The Gravity of ‘Gravity’

October 2013: Gravity, called both “viscerally thrilling” and “deadly boring”, has become a global blockbuster, and is being pushed as a “must-see at IMAX right now” by all and sundry. Apart from the breathtaking cinematography and technological excellence, the film’s portrayal of the female protagonist, Dr Ryan Stone played by Sandra Bullock, is one of its strongest points.

*Plot Spoilers

Us jaded media consumers can tell from a mile away when a star or star-pair is due to have a film released. As the stars acquiesce to promotional and PR tours, the interviews, general interest, red-carpet-sightings, romantic rumours swirl toward a crescendo, and reach an enduring frenzy if the film is a success. So, we knew from afar that Gravity was coming.

I also began to sense that it was bound to be ground breaking from a gender studies point of view. Sandra Bullock—50 years old, sans make-up, unsexualised—had been getting the privileged media coverage reserved for revered male stars, overshadowing the other half of the lead pair, one of these aforementioned men, George Clooney. (This was before I realised that the movie does not have a lead ‘pair’ per se.) I’ve been watching closely as she continues to hold centre stage, with an unparalleled number of interviewers taking an in-depth interest in her holistic self, going beyond the inane beauty/favourite brand/fashion sense/weight-loss regime/love-sex life questions reserved for female actors.

We saw the film a few days ago, a spectacular 3D IMAX experience that blew our minds. Once we recovered from our pacing hearts, I realised this unusual media phenomenon is because of both—Bullock as a mature person and actor, and Alfonso Cuarón’s film and the role she’s essayed in it, that has allowed her to be perceived as such. Because her role is that of the smart victor, not the sexy peripheral in this sci-fi action drama, her media strategy and portrayal is not limited to the physical dimension of her personality.

Mission Specialist Dr Ryan Stone, a first-time space traveller, is accompanied by veteran astronaut Commander Matt Kowlaski. Space debris renders their shuttle Explorer useless, and they travel to the International Space Station to try to evacuate to Earth, talking about their lives on the way.

Stone is smart, not sexy. She’s a doctor and an astronaut, and for a long time, you see only her make-up-free face through the visor of her bulky suit. Even when she does remove it to reveal frill-free, practical inners, the focus is on the physical fitness of her body, a necessity for an astronaut one would presume, and not its ability to titillate. In a global culture that puts increasing pressure on women to look flawless, whatever other talents and qualifications they may possess, prioritises thinness over health and places a high premium on looking young, Bullock’s naturalness sets a refreshing example. Of course, she’s white, thin, beautiful, but not superhumanly so.

In a capacity best described as a ‘support role’, worst as ‘eye-candy’, Clooney’s character chooses to die after these 20 minutes, to give Stone a chance of survival, in a plot device to necessitate/facilitate/stimulate the hero’s dormant heroicness. Stone battles her inexperience, fear and seemingly insurmountable odds, gets advice from Kowlaski who she hallucinates up in a bit of deus ex machina at her point of resignation, and makes human contact in an unfamiliar language over a satellite phone. She embarks on a solitary fight for survival à la Tom Hanks in Castaway, with only her smarts and tenacity, not to mention physical strength, at her disposal. Where she starts nauseous, uncertain and vulnerable, she steps up to the plate when required, and rescues herself. No man necessary, thank you very much.

Though the plot thins, the characters are a tad too cardboard for a deep exploration of their psychological progression through this trial by fire and the dialogue slackens, the film floats along on stunning awe-inspiring visuals of space, tightly paced action and Bullock’s powerful acting. Stone emerges a hero as her capsule lands in a lake and she breaks to its surface and swims to the shore. In the film’s final moments she is granted the honour of the hero shot, from a low angle that makes her look large and victorious, usually reserved for portrayals of dominant males in sci-fi, battle or superhero films. Contrast her triumphant surfacing from the water, a fit body encased in asexual ‘work clothes’ being saluted by the camera, with Ursula Andress’s emerging from the water in the iconic Dr No scene: sexy, bikini-clad, stereotyped and pandering to the male gaze.

This is the supporting role women have traditionally played in action and survival stories (and almost all other genres), shown, as Virginia Woolf noted in 1929, “in their relation to men.” At a press conference at San Diego Comic Con in July this year, Cuarón, also the scriptwriter of the film, admitted to facing pressure to change the protagonist to a male one; Bullock called him “brave” for sticking to his guns. Stone’s own father wanted a son; it is an obvious and important lesson that she’s a child that would do any parent proud.

In Gravity there is a total absence of romantic love, not between her and Kowlaski, not even in their back-stories. This also challenges the genderist notion that the emotional is women’s domain (as protagonists and watchers of chick-flicks, rom-coms and drama) and that the cerebral and the physical (science, sci-fi, action, thrillers, rescue sagas, spaces outside the domestic and emotional sphere)… well, leave that to the men. Stone is nuanced: deeply depressed and unexuberant—she’s lost her daughter and loves the silence of space; alongside, she’s inspiring, in a leadership position in space doing science. She’s a human superhero.

