Random memories

I must have been about five. Sat on a bench with this boy called AZ in the class. One day, we both eyed a pencil fallen on the floor at the same moment and bent down precisely at the same time to get it. Our heads knocked hard but I grabbed the pencil and firmly held on to it.

It was mine; I noticed the teeth marks I had made the night before. But, AZ claimed my pencil was his. I maintained that the pencil was mine and we kept on arguing and pushing and pinching one other till a teary eyed AZ pleaded in desperation, "But my mother will beat me up if I tell her I lost my pencil!!!"

Now, this argument made the most perfect sense to me. I knew it was my pencil and in a way, AZ had also admitted it was mine. My parents did not beat me for losing things. The thing is, I was a regular at the school's lost-and-found department. I reached home jubilantly waving a retrieved lunchbox to simultaneously announce the loss of new pencils or a water bottle.

That day, I got home and told my aaji that I had lost my pencil. Then I clarified that in fact I had "found" my "lost" pencil but had let AZ take it home as his mother would have beaten him and aaji wouldn't do that. My aaji had a good laugh that afternoon and still makes fun of me by reminding me about "the lost pencil" when I take irrational decisions.

This was more than two decades back. Hell! I better start claiming what is mine. Pencils et al.

Methi na dhebra / Savouries made from millet flour and fenugreek leaves

This snack was a staple at my maternal grandmother's house. I remember coming home with a box of the dough that Baa or my aunt would coax me into taking home to make dhebras for breakfast the next day.

I mainly referred to this post, but made many changes along the way to replicate the taste I remembered.

This is how I made the dhebra:

Dry ingredients

3 and 1/2 cups  millet flour (bajri no loat)
2 heaped tablespoon roasted soji (cream of wheat)
1 cup wheat flour (rotli no loat)

1 tablespoon chickpea flour (besan)

1 teaspoon ajwain (carom seeds)

1 tablespoon white sesame seeds (til)

Mix the above ingredients well in a large plate / bowl that you will use to knead the flour in.

Ingredients to be processed in a grinder:

4-5 green chillies, chopped

1-inch piece of ginger, chopped

10-15 cloves of garlic (adjust if using huge cloves)

2 tablespoons of yogurt

1 1/2 tablespoon of jaggery (Use sugar if you don't have jaggery)

1 spoon salt (adjust)

Grind the above stuff, use yogurt instead of water to adjust consistency. Spoon the jaggery carefully that may get stuck to the blades, add some yogurt if required to aid the process.

Additional ingredients

200 gm of fenugreek leaves (methi) and 50 gm coriander (kothmir), finely chopped

1 1/2 table spoon oil

Pinch of turneric, asafoetida, red chilli powder

Method

Mix the chopped fenugreek and coriander leaves and add the oil, turmeric, asafoetida, red chilli powder, and the ground paste to the flour mixture and knead as you were to knead bread dough, dusting some wheat flour in later stages. Slowly add more yogurt if required (I used a quantity equal to the yogurt that can fit the white plastic cup shown in photo 1).

My grandmother is very particular about how we knead the dough for roti (Indian bread) and her rules are: to use only the right hand, no flour should stick beyond the wrist, and no dough should remain stuck on the bowl / plate. Thanks to her constant nagging, I now manage to knead the dough to her satisfaction, see the first photo, it's just after the dough was ready, the plate is clean and so is my hand.

Dab the kneaded dough with half a spoon of oil (take oil in you palm and use your hands to dab the dough) and then cover the dough well. Let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. You can store this dough in a platic / steel container for two-three days in the fridge. I made the dhebras for breakfast the next day.

Preparation to fry the pancakes

On one side of the stove, begin heating oil in an iron pot or a heavy-bottomed, deep pot on medium flame.

Take a piece of thick plastic / polythene bag and spread it flat on clean kitchen platform or the rolling board. Rub a little cooking oil on the plastic.

Make equal sized balls from the dough.

On the plastic piece, flatten each ball with your palm and then tap the edges gently to make a small round pancake that is not too thin.

Once the hot is piping hot, slowly release these pancakes, 3-4 at a time.

Gently press each pancake down with a ladle (preferably a ladle with holes as shown in the photo) towards the bottom of the pan so that it will fluff up.

Fry till golden brown or crispy dark-brownish/black as you prefer. My maternal grandmother always fried the dhebras quite dark and crisp.

Remove the dhebras on a plate lined with tissue paper / napkin to soak excess oil.

