When did we become humane - or did we yet?

Whatever I know, I read it in fiction. I am a big ignoramus regarding actual news.

Someone said, there are only two classes, the exploiter & the exploited. Really? Do we - You & I, not live to disprove that? That we neither exploit, not get exploited? That we are rational, reasonable?

In "Aztec Autumn", I read about how women were "spoils of war" (& also later in Iliad), how certain kinds of rape were a sin, but not rape of the women of the conquered land by the victorious army. Also, how a woman was "sacrificed" for "good luck" in a hunt. Reading this kind of fiction turns the insides out, as in vomit. Of course, compare nausea, to rape. Conclusion - I am living in the best of times. These things had disillusioned me as to the nature of war, & the ethics of military.

In "American Gods", I read about how a God was created. Amazingly disturbing. It's not for the faint-hearted "self-improvement reader". The book was also awesome in the aspect that nothing is sacrosanct. The unravelling is complete. Neil Gaiman confirms my understanding that "Gods" esp. in the plural, are simply super-powered beings, impulsive in the extreme, cruel beyond human capacity, & super-viced in every human vice.

Now "Confessions of the Fox". It's a really anti-capitalism novel, & surprisingly (for me), calls for abolition of prisons. Yes, the events narrated all are innocent people being thrown into prison on absurd pretexts, hated by the elite simply for being poor, paraded, lampooned, broken, starved, abused in every way, & being treated "not as human", at least by modern sensibilities, all in the name of law! Disturbs us, brings us a tear & a low-grade headache. But should the procedure of law itself be done away with? Go back to the times ... times of what? The trussed-up sacrifice? The murdered-child God?

But we are not living in those times, right? Is that true? In my time, on my watch, is it guaranteed that nobody is being broken like that? 

"Confessions of the Fox" also put to my mind the "must have been" process through which medical ignorance turned into a body of medical knowledge. What perversions must have been through the minds of the "humans" who actually accumulated it. God made man in his image, & man made devil in his image. I would also quote from Kartar Singh Duggal, but ... how anti-national can one be? You know we are the great Indians, right? The tricolour has displayed in Dubai. Our military is descended from the Gods. They only protect & save, never harass nor oppress. & our ancient physicians ... well! they knew everything already. They never needed to experiment on live humans. They had knowledge divine.

So, I revel in being a great Indian of the great India. I shrink in horror in the shared guilt of 17500 generations of being the plague of the planet. I can' decide which era was innocent enough for me. I can't be natural enough  - the dilemma of the environment-friendly in the bathroom - use more water, or use more paper? - to be truly natural is to die of disease & rot into the earth, but I personally crave a sanitary house, a huge library of fiction, & sunrises. Out of this self-conflict of being good to the earth & being comfortable in my skin, I want to not exist, to never have existed.

I lost the horizon.

Only the act of writing aimlessly keeps the pain of not being understood out.

I grew up in a township. The land was acquired by the Company, & they planned the township. The township was upwind from the plant. So, whoever the smoke from the plant affected, it did not affect the employees & their families. The planner of the township planned it in  colonial fashion. The way the colonizers built bungalows in the colonies. The houses had gardens. Even the smallest of the houses. The non-executive quarters. The non-executive quarters had small rooms, less rooms. The non-executive families had more members. The non-executive inhabitants built additional rooms in the gardens. They needed the living space more than the garden.

Still, the small non-executive houses, even after extensions, still had gardens. A neem tree, a mango tree, a drumstick (moringa) tree, or at the very least, a guava tree. And flowers in winter. Regal dahlias, lush chrysanthemums, abundant marigolds graced the scrubby frontyards as benevolently as the manicured lawns. Some of the non-executive families even had a little shed in their little garden for one cow or buffalo & her calf. They wanted fresh milk, & they had carried their ways with them, the "house cow". Regardless of the size or interiors of the house, the garden was a matter of unadulterated pride. It was a gender-neutral hobby. In some families, it was the uncle who was the gardening enthusiast, in others, it was the aunty. It was also the topic of discussion which cut through the gender divide & the executive divide, & made a different classification - the green-thumbs & the green-dumbs.