Motherhood and fertility are recurring themes in Gravity; according to Cuarón “there was an understated but vital correlation of her being a maternal presence against the backdrop of Mother Earth.” During the phone conversation (revealed to be with a Greenland Inuit in the accompanying short film Aningaaq by Jonás Cuarón), in what she believes is her last human contact, Stone hears his baby crying and a dog howling—reminding her at once of her loss and the sobering cycle of life. In a post-modern gendered reading, I reiterate that motherhood, nurture, depression (so-called ‘feminine’ traits) need not be at odds with the so-called ‘masculine’ territory of heroism, greatness, career, intelligence. One must acknowledge and accept people, and their individuality and multifacettedness beyond stereotypes in all divisive spheres—gender, politics, religion, race…

It is heartening to see the enormous success of the film because it pushes the audience’s boundaries, opening their palate to a female hero not typecast by gender, sexual or body definitions; similar to Ellen Ripley in the 1979 film Alien. Its success will also allow those concerned with the bottom line to explore non-formulaic non-stereotypical films. Says Bullock: “It’s about making money, and if studios see that a female brings in audiences… hopefully that will become the norm.”

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in October 2013.

NOTA Vote

October 2013: The Supreme Court has recently introduced ‘None of the Above’ as an option on electronic voting machines. How and why this will encourage people like me, a person who hasn’t ever voted, to participate in the next elections.

Growing up, politics didn't interest me at all, but I’ve made a considerable effort to get up to speed over the past few years—I’m 30 now, and it seems like the responsible thing to do.

Though I’ve swallowed my distaste, participate in the intensity of the political discussion in the lead up to the 2014 elections and nurture a strong desire to vote (getting a voter’s ID card is a start), I feel no closer to finding someone to vote for. And I’m not alone. Friends—ranging from an investment banker in Dubai to an editor of a weekly, the former editor of India’s largest news portal to a swadeshi foreigner, actors, designers, lawyers, writers—express the same feeling, of being in limbo. A news magazine’s cover aptly summed up what my little sample group of us young, urban, liberal educateds feel about the choices we face—the UPA/ Congress vs the BJP under Narendra Modi—between the devil and the deep blue sea.

We are always blamed and shamed as a demographic and generation that doesn’t vote. Party to intense political discussions these past few months, I realise it is a studied disillusionment with politics in general that is the reason, and not a lazy disinterest, as is often suggested. Politics and politicians are alienating and cater to a vote bank whose concerns we don't understand, and overall, don't have our vote of confidence. Gleaned from these drawing room discussions are reasons for the current catch-22.

Fledgling Ideas

In my simplistic worldview predating my political interest, I was a latent Congress supporter. For one, my mother was a huge fan of the Congress’s Manmohan Singh as the reform-minded Finance Minister who liberalised the country’s economy. My primary grouse against the BJP was its Hindutva agenda and links to the RSS, etc, and for a secular atheist/agnostic, religion sh/could not form the foundations of a democracy’s governance. As a nine-year-old in ’92, the demolition of the Babri Masjid—that prioritised history over the present, religion over reason—caused the first spate of communal violence that I had ever witnessed.

[Now, we know it’s not like the Congress doesn’t have blood on its hands, and just because most of us youngsters were not around to see the Anti-Sikh movement and riots of the ’70s and ’80s, doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. A friend, Dimple Kaur has never seen her father, tied to a pole and burnt as he was in the riots while her mother was pregnant with her.] Nonetheless, the Congress seemed more liberal, more progressive than the religious-minded BJP, and this was the first one to crystallise of my unevolved and underinformed ideas of what I’d want in a government.

And Now

The nation’s youth has watched horror-stuck as scams after scam, failures after failure have plagued the UPA. The PM’s impassive face, subject to nation-wide ridicule, has watched as the economy nose-dives, the judiciary fails, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, Vadras prosper, nothing gets done, women get raped (and criticised for the role they played in it) and fires burn. There’s also a belief that we can no longer be an ‘elected monarchy’, supporting the murky legacy of the tainted Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, that has long since put self over service. And then, to add the insult of stupidity to the injury of a dovetailing economy is the unsustainable, ill-thought-out Food Security Bill, a mere vote-garnering tool as the elections near.

So no, not the Congress, not again.

As much as the BJP is being seen as the saviour in this unholy mess, it’s hard to buy ‘Gujarat Shining Under Modi’ as the Holy Grail of what India can or should be. Advertising for Gujarat Tourism, with a gently appealing Amitabh Bachchan, has been in full-throttle for a while now, subtly ensuring that Gujarat-the-Great is on everyone’s lips.

For starters, it is hard to forgive Modi for the role he played in the aftermath of the Godhra massacre in 2002. A Modi-supporter once told me that we attribute more control to him than he had at that stage in his political career, that the riots were spontaneous. Not true—by all counts, the systematic massacre of Muslims was definitely State-led. And even if it wasn’t, a basic rule of management states that authority can be delegated, responsibility cannot—and, as the Chief Minister, Modi bears moral and, indeed, administrative responsibility for what happened in the state under his governance. Plus, in a country that needs law and order to provide stability in an unstable political climate, Modi’s extra-judicial methods in dealing with terrorists should also raise some red flags.

