Why So Horny, Mr Hunt?

June 2015: The real reason why scientist Tim Hunt—and other chauvinists—want women out of their headspaces.

You’ve probably heard Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt’s recent call for gender-segregated labs, calling on his “trouble with girls”—“You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.” Oh wow!

Though what he’s saying has such a familiar ring, it’s unusual to hear something like coming from a man of his intelligence. I mean, smart people shouldn’t carry such dogma; or should at least be smart enough not to air their opinions, and certainly not to a collection of women scientists and journalists! And the catch-all umbrella of ‘humour’ and ‘joke’—har-har, it would be funny if it didn’t just expose the attitudes that result in the glass ceiling and women’s low numbers in the workforce, particularly in the science fields that are seen as male domains.

There’s gender segregation in most religions, in mosques and convent schools, and Aligarh Muslim University banned women from accessing a library last year. And their premises are all the same.

Women distract men. At the sight of women, able-bodied men’s bodies flood with hormones and they start thinking from the wrong head, anathema for intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Of course, it assumes a sexual-romantic interest is all that can exist between people of opposite genders, as though we’re magnetised towards to the opposite gender via our reproductive organs in the manner of animals on heat, led solely by them. It also stems from heteronormality—what about same-sex relationships and sex? And what’s wrong with sex anyway?!

Of course, this leaves the onus of men’s hormones on the woman, as though men are blubbering tantrumatic toddlers unable to control their bodies and desires. And this is unfair and dangerous to women—the belief that our mere existence inconveniences the 'primary' sex is the basis of the don’t-wear-short-clothes don’t-go-out-at-night serves-her-right attitude about sexual violence that we fight so hard against. The burka and the ghoonghat are for women’s own safety, you see?

And this assumption of female emotional weakness—really?! In fact, if anything, the principle that lays the responsibility of men’s desires on women (including Mr Hunt’s distracting romantic entanglements with female colleagues) takes the men to be the emotionally weaker sex.

Gender binaries in all cultures that exist today are based on historical mores; they come from a world where physical power was crucial and it determined the relative importance and roles of both genders. We have now evolved into a knowledge economy were brawn only goes so far and equal rights have only grown—we must now rethink the basis of gender and other prejudices.

So no. First, I’m sure most men would like to stop being thought of as weaklings who are tyrannised by their own desires, more balls than brains. Your “trouble with girls”, Mr Hunt, is the trouble with you—your inability to concentrate, your inability to prevent love-shuv and lust from “disrupting” your work and scientific thought. Ditto with the ‘I saw what she was wearing and I couldn’t help myself’ argument for sexual violence—c’mon, give yourselves some credit, why don’t you?

Once that’s done, once men are attributed with (and attribute themselves with) agency and responsibility for their thoughts and actions, everything else falls into place. There’ll be no need to protect them against women’s wily charms; and they’ll be no need to protect women (or for women to protect themselves) against the physical power of those enslaved by their hormones. It’s time for men to be considered (and consider themselves) adults.

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An edited version of this article appeared on iDiva in June 2015.

Bright Lights & Trans Rights

June 2015: Great things are happening in the LGBTIQ world. I take a look.

As America (and the world) watched transfixed as transgender Bruce Jenner debuted as Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair, Mumbai Mirror had it’s own transsexual cover girl last Friday. Bidhan Barua, whose case it had been following since 2012, was now revealed as a happily married Swati, post her sex change. Meanwhile, India got its first transgender college principal—Manabi Banerjee will head the Krishnagar Women's College in West Bengal.

These stories are a big win in a world where heterosexual men and women in natural gender roles is the only idea of ‘normal’. It’s not. Even though transgender is not equal to transsexual is not equal to gay (you can choose from around 60 gender options on Facebook and show interest in male, female or both; read a full list of gender definitions here), these LGBTIQ (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/intersex/questioning) issues are against the norm.

I face ‘confirmation bias’ through my friends, online and off, where everyone is supporting these individuals and calling out their bravery, celebrating these alternative choices that inspire others to live life as their 'authentic' selves. Clearly, this supportive environment is not the standard in a heteronormative world. I have written about the gay struggle; a transgender person was my closest friend when I was in my late teens and a post-op transsexual worked under me in a magazine I used to edit.

