Demolition Men

What would you term an organisation that has only men as its members (and that too ONLY men whose marriages are in various stages of disarray, some of them going through messy divorces and some on the verge of getting there), that seriously advises men not to get married as almost every potential spouse is a manipulator?
That insists that family laws in India should be amended to keep pace with the US as it is easy to get a divorce out there in just six months?

This organisation, ladies and gentlemen, is called--well, you lost the guess--Save Indian Family.
I shall say no more than direct you to this blog, written by a young girl who, it appears, doesnt belong to the feminist conclave, but is horrifically disturbed by what SIF stands for.

I got to know of the existence of a rump of this organisation in Chennai a few months back, and had not paid too much attention for I thought it was just a gripe club. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is no ordinary support group for men who gather together to exchange notes about painless divorces. Rather, they seem to have a surefire strategy to boost membership-enlist more members, even if it means wrecking perfectly normal marriages. The law of averages, I guess.

Here is how it goes: a friend ( who till then had been quite happy with his marriage but had had a few heartburns in an earlier relationship) chanced upon this group and dropped in on one of the meetings just out of curioisity in "finding out how other men coped."
He was perhaps the only married man in the group who attended their meetings after discussing about the forum with his wife. There seemed to be no misunderstanding, at that moment.
The motley SIF, Chennai, comprises of men, who are gainfully employed otherwise but would rather stew in the stench of the past than simply get along with life.
For a few weeks, all was well with my friend. The indoctrination must have been ever so subtle for the man never showed up any trouble and even invited his wife to attend one of the weekly meetings.
Then, whoosh, the kaleidoscope changed. The trouble started manifesting in ways in which the couple could not have foreseen. From then on, every little domestic tiff became a potential minefield, every small argument blew up in their faces and they ended up averaging two fights a day.
To be fair to them, they did talk about talking and getting things sorted. Thing is, it never happened. All those women-hater tales about scheming, manipulative wives who were after their husband's pay packets, ready to slap a dowry harassment case at the slightest pretext and throw the man's aged parents into jail--had obviously found their mark.

This is not to say my friend is as impressionable as all this sounds. In his better avatar, he was a sensitive individual, well read and articulate and with a mind of his own. But then, you are what your peer group makes of you.

To cut a long story short: when the friend brought up the issue of his own troubled marriage amongst the group, one of the ever-so-helpful leaders promptly helped him find a lawyer and asked the friend to henceforth discuss (DISCUSS!!) all domestic quarrels with the lawyer first.
So, now, the lawyer has a tab on the couple's life.
And of the marriage? I'll save my breath.

SAVING INDIAN FAMILIES? Laughing out loud!

Playing Janus

One always knew this was happening but one never knew it would be so close home. The latest figures to emerge out of a UNESCO study are scary enough to be believable: two out of every three victims of domestic violence in India is an educated woman. In fact, UNESCO even says the figures may be on the lower side because such women would rather smile and cover up rather than stand up and be counted, just because they wouldnt want to lose face among peers.
It is so much easier, you see, to pretend the monster doesnt exist rather than look it in the eye.
Am reproducing here a report on a study done a few years back that created enough ripples to eventually result in the Domestic Violence Act (emphasis mine):