Sure, when you drive in to Gujarat from Maharashtra, you notice the difference in the roads. The cleanliness. The shiny, glossy things that attract the magpies. But all that glitters is not gold, and one must be wary of the supply-side economics that favour the rich that Modi propounds. One needs only to look towards Bush’s administration to see its pitfalls.

So yeah, no BJP either. And the Third Front isn’t really a viable third option, is it?

None of the Above

So when the Supreme Court introduced the electoral reform, upholding the right of voters to reject all candidates contesting the elections, I wasn’t surprised to see Facebook updates like “Now I can vote!” Because, god knows, we want to!

That young, urban, educated people don’t vote is, in itself, a huge governance issue, because—at the risk of blowing our collective horn—we are this country’s only hope. It’s up to us to demand the basics—an uncorrupt, efficient government that has its priorities straight and keeps its promises; that teaches the poor to fish (and not simply wait for handouts at election-time); that looks at people beyond cultural and religious prisms; that respects the judiciary and upholds the law, and amends it in a relevant and timely manner beyond vote-seeking self-serving; etc.

At the base of it, negative voting may seem futile—even if the maximum number of votes cast is for NOTA, the candidate getting the most of the remaining votes will be declared winner. But, “Negative voting will lead to a systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates,” said a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, P Sathasivam. Instead of election ink evading our fingers for another half-decade, we must turn out in great numbers to express our dissatisfaction with ‘the Above’ choices presented to us, to prove that we do, indeed, care, and for political parties to acknowledge us as a dissatisfied, formidable vote bank.

So far, people casting negative votes were required to enter their names in a register and cast their vote on a separate paper ballot. Apart from encouraging people like us to have a voice, the move also allows for something else—it allows those who feel pressurised into voting (for reasons of economy or fear) to, instead, go in and come out pretending to have done their pressurisers’ bidding. This is perhaps why the SC has laid emphasis on maintaining the secrecy of votes cast under the NOTA category.

“If the right to vote is a statutory right, then the right to reject candidate is a fundamental right of speech and expression under the Constitution,” said the bench. And I'm sure this demographic, accustomed to being heard, will welcome the opportunity to have a say in the workings of the country.  

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in October 2013.

I have since become much more political and politically aware. Modi's politics have pushed me firmly into the 'Not in my name' category, helping me decide what I want by knowing what I don't want.

The Power—& Fear—of Love

September 2013: Why do traditional cultures so fear romantic love? For the same reasons we need to protect it.

Two articles in today’s paper caught my attention. The first quotes the father who killed his daughter and her boyfriend in the Rohtak district of Haryana for eloping as saying, “Whatever I did was right and for honour. If others also follow the same path, such things (love marriages) won’t take place.” The other article points out that more Dalits are marrying out of caste, “in the phenomenon long suggested by social reformers as the best tool to weaken the barriers of caste segregation.” Ironically, my mainstream newspaper carried these pieces on the same page.

Jurrat: Audacity

Over lunch the other day, India’s most famous cinematographer Ravi K Chandran told me that he and Hema ran away and got married 23 years ago. “Why?” I asked, perched atop my urban liberal worldview, born of (at least) two generations of relatively easy love marriages. “Why are you surprised?” he asked. “In most of India, the only way to marry for love is to run away and do so.”

Most traditional societies and religions don’t like love. It is no surprise that in feudal, patriarchal states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan, this most basic of all emotions (and its sexual fallout and/or social culmination in marriage) is so scary. Love is blind, and deaf to reason, ‘honour’, society, status, money, norms. It beckons their young (daughters, in particular) away from their fold, un-enslaves them from ‘mummy-daddy’, and makes them—gasp—free-willed. It breeds in young, reckless minds and hearts, and feeds on Bollywood happily-ever-afters, romantic notions and lust. It grows in the generation gap like an insidious sapling in a wall crack. It is a subversive, idealistic idea, that disregards social, political, economic, religious, caste barriers like no preaching, media or education can achieve.

One would think that education and its spirit of questioning would rid people of some of these abstract, inconsequential and often preposterous notions. But when I found myself in conversation with a stately forty-something Rajput lady in the Udaipur palace a few years ago, I found that this is not always true.

“Of course we must marry only Rajputs,” she said.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because our bloodline has been pure for thousands of years!”
“Even if that were true and verifiable, how does it matter?!"
“It does matter!” she bristled. Hurrying away from an argument she would lose to rationality, she left me agape with her parting shot: “I tell my children: 'Have affairs on the side, that’s fine, just marry right.'”