Till I was in school, in my Bhilai, I had not even known that there can be houses, where the compound wall opens into the living room, without a porch or any width, & the 2-wheelers are stowed in the rooms itself. I did not know that houses may stand directly on main roads & truckways. Only the streets held houses. The first street after the main road was separated from it by an open field, or a plantation of Teak.  We used to play on the streets, but not always, because there were so many open spaces unused, enough for a decent badminton court, & even a children's street cricket ground. The teak plantations were later additions, "reforestation" efforts. Can rectangles of 60 teaks at 50 places inside an industrial township do the planet good? I do not know.

What I know is that it was my way. My way of life, my way of town, my way of roads, streets. I learnt to ride the bicycle on the streets. I learnt to roller skate on the streets. When I roller skated down the main road, 2 neighbour uncles complained to my parents about my unsafe play in the traffic. The traffic which was a scooter every 2 minutes, a 3-wheeler every 5 minutes, & a car in an hour. Sometimes, we won't feel like playing, we would sit down & chat. There were some weird cement structures jutting out of the open spaces. Then there was the old rusted "stage" which had, at some point, used for a speech by Indira Gandhi. I remember stomping all over it, listening to the gong of vibrations with every step. I remember sitting on those low rails discussing "secrets" with Renu. And, once, I was below the stage, with Kiran, with a watch, we were timing  & counting heartbeats. Kiran was one of the brats who climbed the supporting pillars rather than the stairs. It made my skin crawl to just think of scraping myself on the fully surface rusted pillars!!

Chasing dragon flies with Amit in the monsoon. I knew he was going to kill them, impale them, use them as bookmarks, I knew that was unspeakably cruel, but I just went along. Now that I reminisce, I am completely lost as to why I needed so bad to camaredize with him? Was I trying to check whether I was a tomboy? I was in serious identity crisis around age 8. As far as I remember, he hardly managed to catch any insects, his technique was to hand-catch their wings, & even if he did, I made him leave them. But I remember Red, Green AND Blue insects with crystal wings ... they were beautiful ... & he probably only needed to assert that he was quick & silent enough for them.

In the monsoon, the open spaces turned green. So green, it would hurt your eyes if you weren't a crazy green-lover like me. When we were older, & the boys played only cricket, I took Renu to one of the triangular patches, the one between the last two streets & the main road on the hospital side. The one beside an abandoned bus stop. I've seen enough snakes in my time. With Amit, as well as with Renu. Wonder what my parents thought about that! But , we were brought up in "benign neglect", as specified by Sarita Talwai. Besides, in my family, snakes were never killed, only chased away. Not due religious beliefs, but my mother simply believed that "every organism has a right to live. Don't hamper it till it is impossible not to". Yes, we do kill bacteria with antibiotics.

& there was the horizon. It was all around. I saw a few sunsets in my time. I saw a few sunrises. I can't anymore. There is no horizon. The city is all around me. The city of opportunities. Where can I go? Where is the horizon? Where will the horizon not be built up on by "development"? Where should I take a "transfer"?

Randomizer randomized random personal essay

I am so sad today, I decided to seek help in the form of a "random writing prompt". Google is still my search engine of choice. This phrase returned some results, the first of which I clicked.

Good topic. In the sense, a mood lifter, because my feet are a part of my body that I like. My feet are beautiful. For my height, my feet are smaller than people expect. People meaning those people who need to rush out from somewhere grabbing any which footwear available. My feet are also narrow. I'd say dainty, but it reminds me of the foot-binding process that I read in the "Golden Mountain Chronicles" series' first novel. 

My feet are great shaped. Nothing is crooked about them. My toes are long. There is space between all of my toes. My arches are terrific. The opposite of flat foot. In fact, I even have an arch each on the outside of my feet. A thin sliver of space/gap can visible from under my feet. Of course, why would one want to look there? Weirdly weird. Or perhaps foot fetish. Mr Deeds.

I have two left feet. It's as if all my dexterity is in my fingers. Not only can I not dance, I fall down. I slip on wet ground, I skid on the edges of narrow stairs, I stumble on stuff that should have been a foot (pun intended) to the left or right of where I'm walking through. I stub my toes where I'm consciously aware that there is furniture. I've taken 3 nasty falls, which has led to Chondromalacia Patella in left knee. This means I will get (some variety of ) arthritis, sooner than if I had not fallen.

