Author: admin

Recitatif- the experiment

Posted on by admin

Along the fault lines between the seen and unseen

What could be that belongs to two different sides of a spectrum, two divides of a gulf and plays a crucial role in shaping the very identity of both. Gender, sexuality, language, region divide, religion, class and caste are perhaps some of these divides that has always been instrumental in creating divides and forging identities of commonalities as well. These are divides of inabilities at times and divides of abilities as well.

It could be the wedge that separates a child with home cooked meals in her lunch box everyday from another with a packet of Lays in his pocket.

These divides are screaming and loud as they are silent and unseen at others. No matter whether perceptible or imperceptible, these divides are always present. These divides are as real as the people whom they divide.

Walking to work today morning I passed by a very elderly lady. Hunched with age and perhaps possible circumstances, she was picking out empty cans from the green trash bins that dot the entire garden city. I noticed a black trash bag beside her as well. There were a few empty plastic bottles in that. She shuffled her way from one bin to another, rummaging through the half-eaten food, the mound of tissues and straws, the disposable food packs and drink take aways. She was collecting them to be sold at a pittance. An image of ‘want’ amidst the plenty. The bins around a food court on a Monday morning was a place where she could have a lucrative pick. The commuters walked past her, intent on their purposeful strides towards respective places of work. She was unseen, almost invisible.

I have heard of a similar story unfolding in Germany at the university campus. Elderly come there to sift through the bins labelled “Plastic only” or “Recycled”. A group is engaged in ‘upcycling’ and ‘purposeful recycling’ feeding the chain of greed and want and also giving a generous pat on the back for being sensitive to the environment!

Back home, real stories of people across visible divides of gender and age, language and religion, working on the top of garbage piles are a sight too common for comfort. They often find mentioned in documentaries, award winning photographs, films with little viewership and in memorabilia of foreign tourists. These images, in the said contexts, angers us a little and makes us very uncomfortable. They are closely guarded secrets not meant to be discussed and shown in the public. They are an infringement to our ‘cultural ethos’. The overriding emotion of failing our children, misleading our youth, rejecting our elderly is swept under the blanket of ‘culture and history’. But then again, remorse, action against injustice and unfair policies are not an easy emotion to develop. They require thought, introspection, integrity and sensitivity. It is easier to call them “invasion to privacy” by foreigners. We stand divided again, on the two sides of acts of redress.

Roberta and Tawyla belongs to two sides of a divide. A divide of race. Their anonymity of identity therefore brings the focus to the ‘divide’ in itself, or the divides perhaps. Divides that are naturalised, desensitized, overlooked and often ignored. The lines along which the divisions are made not the superficial ones, easily visible in plain daylight. They are the divides that run deep. Deep under the cover of the night, surreptitious, unnoticed. There are only two sides in that story, the identity of the divide and the identity of the people it divides.

Recitatif is an unique work which brings together the life and the journey of two young girls, briefly united, grown apart and reunited as adults. Their stories are like many other stories- of isolation, neglect, poverty, fitting in and not fitting in. their stories are similar and yet different. A difference where their racial identity is not revealed but left to the supposition and generalisation of the reader.

 

The onus is on the reader, where would you delve into your idea of who is who?

Continue Reading

Forest of Enchantments- Chitra Bannerjee

Posted on by admin

A search and many questions

I was surrounded by women in the café today. Each table independent of the other. Groups of 2 and 3. A couple of them by themselves. Conversations flowing all around me.

Three friends discussing a trip, two women engaged in what looked like some meeting, with the laptop opened between them. A group of 4 young students bend over their notebooks, their iced coffees between them. Some of the women working on their own. Women, girls, daughters, mothers, wives, sisters, partners- the multiple roles, the multiple identities, the multiple ‘Sitas’.

‘The Forest of Enchantments’ beside my coffee. I was almost at the end of this narrative that I had picked up with a lot of excitement. But as I was looking around, hearing snatches of conversation flowing from the other tables, a question came to my mind. There was a part missing from the story. An uncanny gap, like something was promised but not kept. A question that was not addressed and I was almost at the end. Or, did I miss it? Who was Sita? Sita the woman? Outside her roles of a daughter and mother and largely a wife, who was Sita, the woman? Sita, was perceived as she, perceived herself, through the eyes of her husband in the spectrum of a ‘marriage’. I was expecting ‘The forest of Enchantments’ to be ‘The Sitayan’ as it had promised at the inception however, it remained the popular narrative of ‘The Ramayan.’

The question of ‘identity’ has been raised across different milieu. It has been raised across many thought processes and through the many questions of gender, religion, class, cast, geography and history.

Are we born with an identity? Do we get attached to one? Or do we create one for ourselves? Is our identity one or multiple? Is our identity static or dynamic? Do we shape our identities consciously or subconsciously? Is ‘role’ and identity same and do they define each other?

Identity, is perhaps all of them in amalgamation and each of them in isolation. Not being defined or explained by one term or understanding alone, identity is a palimpsest of our existence. One that is constantly shaped and reshaped, rewritten with the intricacies of the past, the experiences of the present, the desires of tomorrow. The Bangla folk song, “Tomar ghore boshot kore koi jona?” (how many of ‘you’ are there within ‘you’? ) has always resonated with me as the multiplicity of identities. Why do we have a hierarchy of identities then?

Who then was Sita?