All these people have described to me how absolutely traumatic swimming upstream had been for them, particularly where they didn’t know about alternate sexualities let alone having the option to openly identify as such. From feeling isolated and alone to dealing with strife in the family and at work, it’s not an easy journey. In fact, I didn’t know about my colleague’s transformation until someone let me into the slew of gossip that had flowed between one media house and the next, from where she had worked to where he was working.

It may seem that Indian laws are progressive, with the Supreme Court declaring the transgender community a legal third gender last year. Truth is, that was a long-overdue acknowledgement of the historical socioreligious Hijra community, not stemming from progressive or liberal thinking. Judiciary and culture continues to be set against the assimilation of LGBTIQs in to the mainstream. This mainstream is where most would like to live, instead of having to congeal in to a community on the fringes, brought together by their inability to find a place in society’s rigid gender norms.

When father-of-six Bruce embraced her new identity as Caitlyn in full glare of the media, the former Olympian, former stepfather to the Kardashian sisters and reality TV star on Keeping Up with the Kardashians told millions about her struggle with gender dysphoria, it brought the LGBTIQ conversation out into the open. For broadminded liberals, her story only reinforces what we already knew—that those who identify as LGBTIQs are people, no more, no less, with more than their fair share of emotional, societal and religious strife.  For others, it shows the inner workings of a lifestyle they had never or only ever heard of, and, hopefully, contributes to their empathy.

Many years ago, my very liberal aunt had said that she would cry if her children had alternate sexualities—“Not for shame or society,” she said, before I could even protest, “but for them. Life is just so much harder as an LGBT person.” For a child somewhere, stories like Jenner’s, Barua’s and Banerjee’s could serve to quell the bitter loneliness and confusion, and contribute to a home and social environment of love and acceptance—and put an end to horrific things like corrective rapes.

Congratulations and best of luck, Caitlyn, Swati and Manabi. You’ve done us proud.

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An edited version of this article appeared on iDiva in June 2015.

On Veganism

May 2015: Why I think it is the only food and lifestyle philosophy that aligns with my value systems.

So shall we get the calls of “hypocrite” out of the way?

I am not a vegan (eats and uses only plant matter). I’ve spent my adult life oscillating between being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (vegetarian, plus dairy and eggs), pescetarian (lacto-ovo-vegetarian, plus seafood) and omnivore (eats both plant- and animal-origin food). (I’m calling out the way I’ve used these terms, as there are so many types and definitions: eg, in Indian Hindus, ‘pure veg’ usually means lacto-vegetarian.)

Truth is, veganism is the only food and lifestyle philosophy that aligns to my belief systems; and food is the only aspect of my life in which I am a blatant hypocrite, where my actions don’t match my words. With a personality that’s “guilt-prone” (my therapist’s words, not mine), it bothers me no end that I am not even a committed vegetarian; niggling guilt and disappointment tinge the pleasure of a good steak. I cannot believe my lack of will power, that my tongue and hedonism (and laziness) win in a battle against my beliefs.

So what are the beliefs that point me straight to a vegan lifestyle?

Anthropocentricism

Let’s consider, first, the mediocrity principle, the opposite of anthropocentricism. What is the place of humanity in The Grander Scheme of Things? We are, for all our self-aggrandisement, no more than one species on earth, and one of millions in the universe. If we are no more or less than the animals who co-inhabit earth with us, we don’t—shouldn’t—have rights over them.

Let’s say one believes the opposite, that humans are the most significant species on the planet, the very pinnacle of evolution, the Masters of the Earth. One could take an anthropocentric belief system to mean that we are the rightful owners of everything that lives—or see that it grants us agency, great power… and great responsibility. In a situation where we can control the fates of other species, how should we treat them? If you had a kingdom, what kind of monarch would you be?

Animal Ethics

It is not anthropomorphism to suppose that farm animals feel pain, loneliness, terror, fear; and also love, belonging, attachment, joie de vivre—no less than pets, no less than us.

I used to be afraid of the dark. Someone once asked me whether it was a fear of what was in front of me or what was behind. I thought about it—what’s behind, I said. “That means you’re afraid of what you don’t know.” (True!) When it comes to animal carcasses on my plate and their hides in my closet (almost zero) however, I am afraid to know. I can’t bear to see videos of animals in slaughterhouses and egg farms, and promptly choose the ‘I don’t want to see this’ option on Facebook when one of my many animal-loving friends posts something gruesome and graphic.

