A Really Dismal Delhi

We wake up one day and find the city we live in has changed. Many years ago they had promised us a “world class city”, with the dark and dangerous stuff, the lost and forgotten people, all waved out of sight to a Delhi Below. We had marveled at the vision and gone on with our lives for we had things to do. I remember the day.

I open my newspaper a couple of days ago to the news that the ASI has, after thrice earlier rejecting a tunnel road project linking NH-24 to Lodi Road, finally approved it. The tunnel would pass under Sunder nursery and Neela Gumbad, ending near the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The Commonwealth Games Village would have faster access to the stadium, so who cares about the heritage zone.

The same day, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) razes a Mughal era monument in Gurgaon to acquire land for the Delhi Metro. The same day, the Delhi govt unveils Master Plan 2021, which imagines, improbably, endless skyscrapers and pedestrian and cycle tracks. The same day, in a readers’ forum, people from Chandni Chowk trash as impractical the Delhi govt’s plan to ban cycle rickshaws from parts of the walled city.

The next day, the Residents Welfare Association of my area is given the Best Citizen Group Award for successfully demolishing a thousand jhuggis. Feeling depressed, I drive along Tito Marg to a friend’s house. Along the way, I count at least eight other cars with lone drivers. On either side of the road something is being built – HCBS? The High Capacity something something? I have no idea what and why, and I don’t care.

I refuse to go to the sprawling, 55 year old Sunder Nursery to buy plants for our office. I also cannot bear the sight of the gracious, wide, tree-lined Lodi Road. I resolve to avoid that entire area till the tunnel is completed – Dec 2009 according to the PWD website – so I can more calmly accept things as must be.

In the evening, we drive up to Patel Chowk, park the car, take the metro to Chawri Bazaar and a rickshaw to Jama Masjid. This is one thing I cannot give up. I even spiritedly propose a spin around the Chowk, for the days we can no longer do it. Our rickshaw wallah gives us a fine potted history. “This is the town hall,” he says. “This is the fountain.” “This is a machine where they put in plastic and get money.” My friend contemplates getting a bicycle to ride around in the city. I laugh till my eyes water, and he drops the idea till the Master Plan comes into effect.

In the morning, as I drive to work with chaos and honking and thousands of other cars, grey pigeons are seamless against a background of grey concrete flyovers. If they disappear, we might not even notice.

(For the tunnel road plan, see story in HT dated Feb 6, 2007: Suffering from tunnel vision? by Aruna P. Sharma. To stop dismal-makers in Delhi, leave your email on this post or email me.)

(links coming soon)

Deal with Sexual Harassment

(Had put this note together when at Breakthrough)
(And I'm still around and well, but getting over this blog, a bit)

Whether at the workplace, school, street or university, sexual harassment can cause the environment to become hostile, intimidating or offensive. Learn how to deal with it!

What is sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment is primarily an issue of power, not sex. It occurs when a person with power abuses that power and brings unwanted attention of a sexual nature into what should be a sex neutral situation.

Abuses of power in the form of sexual harassment can come from people in authority positions in formal settings, for example:

* Supervisors
* Employers
* Professors

Or, it can come from colleagues, peers, and even people who see you as a source of authority.

Harassment also occurs in an informal setting. Informal harassment is often a play on existing power structures such as gender. Gender is a source of inequality and subordination, particularly for women. Men’s whistles, remarks, and stares are an assertion of power and can feel threatening or embarrassing.

Sexual harassment differs from consensual flirting or voluntary sexual relationships because it usually is unwanted, occurs in a power relationship in which the parties are not equal, and/or contains elements of coercion and threat.

Harassment can be men against women, women against men, women against women, or men against men. It may be a repeated unwelcome behavior or an action that only occurs once. All are equally unacceptable forms of behavior.

In short, sexual harassment is coerced, unethical and unwanted, and amounts to violence.

Types of sexual harassment

Physical

Things such as unwanted touching, fondling, patting, hugging, pinching or kissing.

Verbal

Questions and comments about a person's sexual behavior, sexually oriented jokes, comments about a person's body, conversations filled with sexual innuendo and double meanings.

Non-verbal

Displaying sexually suggestive pictures or objects, ogling in a sexually demeaning manner, gesturing and making lewd motions with one's body.

What to do if you are being sexually harassed
(Adapted from Sexual Harassment: Things You Should Know)

1. Do the unexpected. Name the behavior. Whatever he's just done, say it, and be specific. For example: Why did you brush up against by breast?
2. Hold the harasser accountable for his actions. Don't make excuses for him; don't pretend it didn't really happen. Take charge of the encounter and let people know what he did. Privacy protects harassers, but visibility undermines them.
3. Make honest, direct statements. Speak the truth (no threats, no insults, no obscenities, no appeasing verbal fluff and padding). Be serious, straightforward, and blunt.
4. Demand the harassment stop.
5. Make it clear that all women have the right to be free from sexual harassment. Objecting to harassment is a matter of principle.
6. Stick to your own agenda. Don't respond to the harasser's excuses or diversionary tactics.
7. His behavior is the issue. Say what you have to say, and repeat it if he persists.
8. Reinforce your statements with strong, self-respecting body language: eye contact, head up, shoulders back, a strong, serious stance. Don't smile. Timid, submissive body language will undermine your message.
9. Respond at the appropriate level. Use a combined verbal and physical response to physical harassment.
10. End the interaction on your own terms, with a strong closing statement, "You heard me. Stop harassing women."