Serve with garma-garam chai.

Coming up next: Fried ground-chicken dumplings / Chicken masala balls

Look who came calling- 2

  

And they are back! Also, don't miss this related post about peacock chicks. (For all you know, one of these might be from the same batch!)

Closure

All closures come with bittersweet nostaligia. #SixWordStory

Notes to myself

In no specific order GG must remember the following:
1) Be comfortable with your parents in public. Everyone has a weird lot. And as much as Maral may want to innovate, there are no 'parent gardens' yet.
2) Baba loves you.
3) Don't think who called last. Call. Write. Email.
4) Please remember to swallow your ego in friendships, love and generally when dealing with everything else.
5) Eat before you go shopping.
6) Do not hog to celebrate a good shopping spree.
7) Eat with your hands, you were born Indian.
8) Don't let anyone, ANYOnE, laugh at your dreams.
9) On the same note, that people laugh at your dreams is not a reason to stop dreaming aloud.
10) Play with puppies.
11) Look long and good at a handsome guy. If men can stare to "appreciate" beauty, women can do so too.
12) Do not let elder sis laugh at your fashion choice.
13) Listen to elder sis once in a while.
14) Accept that elder bro gives good advice even if he sounds downright cocky and insane when he does so.
15) Do not give up on people, the past.
16) There's a very thin line between being naive and being hopeful, but it's worth being naive 8/10 times if hope materialises two times of those ten.
17) Call friends you haven't talk with in a while when you are stuck in a traffic jam.
18) Call family and write quick emails.
19) Do not boycott relatives who love to gossip, they love you in their own way.
20) Buy good shoes.
21) Make time for reading.
22) Spend less time on the net.
23) Try to sleep like a normal homo sapien.
24) Do not smile so much that people stop taking you seriously.
25) Try to ration your talkativeness and in other situations, speak up even if you are too bored to yawn.
26) Know when it's time to stop blogging and take a nap.

Alu wadi / Patra / Colocasia rolls

Patra (made from colocasia leaves) is a very common Gujarati snack that is available for sale at all the "farsan" shops alongside dhokla, khandvi, fafda and jalebi. My maternal grandmother used to make patras at home and I learnt how to make these sometime back. Sharing the recipe:

Ingredients:
Two bunches of colocasia leaves (about 25 nos.)
About 150 gm. chickpea flour
50 gm. tamarind
50 gm. jaggery
Ginger, garlic and green chilli paste- 1 tablespoon in all
Salt and red chilli powder to taste
A tablespoon of sesame seeds, teaspoon of black mustard, a pinch each of asafoetida and turmeric, 3-4 dry red chillies and 3 tablespoons of oil for tadka / tempering.

 Pictorial (clockwise) 

  

Method

Take the tamarind and jaggery in a small bowl and microwave for 30-40 seconds with a cup of water. Keep aside and let it cool and then extract the pulp (add water as required to do so) by discarding the tamarind seeds and veins.

Take the chickpea flour in a mixing bowl. Add tamarind-jaggery water, ginger-garlic-green chilli paste, salt, pinch of asafoetida, red chilli powder. Mix well to a thick batter consistency by adding very litter water at a time (and chickpea flour to adjust the consistency if required).

Soak the colocasia (patra or alu) leaves in a large container filled with water and some salt, then wash well in running water. De-vein the leaves from the pale-green / back side. The bright-green surface of the leaves shown in photo 1 is the front side and the batter is applied to the other side. To de-vein, scrap the thick mid-vein and the first two-three thickish lateral veins with a knife. Apply the batter to this de-veined side.

Clean the kitchen platform well and then spread the biggest leaf, the de-veined, posterior face up. Evenly apply the batter on the surface. Then place the next leaf, also posterior face up but with the pointed edge of the leaf facing the opposite side of the previous leaf. I have made a diagram to make things simpler.

Apply batter on the second leaf, and go on arranging about 10-15 leaves in the same manner. Then begin to roll. Press very rightly and firmly as you roll up. You may tied the roll with a thread, but that's optional.

Next, steam the rolls in an idli-container or the vessel used to steam momos and dumplings. You can also steam the rolls by arraning them on a large seive (cover it with a lid) that is placed above a vessel of boiling water. Once the rolls are well-steamed (will take about 25 minutes), they will change colour distinctly and look a dull dark green and will appear somewhat shrunk and sorry (see photo 3 above). Do not worry.