Wealth—with the opportunities it provides to broaden horizons, travel, and be exposed to more world-views and cultures—can be a double-edged sword. Though successive generations tend to be less religious and rigid than the ones before, I’ve sometimes found that my wealthier peers have ended up surprisingly conformist when it comes to love, marriage and parents’ expectations… perhaps because they feel they have more to lose.

In Defence of PDA

A good love story makes for happy people, happy people make for happy citizens, neighbours, fathers, mothers… and in a culture of hate, one can see why that would be a problem.

And we are, globally, a culture of hate. A recent study found that anger is the fastest spreading emotion on social networks. We’re okay with Public Displays of Anger, Aggression, but—to quote a Facebook status update I recently read—“hold hands in public and the police gets its knickers in a twist!” Even in our movies: rarely does violence—senseless, stylised, raw, revolting—ever receive as much censure as the humble bedroom scene. Break that down, and one wonders what norms we’re setting: that love, lust, happy-making things are not okay, while anger, hate, dishoom-dishoom, yeah, they’re just fine, signs of masculinity, justice, society. I’m clearly not the only one up in arms against the lawyer who’d rather “burn his daughter alive” than let her have—horror of horrors!—pre-marital sex, or who notices the irony of his misplaced priorities.

Let’s Get Together & Feel All Right

For all its power, love needs to be actively supported. I was pleased to learn that the Centre pays up to Rs 50,000 to each inter-caste couple that has one spouse as Dalit. The Supreme Court has even ruled that the police should protect a legal inter-religious marriage, and has repeatedly upheld the rights of consenting adults.

In reality, though, the police and pseudo-judicial upholders of culture like the Khap Panchayats can be quite severely unsupportive of this ‘anarchy’. In the much-publicised 2007 tragedy, the police is believed to have forced Rizwanur Rahman to separate from his wife Priyanka (at the behest of her industrialist father), leading to his suicide. Kolkata’s then Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee infamously said that cases of eloping, even by adults, were morally unacceptable, so the police had always intervened in such cases in the past, and would continue to do so. The Khap and the police were complicit in the infamous Manoj-Babli honour killing… the examples are numerous.

This has got to stop. For a happier society, we need to let go of our prejudices, and prioritise people and happiness over ambiguous, archaic socioreligious diktats and divisions. We need to recognise, internalise and channelize the positives of love—of both, the Gandhian ‘turn the other cheek’ cultural kind, as well as the romantic heart-bursting-with-joy variety. Just as we need to take a foot off the violence that we proffer as a solution to small or big, perceived or real wrongs.

For the most part, our laws are clear and progressive, worthy of an evolved democracy, with an agenda to allow adults free will and choice. Our law enforcement needs to follow them, and deprioritise moral and cultural policing. Bob Marley had it right: “One love, one heart/ Let’s get together and feel all right.”

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in September 2013.

Women-Men & Public Space

September 2013: The public display of machismo at festivals leaves little space for women’s enjoyment.

Janmashtami heralds the start of the unrelenting festive season—from now until the end of the year, the spate of festivals includes Ganesh Chaturti and the multiple Visarjan days, the Navratris, Dusshera, Diwali, Eid, Christmas and New Years (and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few). Though I look upon the impending traffic snarls, deafening cacophony of music and crackers, and bursting crowds with cerebral distaste, I understand the enormous sociocultural and economic importance of festivals beyond their religious significance—for people less fortunate than us, they provide a break in the monotony of dreary everyday life, a reason to celebrate and let it all hang lose.

What they also seem to provide is an anarchical free-for-all for men and their desires. For one, male enjoyment seems to be inextricably linked with intoxication, the religious origins of the festivals be damned. Put a group of sex-complexed boys and men with diminished social inhibitions and bristling boisterousness on the road, past what would ordinarily have been their bedtime, and there is bound to be trouble—just yesterday, three drunk boys emerged from an under-construction Ganesha Pandal at 1 AM and chased our car down a narrow Mumbai road hurling abuses (until they hurtled in to a stationary rickshaw). Put multiple such groups on the road and there, you have it, a drunken mob.

Mobs dynamics are difficult for anyone to negotiate, but they pose a particular problem for women. For one, there is the cloak of anonymity the mob provides. The Gainesville serial killer Danny Rolling points out in his autobiography that when dozens of male university students were asked if they would rape a beautiful girl if they could get away with it, the majority answered yes. Although this is an American statistic and I don’t believe all men are rapists-denied-opportunity, it explains why this anonymity is so dangerous to female sexuality. Mob mentality is contagious, and sexually reprehensible behaviour can spread through a mob like wildfire. The 40-50 men who molested the two NRIs outside the Marriott on New Year’s Eve 2007 didn’t all know each other. Neither did all the men/groups of men who molested the girls who were walking to Wankhede Stadium to see the victorious team of IPL 2007; they each just, literally, grabbed the opportunity to do what everyone else was. And let’s not even talk about Holi, the most intrusive of all festivals. There’s power in numbers—and bravado that comes from believing in ones collective invincibility.

