persevered and shot in Sri Lanka instead of Varanasi. Lisa Ray, John Abraham and Srilankan child artiste Sarala Kariyawasam essayed the characters beautifully. The result was a poignant depiction of stark, painful reality that many wanted to ignore like an ostrich.

What I want to say is this: Our religion is too open, beautiful and vast. Acceptance of such bitter truths won't in any way reduce its glory..

My post published in a Mysore newspaper

Photo Credit: G V Krishnan

The Mysore Mail is now publishing posts by bloggers of The Mysore Blog Park fraternity every Sunday. This July 4, my post Pros and Cons of Selective Blogging was taken up, along with Abraham Tharakan and Anjali Philip's lovely articles...

:)

Remembering Bhagat-Sukhdev-Rajguru, Ram Manohar Lohia, Kanu Sanyal and Tagore's Tota Kaahini

March 23, 2010 is the 79th death anniversary of Sukhdev Thapar, Shivaram Rajguru and Bhagat Singh and 100th birth anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia. Today morning, Kanu Sanyal, a leading figure of the Naxalbari movement and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), was found dead in his house. Initial reports suggest that the 78-year-old communist hanged himself. I would not have known about Sanyal, or remembered the martyr trio and R M Lohia, but for Vinod Dua's 9.30 news slot on NDTV India.

Seems unnerving that these Indian intellectuals, who remained staunch in their varied beliefs till the end, should be united in their life and death by this trivial, albeit uncanny coincidence.

On March 23, 1931
Three youths died
shouting slogans till their last breath
to keep the revolution alive.
More than six decades of sleep later,
they perhaps still scream in their graves:
Wake up.

Sadly for someone like me, a person born in a free, lethargic nation disillusioned with politics and corruption, the driving force of legends like Bhagat Singh that propelled them to defy leadership with such unflinching confidence can only generate awe, surprise and disbelief.

I feel alarmed and disgusted with the way Maoist cadres and socialist parties are behaving in recent times. My brush with die-hard communists has been limited to invisible and continuous waves of masses of thousands of people rushing towards Esplanade on foot or on trucks that make their presence felt by choking the traffic of even the city's most far-flung corners and its every single arterial road. They speak the same tune, argue the same logic and could be just as loyal to their cause as thousands of young men and women may have been during the freedom struggle more than six decades ago.

Any movement seems just when it takes birth. Slowly, the movement becomes the organ itself, the mission gets sidelined and finally buried under layers of big, hollow talk. Perhaps Rabindranath Tagore had envisioned the way the Communist movement (or any other governing mechanism as such) would end up as long back and had tried to warn the masses with his harmless-looking short story called Tota Kaahini or The Parrot's Tale.

To me, this story has wise metaphors. The foolish parrot is the uneducated, ignored mass of faceless people. The expensive gold cage, sham education, revelry and rigmarole is the all-powerful state machinery that tactfully misleads the masses from their objective. The fault-finder is a person who still has the ability to see and speak the truth - and so is a nuisance.

The biggest sorrow is that with time, people with strong, honest ideals (and not blind transfer of faith into a glorious-looking mass-movement) are becoming a rarity. The country is producing generations of self-engrossed young men and women (including me) each more below-average than the previous.

A dear teacher once confided in a casual, sad remark — "Since the past few years, all the new batches seem worse than the previous ones." Another teacher had also pointed out the same degeneration. "My old students would make my palms sweat with their string of questions. You people just eat up my words without arguing," he had sighed. Have we become a race that is too lazy and/or meek to ask and argue?

I hope that at least for the time we remember people like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, our sleeping conscience urges us to be as truthful and courageous as we can be in our daily affairs.

I end with an edited excerpt from Bhagat Singh's prison diary. Courtesy Wikipedia.

"The aim of life is ... not to realise truth, beauty and good only in contemplation, but also in the actual experience of daily life..."

Life rules, and how...

My blog is my salve. It's been some time now that it is keeping me company like a soulmate in those unearthly hours long after midnight and much before dawn .

There's this aversion to write analytically about current, disturbing issues. Similar to wanting to see a fun, masti movie instead of one with moral highgrounds once in a while.

For example, barely a few days after Shiv Sena blasted SRK for speaking up for a one-off comment in favour of Pakistani cricketers, my aaji pointed out that the party was mum when the Pakistani hockey team was playing India. Good blog-worthy point, I thought. Are controversies raised only when big finances (read SRK and cricket) are involved. Are controversies raked up only when big businesses can be held at ransom?

I could have read up and written, but I was not inclined to. I choose to focus on many other issues — extremely trivial but very personal...

Many more poems have filled up the little diary. My phone is busier than usual. My pets demand attention. I have discovered that I love gardening. We are coming closer, bonding better. It surprises me how life can take the turns you want. It surprises me even more how easy it is to let go and how difficult to hold on — or vice versa.

Some friends from the blogosphere have abandoned their blogs. It is an unfortunate loss to readers like me who take strength from their random, magical lives. Some new writers are coming to notice.

Life rules, and how? :)

Pros and Cons of Selective Blogging

And I have been selfish. How many of you, who are into professions even remotely related to the communications or media have known this selfish phase?