As a young princess, Sita, grew up in the palace of King Janak as a fun loving yet responsible child. She was taught self-defence, scriptures, religious precursors. These were necessary traits to introduce, develop and build. They were the elements that would shape the identity of the ideal queen, when she was going to be married. She held on to these values and fulfilled her role and responsibilities. As a daughter in law, a queen, a mother and dominantly as a wife. Sita, the wife, is considered as the epitome of that ideal (wo)man beside her man! Her example and sacrifice cited, evoked, cherished and repeatedly reinforced throughout the generations of women. Her act of questioning the last proposition of her husband, namely ‘agni pariksha’ for the second time, was in juxtaposition to her lifelong world view in which she rationalised and justified every act of betrayal. She evoked ‘duty and responsibility’ of a king towards his subjects as justifications for the failures. She did question her position as a ‘subject’ of the kingdom who never received any justice. Her question came too late perhaps. She was most ‘dutiful’ but only towards the institution of marriage and role of a wife.

While Urmila and Surpanakha, chose their actions, defying the ‘norms’ of the roles that were expected of them. Urmila followed her heart, when she defied Laksham’s dictum of remaining in the palace too look after the ‘mothers’ during the fourteen long years. She chose how she would want to spend the years. She did it again, when she went to meet ‘Sita’ in rishi Valmiki’s ashram, with out the knowledge and without informing her husband! She chose her decision. Towards the end of the narrative, we again get a glimpse of her personality when she rages against the decision of ‘agni pariksha’ for her beloved sister, who was ‘abandoned’. She tries to convince Sita to leave the palace with dignity and not succumb to another indignity in the guise of ‘duty’!

‘Surpanakha’ confessed her love without being carried away the rules of love of whom to love. The love laws of whom to love, how much and how did not bar her to profess her love. She was duly punished for speaking her mind though!

With the idea of ‘Sita’ deeply ingrained into the Indian psyche of women and men, the question of identity of women treads on tumultuous path. Women are strongly bound by the traditional roles of wife and mother, daughter and daughter in law. It’s the world view we are born into, nurtured and grow up. It has always been perpetuated, developed and reiterated by every single eco systems that we belong to. The microcosm of ‘family’ where we witness mothers happy and revelling in their role of the caregiver and homemaker. Where unexpected guests were deemed normal and preparing ‘lunch’ at home a normality. I am quite sure the phrase of ‘pleasant surprise’ must have been tweaked into ‘unpleasant surprise’ at many homes in myriad occasions. It was certainly mentioned out aloud at my house. My mother, a homemaker par excellence, shared her position on this phenomenon, but only with her daughters!

It was never questioned as to why she must cook again at 2pm in the afternoon just as she was finishing up her daily household chores for the morning!

Upon marriage, the young women are told to look after the new family as her own. To partake in their joys and difficulties, mindful of their needs, giving up her room her space, her preferences and gradually her dreams, hopes, understandings. To reach a point where she fails to remember that aspect of her ‘identity’ that she was born with, that shaped her childhood, that formed her collective childhood memory. This element had been beautifully brought out in the Kiran Rao movie, ‘Laapata Ladies’, where Deepak’s mother reminiscence about her childhood favourite food. It was gut wrenching. It was normalised. Forgotten.

The society that we grow up in, demands that ‘virtue’ from women. With all kinds of accolades and ‘pats on the back’ women are led to belief that this is what she really wants. Betty Friedman in ‘The Feminine Mystique’ talks about this ‘underlying need to please’ as a driving force in a woman’s life.

Women, among themselves have been critical about the other women as well. At workplace, the clothes that she wears, in schools, the children that she raises, in business, the ambition that she has are all viewed with an air of critical judgement! She is too independent, too ambitious, too liberal, too careless, too selfish, too callous, too indifferent, too snobbish, too bad a cook, too loud, asks too much and wants too much! A woman is almost always little short of that perfect ‘dutiful daughter-wife-mother’ triad to which many women dedicate their entire lives. Even today.

Identity of a woman has been always tied to that of a man, The custom of ‘sati’ where life is not worth living after the demise of a husband, the colourless all white attire and one meagre meal, the changing of surname after marriage, women leaving their parents, home, education, careers to follow the husband in the different cities around the world, the fasting during ‘Karva Chauth’ irresponsibly glamorised by mainstream media all point to the meaninglessness of a woman’s life with out a wedded husband. Devoid of her own identity, she stands alone, donning the identity of her partner, thinking, speaking, liking or not liking, perceiving, rationalising, seeing the world from the eyes of another. Hence, she tries to justify the acts of irresponsibility, irrationality, betrayal, untruth and violence.

She passes on this ‘normalised’ actions and inactions to her sons and daughters. She passes them to her nephews and nieces. She becomes complicit in this narrative of ‘identity’ or being without one.

She dons the legacy of ‘Sita’, the virtuous, dutiful wife who held onto her questions till the very end, the end of her own self!

Continue Reading

Stories and Storytelling

Posted on by admin

Between “Once upon a time” and “the end!”

Recently I was asked the question- What do you think is a ‘story’ and why do children love  stories?  That got me thinking about the fascinating world of ‘stories’. A world free of any laws, rules,  restrictions, do’s and don’ts. A world where everyone has a voice, and everything has a tale to tell!

Stories have always been an integral part of human history. The way of interaction and  communication. They have been a medium to make sense of the world. They have been around  from the time humans have walked the Earth. In many shapes, forms, mediums, styles- they  remain that common thread between people, cutting across borders and divide, both imaginary  and manmade.

Evidence have shown that humans have always had a long history of oral story telling. Oral  stories are a repertoire of oral history of people. They hold a wealth of knowledge of experiences  spanning, life worlds, ailments and cure, cultivation and child rearing, communities and ways to  care. Ancient civilizations and indigenous communities of today from around the world still rely  on oral history. They have been shared as myths, legends, religious practices and social belief.

The earliest enduring concrete evidence of storytelling can be found in the cave paintings of  ancient civilizations, like the Lascaux cave in France, dating back over 17,000 years.