April 27, 2007
In India, Domestic Violence Rises with Education
By Swapna Majumdar (Women's News)
Debates about domestic violence in India is being stirred by a study that found a woman's risk of being beaten, kicked or hit rises with her level of education.
In New Delhi, India, a brilliant doctor tries to commit suicide after her husband slaps her for contradicting him in front of his friends.
In Manila, Philippines, a former beauty queen tells police she was coerced into "entertaining other men" after being locked in a room without food for days by her husband.
In Santiago, Chile, neighbors respond to distress calls from a woman battered by her husband for refusing to let him watch a particular TV program in front of the children.
In Cairo, Egypt, the wife of a highly placed bureaucrat finally speaks up after enduring years of physical and mental abuse for being unable to bear a child.
The incidents were documented in a series of studies carried out by the Washington-based International Center for Research on Women in collaboration with independent Indian researchers. The cross-cultural study looked at the problem of domestic abuse in India, Egypt, Chile and the Philippines and found that violence against women was prevalent across regions, communities and classes.
While the findings are not new, the study has incubated a new round of debate about the cultural underpinnings to domestic violence, especially in India, where the study found a woman's risk of being beaten, kicked or hit rose along with her level of education.
In the aftermath of the report, advocates are anxious that the data not be used to retard the push for women's education. That effort was given new urgency this week with the release of a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, finding that girls in many countries continue to face "sharp discrimination in access to schooling." The report also finds that girls in India had just a little better than three-quarters the chance of boys to receive a primary-school education.
"Interpretation of this data needs to be done very sensitively," warned Preet Rustagi, a junior fellow at the New Delhi-based Center for Women's Development Studies. "Education is an empowering tool for women and should not be seen as impacting negatively. In fact, this correlation points to the imperative need for an attitudinal change among men and society in general." Rustagi has analyzed crime records relating to violence against women and also found a correlation between education and domestic violence.
Risk Rises with Education
According to the 2002 study, 45 percent of Indian women are slapped, kicked or beaten by their husbands. India also had the highest rate of violence during pregnancy. Of the women reporting violence, 50 percent were kicked, beaten or hit when pregnant. About 74.8 percent of the women who reported violence have attempted to commit suicide.
Kumud Sharma of the Centre for Women's Development Studies in New Delhi traced the correlation between education and domestic violence to patriarchal attitudes. "Educated women are aware of their rights," she said. "They are no longer willing to follow commands blindly. When they ask questions, it causes conflicts, which, in turn, leads to violence. In many Indian states, working women are asked to hand over their paycheck to the husband and have no control over their finances. So, if they stop doing so or start asserting their right, there is bound to be friction."
Domestic violence experts say the problem in India stems from a cultural bias against women who challenge their husband's right to control their behavior. Women who do this---even by asking for household money or stepping out of the house without their permission--are seen as punishable. This process leads men to believe their notion of masculinity and manhood is reflected to the degree to which they control their wives.
"The behavior of men stems from their understanding of masculinity," said Nandita Bhatla, researcher with the International Center for Research on Women, "and what their role should be vis-a-vis women, especially their wives."
Problem of Perception
Men have always been taught to perceive themselves as the superior sex, said Jyotsna Chatterjee, director of the Joint Women's Program, a women's resource organization based in New Delhi. It is this conditioning, she said, that makes them believe they have to control their wives, especially if they are considered disobedient.
Although men's preoccupation with controlling their wives declines with age--as does the incidence of sexual violence--researchers found that the highest rates of sexual violence were among highly educated men. Thirty-two percent of men with zero years of education and 42 percent men with one-to-five years of education reported sexual violence. Among men with six-to-10 years of education--as well as those with high-school education and higher--this figure increased to 57 percent.
A similar pattern was seen when the problem was analyzed according to income and socioeconomic standing. Those at the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder--migrant labor, cobblers, carpenters, and barbers--showed a sexual violence rate of 35 percent. The rate almost doubled to 61 percent among the highest income groups.
Researchers have not determined why men with higher incomes and educations are more likely to be violent towards women.
Indian theater personality and feminist Tripurari Sharma was shocked to learn that a well-educated and respected actor in her theater group was abusing his wife, also an established actress.
"He was the most helpful, cordial and endearing man," she said. "His wife would attend rehearsals with bruises at times that she would cover up. Later, I found out she was being beaten. If the actress herself had not told me, I would have never believed it. So, I think it is a myth to think that the high education and economic status will lessen the risk of violence against women."
Equally disturbing is the finding that two of every five women in an abusive relationship in India remain silent about their suffering because of shame and family honor. The studies have also shown, nearly one-third of the Indian women experiencing abuse had thought about running away, but most said they feared leaving their young children and had no place to go. Activists felt that for intervention strategies to succeed, attitudes about violence would have to change and the level of awareness, among both men and women, about the negative impact of violence had to be raised.

*****

This is not something that you and I did not know before: domestic violence, like child sexual abuse, is a family's worst kept secret.

It simply does not help being Jesus Christ. Rather, if you are a woman reading this and are an abuse victim, please do me a favour by doing one or all of the following three things:

*Learn to pay back double--for every body blow, cigar burn, knife injury that you receive, deal back in double measure. If this makes you less of a wife to your husband and breaks up the marriage, then thou are blessed, for what are you still doing in it in the first place?''

*Cultivate strength, physically and emotionally. When a man hits you or threatens to do so, he does it so he can have the pleasure of seeing you cower and cringe. Instead, dare him and the machismo cracks.

*And never, EVER, show fear.

What colour is your blog?

Exactly what kind of a creature is a blog? Is it gendered, as in, do women blog differently than men?
If your blog is your unmediated space, do you have to watch every word you write and not simply let go? After all, if you do not like what I write, be my guest and never visit me again, thanks be to you.
Does your blog need to have a....take two deep breaths...an ideology?

Received a rather longish comment from someone who claims to be a regular reader of journalists' blogs. Chap wants to know why we women journalists have to so compulsively write, when anyway we write a helluva lot of stuff the world does not want to read. And to, spice up the proceedings, he simply had to use those cute little four letter words. And ended up daring me to publish the comment, if I were 'man' enough (the exact word he used).
Sorry pal, the world has changed a lot since the time they dug you out of the dung heap. Your comment goes unpublished for I am blissfully un-man.

And then, friend Sanjeev is unhappy that I write too many PJs in my blog and not do enough original stuff. Which is on par for the course, for this blog shall remain adamantly eclectic and un-agenda-ed.
Just that my blog matches my mood which, at the moment, is too purple for comfort...