I'm uncomfortable in heels higher than 2 inches. My lower legs bend forward if I wear such. I do not have a hobby of shoes as I have a hobby of handbags or earrings. I do like sensible shoes better. I hate wearing socks year-round. I was so happy when school ended & college started, because, there would be no more Uniform. Yet, I find socks comfortable in winter.

When I was in Class 9, when I was just developing breasts, When dressing for school, I would put on my brassiere & panty, & my school socks (cotton, white), & lie down on my bed ... facing the wrong side, & put my feet up on the pillows, & just enjoy having a nice body for a minute, before I continued wearing the rest of the items of my uniform (which, by the way, was a Salwar-Kameez). 

Feels good, feels reassuring to realize that I had a positive body image ( though a rotten "face image")

as a teenager. 

A wave from my sooty window (Angsty post about my current location)

Kanpur is a large industrial city on the banks of the Ganges River, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city is famous for its leather and textile industries. Kanpur was an important British garrison town until 1947 when India gained independence. East of the city, along the Ganges, the Massacre Ghat riverside steps were the site of an 1857 massacre during a rebellion against British rule. In the suburb of Jajmau is an ancient mound and archaeological site. According to 2011 Indian census, it is the eleventh most populous city while the population of city and its suburb were around 4 million making it the ninth-most populous metropolitan area in India.

Kanpur is a peculiar . It has a violent, gory history, and a rowdy, lawless present. Kanpurias are proud of their roughness (not just around the edges, all through), their bad habits, their filthiness, and indulge in political unrest, community-based contempt and institutionalized corruption. Moharram juloos * evenings and days are tense periods, when “ordinary citizens” wait with bated breath for the unsavoury demonstrations to be over, the demonstrators themselves revel in their self-flagellation, and undoubtedly, certain individuals lament and salivate at a lost opportunity for “communal riots”. Yes, I'm myself judgemental.

Everything that is lamentable and disagreeable about India, is present, and magnified and focussed in Kanpur, like a fantastic and formidable concentrate drink. The character of a place can, to an extent, be estimated from its dialect. Take, for example, Mumbabiya Hindi - Beedu (pal) and Maamu (duffer, actual meaning "uncle") are terms of endearment, and the exaggerated attempt to display oneself as crooks, and street-smart, and badass ... Hyderabadi Hindi - with the nasalized plurals, and "Parson" meaning any damn time in the past year, instead of "day before yesterday" in standard Hindi !!! Personally, I dislike urban dialects - this is because it is used by people who identify themselves particularly with a city - while I am all-Indian, ... although I have nothing against rural dialects, they exist for natural reasons. The Hindi of Kanpur sounds like a tongue of the slums. “It's a dog-eat-dog world”, and Kanpuria is the language of the Dogeater-dog.

Once upon a time Kanpur was called “Manchester of the East”. I am not sure what it means. What Manchester was, at the time when Kanpur was so known, I do not know. The silent and massive witness of that era is the red Lal Imli Building. There's nothing so futile, nor so difficult to let go, as a glorious past. It is said, that in that glorious past of Kanpur, nobody slept hungry. This, of course, is said of every town or city by its inhabitants, and is completely unverifiable. There used to be prestigious houses of Vehicle manufacturing, and textiles. In the 1970s, the trade union was the thing in India, even the hero in the Hindi movies was mostly a hardworking, morose labourer. I once read in an essay that Florence Nightingale is attributed to have said "whatever a hospital ought do, it ought not spread a disease" and the author of the essay had stated, "whatever a trade union ought do, it ought not close down factories". Well, in Kanpur they did. and the vehicle manufacturing and textile industry never recovered.

Even today, Kanpur is a land of entrepreneurs. In 2014, there was a fair held, called “Kanpur Brand Festival”, with lines of true brands, however small, big, or in-between, originating in Kanpur. It was fascinating. Probably, it was not a commercial success for the brands involved, for, it did not get repeated. Even now, Kanpur is a busy industrial centre, especially in the category of "Fast Moving Consumer Goods" including processed and packaged foods, and home cleaning products. The leather industry is a big thing too, and is majorly responsible for the pollution of the Ganga in Kanpur.