As always, the onus of self-preservation falls on the woman. No, no, no! This is not to say that women shouldn’t be careful, more than men need to be: while we all hope for a utopic society free from sexual violence, there will always be evil in man, and evil men. But we seem to be breeding mobs of rapists-in-waiting as opposed to a few rotten eggs.

The least one can expect is that there be a much more favourable, infinitely fairer balance of places/clothes/times of day/activities that it is ‘safe’ for women to be in/wear/be out/be doing. When my friend Ruchi, a 25-year-old animal activist, told a cop that she was being hassled on the road during a festival day last year, he told her, “Ghar jao. Aaj tumhe bahar aane ki kya zaroorat hai?” Public celebrations should not be so riddled with gender injustice that make them a wanton, rambunctious, anything-goes experience for one gender; a cautious, fear-inducing (if not worse) experience for the other.

There are no new solutions to offer on this matter other than the ones we’ve already heard—bettering law enforcement and developing a culture that is gender-sensitive. We need a better policemen-to-public ratio, more efficient policing and prosecution, etc. And as much as we crib about dry days, preventing men from accessing liquor during festivals and voting is an important governance tool to maintain peace.

Our men need to be taught to respect women and their space, of course, but also about inherent standards of conduct. That drunken groups in topless trucks, who hoot at every passing woman, are carrying Ganesha-the-God home or going around breaking haandis à la Lord Krishna, is laughably ironic. It is telling that both the govindas who lost their lives this year, did so in bike accidents. Neither the need to reassert our collective selves in a post-colonial world, nor the sense of entitlement of the aggrandised Indian man should result in such anarchy. We need to grow beyond equating fun and freedom with rowdiness, rash driving and free cop-a-feels. We need to grow up.  

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in September 2013.

The Spectre of Rape

August 2013: Why women are always looking over our shoulders.

If I were a man, I might even prefer Delhi to Mumbai. I’m serious—in this city, I miss Delhi’s roads, space, parks, infrastructure, cleanliness… the works. But Delhi is a gendered experience, and, as a free-spirited woman, nothing makes the misogyny of the average North Indian man from the Cow Belt and patriarchal Punjab and Haryana worth it. When fear of rape and personal safety become overriding concerns, it shackles you; traps you in the golden cages of your cars, houses, society, familiarity; enforces the protectiveness of a male friend or relative who must escort you home after every night out; occupies some part of your brain in thoughts about safety all the time; changes your dress, your demeanour, your personality. It impacts your career: when I took over as the Editor of India’s leading décor magazine when I was 24, the learning curve was steep, the work unrelenting. I’d consistently come home past midnight in public transport—and know that, were I in Delhi, at some point my parents would have said enough, the possibilities were too dire. Even for less ambitious women from more conservative backgrounds who find self-worth and liberation in regular 9-5 jobs, Mumbai’s culture, transport and male mindset in general are way more conducive.

My friend Jordyn says that, with my personality type, I cannot live in a place where my race, gender, religion, etc are factors in my way of life, my freedom to do what I want to do, say what I want to say, go where I want to go—my freedom to be. I guess he is right, and I am destined to live my life in liberal, cosmopolitan cities. In India, Mumbai it is.

So when someone, anyone, gets gang raped in the heart of this city in the daytime, it shakes me to the core. I’m not pseudo-nostalgic about some idealised Bombay that was once safe—I have read Sohaila Abdulali’s account of being gang raped in 1980 in Chembur by four men, and the other rapes that have made the headlines since. Nor am I so naïve as to believe that only the rapes that get reported actually happen, or that Mumbai is any more or less safe than it has been before this recent incident—the main accused in this recent case has admitted that the gang raped others, including couples and rag pickers, in the same spot, who never reported it. And, besides, rape is often insidious, not always so dramatic or newsworthy. Nonetheless, when it’s in your face, it reminds you of the fragility of your gender, of a unique fear that plagues one half of humanity far more than it does the other. To quote feminist poet Marge Piercy: “Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing/ All of the time on a woman's hunched back./ Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pinewoods,/ Never to climb a trail across a bald/ Without that aluminium in the mouth/ When I see a man climbing toward me.”

The Blame Game

As always, political reactions range from blame and disempowering of the woman, to her mollycoddling. On the one hand, we’ve had the usual ‘Women are weaker, should not be out at night/alone/in unsafe places/in inappropriate clothes’ spiel, on the other hand is Home Minister RR Patil’s utterly preposterous suggestion that female journos should have police escorts when in secluded places. (To underscore our female-is-weaker-than-male sexist conditioning, MNS’s Raj Thackeray recommended Patil be sent bangles, to suggest his feminine inefficiency in governance.) Either way, these reactions put the onus of her own safety entirely on the woman, not addressing the responsibility that men have in this matter—as though men are enslaved by their maggotted desires, unwilling and unable to control them.