But these things are true. The horrific lives and deaths of animals in the meat and dairy industries are well documented. I was the child who’d cry outside meat shops (my parents didn’t permit me to give up non-veg as a child, 'coz protein), and I think Bakri Eid and other animal sacrifice is barbaric. How can I call myself an animal lover, be the person who does all this animal rescue (including that of a male calf—the vet explained that he was probably abandoned by a dairy farmer), believe in non-violence and animal rights, and still give my economic vote to the meat industry?! Not to mention the indirect deaths—the bycatch, the 1000s of species going extinct as the rainforests are destroyed to graze cattle, the male calves and chicks.

I’m not religious and identify as apathetic agnostic. The one guiding force in my life is to be ‘good’ based on my own moral compass—one could call it karma or tie it to the Christian good/evil binary or simplify it to the saying ‘What goes around, comes around’. I do not want to be the perpetrator of pain; I want to be compassionate, kind, gentle and without carnage on my conscience.

The question I’m not sure I have an answer for is whether human beings would let animals even survive if we could not use them, if they didn’t serve our purposes.

Need, Not Greed

Even though I have more of a stomach for human suffering than I do for animal suffering, the idea that the greed to eat meat deprives thousands of food they need, contributing to world hunger and famine, is unpalatable. “If we eat the plants we grow instead of feeding them to animals, the world's food shortage will disappear virtually overnight. Remember that 100 acres of land will produce enough beef for 20 people but enough wheat to feed 240 people,” says one article I read.

Environmental Conservation

Let’s quell counterarguments of agriculture’s environmental impact and inherent cruelty with common sense and the proven fact that meat and dairy farming does much more damage—global warming, water shortage, deforestation, famine (the figures are readily available online).

While veganism is a significant counterculture movement, in India I notice far more children of vegetarian families eating non-vegetarian food, owing to loosening religious beliefs and improved spending power, than the reverse. More than enough people are choosing to override the forest and kill wildlife for their horns, penises and skins. We leave a carbon footprint by merely breathing and each one of us is, literally, one among seven billion, so it is easy to dismiss individual contribution to the conservation effort—but hey, why does one bother doing anything at all, right?

Also, I’ve retained this interesting idea that I once read in a quotable quote (god, I’ve looked high and low for that quote since)! The conservation of nature is not for nature, really, it is self-preservation; nature will go on much after the human race has gone and made itself extinct. If we are, indeed, the smartest, bestest creatures that have ever lived, having children to carry forward our oh-so-important bloodlines and planning for our reincarnations, wouldn’t we want to, like, not go extinct? Shouldn’t we also be smart enough to know of and make those choices?

Health

Though advocates of non-vegetarianism believe the jury is still out on this one, there is ample evidence that vegetarianism is better for your body than meat eating. (From my reading of much research on the subject, I think the question that remains is: with or without milk and eggs?) From Ayurveda to Dr Dean Ornish’s ideas on heart health, researches on cancer, weight loss, ageing and toxicity, and the idea that human bodies were designed to be herbivorous—I’m fairly convinced. My health is important to me. From a personal point of view, of course, but also from a socioeconomic/consumerism/ecology point of view—an unhealthy body taxes available resources and healthcare.

Why am I still an omnivore? Taste: after a few days of being lacto-ovo-vegetarian, I crave the taste of non-veg food. And bacon. Hedonism: pleasure. Tasty new foods, exploring cultures through their foods when travelling, yum… But, mostly, laziness. As a foodie living in the most vegetarian-friendly country in the world, it’s not like I’ve made the most effort to find or cook the best vegetarian meals, for an apples-to-apples comparison (apples-to-chicken comparison, in this case). Neither have I bothered to explore the market of faux meats. And part of the reason I eat meat abroad is ease—though, if my in-laws, who are ‘pure veg’ for religious reasons, can travel the world with careful planning, I should be able to do the same for my beliefs.

Veganism embodies the values I claim to stand by, and, right now, I am my own "inferior other" (as described in this wonderful piece ‘Vegetarianism and the Idea of Untouchability’). I believe transition is a slow process, and I’m going to make a serious start.

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This column appeared on 3QD in May 2015.

Standing Up for Sunny Leone

May 2015: Why Sunny Leone is a cultural icon to reckon with.