Looking for Solomon

Was reminded of the King Solomon fable--albeit the rather tenuous connection and the gender switch--when I read this news report and the comments that followed:

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=553622007

So, who does the baby belong to and where do the genetic footprints stop? Say pink, say blue, but all one can think of is what if the woman had simply told her ex-boy friend she would have the baby but would give a written undertaking that she would not demand any maitenance/child support from him, thus ridding him of any legal obligation for a child he does not want to share?
This is where the thin line between ethics and self-righeteousness blurs....

This PJ bites....!

As far as poor jokes go, this was the worstest, but it still managed to sting....especially, as it was sent in by a Sri Lankan journalist friend. Gawd, what have we done to ourselves!

There was a couple married for quite some time and they had a boy of 5-6years old. Their relationship was turning sour. It finally reached such a stage that they thought it was better for them to be divorced than carry on such a relationship.
So they consulted a lawyer. But the big question was who would have the kid. In the hearing in the court, it was decided that this choice should be left to the kid.
So, the judge asked the boy: "Son, would you like to stay with your mummy?" Kid said, "No, mummy beats me." Judge asked "Would you like to stay with your papa then?"
Kid said, "No, papa beats me."
Now the judge was in a dilemma and was not able to decide what to do. After pondering for some time, he smiled. He had just had the best ever idea about who the kid would stay with......No prizes for guessing, though.
The kid would stay with the Indian cricket team because they NEVER BEAT ANYBODY, NOT EVEN BANGLADESH!

Only in America?

Was actually enjoying my rather longish sabbatical from this blog, when a friend sent in this part-whimsical, part-roller coaster piece about life in the U S of A. All these, he claims, acutally happened...one didnt need his reassurance, though. In the land of George Bush, stupidity breeds like maggots.

Not that we Indians cant give Americans a run for their dollar when it comes to the silliness sweepstakes--remember that all-time Sardarji favourite, Rela-xing/Milkha Singh thing? Those of you who havent, blogroll me and ye shall be told...

Anyone out there who has come across anything closer home? Please let me know.

Meanwhile, here goes:

# 1 IDIOT OF 2006:

I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away. Here's your sign, lady. Wear it with pride.

# 2 IDIOT:

Early this year, some Boeing employees on the airfield decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s. They were successful in getting it out of the plane and home. Shortly after they took it for a float on the river, they noticed a Coast Guard helicopter coming towards them. It turned out that the chopper was homing in on the emergency locator beacon that activated when the raft was inflated. They are no longer employed at Boeing. Here's your sign, guys. Don't get it wet; the paint might run.

# 3:

A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote this: "Put all your muny in this bag." While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller's window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to the Wells Fargo Bank. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it and, surmising from his spelling errors that he wasn't the brightest light in the harbor, told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America. Looking somewhat defeated, the man said, "OK" and lef t. He was arrested a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America. Don't bother with this guy's sign. He probably couldn't read it anyway.

# 4:

A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40 and a photo of his car. Instead of payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $40. Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture, this time of handcuffs. He immediately mailed in his $40. Wise guy ..... but you still get a sign.

IDIOT # 5:

A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all of the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the robbe r saw a bottle of Scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the shelf. He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused and said, "Because I don't believe you are over 21." The robber said he was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because she didn't believe him. At this point, the robber took his driver's license out of his wallet and gave it to the clerk. The clerk looked it over and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and she put the Scotch in the bag. The robber then ran from the store with his loot. The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the robber that he got off the license. They arrested the robber two hours later. This guy definitely needs a sign.

ID # 6:

A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers. The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him. This guy doesn't even deserve a sign.

ID # 7:

Happens in Arkansas. Seems this guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So, he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back knocking him unconscious. It seems the liquor store window was made of Plexi-Glass. The whole event was caught on videotape. Yep, Here's your sign ..... (Please note that all of the above people are allowed to vote)


FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD IDIOT:

I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road. The reason: "Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore." From Kingman, KS

IDIOTS....AT YOUR SERVICE:
My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco. She asked the person behind the counter for "minimal lettuce." He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg. He was a Chef? Yep...From Kansas City!

IDIOT SIGHTING #1:

I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge? To which I replied, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" He smiled knowingly and nodded, "That's why we ask." Happened in Birmingham, AL.

IDIOT SIGHTING # 2:

The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street I was crossing with an intellectuall y challenged coworker of mine. She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for. I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red. Appalled, she responded, "What on earth are blind people doing driving?!?" She was a probation officer in Wichita, KS

IDIOT SIGHTING # 3:
We were at a good-bye luncheon for an old and dear coworker. She was leaving the company due to "downsizing." Our manager commented cheerfully, "This is fun. We should do this more often!" Not another word was spoken. We all just looked at each other with that deer-in-the-headlights stare. This was a bunch at Texas Instruments.

IDIOT SIGHTING # 4:
I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and for the sake of her own life, couldn't understand why her system would not turn on. A deputy with the Dallas County Sheriffs office no less .