However, today’s story is not about the history of stories. It a story about how stories became  our voices to tell our own story.

Near our college, there used to be a small ‘restaurant’. More of a ‘shack’ by today’s terminology.  It very much had a restaurant vibe for us back then. We used to go there for chicken rolls.,  which we would have standing outside on the hot busy pavement. Sometimes when the hostel  bell and our pockets would permit, sit inside for plates of steaming momo and bowls of thukpa!  That place birthed many stories of love and heart break, of how to evade our hostel matron and make that ‘not allowed’ phone call (there were no mobile phones). Our hostel matron would sit right in front of the telephone, the only landline connection, and stare into our faces as we had our nervous conversations with whoever was on the other side!

Now, almost 30 years later, whenever our college friends meet, we still reminiscence about those days, telling the stories repeatedly! Laughing, reliving and filling gaps in the narratives. Every time we seem to remember a new detail!

They are not mere stories, they are memories, shaping who we are, telling us who we were.

Each of us hold such innumerable bittersweet memories within ourselves, some shared, some buried within ourselves, never to be revealed.

Stories are a part of us or are we a part of stories?

I would think the former. Our identity is one of many such stories. Some incidents remembered as they were, for some, the lines between reality and imagination has become a little blurred
perhaps. We remember some as we would want them to be remembered, holding onto snatches of conversations, proximity, love and longing that were ephemeral and elusive.

I often imagine stories for myself. A future where “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”. Where I have the freedom to choose. My choices ranging from my glass of wine to whom I can love. Stories give us a sense of power. An agency which is perhaps not so easily acquired. It enables us to imagine an alternative world. Where we have the freedom to think. A space to be set free, an escape. An escape from whatever has been imposed upon.

Through stories we get to imagine adventures, love, exhilaration, societies, roles that life denies. They reflect the reader, and they shape the reader as well. Reading reviews of any popular book would reveal the spectrum of interpretation they elicit. It reveals the reader. It lays bare the ideology, the belief system, the social understanding, the political belief, the ethos and values of the reader. They are a revelation of the individual character and through them the social character of a particular time frame the reader might belong to. We have heard, “A man is known by the company he keeps”. The company of the stories one remembers, tells, listens to or reads and watches, could be counted as well!

“We are the only creature that does this unusual thing of telling stories to each other to understand the kind of creature we are” Salman Rushdie (Masterclass on Storytelling and Writing)

Walking into a classroom full of children, nothing works like magic as stories. Recently reading ‘Diwaswapan’ by Gijubhai Badheka, with a group of friends, reiterated this conviction on story telling in classrooms. The imagination with which a child can transcend a banal act like ‘walking to school’ perhaps is a clear indicator to their scale of creativity. Any conversation with teachers working with children will bear testimony to the innumerable incidents when a simple conversation or remark has blossomed to extraordinary narrations, views, creativity, interactions and ideas. They unfold into stories into no time. Every child holds a story within themselves, some possible and many not so possible, but nothing ‘impossible’! There is no room for ‘impossibility’ in their world view! Everything can have a story, everyone can have a voice, every being can experience emotions, and every conflict can be resolved! Stories are the key to explore this wonderous world between reality and make belief! The benefit of stories in the children’s life is manifold and multifaceted. It requires a major discussion.

Stories and storytelling are an intimate part of our lives. Right from birth to death, we are but anthology of tales. Some we write ourselves and some are written by others. Some are narrated by us, and some are retold by others. Some stories get an audience and some does not. Amidst the pages of our life’s book, we look for solace, kindness, love, dreams, desires, wants and drama. We seek fulfilment of our lives through the imaginations of others, the writers and the story tellers. The carefree imagination with which children weave their stories gets eroded as we age. We become too ‘real’ perhaps, and hence our stories become stories of others. Imagined, written and told by many voices but our own.

Through the characters they weave, writers and storyteller give us that courage to write our own life stories. Without them, the courage would be lost. We need our stories and our story tellers.

It is perhaps also the time to reclaim back our stories and tell them our way!

Continue Reading

Knife- Meditations after an Attempted Murder

Posted on by admin

Stories have their own journey. They embody freedom. They embody the vision of us that perhaps we fail to visualise. Stories are a part of us, they are our history, culture, language, our beliefs, practices and rituals, our community, our individual and collective self. They are our past, our present. With all its incidents and history, with the many narratives of history, perspectives of ideas, and reasons for actions. Or, inactions, at times. Stories are also our future. They hold within themselves the possibilities of the impossible. They are our dreams and aspirations, ideas and visions. They help to spin that magical space where we would experience ‘our owns elves’, just the way we want it!

And writers are those magicians who make it all possible. They hold within themselves to spin that yarn which can have the capacity to enamour us, completely. As readers, what we can offer to create is a space to wield that magic. Spin that yarn. Build those castles in the air. To question or take away the freedom of the writers is akin to controlling our very thought, imagination and consciousness. The battle of ‘Baat mat Karo’ was waged against ‘Khattam Shud’ to stop the ‘Sea of Stories’ from drying up. It is perhaps a task to be taken up by all ‘Harouns’ to steal the giant ‘plug’ that was meant to seal the source of stories! Keeping the magic of stories alive, and thereby the magic of life itself!

Room 101, at the basement of the ‘Ministry of Love’ in George Orwell’s 1984. Was a place where one encountered one’s deepest fear, the worst thing imaginable in the world. The face of this fear was not alike. For Winston Smith, the novel’s protagonist, it was ‘rats’. For Rushdie, it was inability to see. A ‘knife’ did just that.