I arrive at her site to be greeted by “WARNING! ADULTS ONLY! This Site Contains Sexually Oriented Material”, followed by a detailed disclaimer spanning legality, culture and morality. Below, it says, “If minors have access to your computer, please restrain their access to sexually explicit material by using…”, with links to parental control products. I then proceed to get really turned on. Boy, is Sunny Leone hot!

Although I’ve never watched any of her movies or TV appearances (saving for these *ahem* clips), she has always fascinated me as a sociocultural phenomenon: an Indian-origin American porn star doing increasingly mainstream roles in the Indian film industry. She exists at the nucleus and intersection of several paradoxes—between her Sikh upbringing and career in the adult film industry in the US; feminism, choice and acceptance; her past and her present; legality; post- and multiculturalism; the idea of marriage; the internet and ‘mainstream’; Bollywood’s and audiences’ standards of morality; etc. (All this is for a much longer piece, perhaps.)

These politics that coexist in Leone’s life are brought to the fore by the PIL filed by a Mumbai Auntie on behalf of a fringe Hindu organisation on the 15th of May. She is accused of creating “grossly indecent” material and publishing it on the internet. This is going to be interesting because, hey, the adult film industry IS legal in the States, where all of her porn was created and published, but she faces up to five years in jail if she is convicted under Indian laws. She is also charged under the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. This case pertains to her porn-star past, not to her current mainstream career.

It is safe to say that what comprises “grossly indecent” content is subjective: Fair & Lovely ads, with their deep-seated cultural ramifications are “grossly indecent” to me. What comprises the “Indecent Representation of Women” is also subjective—many Indian movies reinforce the good/bad girl binary, bring female sexuality into bedrooms via item numbers, and badly fail the Bedchel Test. But we live and let live with our (largely unenforced) U/UA/A certifications, in the belief children should be protected and that adults are to be treated as such.

Ditto with porn.

Porn is illegal in India, but the complainant, Anjali Palan has her head buried deep in the sand if Leone’s content is the only—or worst—of the pornographic content she’s found on the internet. Studies have shown that a majority of digital immigrant Indian men first go online for porn, and Sunny Leone is India’s most searched person according to Google’s 2014 list of top searches. Palan is reported to have said that adult content poisons the minds of people and children, and I wonder whether she is proposing that India ban porn on the internet? Here, might I suggest that parental vigilance and controls on computers are a more effective solution than targeting the actor’s solitary site, and there be stronger enforcement of audience-appropriateness based on film certification.

There is no doubt that the organisation Palan belongs to is star-bashing to moral police and culturally persecute Leone, as well as to gain publicity.

According the Daily Mail, its spokesperson Dr Uday Dhuri admits: “Sunny Leone should be ousted from the country. We have registered several complaints but unfortunately no action is taken against her.” Palan too seems to be a bit confused. “This actor is coming here and displaying vulgarity. Bollywood films could earlier be watched with families. Today we cannot see them with our families,” she told reporters, yet her complaint has nothing to do with films you could (or should!) watch with family.

Leone is a strong feminist force, a woman forging her own path and not bowing to stereotypes, and I wish her all the best in battle. At the time of submitting this article, her latest post on Facebook is a quote by R Hunter accompanying a picture of her and husband Daniel: “Sometimes we live no particular way but our own”. Take that!

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An edited version of this article appeared on iDiva in May 2015.

Backchatting to Men in Power

May 2015: What to do when protectors become perpetrators?

They say there’s something about men in uniform, and for some women it’s even a ‘thing’. Sure, they look dapper but, beyond that, they exude a sense of protection and security arising from the power vested in them by the government. 'An Officer and a Gentleman’—or so one is conditioned to believe.

And then they, or some of them, do this—harass the very women who turn to them for protection. Within a month of three Mumbai Police cops being arrested for the gang rape of a model, a rape survivor has accused the cop investigating her case of stalking and propositioning her; meanwhile the jawan who a UK national turned to for help against a harasser aboard the Amritsar-Delhi Shaheed Express started harassing her in turn.

This is worse than your regular run-of-the-mill Stranger Danger. Unlike with strangers, we approach upholders of the law with our guards down and at our most vulnerable, seeking and deferring to their authority. It is a skewed power dynamic, and one that can prove to be fertile ground for all sorts of exploitation, from the economic to the sexual. When it is used for such, it undermines and sullies the reputations of those in the law enforcement agencies who actually do great work. It destabilises the trust citizens are encouraged to repose in the government, and our desire to obey those who hold its authority.