IDIOT SIGHTING # 5:

When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the drivers side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "its open!" His reply, "I know - I already got that side." This was at the CHEVY dealership in Canton, NJ

A slice of sunshine

Once in a very odd while, you feel like getting on to a rooftop and crowing gustily: "We still make movies the rest of the world can watch and feel proud of." And once in a very odd while, does a movie come that gnaws your heart so bad, you feel like rushing out of the cinema hall midway just because you can't take all that reality.
Veyyil should redeem that faith: neither the rat-infested aisles of Annai Abhirami nor the frequent drunken snithering of a lout seated halfway across mattered. The movie rises above cliches: neither is its realism stark nor is it stylised, it is realism as you and me live it.
One wonders what it is about Shankar that makes him such a good producer--first Kadhal and now this--but a kitschy director.
The day I went, there were hardly twenty people in the hall, and even that was a desultory crowd. Veyyil has had its run and will never be outwished.
There is a strong remembrance of Devar Magan all through--especially in the eerie presence of the irredeemable cycle of violence that sits across the protagonists' heads even at the most unsuspecting moment, and more so because, in Pasupathi, you have an actor who can out-Kamal Hassan anyone else--and (as friends point out) snatches of Cinema Paradiso, in the way Murugesan's (Pasupathi's character) first romance ends.
It is Pasupathi's movie all through and, according to director Vasanthabalan, Murugesan is his flesh-and-blood spitting image. And what subtleties the actor manages to weave into a performance that a lesser actor could have ended up hamming: the scene, for example, where he tells his father what drove him to run away from the house is an exercise in restraint and yet
chills you to the bones.
One tries in vain to look for a chink in the chain that tells you it is a movie you are watching, and one blessedly fails. Nor for a single moment does the director stray away from a relentless authenticism.
There are those opening moments that bring in a whiff of Azhagi, with all that bare-bottomed rustic humour. Then there is that heart warming sensitivity about life in the butcher's household, about the way life is shown amidst all that animal blood and gore.
The bonding among the boys is natural and never sentimentalised. Even the relationship between parents and offsprings is never overtly played upon. Thus, it seems the most natural thing to happen when little Murugesan, caught red handed by his father for flunking class and going to see a Em-Gee-Yaar movie and made to grovel naked under a hot sun as the whole village watches, scoots home with his mother's jewels and his father's savings, boards a lorry to come to Chennai but gets sidetracked halfway and ends up in a Tirukazhukundram talkies.
From then on starts the parabola of retrubutive justice for neither the family he left behind nor Murugesan ever manage to get their lives together again.
There are several fresh concepts worked into the movie from then till the end: the tender but ill-fated romance between Murugesan and Thangam, the shutting down of the theatre, a gaunt and hungry Pasupathi heading back to a family he had never contacted for nearly twenty years,
the unworked wrath of the father who refuses to take him back, the love of the brother and the coldness of the two sisters.
Dont miss this movie--it may be a long while yet before another one like it comes along.

Lest we forget.-II

The day after I came back, feeling all knotty, at the splendid facilities one of the city hospitals claimed it had lined up for attracting foreign clientele, this photograph(if the link does not connect direct to the photo, click on the page 3 on the sidebar) that the Deccan Chronicle had carried of 16-year-old Kalpesh hit me with all its bone chilling pathos. One can debate endlessly over the shock value the paper must have been aiming it, but then this is `unprettified'
reality. If it was meant to disgust, then such disgust is a most welcome response.

******

Friend Sanjeev Ramachandran has done a fark and come up with this line up on the Ash-Abhishek engagement. Just waiting to see what they will do to Shilpa Shetty...

******

This is for all ye blogger-bashers: Kiruba Shankar has come up with this
which just goes to prove that the `Indian blogosphere', as Kiruba so lovingly describes it,
is, in reality, the commune of the future. This is as good as one can get.

Lest we forget.....

They said she was barely four months old when they first saw her. The great wave had tossed her into a bramble shrub. There were thorns in her hair and scratches on her face.

Of her parents, there was no trace. Two days later, they found her brother who had sought shelter with a neighbour.

Today, Abhinaya is everybody’s darling. At the Cuddalore government orphanage, she is the prima donna. She is perhaps the most written about tsunami orphan in Tamil Nadu. When I first saw her, she was so fascinated by the camera of the photographer who accompanied me that she would let out a loud joyous cry every time the flash bulb popped. A child’s simple joy and behind it the greatest tragedy of our times.

One feels apologetic to write about the tsunami by simply saying, `Two years have passed….’

For me, it was a personal journey of self-discovery that took me to every godforsaken tsunami hamlet in the State, relentlessly looking for scraps of human dignity among survivors. My well-intentioned, but still-born blog notwithstanding, one day I hope to come terms with those memories which, for all of us journalists who were doing the rounds then, will be a curse we will have to bear till the end.