Immediately remove the rolls on a dish and let them cool well, leave aside for at least 30 minutes or more for the excess moisture to evaporate. Once cooled properly, you can also put rolls in the fridge and resume the next part of the recipe just before serving. The boiled patras can also last overnight in fridge.

Next, cut the cooled patra rolls as shown in photo 3 with a good knife and swift, sharp cuts.

We usually saute the patras cuts in some oil tempered with mustard seeds, dry red chillies, garlic and sesame seeds (shown in photo 4). However, in Maharastra many prefer these deep-fried (photo 6). I deep-fried the stuff after I got to know of this preference. :)

Serve with raw mango chutney (as shown in photo 5) or ketchup. Tastes best with a glass of piping-hot chai.

Coming up next: Methi na Dhebra (Fenugreek and millet flour pancakes) :-)

Wordless Wednesday

#ArtsyAunt for the #CrazyPilloo

Bel Sharbat- Aegle marmelos cooler

Last week, everyone in the family was sick turn by turn. First Aaji was down with fever, then it was Indiraben with sudden and severe stomach upset. We are not used to seeing Indiraben go silent (she talks non-stop and has an opinion on every word that reaches her ears) and sit still. Our gardener, Bhaiyyaji, happens to be her special friend - they gossip a lot over many cups of tea - and as soon as he heard that Indiraben is unwell, he ran to a neighbour's garden and got me a ripe Bel fruit for her complete with instructions on how to make the cooler: "Make it NOW and give it to her."

Pictorial: Making bel (or bael) sharbat The bael fruit is said to have medicinal properties and can bring relief for a number of small disorders from stomach upset, acidity, cold, etc. The fruit Bhaiyyaji (he had a headache today :-() got was the size of a biggish cricket ball, with a hard yellow shell which had a crack or two. I had to knock it on the kitchen platform a number of times before I could maneuver the knife and break open the Bel into two unequal pieces. The core is a fibrous, orangish mass interspersed with soft beige seeds. Once cracked open, the fruit gives an extremely delicate, soft and sweet fragrance that more than makes up for the slightly sticky fibrous core. The photo explains itself, that's how I made the bel sharbat. Add water very slowly to mash the fruit pulp. I took a glass (about 200 ml) of chilled water in all and used a little more than half of it while mashing the pulp in the strainer. Add sugar, salt and lime to taste. Best if served chilled.

Tahiti and Maugham

Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their somber depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone. -W Somerset Maugham in The Moon and Six Pence

Female Foeticide, Beed's Dr. Death and motherhood

He reportedly fed the aborted foetuses to his pet pack of dogs. So did a lot of "doctors" in the area.

No. Don't emote as if you were to puke and leave this page. No, not yet. You and me, we have gotten into the habit to conveniently blindfold ourselves to the wretched-ugly-gory facets of life. Hold on just a minute more, please. I promise you won't puke.

So, it has been reported that Dr. Death and his wife (Dr. Sudam & Dr. Saraswati Munde of Maharashtra's Beed region) had an ultrasound and abortion factory that they ran with the help of local goons and corrupt officials. For years and years. They continued butchering even after a sting operation by a local NGO.

It required a woman to die on the operation table (there might be more cases like this, suppressed) when she approached the couple to discard her four-month-old foetus. The woman's family refused to file a complaint and the police decided to (after being pressured and shamed into it by some activists, I suspect) file a suo-motu case.

Because I feel nauseous even as I remember those articles, I will simply link those at the end. But as I have more to say, I request you to read on for another small minute. Please.

My mother cried after I was born. She was scared my grandparents would be upset with the birth of a second girl child. Ridiculously unfounded fears. I know for a fact that my paternal grandmother would never entertain such a sick idea. May be mother herself wanted a baby boy, because when around I was 10, she asked me if I would like a baby brother. I took no second to scream "No!!!" with my wide-eyed disbelief. That was the end of the discussion.

I am glad I cornered her once and demanded why she cried on being told it was a girl. She didn't really say anything as a direct response. But I remember her silently telling me some other time that once when she went for a regular ultrasound checkup when she was carrying me, a woman was waiting to get her female foetus aborted. My mother looked deeply sad and shaken as she recollected that day.

In her typical quiet and mysterious way of withholding herself physically but coveying everything with her silent gestures and eyes, she said, "I would never do that."

Wait. Does that mean someone suggested that mother check the sex of the second child, abort, if it was a girl?