There is no genius advice to offer those who abuse their power: stop. Gender sensitivity and pride in the uniform must percolate down the ranks of our unwieldy police force; those found misusing their authority should be punished appropriately; etc. But here’s some advice for you, in case you find yourself at the receiving end.

A) Know Your Rights

Women can’t be called to the police station; can’t be arrested between sunset and sunrise; can register an FIR via email or registered post; can’t be in a police station or vehicle, or interrogated anywhere without the presence of a female constable. Knowledge empowers; quote our constitutional safeguards to fend off potential abuse.

B) Trust Your Instincts

I was spending a leisurely afternoon talking to a group of sadhus on the banks of the Ganga during the Kumbh Mela in 2010. A portly uniformed cop joined our conversation and left, and, shortly after, a crisply dressed man appeared down the steps. I could tell he was a UP cop from a mile away; this time though, a primal instinct reared its head.

If you sense you’re in danger, you probably are. Take a call on fight or flight.

C) Hold Your Own

Alerted to my presence by the other cop I’m sure, this one headed straight to me, introduced himself and started grilling me. Where was I from? What was I doing there? What did my family do? Belying my fears I tensed my quills—and no, he could not drop me to Dehra Dun, thank-you-very-much. With no headway to be had, he left soon, but not before curling his middle finger into my palm during our goodbye handshake (the creepy gesture for ‘Wanna fuck?’ Er, no thanks).

It was presence of mind that saved the Brit girl in the train as well. She wriggled herself onto an upper berth, and took pictures and video of the jawan while yelling, “BBC, BBC” and “You are in trouble”. Daunted, he alighted at the next station. (I recommend taking photographs of perpetrators: read here.)

D) Turn the Tables

Even though officers who misuse their power seem like a pandemic, they are not meant to be the norm. Women in all these cases reached higher authorities—the model SMSed and the rape survivor wrote a letter to Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria; the UK victim told the British High Commission when the Punjab Police wouldn’t register a case against its own. Then there’s social media that gives everyone a voice, whether or not you have access to traditional media channels—there’s nothing like public shaming for the perp or to make authorities sit up and take notice.

Let’s not take things lying down, shall we?

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An edited version of this article appeared on iDiva in May 2015.

The Aftermath

May 2015: Thoughts inspired by our experience during the Nepal Earthquake.

My husband Sahil Mane and I were in Nepal for a much-needed 15-day vacation from Mumbai—three days in Kathmandu; three days at Universal Religion Music Festival; back to Kathmandu for our friends, Republica couple Cilla Khatry and Biswas Baral's wedding; then onward to Pokhara to trek and bike. On the 25th, I was getting tattooed on impulse at the Nepal Tattoo Convention at Hotel Yak and Yeti when the earthquake struck. We were, fortunately, prepared for the outdoor festival that was the second leg of our trip: our friends and us had tents, food and woollens packed and ready to go. After retrieving our bags from our hotels in Thamel, we pitched tents in the lawn of the Social Welfare Council, received a call from the Indian Embassy at 4 AM saying our names had been registered for evacuation (Sahil's parents had sent them an email as instructed on TV), battled the chaos at the airport, and got evacuated by 6 PM on the 26th. After being hosted by the government in New Delhi that night, our group flew to Goa instead of home, not quite ready to deal with our daily lives. (Read detailed accounts of our experience here and here.) 

Government & Governance

I don't know about you, but we in India are quick to criticise the government, social media giving outlet to all our niggles, big and small. So I must take this opportunity to praise and thank. Officials from the Embassy responded to my mother-in-law's email and called (they've even called since to confirm we've reached). At the airport, Army, Air Force and Embassy officials worked tirelessly with their Nepalese counterparts to get us out. Representatives from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Maharashtra Government waited to receive us at the Delhi airport: they fed us, hosted us for the night and dropped us back to the airport in the morning. 

Contrary to a comment I received, this wasn't "differential treatment [owing to our] financial statuses and contacts in the government." This is how the government treated everyone, and we had used no contacts or money. The Embassy's email ID was made public, and families of/those stranded were asked to email their details to be registered for evacuation. At Maharashtra Sadan too: there were people from all sorts of financial backgrounds being hosted in the same way (including those who had never seen lifts).