How does one come to terms, for example, with the memory of firemen pulling out from the sand near the Marina the bodies of six boys, who had been buried head first, and who had been playing boisterous street cricket when their lives ended?

Or a rescue worker in Cuddalore quietly carrying what appeared to be a white gunny sack and when you drew close, you found it was the wave-bleached body of a five-year old girl in a lace frock?

Or the surreal scene at the Velankanni shrine where, under all that Christmassy-glitter of the little coloured lamps strung across the shamiana, nearly two thousand bodies lay? Some of them had come from as far as Orissa and had to be buried almost immediately because their corpses had started falling apart.

Or the memory of the bleakness in eight-year-old Vigneswari’s eyes when she said her wave-dead father--a fisherman in Nagapattinam-- had promised her a gift for her birthday but now she did not have anybody who would ever buy her a gift?

Or the Christ-like stoicism of fisherman Victor in Akkaraipettai who, though both his children were still missing, had gone around collecting food packets to feed other frightfully hungry children?

Or the memory of the mass grave in Kanyakumari’s Colachel? We had been told there was a children’s’ grave inside the compound of the parish church and Father Stanley had pointed us to beyond a closed gate. We reached there and found just a raised Cross on a simple, cement platform. We looked around in vain for the graves when somebody informed us that we were already standing on them.

A cold shiver shot through us. Underneath our feet, behind the cement platform, lay the bodies of nearly 150 children. They had all been brought there to rest by their parents who had held decomposing son-flesh and daughter-flesh in their hands and still retained sanity to give them a decent burial.

All one can do now is crave the blessedness of forgetting….

Federer and friends

Were it not for the jostling, pushing, shoving, screaming, ranting--in one word, playing true to form--media men, it was almost impossible to believe that a celebrity had come visiting. Federer, however, retained poise and grace and was more than willing to play from the heart in Cuddalore.
Children, it seems, are closest to his heart and the man had the humility to admit he can still learn from them. One almost thought one would see a replay of the Brad Pitt episode, but was glad that this time the mediamen were less paparazzi-like and not so celebrity-hung up.
All they had wanted was to do their job--capture Federer and girlfriend Miroslava `Mirka’ Vavrinec with the tsunami kids--and get out but were not allowed to as the UNICEF seemed to think every newsperson was a paparazzi and did their darnedest to keep the national media away while allowing Reuters and AFP free run.
It was then that all hell broke loose and one almost feared for Federer’s safety as the policemen (some of whom admitted they did not know who it was they were supposed to be protecting) seemed to enjoy the free-for-all. ``We will not let Federer get out of Cuddalore", yelled one scribe while another vowed he would snatch the Reuters/AFP cameras and break them to pieces.
"You are trying to sell photographs of our kids to newspapers abroad to grease your slimy fingers and raise money,’’ one said.
Finally, all was well that ended well. Am not a Federer fan at the best of times--am more the Stefan Edberg/Pete Sampras kind, with a dash of Agassi--but must say the children were taken in by his transparent earnestness and touching honesty and responded with a spontaneity only kids can muster.
``Do you speak Tamil?’’ one asked, "Have you seen Rajinikant movies?’’ another wondered and "Will you buy me a mithai?’’ one cajoled.
Little Abhinaya--by now almost iconic among the tsunami orphans, more about her in the next post--blew him a kiss and Federer was thrilled to bits.
Managed to get some cute pix. Will post them soon.

The strange case of Santhi Soundarajan

Those of us who thought vultures were becoming extinct, needn't have worried: seems they have morphed into camera-toting newsmen, feeding off the last morsel of flesh. Vultures, may they forgive us, are noble birds and, am sure, have more finesse in them than what was on display when Santhi surfaced at the Tamil Nadu Secretariat.
Was not there myself but colleagues said Santhi, praise be to her, retained her composure and did not break down, even when the questions grew carrion-esque: ``The tests said you do not appear to be a woman....so what are you?" and "How does it feel to be called not-a-woman?"
And the headlines reeked of rotten flesh too: ``State government stands by shamed Santhi"/``Dude looks like a lady"/ "Middle distance runner caught in middlesex controversy"
There was even more blood-letting elsewhere: ``Indian runner Santhi Soundarajan has failed a gender test. Could this be a cause of global warming?" somebody asked on Yahoo!answers.
What were not asked were questions about the politics of testing for gender and personal identities.
Does "having more Y chromosomes than you are allowed" make one less of a woman, though Santhi was born a woman, lived a woman and almost never underwent a sex change surgery? If, as one vernacular daily claimed, she had never attained puberty, is she gender-challenged? For laughing out loud!
And pray, what exactly are `secondary sexual characteristics of a woman?' If a battery of gynaceologists, endocrinologists and hemotologists decrees that one is not woman-enough because of a fluky chromosome, then does it negate all those painful years Santhi went through, overcoming hellish odds, to get where she is? For pity's sake, and this in the age of post-Germaine Greer?
Somewhere along the way, there were helpful hints too: that Santhi could be the victim of malnutrition as she grew up amidst a very Indian poverty that suppressed certain gender manifestations. Santhi could most certainly not have competed with men and won, so how does one set standards for being a woman athlete? So, what happens if, for example, a male athlete fails a gender test (there are NO such tests for men, one is told) and is told he hits neuter-ground?
Amidst all this, Santhi has found support at home turf.. When Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi,before honouring her, asked her if her conscience was clear, Santhi replied with a simple, yet profound, `Yes.'
A lesser woman would have crumbled.