Knife: Meditations after an attempted murder, is a book on meditations. Meditative thoughts on many aspects and imaginations that have intrigued the author and have evoked emotions, fathomable and unfathomable. It is a book on the many everyday things of life which one moves through. Some of which are taken for granted like the capacity of the field of vision, literally. Most importantly, it is a book on love and courage, where one cannot survive without the other. It is also a book of indomitable conviction on the power of writing and storytelling!

In that one short affair called life where the past cannot be retrieved, no matter what, one gets a glimpse into the person who is Salman Rushdie. He stands out from the multiplicity of identities that he has. He stands out as the author.

This is not just a recollection of events, a memoir. It is but a putting forward of oneself. Authentic. Stark. Genuine. With promises and fears. With hopes and desperations. With the ups and downs. With optimism and vulnerability. With anger and bewilderment. It is an honest work of examining oneself through all these various emotional facets that form our being, that is our desire to be.

Freedom is the capacity to change. It entails the intentionality of desire to be. The desire of disclosure of being. As we as readers sought after that magical ‘Land of Stories’, what right do we have to curtail and question the very hand that writes them? Freedom of expression is perhaps a fundamental right in the world of creativity. To hold back the truth of creation is an complete contradiction to the very ethos of ‘creativity’-which embodies freedom.

Knife- meditations after an attempted Murder, is also perhaps a book about freedom. A book celebration freedom.

Continue Reading

A New Spelling of my Name- Audre Lorde

Posted on by admin

Zami: A New Spelling of my Name

Audre Lorde

The story of ‘Zami’ began with her childhood. The author’s childhood. Began in her childhood. Like all stories, the memories of her childhood came from the collective memories of herself, her mother and her sisters. Of the many women she knew. The many women who knew her. She was herself and the vision of herself, ‘the gulf between who I was and her vision of me’ filled by the ‘mythography’.

Near sighted, overweight, black girl growing up in Harlem, in the 1940’s. That quite says it all. Sums it all up. The missing of ‘home’, a home far away, being ‘unseen’, the correctness of everyday living. A childhood which understood, or rather felt, with confusion at times, why there were no stories about them. A childhood that questioned it. Tentatively. Defiantly. Loudly. Brazenly. A childhood, an adolescence that was looking for an affirmation of just being whoever she was. She walks through life stumbling, losing way, finding it again. Finding love in places she didn’t expect. Seeing out adventures and memories. Holding on to her ideas of who she was and what others thought of her.

“…how very difficult it is at times for people to see who or what they are looking at, particularly when they don’t want to.”

Throughout the narrative there are people who fit into the group of ‘don’t want to’. They don’t see ‘her’ because their own perceptions are perhaps clouded by their own identity. Perhaps that is why her companions did not see the struggles of being a ‘black’ lesbian. For them the identity of being a lesbian encompassed all. Even her partner did not notice the comment of the old lady at the laundry. She (Mauriel) should try on ‘showing her legs’ which was bestowed at her. Muriel, Lesbian, White.

This book is not just a narrative of past events, a journal entry of memories and affect. It is a realisation of the many different facets that make experiences that turn into memories, worth remembering and worth forgetting. It is about being of colour. Being a woman. Being a woman having a different sexual orientation.

This book is about identity. About having one, questioning it, coming to terms with it, struggling with it, wearing it like a crown and holding it like a shield. The many that she was.

Identity is part real and part imagery. It is always a Biomythography. A Term coined by Audre Lorde herself, describes ‘identity’ as to what it is. A blend of who we are, who we were and who we aspire to be. Realities and imaginations, history and aspirations, stories of identity weaves back and forth between the many different realms of the world.

‘Zami’ a Carriacou name for women who work the field as friends and lovers.

‘Zami’ is a name of a collective. A group. A group that shapes and individual and individuals who shape the group.

Continue Reading

Black Skin White Masks: Frantz Fanon

Posted on by admin

“Every citizen of a nation is responsibleforthe acts perpetrated in the name of that nation.” Francis Jeanson

Being the other, creating the other, perpetuating the other. Eroding dignity, respect. Stripping one out of the self-image, shredding it into pieces, mercilessly laying it bare in all its nakedness and vulnerability.

Black Skin White Masks is perhaps more than that. Much deeper, much wider and much more damaging. Yet, it is not a work of desperation. Of venting out. It is a quest for dignity. A similar quest, an identical search on which many embarks. The search for dignity. The search for humanity, immanent within all humans. The colour of the skin that is black, is more than skin deep. It permeates

the very existence of the black man and distorts the way he perceives himself in the realm of mankind. He is not born inferior. He is just born with a certain colour of skin. This sets him plummeting down the tunnel of indignity. Unknown at first it becomes bewildering as time goes. Gradually it is the Black Man who dons the ‘white mask’ of violence and oppression towards others. It is therefore not the mere oppression of one by another but creating a perpetual cycle of violence. Violence wielded by the dominant over the non-dominant. The face of the dominant alters as does the face of the oppressed. Sometimes they are black. Sometimes, they are the ‘dalit’, ‘tribals’, the slum dwellers, the poor, the women, the transgenders. Through the space time continuum of languages and states, through the divides of oceans, divides of customs and histories, divides of past that weaves into the present and the present that permeates the future, the oppressed and the oppressors have many faces. Yet their stories remain the same.