When harassment occurs within an organizational setup, such as a school or company, there may be an existing sexual harassment policy and a process for handling complaints. Here documentation is the keyword. You should:

1. Photograph or keep copies of any offensive material.
2. Keep a journal with detailed information on instances of sexual harassment. Note the dates, conversations, frequency of offensive encounters, etc.
3. Tell other people, including personal friends and co-workers if possible.

You may also be able to access outside legal remedies. Get in touch with a lawyer to seek detailed advice.

What to do if you have been sexually harassed

* Don’t be silent. Talk to people about your experience. Help create a social climate where sexual harassment is not tolerated.
* Educate yourself and others. Discuss what can be done if you are being sexually harassed. Discuss how myths, such as women who dress provocatively are asking to be harassed, are dangerous and perpetuate violence.
* Offer support to others when sexual harassment occurs.
* Remember: harassment is shameful for the harasser, and not for you.

Young bride to her husband

If I were a humming bird,
I would fly to your window without
bada sahib seeing me, nibble
your ear, nuzzle your neck, and fly
back.

Night visions

Cat follows.
The cat could be familliar.
Its white fur, dark patched, gleams near the shrubbery.
"Frodo!" I breathe.
But the gait is all wrong.
This cat backpedals into darkness.
Its eyes are different too.

Airplane

Are we different people free floating thousands of feet above the ground? Everything that holds us down left behind, left down there, and us soaring with happiness, with the lightness of unbeing.

Walking, No Talking

Walking is for me a private activity. Something to be carried out in the dim environs of Jangpura parks, with not very many like minded people about. Which is why I was rather taken aback when tonight two impudent young men on a motorbike entered this zone of contemplative peace. Last evening, at the Lodi Gardens, was disturbing in another way. I usually prefer to let my feet loose and meander all over the extensive gardens, but yesterday decided to take the fixed path many trod every day.

And felt, strangely, exposed. As though the presence of the hundreds (determined or joyful or sullen or indifferent) walking by and alongside put me in the limelight. The first few metres were, yes, self conscious. Then the rhythm of my walking and the rhythm of my thoughts took over and I was walking as freely, uncaringly and eccentrically as ever in that private space jotted by my feet.

sympathies all around

Finished reading a week back - and recommending, THE CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen.

The book is a tour de force, "a vivid reading experience of tremendous texture and dimension, a masterwork of observed detail. It's not always likable, but it's real."

Most astounding is the ability of Franzen to get into the skin of each character, in turn, and show the reader their world (including that of a 75 year old with Parkinson's and dementia) and leave no room as to the validity of their world view; and then get into the skin of the next character and make the earlier character seem villainous, unbalanced, or quite mad. Alternately, to show them up in all their confusion and weaknesses when in their skin and when outside, as specimens of normalcy and amiability.

In other words, he accomplishes the feat of creating characters as complex as human beings really are.

Definitions from Uncyclopedia -

- are growing funnier by the minute as people refine and add to this "encyclopedia of misinformation, nonsense and utter lies."

Such as:

"Polyamory is the love of tending and raising flocks of parrots as pets. Many polyamorists are therefore sea pirates."

first fight

Is it unnatural to be pleased when you have your first fight with a lover?

I think of it as a relationship strengthening exercise. It's this that teaches you what strengths and weaknesses both people bring in to solving issues, and what in turn you can do the next time to ensure the going is not so rough. (Of course, the difficult part sometimes is remembering this the next time!)

When did you last try to live a legend?

At Baijnath, legend has it that nine men can lift the large smooth rounded stone lying innocuously in a dusty arena outside the temple complex - kewal ek anguli lagaake (by using just a finger each). I challenged the men - my driver and the two from Haldwani who had found me at the riverbank and offered me fish food to throw to the rohu - to prove it true. They seemed eager to defend their masculinity, and soon we were calling out to other men passing by to join in the test. Here are the seven who formed the backbone of the team. Since the stone would not budge, they beckoned a rather senior citizen and a 14 year old gawper sitting on the railing. Women, they were firm, could not be part of the fun, since the legend decreed only men.

No luck in the first attempt, but the second time round our valiant nine, hooking one finger each under the stone, had lifted it up to their shoulders.

Over the Weekend -

- was at Kausani (here is a dreamy blog post on this hill station, which for the author has been "a fixation since I read about it in my Hindi textbook in school"). Working holiday, travelling to write, turned out to be quite marvellous, and not the least because S was a wonderful travel companion. Filled with curiosity and wonder and adventure, lots of bonhomous wise talk, and a love for walking.

And why is it that every time I return from a holiday, I find the carefully worked out schedule in my head has fallen by the hillside?

And I am all expansive.