Dolce vita!

Caught Russell Crowe in action in Rome....or rather a pathetic apology for him. A gladiator with a tattered gown, whose only sustenance for the day was a haggard cheroot which he kept drawing on whenever he could take a break from being killed.

A sobering snapshot just outside the awesome Colosseum. A reminder of how history pays, even today. When the boy in the picture had his fill of the sword and moved away, the man turned towards us and offered to get killed by us too. The kill would have cost us ten bucks. We move away, deeply insulted.
This is how Rome reinvents history, in very public spaces where Euro-wary tourists attempt to take back home vignettes of one of the world's bloodiest arenas. Sinatra would have loved the situational humour.
Elsewhere in other remote and forgotten corners, you find illegally-staying-on Bangladeshi hawkers littering pavements like discarded confetti. In one of the world's most culturally alive cities, the disowned migrant exists in a closed-out corner where neither tourist cameras nor the long arm of law can reach. The law knows they are there, but doesnt bother too much: the big city feeds on their horribly underpaid services for peddling its time-machine-ness.
But then there are the smart ones too: we come across one such, a Pakistani Big Boss who runs an umbrella store in one of the streets leading to Roma Centrale. Almost all of them under his employ are fellow Asians and living on in Rome illegally as unlike other European cities, the policia here leaves them alone. Every morning, they fan out across the city, selling everything from umbrellas to salted acorns, returning home at night to the memories of families that exist in an unreachable corner of the world.
You search in vain for their smiles, but find instead only the dark misery of a bottomless cavity.

Um...Hmmm...a blogger's block and why I am running out of excuses

Yes, and a reason why I am unable to sustain the initial momentum I started out with on this blog.
To blog or not, is a question that every blogger has to grapple with sooner or later. I guess mine is now.
My blogger's block is growing by the moment and believe me, it aint no fun to see others racing ahead.
I guess it happens to most of us most of the time. In my case, just put it down to a whole U-turn my life took in a short span of just six months....a new responsibility, a new person in my life, a whole new role which I try my darnedst to make sense of.
Will be back soon (though no one seems to be missing me as yet--sigh!) with a bigger, better, brighter me. And knowing me, soon may just as well be tomorrow!
I sign off, for the moment, in peace.

Home is where etc, etc: A Srirangam story

Went home after what seems like an eternity. Went to Srirangam. A place I hold so close to my heart that it has withstood all my bravura about being a failed atheist.
Never knew a homecoming would turn out to be a soul-therapy. All it needed was for me to take one look at the steamily dirty Cauvery to get this all's-well-with-the-world-and-god's-in-his-heaven kinda feel. Human floatsam and jetsam can never ever sully a great river. And she is the greatest there ever was...
Be that as it may, it is the town itself that gives me this time-machine experience every time I set foot there. True, one sees the same semi-cartoonish vertical vertigo that every little town goes through: where there were once sprawling naalu-adukku houses complete with a mitham, thinnai, vennir-ul and saami-room, all you now have are ugly pigeon holed apartments.
The real surprise of the town, however, lies protected in the womb of the temple, inside a small shrine near the sanctum sanctorum, around the magical-realist legend of Surathani, the daughter of Sultan Malik Kafur (1310-1311 AD) of Delhi.
Without sounding docu-drama-ish, the legend of Surathani (or Bibi Nachiyar as she is known) is perhaps one of the best examples of `secularism' (oh, that awfully-bandied, vilely-abused word!) that is cast in stone in what is considered to be the foremost Vaishnavite shrine in the country.
In a nutshell: when Kafur's men invaded Srirangam, they raided the ancient temple and carried with them the idol of the main deity--Ranganatha--as war keepsake to Delhi. So entranced was Surathani by the beauty of the idol that she refused to part with it. Following an appeal by devotees, Kafur decided to return the idol to Srirangam, but had not reckoned with his daughter who followed the idol all the way down south. Upon arrival, she prostrated before the sanctum sanctorum and died almost immediately. Till today, she retains her Muslim identity in an all-Vaishnavite temple and accepts only rotis as prasadam.
Not that the legend--or what we know of it today--is blemish-free.
But then what is a legend without some leeway?
A few years back, when I recited this legend to a gender studies researcher from the University of Pennsylvania--who had come down all the way to Tamil Nadu to do, of all things, a research piece on Avvayar--she chortled: ``Sub-ordination of the feminine! An extension of the Andal, Meera, Radha etc, etc concepts to a Muslim princess to prove the superiority of a male Hindu god.'' Hunh?
Maybe the Surathani legend was a construct of patriarchy, maybe the princess herself would have been none too happy to be thought of as a dim-witted, obsessed thulakachi.
But, the legend doesnt end there: thinking his daughter had been done to death by the devotees, an enraged Kafur once again ordered the invasion of the temple and what followed was perhaps the bloodiest period in the temple's history: the deity himself had to go underground, the temple was shut up and 13,000 devotees died in protecting the temple from the invaders. For nearly six generations, only a ghostly sliver of glory.
Sounds familiar, doesnt it, this vengeance-is-mine twist to the tale?
Whatever, when all else has been reduced to rubble and dust, legends will still rule the world and perhaps the princess will have the last laugh...