I spoke to Shamsher Sherrif, a high-ranking government official who is a close friend of my parents, shortly after we arrived. India has become very good at disaster management now and has just evacuated people from Yemen, he told me. "Sometimes our boys don't sleep for days on end."

Though it's a thankless job, he admits. While they were out there helping us, we, the very citizens they were trying to help, shoved, nearly caused a stampede, didn't follow instructions, fought and argued, and nearly lynched a customs' official. Friends later told us that there had been a lathi-charge on the registration line after we left. 

Why is this attitude so prevalent in our culture? Is it a colonial hangover? Is it a distrust of the government? A lack of education? The poor and voiceless seem to feel so disempowered that displaying a primal survival instinct seems like their only chance; the elite are so entitled and status-aware that they expect special treatment. I don't envy our government servants, and I've come away with deeper gratitude and respect. (I say 'deeper' because, as a late Naval Officer's daughter, I have grown up around people driven by a desire to serve.)

Animal Sacrifice

When I returned, under the avalanche of grieved tweets and updates in support of those affected were a few I could not believe. Those, including politicians, who were saying that the country had it coming because of the animal sacrifice that is a part of its culture. What?! Really?! 

Not that I condone animal sacrifice, it makes me sick: we chanced upon it at Bhaktapur, and I cannot bear to see images of the Gadhimai festival. But rather than a 'serves you right' (c'mon, not now!), I say: clearly it does not work, does not serve its protective function. So perhaps now's the time to stop. 

Survivor's Guilt

As people in the media, easily accessible to lots of journalist friends, our little adventure has been covered all over—print, radio, TV. But here's the thing—that's all it was, an adventure, a story of a lost bag and incomplete tattoo to tell at parties for years to come. 

The awareness of how fortunate we've been started dawning once the adrenaline wore off, that first day in Goa. So fortunate in so many ways—that we survived with nary a scratch, of course, but we were also unexpectedly prepared and were evacuated so soon after. We could just get up and go home. 

The mind takes its time to process new plans born unexpectedly, and it's surreal, being here in this hot, familiar beach town instead of the beautiful Himalayas. Our plans have been disrupted for 10 days; for some of you, life will never be the same. If we're still starting at loud sounds and dreaming of earthquakes, what must your nightmares be?

We're sorry, and hold a great sadness for the devastated country, people and architectural heritage that we have come to love deeply. May the force be with you. 

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An edited version of this article appeared in Republica Nepal in May 2015.

What Were We Doing During the Nepal Earthquake?

May 2015: Well, I was getting a tattoo.

Sahil and I were in Nepal for a 15 day holiday: three days in Kathmandu, three days at Universal Religion Music Festival, back to Kathmandu for a friend Cilla's wedding, and then further to Pokhara to trek and bike. Though we were travelling by ourselves, we synced plans with Prabhat and Arti, Poorti and Payal, friends from India who were also there for the festival. 

The only thing good about the festival being postponed from Friday the 24th to Saturday the 25th was being able to visit the Nepal Tattoo Convention, and we went only to see it. Except I fell in love with a particular artist's work and decided to get inked the next morning, the 25th, and leave for the festival a couple of hours later than planned. 

This is how we found ourselves—Fabrice one-third through my tattoo, Sahil sitting opposite me—when the earthquake struck at noon. We were at the far end of the hall far from an exit, but were near a column and far from the giant swaying chandeliers. We stayed under a table for a few minutes, and as soon as the shaking abated a little we fled—through the hall littered with broken stalls, under cracked doorways, down an unsteady staircase, with hoards of screaming people. A few jumped from the first floor, one was pushed out by the tide, but we all gathered relatively okay in the garden of Yak and Yeti Hotel to... Well, no one really knew what to do or where to go next. It didn't help that foreigners far outnumbered locals here. 

Sahil's mum was able to get through on our phone before network disappeared, so were our friends still at the hotel. Spotty information came through relatives abroad, things they were hearing on their news channels; rumours spread fast and furious; Chinese Whispers were doing the rounds. Thamel, the tourist hub where everyone at the convention was staying (as were we), a congested maze of narrow streets and tightly packed buildings, had been razed to the ground in the second earthquake, we heard. Nonetheless, a couple of hours later, we decided to venture there, to look for our friends and get our packed bags. 