Fanon states, “All forms of oppression are alike. They all seek to justify their existence by citing some biblical decree. All forms of exploitation are identical, since they apply to the same “object”: man” “Colonial racism is no different from other racisms” idea of ‘good life’ permeates his thought and mind and soon translates into purposeful actions. These actions are laced with the idea of leaving all that binds him to his past. Suddenly the friends are too raucous, the heat is too oppressive, the villages are too backward, and the air is too polluted! An outsider’s perception seen through the lenses of colonialism and oppression, sees everything different from themselves, wanting in someways. The others, therefore, are viewed as ones needing guidance, leadership, ideas, hand holding. “The simplicity of the Negro is a myth created by superficial observers.” To address and redress the misgivings, reinforced by the guilt complex, the white man initiates development. Roads penetrate their sacred forests, temples of popular God built over their places of indigenous worship, the stone and the tree are replaced by deities made of stone. Their economy of exchange is replaced with money, their community practices of learning from every day is replaced with school book teaching of “I am a little teapot”. The mantle of developing the oppressed is taken up with much seriousness, to dim the differences.

The ‘black man’ welcomes these changes and perceives a future similar to the one he had so desired. It is like a dream coming true. Soon “the black child subjectively adopts the white man’s attitude.” Based on imagination or at least illogical reasoning, the oppressor finds it imperative to point out the sheer dependency of the oppressed on their masters. Deprived of their land and customs, denuded of their contexts, coaxed into an alien understanding of development and acceptance, the oppressed, find themselves at the crossroads. Either to reclaim their identity or to forever remain alien at the periphery of their oppressor’s world. “…society has crushed his old world without giving him a new one.” He is never quite understood. Never quite accepted. Never quite assimilated. He remains an outsider, the identity and the black skin, stark and irremovable. “An attitude of recrimination towards the past, a lack of self-esteem and the impossibility of making himself understood.”

the impossibility of making himself understood.”

He has to fight the fight all over again. However, this time, the fight is not just about reclaiming the past. Not just about the colour of one’s skin. A fight of human values of freedom and dignity. Of respect and equity. Of equality and a levelled playing field. He has to take up the fight for assimilation of developing a collective consciousness and understanding. “To fight with all (my) life and all my strength so that never again would people be enslaved on this earth.”

“…simply try to touch the other, feel the other, discover each other.”

Continue Reading

Dissolving into Cafe Lattes

Posted on by admin

Another news of a bookstore downsizing.

One of the few remaining bookstores, Books Kinokuniya has always been a favourite place for many different reasons for many years now. The excitement when this huge space was opened is still palpable! At the first visit, it seemed never ending. I had become ‘Bastian Balthazar Bux’ and was journeying into Fantastica, one door opening into another! When my daughters were small, it was a place where my elder one would almost always be lost. She would be submerged in the world of Percy Jackson or lost in the Land of Stories! A considerable amount of time would go to find her. She was about 7 or 8 years old. Children of her age did not have smart phones in their hands then. It was many years ago. Books Kinokuniya opened a couple of more outlets over the next few years. Closed those down. Downsized their flagship store to almost half its original size. Now, it is downsizing again, to accommodate a café! Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of cafés as well! The very ambience, the aroma of coffee, the company of friends and many a times myself, have always been my favourite haunts. However, they simply can’t replace bookshops. That sounds, well, wrong. I am sure many would share similar views.

That brings me to the question of why? Not why the bookstores all over the world are gradually shutting down, but why are the people who read reducing so very rapidly?

Is the availability or accessibility of e-Books alone the sole reason or even the substantial reason? Or is there a general decline in the love for printed words?

What are the children, young adults and adults engaged in these days? What are the psychologically stimulating activities that people are engaged in these days?

What are the young school going children doing when they have free time? With the number of instructions that are given at every step of the way, are we taking away their agency to think by themselves? “We need stories to understand ourselves” Rushdie, Writing Masterclass. After safety and love, the first thing that a child asks for is a story. Stories are all around us. In small little everyday incidents, to major historical and social transformations, our lives are not short of dramas! And yet we love to hear and tell more. The interesting gossip, the life changing moment, the fabulous trip, the incident at the restaurant, the debate on feminism, the experience in the train after many years, all hold a story within themselves. Waiting to be told, waiting to be heard.
Then why did we stop reading? Working on a school project a few years back, I was having conversations with colleagues and parents on ‘reading’.

To my immense chagrin, many answers were “I used to read when I was younger, now I don’t.” There were no answers to my why’s. During the said project and as a part of it, we had a workshop for the parents, on reading and storytelling. We attempted to share the importance of books, reading, libraries, stories with the parents and its paramount role in shaping the child’s personality and psyche. Many of the teachers sounded forced. Rehearsed. They lacked the conviction to carry the message through. Most of the parents shared, they don’t read! They seldom get books. It would have been unimaginable situation twenty years back. I would see many people in the public transport opening the book at the bookmarked page the moment they got a seat. That’s a rare sight now. A very rare sight. I have also come across this statement, “there is no space at home”, and they are not living from the closet.

The space is often occupied with innumerable clothes, shoes and other essentials. “I have no patience” is another well heard response. Maybe picking something that interests you, would easily address the lack of patience. In school, the hectic curriculum and the zeal to ‘teach’ the children everything has constricted story time. That’s the first thing that is taken away. Readings of number and science takes precedence. Stories are magical. How have we as adults, forgotten about the adventures of Nancy Drew, the detective with an egg-shaped head who would make his grey cells work, Alice as she fell down the rabbit hole, Guy Montag, the fireman who burns books? We, as members of the society, constantly learn from each other.

In social learning theory of development, Bandura emphasises on the role of the adults in society. Children learn from the environment and from others. If they see their family members read, value books, have conversations about them, engage in visiting book fairs and libraries, they will imbibe the trait as well. Children who read, often, have parents who read. I used to ask in my class sometimes, how many of your parents read? It was reassuring to see a least some of them raise their hands and explain their observations.