There is also the usual political bashing of ‘Western Culture’ that has contributed to women’s lib in a great way, but surprisingly little of the ‘rape culture’ that is creating these monsters out of men. If anything, ‘Western Culture’ (or the homogenous entity it is believed to be) empowers women, giving them agency, individuality and control, and therefore, rights and respect. If anything, it is this culture that has the potential to squash the entrenched patriarchy that allows Indian men to see women as weaker and worthy of subjugation. It is this liberation (and, of course, socioeconomic might) that enabled the photojournalist to come forward where the rag pickers couldn’t.

The sooner we, as a culture and its police, politicians and public administration, change our sexist mindsets about the ‘weaker sex’, put the onus of rape on the man and not the woman, and stop short-changing victims in the law, the sooner we will have (maybe not less rapes, every society breeds monsters) more reporting, sensitivity, outrage and justice for the ones that do happen.

We are called a city of survivors, a city where people will dust themselves off and get to work before the dust from a bomb blast has even settled. This little 22-year-old, faced with the uphill task of recovering from being brutalised in the worst way, shows she is made of great stuff: “I want to join duty as early as possible,” she says from her hospital bed. Cheers to that, and to her other wish that the five perpetrators get the strictest punishment at the earliest.

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in August 2013.

Muslims & Majority/Minority Mindsets

August 2013: Most of us will never know the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination this minority faces in India and the world over.

Someone asked me many years ago whether there is discrimination in India. While my first reaction was to say no, I realised that, in actual fact, I would not really know—because, for all intents and purposes, I am the privileged majority. Apart from being a woman, which hasn’t been debilitating in my sociocultural environment, on paper I’m Hindu, and upper caste to boot. I’m pretty and fair, educated and speak English. What discrimination would I face? For me, the world is an oyster, a fair meritocracy sans hurdles that I cannot cross. This, I take for granted.

But this is not how life must appear to those who are pre-judged for their names and their attire, and are racially profiled every day, all the time, and by everybody: the uneducated, the System and the classes alike. As soon as my last domestic help realised that the delicious phirni had come from a Muslim friend on Eid, he refused to eat it and said, “Main un logon ka khana nahi khaata.” Most Muslims who travel internationally will tell you that that ‘random security checks’ at airports aren’t really random—ask Shah Rukh Khan, who was “detained at the (US) airport as always” last year. Try renting a home in Mumbai as a Muslim—it is bad enough for families, but for a bachelor it’s near impossible. At my previous office, a colleague re-joined a day after he’d quit because he couldn’t find a rental home close to his new workplace in Andheri, and travelling to and from his parents’ home in central Mumbai wasn’t a viable option! My former landlady, Hindu married to a Muslim and bearing his surname, had kept Muslim tenants before us. She describes having to battle the housing society to let the family stay: I’ve heard her use the line “All terrorists are Muslims, all Muslims are not terrorists” to defend them and her own family time and again. And recently on Eid, Himalaya Mall, one of Ahmedabad’s five biggest, decided to charge Muslims, and them alone, a Rs 20 entrance fee; while a sign outside a shopping centre in faraway Texas said, ‘No Muslim Parking… Your car will be towed’.

I’ve never had to feel these things. But Sahil, my husband, whose name is of Urdu origin, will never forget his encounter with a fellow holidayer in the UK a few years ago. While his family was in the room, he decided to explore the hotel and neighbourhood, where he met an older man, also from Mumbai. They exchanged names and not much else, and Sahil didn’t think much about it. Later, he found his father, who has a Hindu name, in conversation with the same man. “This is my son,” he told the man. “Oh,” the man said to Sahil, “I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you. I thought you were Muslim.”

I come from a completely secular family. My Dad was a non-practicing Hindu; Mum goes to church once in a couple of months. Asked what I am, I’ve always said I’m neither—not Hindu, not Catholic, I’m apathetic agnostic. I can say with absolute conviction that I have no sort of religious prejudice—if anything, I’m uniformly and collectively disdainful of them all.

Given this proclamation, when I went through my phone book to send Eid Mubarak messages, I was surprised at how few Muslims I know (and, ask yourself, how many do you know)? As such a major minority, they have had a disproportionately small representation in the 11 mainstream educational institutions I’ve attended up to my Masters, as well as in the companies I’ve worked for and in my social circles across cities. Instead, a great many of the carpenters, upholsters, painters, labour, etc that I work with, in my alternate career as a set designer, are Muslim.

I generalise, I realise, but my intention is to call out the fact that this discrimination is detrimental to a whole community, a vast number of people. In covert and overt ways, deliberately or subconsciously, they are systemically, culturally and personally denied easy access in to mainstream life and resources that we take for granted.

Admittedly, I’m not as immune to subconscious stereotyping as I’d like to be, though I am constantly on the lookout for any seeds of indoctrination. It is a well-documented fact that 9/11’s biggest and most unfortunate legacy is the demonising of all Muslims by American politicians and people, and the media worldwide, and the associated discrimination. A few years ago, I found myself driving in a small lane in a Muslim part of town at 8.30 on a Friday evening. Men in white kurtas and topis returning harmlessly from their prayers surrounded my car. I was terrified—partly because mobs of men scare me, more so because these were Muslim men. And I was ashamed and full of self-loathing.