It happened some months ago that I began using the security of pen and paper instead of the instant online gratification of blogging. I began doing this after many great sentences and ideas vanished with the fumes of traffic for not having something to jot them down on.

With time, I had a huge collection of items 150-200 words each. These pieces, which I consider some of my best thoughts, now smell in the yellowing pages of a small little diary. Nothing wrong, some of you may say, the old-fashioned diary/letters is far more romantic. But I thought I am being selfish when I said, 'No, this is not for the blog, preserve this for better times.'

There are big minus points of saving your words like a squirrel who stores nuts for the winter. She can hope to relax like a queen in the future, but the present is incessant legwork, no?

A diary is alright when it comes to prose. But it is much more difficult to keep poems locked in bound pages. Most of the poems I have here on my blog are impromptu inspirations, thought and penned from start to the end on the blog itself — Why Do We, for example. With such fluid dialogue possible on the blog, accumulating my thoughts on paper and imposing an incommunicado on them is like having a stomachache due to a deep dark secret you have been burdened with.

I remember having written a post on why I blog. Apart from getting the pleasure to write and improve my skill, the biggest reason was having a readership that is open to a dialogue, is receptive of my ideas. When I wrote that post, I didn't even have half the readers I have now.

Today, some readers can gauge even the slightest of discomfort in my words. There are people who say beautiful deep words of promise without knowing that they lift me up. From my blog, I have known the joy of associating with frank, like-minded people who are not afraid to disagree.

So, being selective with my writing on this space, my blog that has nurtured and humbled me for more than four years now and with people who take time out for me, makes me wonder if I am being selfish.

Tell me, have you ever indulged in selective blogging?

Poems — In your language :)

This is an excerpt of a lovely poem by Baruk:

in your language, not mine
will i abuse and curse at you
and scream and rail and rant at you
in your language, not mine.

The poem has been recognized by Amnesty International (Aotearoa New Zealand) and was read out on Courage Day.

Also read this post called Grin and the interesting discussions in the comment section.

Initially when I began reading his blog, I thought his posts were too full of anger. Then, I slowly got used to his way of writing and began loving the way he morphs his angst into lovely, strong poems.

Ever so often, I feel sad that poems only pose prodding questions in a wordy way, questions to which we have no answers and so get frustrated. Once out of the system, the best a good poem can do is to act as a catalyst for more thoughts, introspection and sometimes debates. But even within this limited scope, poems can do a mighty lot.

Read about George Orwell's take on poems that I mentioned in this long post. He says that poems can survive even in the face of totalitarianism. Excerpts from Orwell's essay are written towards the end.

Coming back to this poem...

As I read In your language not mine again, I realise how relevant it is in the vicious times we live in. The immediate connect reading it this time was with the episode in which MNS members of legislature allegedly manhandled and even slapped Samajwadi party MLA Abu Azmi when he began taking his oath in Hindi. Some people were actually cheering the vandalism as another act of bravado in defense of Marathi asmita...

My favourite poem from Baruk is Api's thlan

Why has English become a necessity?

I came across this wonderful article on Mint and it's a must read.

Freedom to study: Anil Sadgopal


“I will take this chit, take a bus straight to Rashtrapati Bhavan and ask the President why we ever fought for our independence when I don’t even have the freedom to study in my mother tongue.” he had said when he was being denied admission to St Stephen's College, Delhi, apparently because he had studied in a Hindi-medium school.

But, our preoccupation with the language continues. It crops up everywhere, ever so often...

The first thing the NGO person said was, "Hamare bachchon ko English nahi aati. Aap bas unhe English sikha dijiye."

"Our children don't know English. You just teach them English..."

He said a lot other things, in a tone I disapproved of, of how pathetic the kids were in the said language.

So, the emphasis was English... And I wondered why, for the students of an Urdu medium school, should English be imposed with such a fanatic reverence.

The students who came up for the class were indeed extremely weak. The attendance has dropped as days have passed, but one Class V student is persistent.

I have taken a special liking for this girl because she turns up regularly two days a week, with her books and pens and sits expectantly. She struggles to read basic English words like his, this, with, that, the, is. Her face cringes with effort to recollect a correct meaning, to pronounce w-i-t-h and yet, she labours on.

The first time she began reading, she spelt out each single letter- I-- T--- IT, H--I--S HIS and so on. In this manner, reading one and a half paragraph took one and half hours... Also, her writing is all jumbled up, with no space between different words. I am basically a lazy person, but if I have stuck to this class for one month now, it is because of this girl.

I wonder how she was promoted to class V without being able to read that, when, why, what or know what these words mean.

What her teachers do in class? Do they eat from the children's tiffins and polish their nails? (A very smart girl in Pune indeed told me this. "I left the Zilla Parishad school because the teacher doesn't teach there. She eats from our tiffins and paints her nails in class."

I have digressed. Lax education system in our country is not a matter of debate anyway. It is a taken fact.

The thing that disturbs me is our preoccupation with English. Take Japan for example, the country has excelled beyond excellence without being crippled by English.