I still remember one response very vividly. A child of 6 at that time, Yazhini said, “my daddy reads. He brings books from India. Some are old and covered with newspaper”, something many of us are used to do as well, especially with old books! My very kind and long-time assistant, a house help who became a member of my household, had been with me for 14 years. She would often ask me to suggest a read for her from my bookshelves.

She gave books to me and my daughter as gifts on our birthdays as I would give her!
Book shops are a place of belonging for me. One of my favourite places to be when I am in
India are the many bookstores. It used to be the bookfairs during college days. The romantic
exhilaration of those days! My companion by my side. We still visit, but it is dominantly the
bookstores now. Always returning with two or three paper bags. Coming home and going
through the purchases one by one. Letting him write my names in each of them. It is like
someone returning again and again to the same self.

Bookstores are not just a place to hang out. They are the very labyrinths of memory itself. The
past, present and future, dreams, imaginations, ideas, amazements, frustrations, excitement.
We are a dying breed. We the people who are in love with this act of looking through the
shelves, picking out the ones our eyes rest upon, breathing deep into the crisp pages, hugging the
bag close, proud of our purchase. After that sitting in the café and opening them one by one,
with the steaming latte beside!

Back home, finding places for the new members. There is always a place for a loved one!
Cafes are places to meet people. Engage in discourses, conversations, births new ideas and opens
possibilities, form relationships, catch up on one another, laugh and be with friends, talk about
lives.

Bookstores, reading, however enables to form ideas that spark conversations and discourses,
perceive gaps that enables efforts, seek questions that addresses the wrongs, create agency to
look beyond what is shown, forge relationships beyond the realms of known and familiar, create
a new world!

A reading of ‘Untouchable’ would perhaps enable us to investigate the character of ‘Hatoda
Tyagi’ with more objective sensitivity. The systemic violence and the ease with which injustice
dished out over generations to the marginalised is felt deeper than the comment of “it’s so sad!”
Or perhaps the ambition of ‘Tara’ to climb up the social ladder and carve a name for herself, can
be better understood after readings of Deborah Levy’s Cost of Living.

Let’s keep our conversations alive without destroying the agency to question things around us,
imagine, dream!!
Mere chatting and ‘catching up’ would not be sustainable perhaps.
We do not have the time for just ‘catching up over latte’ anymore!

Continue Reading

In all Fairness

Posted on by admin

Search for the lighter skin

The other day I was at the local pharmacy shop, looking for a moisturiser. The easily available tubes or small jars of cream meant for your face and were used on hands as well. I saw rows and rows of brightly packaged small boxes, jars and bottles. There were creams, serums, oils, lotions. Numerous concoctions of magic potions that held the promise of brightening, lightening, illuminating, revitalising and uplifting my skin and different parts of my face during different times of the day!

The one that screamed the loudest, was lightning and brightening formulas.

I was not surprised, just saddened.

We are celebrating International Women’s Day. There are numerous messages on social media. Multiple offers on clothes, accessories and jewellery. Ideas to pamper ourselves, advertisements to boost morale, quotes, songs, flowers, cakes and gym memberships! You name it!

And there are batches of fairness creams and brightening serums manufactured, stored, sold, bought, used!

I am not even going to the other deeper issues of violence against women. The more ‘visible’ acts of being killed, silenced, abused and tortured. They are a visible plague which we are battling with. I want to ponder on the surreptitious miasma that is pervading our existence. The obsession with lighter skin is far more than just being skin deep.

In the song , “Yashomati maiya se…” young Krishna confides his confusion about the different skin tones of himself and his beloved Radha. Imposition of the lighter skin has been on our mind from much before the advent od the fair skinned ‘invaders’. The various settlers, rulers, invaders and colonialists who came to India from as early as 1400’s were relatively lighter skinned than the ‘adivasi’ inhabitants of our land. Our inherent caste system provided much needed fuel to reiterate this deep divide which continues till date. It has been a part of the Indian psyche for a very long time. Too long perhaps. Fair or lighter skin colour was associated with upper castes, affluence and now urbanites and questionably educated elites. On the other hand, darker skin colour was associated with manual labour, poverty, lowers class and caste, villagers and ignorance. The distinction between good and evil represented by black and white, its depiction on light and darkness, doesn’t help the cause at all. A fair bride is still a favoured choice for a suitable match in

the matrimonial columns. The skin colour of the groom might have big room for improvement along with various other aspects!

Mainstream cinema has long perpetuated this ‘dark’ and ‘fair’ divide. Implicitly and most often explicitly. The characters that were the most unsavoury or mundane were dominantly of darker skin tone. That would include all domestic help and those engaged in manual labour. The association of ‘dark skin’ with acts of violence and aggression has been perpetuated over years. This prejudice knows no gender bias. The unconscious tightening of a bag and moving to one side, when a darker skinned ‘poor looking’ person happens to be the co-passenger in a bus, is all but too obviously visible. Though this is not particularly true for Indian societies alone, it need not be used as a justification. It is wrong. It is violence. It is inhuman. The contexts are irrelevant. The prejudice towards women with darker shades of skin tone is stark embedded within our psyche and skin. The ‘very plain looking women’ who work behind the lead actor in a dance sequence in popular cinema, is not a thing of the past! Neither is their obvious difference, in terms of attire and projection. The onus of this appropriation of ‘beauty’ is on film makers and the industry. However, it is often pushed under the blanket of ‘viewer discretion’. The disclaimer at the beginning of the screening hardly washes out the irresponsibility towards a huge section of the fanbase, who make these very projects run! Many would argue that it is ‘cinema’. Unreal. Fictitious. Mere entertainment. The cost and the brunt of it is however very real. Cinemas are a mirror of the social unconscious as societies are a reflection of the cinemas that are being created and watched.