Sometimes, people ask me, where I'm "from". (5 seconds pause and) I'm from all over. I grew up and went to school in Bhilai, in central India, a small town and a township for the employees of the "Bhilai Steel Plant", and their families. I went to college in Hyderabad, the city formerly of Nizams, and presently of the IT industry. and then, I've worked, for a few months each, in various locations in the NCR, the south, Mumbai and Pune. So, how did I end up here? I married a homing pigeon, and it is his hometown. People used to (comparatively) civilized environs of Delhi and Mumbai dare not settle here, and there was a window of opportunity to be seized. Also, no need to pay house rent or office rent, at least initially, since the parental house is here, and it can accommodate a small office. “Cheap labour” would have been another plus point, as the employees too are local, and are saving house-rent on their part, which they would need to pay in the Metro cities! I have a “transferable” job, with a semi-Government company with branches all over India, and took a “request transfer” here, on "family grounds".

40% of all middle-class women here are teachers of some or the other qualification. It is true that the population is very high, there are many schools and ample kids in all of them, but it seems that somehow the college-going girls here were brainwashed to believe that becoming a teacher will fetch them a good husband, or perhaps better still, fair complexion!! As these two are the most coveted blessings in these young girls' lives. Of course there are many professionals, engineers and doctors and “MBA”s originating in Kanpur, but the IT industry is in a handful of Metro cities, and that is where the “engineer daughters” (and sons) are.

There are also huge no. of lawyers. The lawyers, if you believe the talk of my office, are the true "goonda"s, I have been told that the police (who are goondas in uniform) too are afraid of the lawyers - because, after all, the hearing will be at the court, and outside it, they will round up whoever they are dissatisfied with, and beat them up, including persons in Police force. Yes, of course, one can file a "writ petition" if one fears this, but the writ hearing will also take place inside a court , right? ... Oh! there are a handful of women lawyers, and, as is true of every rowdy profession, the women are the rowdiest ;)

Recently, the Bar Council elections took place. The traffic of half the town was jammed for two days :D This is nothing new. During Chhath pooja, conducted by Bihari  Hindus, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days, During “Light Festival” of the Sikhs, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days, and indeed, during the various political “events” and visitations, the traffic of half the town is jammed for two days. The traffic consists of n number of two-wheelers, three- wheelers of 3 kinds - the 7-seater, the auto-rickshaw, and the e-rickshaw, (and oh! the cycle rickshaw too), minibuses, actual buses, trucks (these are less, as trucks plying inter-city have a bypass outside the city), mini trucks carrying construction material, cars - hatchbacks and SUVs, and a few sedans, and then  hand-pushed carts and horse Tongas (these , as well as cycle-rickshaws have much reduced), AND pedestrians. If Traffic Jams generated  revenue in some form, Kanpur would be richer. And it is certain that it is not possible, due to the simple fact that it has not been done. Kanpur is not a city to let a business opportunity slip through its fingers.

So, why do I live on? Two reasons. Firstly, any place, which is not creeping with humans and Indians today, as Kanpur is, can easily become so, in a matter of mere months. And secondly, resilience, though the virtue of the virus, is still a virtue. I found life, and beauty, in the midst of all the filth and ugliness of Kanpur. Since I can afford a paid driver, I can afford to look out of the window. First I found the trees. Appearing from inside the monochrome grey dust, and the heaps of illegally-mined sand, rise the drumstick trees. It is not easy to guess who planted them, but it is easy to see the attacks on them.

Let me introduce you to the Drumstick. It is a vegetable, long pods (which are really soft when tender, and get really woody and need to be skinned when mature) with interestingly three-sided, eye-shaped seeds, cooked in various cuisines in India. Some love it, others hate it. The flowers, white smalls blossoms, are also edible, they have a slightly bitter, very specific taste, my sister loves it. Recently, it has emerged in studies that the leaves of the Drumstick tree are an awesome source of many vitamins and minerals, and some projects are encouraging poor people to plant a tree and use its leaves as "greens" in their meals. I do not know if this is the reason why random people decimate the roadside Drumstick trees.