In India, English has somehow become irrevocably linked with the confidence and job prospects of a student. It has become a standard benchmark to judge capabilities.
I remember my parents, who struggled with the language and often felt snubbed because of their inability to speak 'posh English'. The idea that English is the only way to surge ahead has somehow taken deep roots. This mindset, coupled with the pathetic tribe of teachers, is set to ruin our country.

Related Post: Speak Correct, O Really?

Beheaded

Every once in a while, I come across news of witch-craft murders in rural parts of West Bengal. Such incidents are alarmingly common in villages of Orissa too. Like yesterday, I was particularly disturbed after reading about a man who beheaded his aunt with one swift lash of his tangia (an axe-like tool) in Mayurbhanj district.

That was not the gory part that upset me though:

The man actually walked about 8 km to a police station, with the severed head in one hand, the axe in another, and surrendered himself.

I asked someone to read the copy and his reply humbled me.

"This is very common there. The tribals, they are so simple people, they do such crimes on an impulse, and then don't know what to do with the head. So, they walk all the way with it and submit it to authorities."

Simple is the word my father also often used for the tribals of Panchamahals in Gujarat. He had spent the best, brief years of his childhood in a place called Dahod. Dahod was teeming with wilderness and tribals then and joy of his association with the innocent folks — with all their poverty and superstitions — has not faded till this day.

"They are very simple people who do not know greed," he says.

When I used to read about such witch-craft murders earlier, I was revolted with the sheer violence of the description. My immediate reaction was one of disgust and reproach. Last evening's brief conversation has changed the way I see things.

The act is not as violent as the ignorance, the haplessness of people staying in such remote, neglected regions is...

Kinley Ad: 'Vishwas kar'

We were told something about emotions manipulated in advertisements in college. These days, I am seeing more and more such ads that are targetted on unsuspecting, sentimental, rather foolish people who have a lot of money to spare.

Take the new Kinley advertisement for example. It starts off with a rucksack-totting young man in some village where little boys are having a gala time at a tubewell, bathing with absolute relish. This youth looks thirsty but unsure. Then an old man gently calls him to his shop and hands over a Kinley bottle. Problem solved, the best of human bond established. The young man holds that bottle close to his heart for the rest of the journey. Trust, motherly love perhaps and all the good things in life packaged in one bottle of water. Give me a break!

Let me tell you how trusting one bottle of Kinley won't put the problems of a huge chunk of people at rest.

In Kolkata, on my way to office, I come across at least five roadside water pipes lined with jerry cans, women waiting in queue. Forget roadside, even in my building, which is huge, the water supply is far from good. It is full of iron and the dal used to take a long time to cook even with the Aquaguard and iron-nil. I, and many others, have got a RO machine to solve the problem. Many people get a supply of those huge Bisleri jars every day or two. Some send their maids to a water pipe near the main gate to get 'sweet water'.

But, this is the easy way out, the kinds you and me can afford to take and take. What about the rest whose monthly income equals less than my restaurant bill? To supply good drinking water is the government's responsibility and it has since long washed its hands off the issue. May we assume that a huge nexus of multinational giants, RO companies and bureaucrats is working hands in glove to further the manipulative economy of clean, sweet water? Ah, that reminds me of the famous question MP Hema Malini asked in the Parliament. Read Hema Malini in soup over water purifier ad

After Aila struck, an acute crisis of potable water was highlighted by major dailies.

(Access article on e-paper Water Crisis Deepens in Sunderbans on page 4, TOI Kolkata, issue dated June 25, 2009 to view story and accompanying photos)

The fact is, and it was duly covered, that the Sunderbans had a pathetic network of drinking water facilities much before Aila struck. Women and children had to walk miles, they still have to, to get a pot full of murky water pumped out from a tubewell.

Read on e-paper Sunderbans: Island of Despair on page 3, TOI Kolkata issue dated March 17, 2009.

Move on to Murshidabad. The district faces an alarming crisis of arsenic content in water. Most of the villages rely on hand pumps to get their supply of drinking water. We saw quite some photos of boys having fun, bathing and drinking water from the hand pump in Murshidabad villages, quite similar to the scene depicted in the idealistic ad. But not all can trust (or afford) a bottle of mineral water to solve their problems.

Read e-paper article Poisoned Water: Dying on False Promises on page 2 of TOI Kolkata issue dated March 22, 2009

An expert voice to sum up this article. Sunita Narain: Bottled water costs us the earth

The article mentions how the mayor of San Fransisco banned the use of bottled water in government buildings and how the mayor of Salt Lake City asked public employees to stop supplying bottled water at official events. Narain goes on to say, 'But in India, bottled water is growing as an item of necessity: private industry is meeting the drinking water demand left increasingly unfulfilled by public utilities. In most cases, people are paying prices that they cannot afford to because they have no alternative source of clean drinking water.'

The Kinley ad, and many other such manipulative commercials first fool me into tears and then wake me up to reality. As I write this post, I wonder what my rant will achieve? But then that is what we can do best. Write our anger off, spread our indignation to more and more people and hope it boils down to something concrete. Journalism cannot propel issues beyond a certain point. But within those boundaries, perhaps it is our duty to get frustrated and spread the word, even if it may seem as mundane as ads that anger you.