However, one can choose not to look! We, the ‘educated elite’ living in gated communities have mastered this skill. The irresponsibility with which sexism, casteism, gender divide, classism is used to perpetuate this violent divide is immense. The sense of responsibility towards their viewers is not of great concern for the ‘creative creators’ of these content. Creativity has such limited scope at times. They are in the business of entertainment! However, in a country like ours where the ‘screen idols’ are revered and seated on pedestals, complete inaction and irresponsibility is nothing short of compliance to this act of violence on many of the people who have raised them on that very pedestal. Obsession with lighter skin is not a thing of the past. The recent episode titled “Mirror, mirror on the Wall” of the series Made in Heaven, addressed this very concern. The clients were the rich elite of Delhi. The Bluest Eye written in 1970, reflected the desire to have ‘blue eyes’ in a young African American girl, who was deemed ‘ugly’ for her dark skin. Our belief in the beauty of ‘snow white’ reigns in the heart and mind of men, women and society at large. It is a result of many factors like colourism, patriarchy, classism, casteism and residual colonialism Our quest for ‘fairness’ unites us across, gender, race, religion, class, caste, education, societal hierarchy, language and political ideologies!

“Fairness”, could very much become a reason to be seen as one! What a paradox. Being of lighter complexion of two siblings, I recall many instances of our relatives, making comments on the darker skin colour of my younger sister with perfect normalcy and nonchalant attitude! My mother used to be furious, and she made no bones about saying it! She would refuse to take us to the houses of these ‘close and extended family.’

I have two beautiful daughters. The younger one is very fair, and the elder one is a few shades dark. When they were both very young, the comments, “Oh your baby is so fair! Indian?” were the most unnecessary and irrelevant, and they were plenty from passersby. People I did not know and did not have any inclination to know either. My elder one would always reply with her characteristic wit and spunk, “she is half Chinese!” She was about 4 or 5. Little did she know what she was saying. However, the looks on the faces of the people who commented, were priceless!

Continue Reading

Not wanting to see

Posted on by admin

Not Wanting to See

Selective seeing and Selective hearing- Selecting living

A bus ride to work. A ‘labour’ sits in the seat vacated. The ‘lady’ in the adjacent seat gets up and leaves. The lingering smell of her perfume wafting past as she takes up a seat at the back. The adjacent seat is occupied by a formally dressed individual. From the attire, looked like the place of work would be an office space.

A family having a meal at the food court. Parents, children, related, by the look of it. Trays of food in front of them, eating, drinking, spilling, climbing all over, intently engaged on their phones. A young girl, not related, seating at the table beside. A little distance away. Sometimes fussing over the children. Sometimes looking at them with vacant eyes. Picking up the toys they are throwing around. Feeding them. There was no tray in front of her. The young girl, not related, by the look of it, a house help.

The warm hugs by the teacher, to the kids in her care. Warm and tight for some. The bright eyed, fair skinned, uniformed with fresh smell of ‘Strawberries kids shampoo’ in their hair and smelling of sunshine. A mere gesture with arms around the child, for others, who smells of sunshine alone. It lacks the heart, the warmth. The eyes that are not met outside the car window when it stops at a traffic signal.

The small hand that stretches out, the ‘clap’ that asks to be seen, the elderly with rheumy eyes and vacant looks. The questioning looks given to someone who does not have that ‘airport look’. The turning down of certain patrons at the boutique outlets in upscale shopping spaces. The many times we go about choosing not to see, choosing not to speak! Our ability, or inability, to see is subjective. Just as we do what we wish to do and learn what we wish to learn, we see what we wish to see. Perception is not innate. It is acquired. Learnt. Practiced. Over the years. Over contexts.

We all are partially visually impaired, and it is a matter of choice.

To See and not to see?

We are deep rooted in our beliefs. Belief of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, belief of ‘trust and mistrust’, belief of ‘us and them’, belief of ‘good and bad’.

Our belief systems are a part of our inherent nature and acquired nature as well. We are born in certain belief systems and walking through life, knowingly and unwittingly, we imbibe a lot from our surroundings. Our surroundings of people and places. Of cultures and languages. Surroundings of contexts. Surroundings of gender.

Behaviour is often born from these beliefs, feeding into each other, in a perfect symbiosis. They are nurtured, shaped, altered, rearranged and restructured by the different belief ecosystem that we find ourselves in throughout our lives.

It is the belief in the understanding of ‘good and bad’ that makes us unsee the grey. Dividing actions into watertight compartments of acceptable and unacceptable. A mother who sacrifices her desires is acceptable and hence ‘good’. A mother who chooses her desires and dreams, could have been a little bit adjusting perhaps! A better understanding of her new ‘role’ would have been ‘good’. We do not get a rejection outright for choosing our dreams these days, its often the health of the family, upbringing of the children, the half-eaten lunch boxes, the desire to feed that ‘home cooked meal’ made by the wife and mother that does the job! “Born to make laddoos”, was not a mere dialogue. It reflected a belief system, working relentlessly, irrespective of discernible differences in class, caste, city, economic hierarchy and educational qualification. We seldom question these exchanges often missing them in the glossed over outer surface of movies, advertisements, stories, narratives and understandings. ‘Unseeing’ or not seeing is not pertained to the gender question alone.

The rickshaw puller denied of his meagre earnings, the shabby looking individual served last in a roadside tea stall, if there happens to be someone, visibly different, the sharp words of cleaning that corner of a room, not letting our children ‘mix’ with everyone in the neighbourhood park are all incidents of ‘not seeing’.

The separate ‘service elevators’ in many apartments perpetuates the class divide of who can stand beside you in the same space. It also pertains to ‘dog owners’ when they are taking out their dears for a walk. Many a times, happy Husky and Golden Retriever’ do join the other residents in the elevators ‘not meant for them’.