In a sense, we couldn't have been better 'prepared'. Waiting packed at our hotel in relatively unscathed Thamel, were our bags ready for the outdoor festival, food and tents, and the staff kindly let us in to retrieve them. The six of us now left Thamel for clearer ground, and watched the chaos on the roads... Paramedics, police and army personnel were everywhere. People were crying and bleeding, sirens were wailing, dogs were barking. And it was getting cold (it has been a freakishly cold summer in Nepal this year). We found ourselves an open lawn and set up camp, with enough food and woollies to share with those less prepared. We talked to people, made friends, shared stories—nothing like tragedy to bring people closer together. The tremors came on and off, and then there were those in our heads—on stable ground now, all of us are still having dreams of earthquakes and tremors, obvious signs of the trauma just surfacing from under the adrenalin.

Sahil's parents had been in touch with the Indian Embassy via email (the phones were constantly engaged), and at 4 AM, shortly after we had been able to fall asleep, we got a call from someone at the Embassy—our names had been registered for evacuation, these were the numbers to call. 

The airport was packed, the Indian line snaking down the driveway. And in the domestic terminal that was dedicated to Indian evacuations, chaos would be an understatement. We can't praise the Indian Army and Air Force enough, but there are no words to describe our citizens' impatience, disrespect for authority and me-first attitude. The customs' officer distributing the departure forms was nearly lynched, and all of us (officials, wannabe passengers, et al) were at serious risk of dying in a stampede. 

We boarded our rescue plane on the evening of the 26th, bidding a sad farewell to and aching for beautiful Nepal, its lovely people and the greatness that was Kathmandu. On the way, Prabhat and Arti, Sahil and I decided not to return to Pune and Mumbai respectively, but to recuperate in our home in Goa. 

In Delhi, we were greeted by a representative of the Ministry of Home Affairs, who directed us to someone from the Maharashtra government. We were hosted at Maharashtra Sadan, and taken to the airport for our flight this morning. (Wow, I must say!)

Those who caught the first busses to the festival are still stranded at the venue outside Kathmandu, we hear on Facebook; Cilla's wedding has been postponed; my tattoo is done-enough to pass as complete (until we meet again, Fabrice). Oh Nepal!

It feels surreal, the froth-capped waves replacing the snow-capped mountains so soon after the fright and the adventure that we have had. As we talk over lunch at this beach shack, there are pensive pauses as each of us considers that there are those not as lucky as we have been.

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An edited version of this article appeared in Mumbai Mirror in May 2015. Read detailed accounts of our experience here and here.

As far as the incomplete tattoo went… Although my tattoo looked complete, it was only a third done. And although many recommended I left it as it was—in memory and because it was beautiful anyway!—I was eager to finish it.

I saw what had happened as symbolic of the things one sets out to do, in life, in general—shit gets in the way, but you still finish anyway, even if in a different, updated manner than first intended. So, I would wake up with vivid dreams of finishing the tattoo, and write impassioned messages to Fabrice.

Problem is, he lives in Germany. After much back and forth, we'd planned to meet at a convention in Delhi on December 3rd 2016... everything was done, his tickets and mine were booked. Then my grandfather passed away on the 1st, and our best-laid plans were waylaid. And we hadn't resumed our convo—2017 was chaos, for him and me.

In early December, scrolling on Facebook past midnight, I saw Fabrice was back in Delhi (where I was too, undercover). Excited, I wrote to him. In a great stroke of luck, my subject had somewhere to be in the morn and Fabrice’s appointment was cancelled.

So this chapter from Nepal closed two and a half years after it started. (Plus another impulse piece, for good measure!)

The Changing Idea of Knowledge

February 2015: Thoughts on the breath and depth of knowledge in the information age.

Last year, I finally completed my Master's in Literature. I'd started way back in 2006 but, midway, I became the editor of a magazine, and I never found the time to take my second-year exams. Not that I had much time when the exams dawned in April, my last chance to retain my (great) first-year score. Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this but, considering I read the syllabus four days before they started, I did an MA-by-Wiki and by watching the movies made on the books I should have read.