Half-naked, rotten-toothed humanity aged 11 to 90 hacks away at them. Not only are the drumsticks reaped, but the tree is reduced to a stump. I used to, initially, seriously feel bad. Then, I saw the shoots. Rising vertically, like so many middle fingers pointed at the heaven. Humans will perish, and with them, the idea of “heaven”. But drumstick trees will remain. Right now, in January, their “bowers” as I am tempted to call them, are laden with greenish white blossoms, literally bowing. I remember my sister, in Amsterdam, she can't have access to any of these!

There are massive Gulmohars and Palaashs, perhaps 80 or hundred year old, and yet, youth visits them every year, and proudly they display their blood-red prime against the blueness above. There are Rangoon creepers and railway vines and Glorybower covering private and Government walls in ice-cream pink and wine red. And the Amaltas - Laburnum. It thinks it is in Europe! For the Laburnum, spring comes not in late February, but in Early May!

Then, I found the humans. What ultimately matters, in the passing of the day is not what the facilities and the amenities are, but who I see when I have the time to look around. I found those who take unpaid leaves from their paying jobs to carry food to and ensure the changing of dressing of injured animals at the SPCA – my informal Animal Welfare group. I found those who have to give up the city's last private children's library, because they have to rent out the space, but come back with a smaller one, because they just cannot not have a library for kids. I found my tribe. It is not close knit, it does not reside in one clan. It is spread over the city. Those, who, upon finding out that special kids are in need of entry to “normal school”, themselves went for a short course on Early Childhood Special Education. Those who itch for and crave books, and a bookish and literary atmosphere. Who dream up, chalk out, fundraise, and actually hold a LitFest. So, yes. I'm not planning on retiring in Kanpur, but as of now, I am working, staying, and living here.

*The Mourning of Muharram is a set of rituals associated with mainly Shia Islam. The event marks the anniversary of the Battle of Karbala, when Imam Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, was killed by the forces of the second Umayyad caliph. In India, processions(juloos) are taken out, in which young men are showing their mettle (and their sadness) by drawing their own blood by various means

Open letter to to the WhatsApp forwards - rebellion of the "overparenting" parent

“Why I am pushing my child”

1. A child is not a mini adult. A child is not a weaker, “fragile” adult. A child is not a dumb adult. A child is a learning machine. A child is a faulty-logic-ed (classic Piaget), limited-knowlegde (they don't know that gas from gas oven kills you, heck, they don't know what “killed” really means), vulnerable (did you miss the latest rape news?) learning machine.
2. If I don't teach my child, the world will teach. It will teach her that Pakistanis & Chinese are evil, & should be killed off as whole populations. It will teach her that boys cannot wear pink. It will teach her that women are annoying beings that prevent men from enjoying their lives. It will teach her that “talking about death” is an unlucky thing, but wearing a seatbelt is stupid-elite.
3. I am not pushing her to do things that she hates. (In fact, I do not know of anything that she really hates). One must “try” something before developing a taste. An art, any art, can only be practised by discipline, & “pushing” one's own limts. I am exposing my child to books & crafts because I love reading & craft-ing (which is a word now). I don't say you are “pushing your child” when you send them to “BrainyBaby” or teach them to fold their hands upon spotting a religious building, do I?
4. Habits are learnt by – habit! As a child grows, “learning manchine-ness” decreases, it is more & more difficult to pick up new skills. It is immensly more difficult for anybody, child or adult, to break an existing habit, than to pick up a new one.
5. Good habits save time. When you know where your keys are, it saves 5 minutes of searching. If you routinely wash your socks & keep them in the same corner of the cupboard, you always have fresh socks when you need them. Time already is, & will continue to be the most valuable thing. Time saved can be utilised in making money, spending money, with one's family, practising a hobby, sleeping, or gazing at the cows in the meadow, whichever is the most valuable to us.
6. Said child is not complaining. She is unhappy why I am issuing so many instructions, but NOT unhappy about ANY of the activities that she is being pushed into.
7. I am not making her into a robot. She does not just “receive & follow instructions”. She jots down her own to-do list, & asks me for suggestions or availaibility. Sure, I do “disapprove” some of the stuff she plans, & add some others, but that, directing one's child, molding their priorities, is parenting.