Stung by the camera

Even at the best of times, am no admirer of kamikaze-style television journalism, having seen at disgustingly close quarters the near-cannibalism of some members of this tribe. If you have ever seen a chirpy young, brilliant-smile-in-place teevee anchor ad lib her piece into the camera minutes after she has tried, in vain, to grab a `byte' from a mother who has just buried the bloated corpse of her child with her own hands, then you too would know what I mean. Am speaking of post-tsunami Nagapattinam and have no intention of sounding holier-than-thou. You've gotta been there, is all I can say. It needed Times Now TV's Dhanya Rajendran to change that perception. It needed her kind of guts, presence of mind and sensitivity to try and crack the web of nepotism and cheapstaking that one of the oldest universities in the country seems to have fallen prey to. Where others where thrusting cameras through bedroom keyholes, DR dared to turn it on to an issue that involved the future of lakhs of students. Not that the varsity suffered a major shake-up after this. If anything, the wheeling-dealing seems to have only gone underground and more acrimonious. The behemoth bungles on. But then, in the likes of Dhanya rests the future of teevee journalism. And I have never felt prouder in calling anybody `friend' than I do her. Her stunner may not have created the kind of ripples that one would legitimately expect it to: had this been, say, the Delhi University or even a third-rung north Indian university, then hell-breaking-loose would have sounded quite mild. Despite a high-level DVAC probe and two employees in the slammer, Dhanya's painstaking work seems not to have made it to the big league yet. All the more is the pity. But then, she's still around...

Does getting hate mail mean....

...you have arrived? If so, then friends, fellow-bloggers and all ye those who have cared to stop by in the past few months since I stumbled onto the infinitesmous blogosphere: ergo, yours truly is truly here and how! A particular gent (why am I so sure it is a gent? I simply know, that's all) seems to have been so comprehensively offended by my post on Kushboo and the moral police that he has been shaken and stirred enough to fill my comment box with spite-posts at regular intervals. And he seems to have inspired a couple of others too--or is it him doing the Anniyan-thing? Have never really believed in comment moderation on a blog but the venom and gross savagery in those posts has pushed me into doing something I intensely dislike. Would like to know of any other such experiences. Quo vadis?

In my thirties and loving it...

Dunno if it is my presence that is causing them to behave this way but at least thrice in the last weeks, different sets of individuals on different occasions have wondered aloud if there was life in the thirties.
It is almost as if just by crossing the thirties threshold you have somehow abdicated your right to enjoy life. He may be just about pushing thirty, but friend and colleague Sudhish Kamath has this hangdog expression on when he sighs: ``Just eleven months to go...''. If you didnt know him better, you would have thought he was syndicating his own epitaph.
And then there is this friendly neighbourhood Anupam Kher-type upon whom I tripped one day during my morning jog. Still think it was his irritation at the way I outran him every time he tried to get in my way but he simply had to have this parting shot: ``You are thirty plus now, in a few years you will become like me (shudder! shudder!) and then you will know...''
Still again, there was this saturnine blop across the face of a fellow swimmer when she learnt I was thirty plus (somehow, me thinks, it is this plus thing that makes it even more rib-crunching) and still single: ``I am two years younger than you and my daughter is already in Std. II. What have you done with your life?'' she asked, trying to out-Hagar me.
My life, eh?
And thankfully, I am in good company: even super-successful Shashi Tharoor has had to console his fiftying genes by telling himself, ``Fifty is the new forty.'' And where does that leave me on a comparative scale?
Arundhati Roy understood when she said, ``Thirty is a viable, dieable age.''
Honestly, what is wrong with thirty? Me thinks the number has this beautiful pebble-smooth roundness about it, and suits my Meanwhile personality just fine: I can safely let myself be turned on by both Dustin Hoffman and Aggie Goldsmith.
And you dont have to worry about whether twenty is too early or forty is too late: the thirties offers you a range of possibilities for a range of things, don't ask me what.
What thinks you, reader? Wanna bet on thirties?

We are like this only...