The good news is I am alive. And I am angry. Because millions of pretty, sweet, kind, funny girls (girls are all that and more) like me have been killed even before they are born just because they are girls.

That brings me to motherhood. If and when I become a mother, I want to make up for the harassment I piled on my mother for being the nastiest brat one can ever manage to be. It seems a rather humanely impossible task to be as gentle and patient as she was with a child like I was, but I will try. Baby boy or baby girl. Mine. (Correction: Ours)

End of story. See, that was quick. And no puke.

Now go catch up reading on the doctors who reportedly doubled up as butchers. And puke.

Articles in the Mumbai Mirror, India Today , and read Maharashtra steps up fight
Related essay I wrote for NYTime's journalist and my professor Michael Powell's class.

Jewellery projects: Peyote & ladder stitch earrings

#ThingsToDoAfterJ-School (Check 2)

Recently made stuff

Beaded earrings from a mix of ladder, brick and circular peyote stitches. Got raw material from Michael's on 100 St & Columbus, NYC. Also got myself a very practical, super-convenient set of plastic storage boxes to keep the delica beads from this hobby store that I highly recommend. Sourced the faceted sand stones and faceted black onyx from a store in Fremont.

Feels so good to be beading again!

Shooting Stars

There was still light in the fading evening sky, just enough to delay the gloom of dusk. I was waiting then and I continued to wait for months worth of hopeful days and yearning nights. I wished on shooting stars that fell just for my eyes in the quintessential New York sky suffocating with concrete silhouettes.

Shooting stars lie.

The No. 7 Train

Languages clash on engrossed cell phones
that are unmindful of public space.
Black and brown shoes rest in different pairs of legs;
Keep their distance like respectful strangers.

I keep my face down,
resist the view of the big city flying below;
For eyes can't reach where the mind is now:
Home.

Red manicured fingers tap iPhones;
When will fashion come natural to me?
Large studded earrings dangle music
from ear plugs and mock my loneliness.

I see shadows of gloom as bright white morning light
falls on sloped roofs and cars and Taco Bell;
No one told me that New York City looks
poor and lonely from the no. 7 train.

I am on the no. 7 train;
A long, long way from home.

-Gauri Gharpure
October 27, 2011

Heena tattoos, fridge magnets & more: A little bit of fun at the Columbia Journalism School

Know the feeling when you have been wanting to do something since long and it finally materializes? Well, I wanted to put mehendi on people's hands, spread the crafts stuff I make, and share Indian trivia with people.

Questions like, "What's this dot on your forehead?" or "What's this tattoo paste made of?" can lead to conversations that go deep into Indian cultural roots. So, this little Spring Fest celebration on the college walk of the Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism, was worth sitting in the sun for hours on a lazy Friday.

The Society of Professional Journalists helped me put this together and the proceeds I could raise went to the SPJ. I will remember the excited girl who was delighted after putting a bindi on her forehead, or the old woman who loved the salwar kameez as the sweet highlights of my *Fulbright experience.

Putting Mehendi on the hands of an Australian exchange student 

For those who have been following this blog for long, you probably know I love to spend midnight hours with scissors and papers, glue and threads, beads and needles. This time around, finding time for my pet passion was an ambitious juggle between school assignments, long readings pulped with statistics on the poor, the homeless and the drug crisis of the 90s, a Harvard Business School case on LinkedIn and professional networking sites, job hunting, and more, and more. But it was worth it. This is the kitchen table in the wee hours of Friday:

That colorful table with scissors and scraps :) 

 I made fridge magnets, something I have wanted to do since years after I saw hobby ideas on How About Orange's site. Then, there was the staple bookmarks and cards. I love to mark my readings with these bookmarks; in school I used to copy-write stunning paragraphs and poems by my favorite authors on the back of the bookmarks and get high on good writing just by flipping the bookmark over. Don't you think bookmarks are perfect little non-intrusive presents for friends young and old? And the cards, they liven up the long letters sent by snail mail.

 Some bookmarks and fridge magnets

I got mehendi cones from - no two cents for guessing - from Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights. They have a mind-boggling range of Indian products, so many desi items, sometimes I feel even a store back in Ahmedabad, India, would be put to shame. These were very good cones, it was an absolute pleasure to put mehendi with these. And Lyuda, who's a graduate Biology student with an interest in neuroscience, she loved it. In fact, she was the first person to come by the table, go back to get cash, and actually linger around while I finished decorating someone's hand. Time is such a precious commodity in NYC and that patient wait really meant something to me.