Finish I did, and fabulously. And, while part of me is proud of my genius and is jumping for joy at having worked the system, this has also been bothering the jigyasu* in me no end. While I recognise awareness is not held in degrees or determined by exams, I wonder what knowledge, general and specific, means today.

GK: Who's To Say?

It brings me to a nugget of an idea that has stayed with me for years from, of all things, Bridget Jones's Diary (probably book). Bridget justifies not knowing a piece of common information by presenting a counterpoint—when there is so much information available to us, what is ‘general knowledge' anymore? I am reminded of this often: at a random get-together just the other day, two friends of mine met for the first time. X, an activist, started raging against Monsanto.

"What's Monsanto?" asked Y-the-fashion-writer.
"You don't know Monsanto?!" he replied aghast. It was a bit tense and judgemental, but the evening moved on.
Later that night, he decided to show us a video that he had recently chanced upon on YouTube. It was a homemade vid of a white girl rapping. "It's so cool," X said awestruck, "the way she's talking-singing so fast…"
"Erm, yeah, that's what rap is," said Y, "and this is not even good!"
And he said (I kid you not): "Rap?! What's that?"

In line with the criticisms of IQ tests, one must ask who determines general knowledge? What is relevant to whom? Today, when ‘do research' means ‘Google it', when we're bombarded with more information than we ever have been before, when our short-term memories are suffering from the lack of micro-moments, where does the Lowest Common Denominator of information lie? 

The Generation Gap

I'm 32, and I'm a digital immigrant who's an easy Internet (if not technology) user. I've been teaching post graduate students of mass media for seven years—when I started out, the students were three-ish years younger than me, now they're about 10.

It's been interesting to note how much more we know today about the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Kim-Kayne wedding than we do about boring ol' things like farmer suicides, electricity and education. While entertaining lifestyle news has always been a glittery lure away from ‘serious' issues, today, (instead of being relegated to P3 of your national newspaper, as it used to) in ‘trending' it tends to obliterate the less-glam issues. And there's a certain generation that gets all its news from peer interests and recommendations online…

There's also a lack of historicism that pervades this information age (gosh, I'm starting to sound old). As a New York Times piece pointed out, the realms of internet space being dedicated to Michelle Obama's "bold", "feminist", "revolutionary" headscarf-free attire in Saudi Arabia recently was a waste of our collective praise—it had been done by many female dignitaries before. But the current is too engaging to bother with the past, and other mundane things like history, research and fact…

And what is fact? Images speak louder than words, and between Photoshop and self-serving representations there's a whole lot of misinformation that's doing the rounds. I can't tell the students enough to verify all the information they get from the internet and seek out ‘authoritative' sources.

My broad observation: in the age of smartphones, it seems that the breath of our knowledge is a lot more than it was in previous generations (though it may not overlap the way it used to). We know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about very few. And you know what they say about a Jack-of-all-trades.

Living in a Bubble

Apart from the lure of the trending, social media has the potential to exacerbate our knowledge silos. Now, most people engage online with people similar to them in some way, or those they admire—all my close friends are liberal, educated, feminist, thinking people. And though I have a large online circle, these are the people I actually follow, those whose ideas I am engaging with (too much God-religion; any right-wing-ism, racism, anti-Semitism, Muslim-bashing; supporting guns; being homophobic… I'll unfriend/unfollow you straightaway).

If we made the mistake of only looking at our immediate friends' ideas, article-suggestions and knowledge as representative, we would all be living in our own respective rabbit holes, deeply disconnected from others with other types of worldviews who we encounter in daily life. (My feed is full of cute kitten videos, in case you're wondering.)

My answer to these current affairs issues is simple: read the newspaper. I read three actually, India's most popular dailies. This is a quick and easy way to keep you on a somewhat common ground, so to speak, connected with what's happening, ere you lose yourself in the worlds of 3QD (yes, first), The New Yorker and GQ, Rushdie, Buzzfeed and kitten videos, or whatever else floats your boat.

Exponentiality

While the internet enables plagiarism and cheating like never before, one of its greatest boons is the endless amount of inspiration it can provide, and the potential for seamless collaborations. Creativity grows exponentially if you let it, methinks, and having so much stimulus at ones fingertips keeps your neurons firing. It can make you lazy, if you let it, or very smart. You?

*Jigyasu: ­­­A Hindi word that means ‘a seeker of knowledge'.

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This column appeared on 3QD in February 2015.