It made me question whether my (in)tolerance of religion is really as uniform as I’ve always said it is. I wondered how I—with my logic, and belief in the individual beyond pigeonholing—could allow myself to be preconditioned against a huge percentage of people by society, culture and the media. But we all are, aren’t we?

And then we wonder why Muslim people seem to carry a chip on their collective shoulder, are in parts defensive and offensive, and why they choose to remain wary and sequestered. While we can argue the chicken or egg question without ever reaching a conclusion, we cannot deny the role we, the majority and the media, have played in creating this chasm. Or the responsibility we bear to bridge it.

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in August 2013.

Dance Mumbai Dance

July 2013: Celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision to squash the ban on Mumbai’s dance bars, and what it represents…

After 10 years away, I returned to my beloved Mumbai in December 2005, shortly after the state government’s ban on dance bars came in to effect. They were very much a talking point then, and continued to remain in public consciousness through their eight-year ban, recently lifted by the Supreme Court.

It observed that the Maharashtra government’s decision violated bar dancers’ right to livelihood and was ill-considered, leaving many jobless women with no option but to turn to prostitution. Besides, allowing women entertainers in establishments with ratings of three stars and above is classist and breeds inequality. In the end, it is the triumph of the right to earn over moral policing, of practicality over autocratic bureaucracy… but, inherently, it stands for so much more.

With this ruling, the Apex Court has delivered a body blow to the cultural imperialism and misogyny that has been the bane of this once liberal, cosmopolitan city, and the Bombay Police (Amendment) Act of 2005. We have bred the draconian Dhobles wielding their hockey sticks with impunity, seen a dip in women’s safety, and observed the growing chasm between the haves and have nots, all this against the backdrop of increasingly risqué cultural fare dished out via aspiration-inspiring Bollywood. We are a confused bunch, led by thoroughly confused politicians, trying to negotiate changing sociocultural paradigms, the old and the new.

Moral policing is NOT the way to do so. For one, who determines what is moral or immoral? Who draws the hypocritical line that allows heaving bosoms in film songs, at stage shows, award functions and upmarket venues, and disallows it in dance bars? More importantly, does moral policing extend only to sexuality, and that too, female sexuality—and not to those who allow illegal, substandard buildings to come up and collapse, those who rob our coffers, those who poison poor children’s mid-day meals. Clearly, morality is subjective, but I believe that, in the grander scheme of things, there are far more important ‘immoral’ issues to tackle than female modesty. Really.

Aside from the moral policing issue, I think the ban on dance bars has robbed Mumbai of two of its best characteristics—a semblance of women’s lib and socioeconomic parity. Simply put, an expensive city needs double income homes, and women here have needed to work—virtuous, gharelu ideals for daughters, sisters and wives be damned. A society with working women tends to foster education, liberation, equality, empowerment, and safety and respect. Disallowing thousands of adult women from practicing their trade, immoral though it may seem to some, has taken us back a few steps. If the government believes that bar dancing is “derogatory to the dignity of women”, well, so is treating these dancers like dependents without rights on their own bodies and choices.

And it’s not as though this ban eradicated bar dancing altogether. A ‘lucky’ few continued to dance in sleazy underground ‘orchestra’ bars, more vulnerable than ever before for plying their illegal trade. Others were compelled into prostitution, while a few have managed to make successful career changes, like the famous Sweety of Grant Road’s Topaz bar who is now a make-up artist.

What I have always loved about this city is its lack of classism and respect for the individual beyond the family, history and wealth they come from. Though Bollywood is turning dynastical with this new crop of star children, strugglers throng to the ‘city of dreams’ like they always have, and any one of them could be the next Shah Rukh or Dhirubhai. No dreams, big or small, seem unachievable—but, seemingly, watching women dance has been reserved for wealthy men, and performing live has been reserved for those few women who can land gigs at three-star venues.

The ban was clearly politically motivated, and it seems to have backfired in more ways than one. Eight years on, it is deemed unconstitutional and imprudent, without a thought for the repercussions. Not only have the dancers and bar owners suffered, but it is estimated that cash-strapped Maharashtra has lost out on Rs 24,000 crores of excise revenue and licence fees. And yet, at the time of going to press, Home Minister RR Patil is reviewing legal options, and blusters that the ban will continue despite the Supreme Court’s directive.

Instead of fighting what is sure to be a losing battle against the country’s laws, I wish he, and others in public administration, would read up on American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s significant 1943 theory on the hierarchy of needs, and apply it to governance and social construction in India—and the third world in general. Maslow classified humans’ emotional needs as Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualisation and Self-Transcendence—from the most basic, to the most advanced. In India and other developing countries, many are still deprived of the absolute basics—food and water. Safety and security—of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health and property—are a long way off for most, particularly women. Instead of seeking to control evolved concerns like culture and morality, the government should focus its limited resources on securing the basics for its citizens. In this case, its ban on ‘immoral’ dance bars has actually deprived thousands of food, and the safety of their bodies, employment, resources, family and health. Okay, forget Maslow: I wish they’d just follow our Constitution, which is rather progressive for the most part.