  

Lyuda loves the mehendi!

Starting with the artsy stuff, I plan to go the tummy route now. What better way to make India come alive in NYC than cooking some spicy (OK, not-so-spicy, to suit the taste buds here) Indian food? Next week I plan to make deep-fried pastries with potato-peas filling: samosas :) 

*The DEADLINE for the 2013 Fulbright scholarships is July 15. Go to the USIEF site for details.  


 

Shokhiyon mein: Prem Pujari, a song translation

A man in a khaki shirt with a bright red jacket balances a butterfly net on his shoulders and flicks his muffler in place as he walks to wild yellow flowers. A red chiffon stole coyly sneaks into sugarcane bushes. With a cerebral twitch that he made into a style statement and his signature tilted hat, he continues looking for his lady love. He finds her after she hits him with a twig and jumps down to him from her perch on a haystack, skinning sugarcane with her teeth. Meet Bollywood actors Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman as they take romance to another level in the song ‘Shokhiyon mein ghola jaaye’ from the 1970 Hindi film Prem Pujari:

Mix the youthfulness of flowers with these playful moments
And top the blend with some wine,
The intoxication that would result,
Is love.

He nods as she moves away from him and walks from haystack to haystack. Her stole falls on the golden pile and the camera zooms on it to pan to Dev Anand who waits with a smile. She hides her face behind the sensual chiffon cloth and then drops it, Dev Anand catches it. Without the drape covering her slender body, with the feeling of freedom that every young woman in new love feels, Waheeda begins to climb a haystack on a makeshift wooden ladder as she sings:


It was a laughing childhood; it’s a tempting season now,
If not dealt with carefully, it’s a ball of fire
If you touch it gently, it is dew (2)
In the village, in the fair, on the road or when you are alone:
The one you remember again and again,
Is your love.

Her beau throws the stole back to her, the fabric glides towards her, she catches it and flicks it on her shoulders with a laugh. Then she glides down the stack and is surprised that he is not in sight. He sings from his hiding place in hay and she bites a dry strand of grass while looking for him. But, she doesn’t look for long. As if she’s confident he’ll walk back to her, she rests on a stack. The camera zooms to the red heels she dangles, then we can see her man walking towards her. He comes close, she doesn’t mind the proximity. He tells her how beautiful she is:

Gold melts in your complexion,
Nectar oozes out of your body as if
A note is being softly played at night,
The one who waits for you in the sun, in the shade or in the dancing winds,
That is your love.

Butterflies fly out of the net in a whirlpool of air and flutter by the lovers. They then run in the fields. She almost stumbles once, and that adds to the romantic simplicity of the visuals. They celebrate their love again:

If I remember him, my loneliness vanishes,
It feels like someone has started playing the wedding flute in a desolate town,
The pride that doesn’t fade whether you are uphill, downhill; any time of the being,
That is love.

‘Shokhiyon mein ghola jaaye’ penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri blends innocence with longing and intense courtship with playful patience: something almost extinct in these days of speed-dating.

A diva of romance and with a career as an actor, director and producer spanning close to 60 years, Dev Anand died at the age of 88 in December 2011. He still makes hearts flutter. Kishore Kumar’s voice complements Anand’s charisma well, the playback singer had a knack for matching his voice with the persona of all the screen characters he sang for. Kumar developed his own distinctive style of yodeling, blending classical notes with the funky, the mischievous and the sensual as and when it called for. His greatest hits were with music directors Sachin Dev Burman, who also composed this song, and his son Rahul Dev Burman.

Waheeda Rehman (born 1936) has aged gracefully. She still plays character roles, the more recent performance was in a film called Delhi 6. Lata Mangeshkar (born 1929) has sung 'Shokhiyon mein.' She still sings, her next song is for a film that is expected to be released in 2012.

-Gauri Gharpure
March 26, 2012

This was for John Bennet's magazine-writing assignment. Long shot, because the Indian dancing-round-the-trees routine seems very lame to the Western audience. That said, I adore this song and went ahead with the unusual choice. Also read this book review that I submitted as a backup.

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.

Wordless Wednesday

A Walk in Harlem

The signal is red. The M 60 bus reaches the 116th & Broadway stop at 4:00 pm. It has three passengers, five more get in. Buzz-beep-slash: passengers swipe their Metro cards and find solitary seats. The driver’s belly droops over his belt. From behind his black goggles, he looks disinterestedly at those stepping in. A recorded female voice greets mechanically: “Thank you for riding the MTA.”

