The Masculine India

Asaram Bapu’s statement that the 23-year old woman who died after being gang-raped in Delhi last month was as much at fault as her offenders is shameful and has made way for competitive male chauvinism. Interestingly most of this chauvinism is coming from the political outfit which forever assures the safety and justice for women. These ludicrous, bordering on imbecilic, remarks by various political and social leaders across the country began after the death of Nirbhaya.

RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat started it all by blaming the western cultures for crime against women because according to him crime against women happen only in urban India and not Bharat ( read villages and forests). By voicing out these chauvinistic opinions he bought back the memory of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini's attribution to "American crotch culture". But the cheery on the cake was when Bhagwat advised women, at another event, to follow the "social theory" of confining themselves to doing household chores and leaving the earning of money to their husbands.

Then we have Kailash Vijayverghia, minister in BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh. He has told women that if they crossed their limits they would be punished because Sita, one of the worst sufferers of the Hindu mythology, was abducted because she crossed the lakshman rekha. Even Sita wasn't spared.

 VHP leader Ashok Singhal and the Jamaat-e-Islami, both important organisations feeding communalism and fundamentalism, glorified on the virtues of virginity (that of women, who else?), the evil western culture, dignified clothing (for girls, of course) and the undesirability of co-education.

The "hallowed opinions" of Bhagwat, Singhal and Vijayvargiya have caused a lot of uproar, but are unsurprising. Brought up in a feudal and patriarchal society, they have deep-rooted prejudices and no desire to acknowledge the change society has undergone. Their mindset, authoritarian, masculine and mysogynistic, is so sunk in dogma. These people, as also the Jamaat, can’t be expected to think or talk better.

But what has left me stunned is a statement by Asaram Bapu, a popular religious figure operating out of Gujarat. This is his take on the rape of Nirbhaya:

“Only 5-6 people are not the culprits. The victim is as guilty as her rapists. She should have called the culprits brothers and begged them to stop. This could have saved her dignity and life. Can one hand clap? I don't think so.”

He said he disfavours harsh punishment for the rapists because he feels the law could be misused, as it is in the case of dowry harassment cases.

In one stroke, Asaram Bapu has become the symbol of all that is wrong with hollow Indian masculinity.He is not a male chauvinist. Perhaps a modern-day Ravan would be a more apt description. But then Ravan had some virtues too, didn't he?

In the smiling bearded visage of Asaram Bapu one sees the six faces that stared down on Nirbhaya on the night of December 16, 2012.

Nirbhaya

I don’t know her name. I know her as Damini or Nirbhaya, the name media has given her. She was 23, as old as me and maybe similar to me in many ways. And now her battered and tormented body is a testimony to all the faceless and nameless women who were raped and left to die, who are nothing more than mere footnotes in the left-hand column of the newspaper.

Often when we talk about the women in India, we speak in shorthand. The Park Street rape case in Kolkata, The Gurgaon gang rape, The Bhanwari Devi case, Pallavi Purkayasth murder case. Each of these women and places, map a geography of pain, of unspeakable and unimaginable damage inflicted on women’s bodies, on the map of India, where you can, create a constantly updating map of violence against women.

For many of these tormented women, amnesia becomes a way of self-defence: there is only so much darkness you can swallow. And then the tipping point comes, and there’s that girl. For some reason,  she got through to us. My heart shrivelled in the face of what she had to go through. The mental agony, the trauma she had been subjected to by the six men travelling on that bus, who spent an hour torturing and raping her, savagely beating up her male friend. Horrific, brutal, savage—these tired words point towards a loss of words, and none of them express how deeply we identified with her.

She had not asked to become a symbol or a martyr, or a cause; she wanted to lead a normal life, practicing medicine, watching movies, going out with friends. She had not asked to be brave, to be the girl who was so courageous, the woman whose injuries symbolised the violence so many women across the country know so intimately. She had asked for one thing, after she was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital: “I want to live,” she had said to her mother.

 Some cases stop being cases. Sometimes, an atrocity bites so deep that we have no armour against it, and that was what happened with the 23-year-old medical student, the one who left a cinema hall and boarded the wrong bus, whose intestines were so badly damaged that the injuries listed on the FIR report made hardened doctors, and then the capital city, cry for her pain.

She died early this morning, in a Singapore hospital where she and her family had been despatched by the government for what the papers called political, not compassionate, reasons.

The grief hit harder than I’d expected. And I had two thoughts. The first was: enough. Let there be an end to this epidemic of violence, this culture where if we can’t kill off our girls before they are born, we ensure that they live these lives in constant fear. Like many women in India, I rely on a layer of privilege, a network of friends, paranoid security measures and a huge dose of amnesia just to get around the city, just to travel in this country. So many more women have neither the privilege, nor the luxury of amnesia, and this week, perhaps we all stood up to say, “Enough”, no matter how incoherently or angrily we said it.