In My Midriff

He had done all those
things
one would want to do in secret
with a language.
Like scratching his own back.

(from Riding Two Horses)

Sivakami Velliangiri has just released her chapbook In My Midriff (downloadable here from Lily Press). Her poems are by turns deceptively tranquil, eerie, and blazing with feeling. Such as

and thunder softer than the cracking
of a neck at an unusual hour.

(from Napoleon was the First, Hitler was the Second, So Are You the Third Antichrist?)

The striking imagery takes off from folk tales and modern tales, and can be often feminist (as in "To My Alma Mater") or very sexy (as in "Naughtiest Girl in School 1970").

BNP wishlist

Blank Noise Project is doing some amazing work. It has turned street sexual harassment into a subject of street performance, which can be quite a compelling method for influencing public attitudes.

I have my stories of harassment. There is this that happened two years ago (please try to be trigger-happy in the Jasmeen way, not mine!) - remembered more by being recorded on the blog. But what about that durga puja long ago, when I was shoved by one man, slapped across the butt by another, trying to make my way to another pandal with mum and brother and maid through thousands of people all out on the streets of Ranchi? Why does that memory stay somewhere at the top of all of my childhood memories?

Fortunately, today I've come quite far from the shame so many women are taught to carry around our bodies. I can choose to ignore innocuous looks and stares. If there's a stare I don't want, I can stare it down, or if that does not work - heckle it. There is a sense of power, of being able to do something, which means I can brush off these incidents from my mind more easily.

One of the first times I felt empowered this way was while walking down a crowded Brigade Road with my parents in 2003. A man pinched me and started walking away. Totally unrehearsed, I turned and grabbed his collar. Just a few minutes later - yes, fair Bangalore has its fair share of roadside romeos who all seem to be on this road - there came along another guy. I communicated some pretty unflattering things to him too. But what I remember most is being drunk on the knowledge, for hours after, that I had done something. The exhilaration heightened since this had happened in front of my parents, who had possibly never before seen - whom I had possibly never before allowed to see - me as a sexual being - being harassed, giving it back.

Yes, I celebrate my outrage. Let me say this again - I am fortunate in this. Still fear, shame, guilt, trauma remain a reality for so many women - across classes, regions, ages, education levels. Sexual harassment remains normal for so many men - ditto. Which is why the BNP initiative is so important.

Yet, I wish some things were different:

1. That we did not use Section 354 in the flyer, with its conservative moral tone and language.
2. Or the equally archaic term, "eve teasing". Even though, it is true, this is the term most laypersons recognise immediately.
3. That we did not list "leching" at someone as harassment. After all, we all lech. I lech. What is good leching? What is bad leching? What if someone wants to be leched? Can't you, when someone looks, "lech" back or (in many spaces) publicly object and get a public reaction/sympathy?

Some of BNP's strategies are fun. Can you imagine a row of women standing at a street corner, lolling or nervously purposeful, and a "stranger" tries to harass? Can you imagine the full force of a score or more eyes turning to him, boring into him, probing him? Wow. Kudos for imagining this and performing this, all of you at BNP.

Silly Photo

Okay, so I know my tree climbing (see right) and feet photos already, according to some, qualify for this, but every tag deserves a fresh attempt. So here it is: me at holi this year. After having prepared bhang ki thandai for the first time (though, honest, did not drink since its mother drug had handed me a not-so-pleasant time a few months ago) and, of course, many colours.

Also: tagging Em, Gautam, and Rakesh.

chhutiiiii

Having just finished a long, really long translation assignment, I sat down to journal. Today I deserve a break. Pizza delivery chains and other assorted stories for the editor can be written tomorrow. But surprise, I found my pen resisting any structured sentence or thought. I wrote no-sense, doodles, childlike sunfilled daubed up words. Happily. Make sense of this, the pen laughed. Don't you have enough sense in your life already? What will you do with so much of it? Just let go sometimes of sense, elegance, structure and your hair will grow much wilder, bushier and blacker. You'll see.

chia did it

all black clothes
perpetually blessed

with white fur

Capacity

The inaugural issue of DesiLit magazine is just out. It features my poem "Capacity". Read here.

Chia at the Jangpura parks

If you ever come across this gorgeous one and a half year old at the Jangpura parks, do spare a few minutes (or more) and join her in her gambols.

What is ggkiss?

A throaty, monster kiss. The kind you want to nuzzle down your lover's neck and hair. In the middle of the workday, with the dog -- to your left -- blissfully asleep on sheets and pillow in disarray.

Notes on the new house

D and I did up the house today, with prints, posters, paintings and assorted masks. The house is already so much more ours. A charasi Buddha A. and I had always tussled over (he insisting on putting up egg-yolk-whatsits his mommy had painted - apologies, aunty!! - if I ever mentioned this lovely old thing) serenely sits over the mantelpiece. This, now, is the shelf below the kitchen pass-through window which gives me kicks no end. The house even has - and this is what sold it to us - a foldup drinks bar! And it is open and spacious and has a third room S and I use as our writing space. So welcome aboard to this part of the journey, friends and comrades.