I welcome the relegalising of bar dancing. Like my opinion on pornography and prostitution, if the police does its primary job henceforth, one hopes that these women will be better protected than they have been in the past. If the Maharashtra government believes that dance bars fuel prostitution, it should work on better policing, not banning them altogether.

Patil has accused those who support dance bars of having “double standards”—we wouldn’t want them in our buildings or bar dancers in our families, he says. He may be right—many years ago, when a friend was dating the owner of a dance bar (during the ban, mind you), I remember teasing her about the origin of the sweat-soaked money he lavished on her. Nonetheless, an evolving society and a government with more important things to achieve must allow adults choice, and safeguard them, whatever their choices may be.

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in July 2013. It won the Laadli Award for Best Feature (2013-4).

The His-story of Sport

July 2013: The sexist sidelining of women in the Wimbledon, and sports in general, is just a slice of life.

The recently concluded Wimbledon kicked up two storms on the sexism front: BBC Radio 5 Live’s presenter John Inverdale’s comment on Marion Bartoli’s looks—or apparent lack of them, and the headlines about Andy Murray being the first Brit to win the cup in 77 years—ignoring, it would seem, Virginia Wade’s 1977 win.

I kind-of buy the arguments in defense of the first-Brit-win headlines—that headlines are about brevity (and elaborations are reserved for body copy), and that a men’s singles’ win is different from a women’s singles’ win (and even a doubles’ win, which Brit Jonathan Marry won last year). What this does not explain away is the inherent sexism of language and in sport: that male is the assumption, notice how ‘women’s’ will always be specified, headlines’ brevity requirements notwithstanding. It’s no wonder, is it, considering language has evolved with society—socioculturally, sport is akin to battle, and men have been doing it long before women were emancipated enough for this public display of strength, adrenalin, sweat and ‘masculinity’. In this light, I question Susan Sarandon’s much-publicised recent assertion that feminism is an "old-fashioned word": while the alternative ‘humanism’ she proposes is idealistic, it is a long way off as long as language and his-story are as gender-biased as the word.

More disturbing are Inverdale’s comment and his later justification. As Bartoli reached out to hug her father after her win, Inverdale mused about whether he told her when she was little that, since she isn’t (as gorgeous as blonde, tall, beautiful) Maria Sharapova, she’d have to “be scrappy and fight”. Disparaging comments about Bartoli’s looks have also flooded the Twitterverse, with hashtags such as #ShesADude, #NotAWimbledonBabe, #Whore, #Man, #Whale, #Fatty, #Slut. What?! What does the way a tennis player looks have anything to do with his or her sport?

Well, apparently, not his—no one is dissecting Andy Murray’s pasty unattractiveness or the enormous nose that dominates his face, let alone the size and quality of his privates. But it is certainly important for her. In sport and other arenas of life, the explicit dissection of the female body—hair, weight, breast size—and sexual desirability through a prevalent cultural prism of sexism is par for the course. Alongside whatever other achievements she has to her name, a woman must also attempt to fit in to predetermined ideas of beauty and sexual desirability, and be targeted for both, meeting the requirements and for failing. In the corporate world, notice how bitchy office gossips will wonder whether a (usually attractive) female colleague has slept her way to the top, undermining her feats by discounting her as a ‘slut’. As a woman in the public eye, a sportsperson (not an IPL cheerleader, mind you) is apparently responsible to please the aesthetic of all the people, all the time—and Bartoli is paying her price for failing to titillate the male gaze. She’s black-haired and muscular, not the glorious blonde legginess of Anna Kournikova or Caroline Wozniacki. Seemingly, these women fulfil “the attributes of natural athletes” that Inverdale is referring to in his equally offensive apology—as though winning the Wimbledon isn’t enough.

Dustin Hoffman understands. In a video that went viral this week, the actor tears up describing his experience playing a woman in the 1982 film Tootsie. The first time Hoffman saw himself in the mirror in full makeup as his character Dorothy Michaels, he says he was shocked that he wasn't more attractive, that this was as beautiful as he would be as a woman. This is when he had an "epiphany" and truly understood the meaning of female beauty. “Talking to my wife, I said, 'I think I am an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fulfil physically the demands that we're brought up to think women have to have in order to ask them out… There's too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.'" We are a culture brainwashed by gender-based stereotypes, where women are judged on their appearance in all arenas of life, relevant or not; and for men, looks are incidental.

What’s heartening that Inverdale’s and other misogynists’ attempts to reduce a role model for achievement, for emotional and physical strength to a base scrutiny of her body and sexual attractiveness have not been completely successful. Riding a wave of support, Bartoli has flicked away comments about her looks with dismissive dignity: "I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact." She reiterated: "Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I'm sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes." No, she’s #NotAWimbledonBabe, she’s a Wimbledon champion. And that’s all she needs to be.

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in July 2013.