The second was even simpler. I did not know the name of the girl in the bus. I don’t need to know her name now, especially if her family doesn’t want to share their lives and their grief with us. I think of all the other anonymous women whose stories don’t make it to the front pages, when I think of this woman; I think of the courage that is forced on them, the way their lives are warped in a different direction from the one they had meant to take. Don’t tell me her name; I don’t need to know it, to cry for her.

The Battle Within...

"Put the gloves on otherwise you will cut and scratch your hands", says my mother. I do as I am told. Its a fine day. The sky has little wisps of clouds and there is a distinct chill in the air. I am standing in my garden helping my mother to remove the weeds. Besides me lies my weapon- its like a curved spear, almost the same size as the butcher knife. Its called a sickle. The object of my attack is right there in front of me- my garden.
I immediately bend down and start my battle with the weeds. I start remove them among the plants and the grass. I do this for quite sometime knowing that each plant I remove will die in a day or two. Suddenly a question pops into my head- Am I doing the right thing? What we call a "weed" is, in fact, a species which is trying to survive, a species which has taken Nature millions of years to create and develop. The flower was fertilized by several insects. Then it was transformed into a seed and scattered by the wind everywhere and because it was not planted in one particular place- but in many- its chances of survival are many. But all the effort put in the survival is cut short by my sickle which is mercilessly cutting the plant, uprooting it from the soil.
Why am I doing this?
My mother created this garden. It is in perfect harmony with the nearby tress, birds and the insects. My mother had thought long and hard and she knew what she wanted when she planned this garden. She tended this place for so many years. But she thinks the weeds spoil the beauty of her garden and destroy all her plants.  Should I respect my mother's choice or should I just accept the survival instinct of the weed?
I continue my war with the weeds. I pull out quite a few and toss them into a pile. You might think I am thinking to much, unnecessarily. But, then, every gesture of man is sacred, and that makes me think even more.
On the contrary, these plants have the right to live anywhere they want. But if I don't destroy them now they will destroy the other plants. In the New Testament, Jesus talks about separating the wheat from the tares.
But the Bible doesn't solve my dilemma. I am faced by a concrete question always faced by man - How far should we interfere with nature? Is our interference always negative or does it yield positive results as well.
I set aside the sickle and to give more thought to this question of life and death.
In the end the Bhagavad- Gita comes to my help. I remember the answer Krishna gives to Arjuna, when the latter loses heart before the great battle, throws down his Gandiva and says it is not right to take part in this battle because it will only result in the death of loved ones. Krishna says," Do you really think you can kill anyone? Your hand is My hand and it was already written that everything you are doing would be done. No one kills no one and no one dies."
Encouraged by this particular passage, I pick up my sickle and attack the weeds again. This experience taught me one lesson- when some evil or undesirable grows in my soul I ask God to give me the courage and strength to mercilessly pluck it out.

What Love taught me..

5 years in Pune has bought a tremendous change in me. This city has changed my thinking, my perceptions, my views and to some extent it has touched my life in many significant ways. Pune has given me the best and the worst to cope. It is in this city that I fell in love for the first time and this thing called LOVE taught me a few things about life and myself. It has not been a very pleasant experience but love helped me to know myself better and I am grateful.

It is possible to love someone who doesn’t love you back. It is painful and makes you sick. It makes you feel incomplete. But its very much there. Unrequited love is one of the most strongest yet the most painful forms of love I have known.

I have always been told that I have to love myself before letting anybody love. But I don’t agree with this notion. There are times when I hated myself beyond anything and there was still someone who loved me in spite of that. But it’s not healthy. Its not the best kind of love I feel.

Love is like a drug. Its a fixation. A fixation burrows into your heart and mind. Its stubborn and won’t give you peace and Love is the worst kind of fixation.

Its painful to have loved someone once and never again. Sometimes you regret it and wish that it never happened.

One of the most important things love taught me was that you can never love someone quite the same way you did the first time. For me that is a painful thought and something that I have to live with for the rest of my life.

Its a beautiful feeling when you realize that you are worth loving.

Sex and love should never be confused. Sometimes sex just brings out the weaknesses in the relationship.

Someone you love may betray you. Its the law of life and everyone has to go through it.

You cannot force yourself to love someone. If it’s not there it’s not going to happen.

Love is not always exciting. It can be felt subtly on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you are sitting with someone silently. You look around for  a second and realize that you can never feel safer or happier anywhere else.

Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to feel wanted and relied upon. For most people its like Achilles heel. I am no exception.

Finding love is the most conscious motivator for a lot of things we all do. Love is the reason why we work out. Love is the reason why we want to look good, no matter what. Its why we talk to strangers in the first place.

If you love someone today there is a chance that you might hate that person someday. Yes it happens.

There will always be that one person who will stick in your mind. They will feel like a perpetual ache in your heart.

Love will bring out the best and the worst version of yourself.

Love is the reason why we are all here.