The bus takes a right turn off Amsterdam Avenue onto W 125 St . Outside the Harlem USA II Nails salon two black women stand smoking cigarettes. The shade of one’s jacket perfectly matches her brown highlights. The other is shorter, plump and wears a black jacket.

Are they poor?

But, poor men and women do not wear an identity badge. Poverty is a human reality that goes beyond color, race and time. The white man’s hunger is the same as the black man’s hunger.

The first sight on getting off the bus at W 125 St & Adam C Powell Blvd is a foot-long red signboard with “Pashmina” written in white all-caps. Below the sign hang red, green, black, navy blue, sky blue, rust, pink, zebra- and leopard-print shawls.

A sweet, fruity smell with the hint of strawberry and vanilla arises at the next stall. In old glass bottles that do not inspire much faith are synthetic fragrances with enchanting labels: Happy Women, Patchouli, Victoria’s Secret, Kush. Incense sticks are labeled Coco Mango, Mango Butter, Sandalwood and Tulasi.

“Nine-ninety-nine dollars,” says a man as his dark glasses fall low on his nose.

“Ten thousand. O good. She’s going for 30K," he says as he stares at the woman walking towards him. He sits on a square-iron fence that guards a barren tree outside the Diallo Cap store at 112 W, 125 St. But she sits instead of walking away, he's taken off guard. “It’s not safe to sit down, don’t you know wonderful? I am jealous of the girl. Sometimes you got to get the moves. Sometimes you got to take rest.”

He stands up leaning into his walking stick, uncomfortable with the woman’s silence and scribbling. He is wearing faded violet-blue pants, a thick jacket with a jean pocket stitched on the left arm, white gloves, gray cap, and a black bag hangs from his shoulders. He takes a short aimless walk but quickly returns to whisper, “You have to move, gorgeous.” As the woman gets up to go, he shouts a parting advice: “And don’t spend too much money!”

Walking sticks negotiate the busy footpath. Sounds of screeching tires, horns and music mix. A child stops to cough and resumes the tantrum, the sobbing. There’s a vacant lot at the corner of 125th & Lenox Ave. Near the fence, two women stand arguing.

“Fucking America. And nobody helps you in America,” says the older woman. The other is dressed in a black jacket with an intricate golden design and a black purse with similar gold work. Her hair is elaborately braided and tied back. The stud in her nose sparkles as she shouts, “Mom! You got the right papers … Listen … I will go to the church …”

A short old woman in a woolen brown cap stands outside a store. She wears a thick grey coat from which only the florescent orange hem of her dress is visible, thin skin-colored stockings and black shoes. She has a white tote bag painted with the stars and stripes of America.

A man in a Quantum A 4000 wheelchair tears open the plastic wrap and bites an orange candy stick. One leg is amputated at the knee, the other at the ankle. The ends of his cream pants are cut and tied up. An old paper tag that reads 11-10-11 is tied to the wheelchair. Near his hands he has hung a white plastic bag that contains a bottle of Coke.

Two men can be heard cursing from far away. As they come near the wheelchair, one of them shouts, “Shut the fuck up.” “I will call the police,” says the other. They walk away only to return quickly, still shouting and cursing with the same intensity.

The return journey is on foot.

The pleasant smell of cleaning detergent splashes outside the windows of the Outside Avenue store. A tall black man in a red sweatshirt diligently pushes a yellow trolley containing the cleaning liquid and mops. He walks with a slight limp in his right leg.

Near the same fence where the mother and daughter were arguing, now walks a blind man obeying his red-tipped walking stick. On the opposite side of the street, a man dressed in an ocean-blue robe and a hat that mimics the crown of the Statue of Liberty distributes pamphlets and shouts, “Taxes, taxes.”

The man with faded violet-blue jeans looks up again from the corner of his dark glasses and smiles, “O, she’s back!” The same strawberry-vanilla smell returns. The same shawls, the same people…

Are they poor?

-Gauri Gharpure

* This is the first assignment for Michael Powell's seminar "Writing about People Along the Poverty Line." It was a very fruitful experience in that that we were not allowed to talk with anyone while working on the piece. All energy spent in observation brought out much more than what is usually got in the hurry to ask questions and note down replies.

Hola!

A tad late. But, as with everything else, I take my own time...


And while I was making this, I remembered this post.

May each one of us find ourselves better than we are now in 2013.

Love and luck!