These breeds are not inexpensive. An assumption that their ‘owners’ are ignorant, callous, illiterate (this is often written in bold in the lifts) is perhaps not the full story. Can it be completed with, they just ‘does not care’? It won’t be too harsh, I hope! Not consuming food from certain households for religious, caste-based reasons and ‘types of food’ consumed, is seen, tolerated, participated, justified and practiced every day under a million pretexts. These are violence. Committed every day, in many ways, relentlessly, consistently,

Continue Reading

Purposeful Play and the Role of Discipline

Posted on by admin

Rethinking ‘purpose’

Setting up classrooms before the onset of the term is one of the most interesting, creative and as well as daunting task for any preschool teacher. Their ingenuity, creativity, fun element, ideas of child development, pedagogy and level of interaction with the kids are up for completely authentic analysis. The inquisitive eyes that will take in everything on the first few days, will determine how well you have planned and how the term is going to move forward. The ‘dramatic play’ centre is always the most challenging, layered and thought-out area. It is where most of the action takes place!

Jean Piaget, was one of the first psychologists to make a systematic study of child’s cognitive development. He found the role of play crucial and have stated various stages of play in tandem with the child’s developmental and biological age. “Play is the work of children” he had stated, emphasising the importance of play in the context of early childhood development of children According to Vygotsky, play enables children to regulate their internal capacities of managing actions among many other things.

Winnicott states that “it is only in playing that the child or the adult is free to be creative.” Child development theorists, child psychologists, teachers, parents and adults, emphasise the role of ‘play’ in the life world of a child. In a classroom, nothing elicits more joy than the two words “play time”! It is an indicator of a time where the children can be themselves, doing what they do best.

Play enables them to be themselves, share their emotions, imagine scenarios, build language competencies, solve problems and build their physical coordination. It enables them to form relationships and manage them. Ideate on rules and boundaries. Develop a sense of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. It capacitates them to understand, create and respect boundaries. They do it all by themselves, without adult intervention, intention and interference. The question here is an attempt to understand the oxymoron like phrase, ‘purposeful play’. A relatively new idea in the block, ‘purpose’ has taken over ‘play’ in most of its applications. Perhaps it is also time to rethink what we perceive as ‘purpose’ and ‘learning’.

If a child is to have freedom for growth it must have freedom to regulate its own life, freedom from interference and supervision… To encourage the children to set their own bounds and to reason out their own discipline, needs a real faith in their capacity and a real courage—the courage to stand by and watch mistakes being made without constantly interfering to set everything right.

(Rabindranath Tagore Pioneer in Education, Essays and Exchanges between Rabindranath
Tagore and L.K Elmhirst)

This idea of a classroom where the children learn to set their boundaries, rules and understanding of what is helpful and what isn’t, resonates in the writings of Gijubhai Bhadeka as well. He has worked and written extensively on children and learning in the contexts of schools and outside. His work and philosophy developed in 1920’s still hold relevance and. application in our modern first world classroom context (Diwaswapan, Gijubhai Bhadeka)

Unknowingly and unconsciously, the same idea resonated in the numerous games played with the neighbourhood kids in the growing up years of many adults. It is still evident in the parks and playgrounds, open spaces not much of which is left, thanks to our relentless development. What is then happening in the classrooms of the institutions?

Schools are tightly bound by unseen shackles called curriculum, administration and management. The Holy Trinity of the institutions decides the fate of the teachers and children issuing a dictum about what is perceived to be ‘learning’ and ‘discipline’ and ‘desirable’.

The teachers in the classroom are ever more vigilant now. Armed with the checklists, phones, apps and tools they document every move, every action and inaction, every conversation, they are on a constant look out for that errant child who dreams, gazes, reflects, takes up more time, doesn’t feel like sharing, moves on to the next ‘learning centre’ doesn’t keep the materials back, doesn’t ask the right questions or talks too loudly! They are quick to note it down, analyse, discuss, diagnose and suggest a remedy! The untroubled calm of conventional classroom, where teachers deliver and children assimilate is maintained through imposed discipline. A façade is created of uniformity with only a sprinkle of questions during a certain ‘planned time’. It is quite alright to rest the little grey cells at the other times! The teachers cannot be solely blamed in this entire set up. Apart from a myriad of issues they also have superiors to report to, who have perhaps their own chains to unshackle.

The errant child of five or six is identified as the one with a ‘problem’ who is not able to respond to the purpose of the purposeful play. The ‘café’ that was set up in the classroom losses its element of play under the burdensome purpose of asking the right question, “how much is the bread?” Classrooms are confined spaces. Confined by time, flexibility, physical space they perhaps leave little room to manoeuvre. Over and above the objective driven day leaves little room for imagination and exploration of joy. Teachers are strictly instructed to instil discipline and include ‘teaching moments’ throughout the day. The more the merrier.

However, classrooms are not just about teaching letters numbers and geography. They are not about teaching or imparting from one on the podium to the rest on the floor. It is not about a hierarchy of knowledge. On the contrary, it is a place of mutual learning, conversations, dialogues, creative bursts, imagination, debates, disagreements, dreaming and a lot of fun! We need not look for teaching moments all the time. Perhaps it is time to ask the teachers and members of the management, what have you learnt from the children today?

If we stop looking for the purpose in the play, we, the adults will come home with authentic lessons of acceptance, problem solving, camaraderie, respect, laughter, looking beyond differences and the sheer joy of being there and doing nothing! Just because sometimes, ‘doing nothing often leads to the very best of something’- Winnie the Pooh

Continue Reading