How I Miss You

Yes I do miss you. So much, that it breaks my heart. I don’t know whether you miss me as well. I stay up late at night so I can speak to you. Your voice is the last thing I want to hear when I fall asleep so that it goes deep into my sub-conscious and stays there forever. It’s painful to miss you.

 Sometimes I want to isolate myself, physically. I want to lock myself in a room and limit contact with you and the rest of the world. I do it because I have to, because today I need to find myself. I want to remove myself until I am lonely, until I can’t stand to stay away longer. I need to do this because everything I do and everywhere I go feels like a prison cell.

Or maybe I should remove myself, mentally. That’s the hardest thing to do. I want to challenge the distance between our minds. That’s exactly what I am doing since the past one month- picking up an empty argument , refusing to yield to any solution and looming in the void you have created, harping on the memory of certain days, days that are long gone. Those few days I spent with you are like summer. The walk in the rain and the evenings in your flat are etched into my memory in black ink. I remember all the things you said, I remember the gentleness, the urgency, the rain, the wetness and the cold and I miss you.

I have taken inventory of my life and I know what’s gone missing. The easy company. The long talks. The secrets. Your voice. Your presence. These are things I now know exist but had never taken special notice of before. Now they’re showing up to make me realize that I am never going to find them in someone else. They are my joy and my happiness comes from them. Now they are out of reach because you are withholding them from me.

I want to regain what I have lost but I have trouble expressing myself. I try to talk normally but I end up choosing all the wrong words, “I am busy”,  or “How was your day?” or “I have been reading this fantastic book” but all of the sentiments just scream out of my mouth as “I miss you.” Every gap in the conversation simply says “I miss you.” And the worst feeling comes when you know all about my pain but you refuse to do anything about it.

I want to miss you until you come back, or until I come back, until your absence in my life becomes something to be avoided permanently. I will miss you until it feels like you never left. Or I will miss you until you can’t anymore, until the things I miss are identified as things and not you, until I can find a way to figure out how easy company, long talks, the secrets and your voice and your unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find me again the way they did at the first time. 

Soulmate

I have never been in a serious relationship. Love has always eluded me. A year back I met this guy who I thought had to be “the one.” He was smart and older to me. His eyes were sharp and twinkled when he smiled, he mostly listened to soft rock and jazz. Plus he was my senior at school but we didn’t know each other during that time. We got along well and I thought “Yes that’s it. Now I have found someone, I don’t need to look elsewhere.”  But then he backed off, because he couldn’t handle the distance between us. I moved on. I met a few guys after that but the fire was never kindled.

Though I am the only single person in my group of friends I have never really felt lonely. But the person I’ve been in a relationship with for at least 19 years, who has always been there for me no matter what, is my best friend.

Meeting your best friend feels like going on an awesome first date every time you guys talk or hang out. It seems like momentum. We finish each other’s sentences. The rhythm of our conversations is speedy because our brains are working so fast to keep up with the other. Over the years we have watched each other cry, smile, grow and we are proud of each other. Sometimes I can’t believe I even been friends with her for that long. 19 years. In that time I have grown to love and treasure her. It feels as if she is a part of me. She reads my mind. There is nothing more intimate in life than simply being understood. And understanding someone else. The memories we shared, our inside jokes, the laughter and the tears live inside me. These are all traits we look and hope for in our soul mates, but the truth is that you can always count on your best friend to be your soul mate, even if all of your other romantic relationships fail.

There’s no such thing as “the one.” Ideas about “the one” are probably the biggest myths that our culture teaches us from a very early age, which is why a lot of us get brainwashed into looking for “oneness” in all of our lovers. The obvious truth is that there are so many different kinds of people in the world that over the course of our lives we will have many “ones” — the one we think is the one because he or she likes the same things we do, the one we think is the one because they are exactly our type. Life is never fair and we are always going through a lot transitions. And that’s why your best friend is your soul mate. No matter where you go in life, no matter what you do, no matter where you are, across countries, cities, or through different career paths, your best friend is the person you can meet up with in person for the first time in weeks, months or even years. A best friend is there for all of your heartaches and joys. He or she will listen to you go on and on and on about your problems and will give you their honest take on the issue. Your best friend will listen to you talk about your dissertation project and eventually they will know more about those things than you do.

Sometimes people cut their exs out of their lives, even when they have been together for a long time. I can understand that bad things happen and heartbreak never fully heals. But that’s probably the main reason your best friend is your soul mate because he or she is not going to break up with you.

BLACK ROSE

Taking my face in your palm,
you whispered my name and love.
The scent of your breathe,
the whisper of your voice
and the velvet of your tongue
reminded me of the rose.
You were my black rose
the rarest of the rare.
Strange and irreplaceable.
Unreachable, yet I was
lying in your arms.
What a thorny embrace it was.
You were my black rose,
with your brooding black eyes,
whispers, delicate touch, musky smell,
and the satiny lips caressing
every pore of my body.
But you were the black rose,
thorny, cruel and black.
And as the rose withers
so did you.
Going far, far away,
making me fade into oblivion.