I reproduce here, without comment, an unparalleled collection of gems which friend and fellow blogger, Mehul Kamdar, has sent in. Have to wonder, though, if anybody has ever put forward something similar in Yankee-ish: This is a collection of leave letters and applications written by people in various places of India ... 1. At Infosys, Bangalore, an employee applied for leave as follows: Since I have to go to my village to sell my land along with my wife, please sanction me one-week leave. 2. This is from Oracle Bangalore, from an employee who was performing the "mundan" ceremony of his 10 year old son: "as I want to shave my son's head, please leave me for two days.." 3. Another gem from CDACLeave-letter from an employee who was performing his daughter's wedding: ``As I am marrying my daughter, please grant a week's leave.." 4.From H.A.L. Administration dept: As my mother-in-law has expired and I am only one responsible for it, please grant me 10 days leave." 5. Another employee of HLL applied for half day leave as follows: :"Since I've to go to the cremation ground at 10 o-clock and I may not return, please grant me half day casual leave" 6. A leave letter to Mindtree Consulting: "I am suffering from fever, please declare one day holiday." 7. A leave letter to a headmaster: "As I am studying in this school I am suffering from headache. I request you to leave me today" 8. Another leave letter written to another headmaster: "As my headache is paining, please grant me leave for the day." 9. Covering note with a resume to a shipping company: "I am enclosed herewith..." 10. Another one: "Dear Sir: with reference to the above, please refer to my below..." 11. Actual letter written for application of leave at Ranbaxy "My wife is suffering from sickness and as I am her only husband at home I may be granted leave". 12. Letter writing: -"I am in well here and hope you are also in the same well." 13. A candidate's job application:" This has reference to your advertisement calling for a ' Typist and an Accountant - Male or Female'...As I am both for the past several years and I can handle both with good experience, I am applying for the post. Whatever, I still think any of Mehul's contributions pale before this one:Leave letter from student to teacher: ``Dear Madam, as my grandmother is suffering from romantic pains and my grandfather is no more, I have to take care of her. So, please grant me, etc. etc," Yes, you guessed right: the leave-seeker was of course speaking of granny's creaking joints: rheumatic!!!

Meanwhile....a reader's choice

A reader who says he stops by my blog every now and then has taken offence to my use of the m* word in one of my posts. The word does not need to be stated explicitly in that context when the word `self-pleasuring' would have served the purpose equally well, he says. ``Unless you want to go in for mere shock-value, I suggest you use the more tactful word,'' he says and has even threatened to stop reading my blog if I persist.
Since this is a very embryonic blog---only 368 hits in nearly three months, my merciless clicks counter tells me--that can't afford to lose any of its readers for now, I bow in deference and the word stands immediately replaced....

A V day story

Under normal circumstances, I wouldnt have been caught dead blogging a V-day story (which is why, just to save face, I am doing this a day after). But stranger things have been happening to me these past few weeks that make me wonder if.... Does love begin with a Chinese nose job? Or does being the world's most cantankerous millionaire also make women want to fall suicidally in love with you? I wouldnt have bothered to find out for I believe The Bard wasnt too far off the mark when he made the sanguine Prince of Denmark famously say, ``There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'' So it was when I found my cynical edge getting blunted when a friend told me about another friend whose friend (well, you get the picture) had just been through this extra-ordinarily ordinary love story.... It all began (where else?) in a chat room where A accidentally stumbled upon C (an aspiring documentary film-maker) who was pouring his heart out about how his (self-confessedly) brilliant film on teen pregnancies was languishing for want of takers. They got talking, day after day, for nearly a whole year, without either exchanging mobile numbers or photos. According to C, it was the singular most beautiful experience he had ever been through in his lonely 28-years and anonymity must have guaranteed a certain degree of intimacy. Very soon, he would spend the whole day in anticipation of the golden hour--5.30 p.m.--when A. would log in. During the year, they may have even passed by each other in the market/bus stand/theatre (in true Tamil film fashion) but they would never know. Then one day, they suddenly met. No lengthy preambles, no `shall I, shant I' fundas, just a simple `okay, lets meet.' Now, after it is all over, C. wishes he had never suggested that: at least the beautiful fiction would have been alive. Surprisingly for two people who had connected at the most psychic level online, the first meeting was a pathetic joke. They could never look at each other nor even know what to say to each other. So, an hour and three Cokes later, they decided to go back to where they were most comfortable with--the chat room--only to find that the magic was somehow missing. Three months later, A. married. Two weeks after, they got back online and suddenly everything was as before. Last heard, C. is deliriously blissful: he may have lost the reality stakes but his luminescent illusion is alive. When I heard this story first, I thought my friend was making it up. `Cyber adultery,' I remarked flippantly. But then one silent night, as I was driving back home, it occurred to me that I dont actually have to believe it. This story doesnt require a value addition in the form of third-party validation. I dont have to meet either A. or C. to know if the story is true. In the end, it is a damn good story and that is all there is to it: a tale of bonding that has earned its right to exist due to its own sweet implausibility.