What are words worth?

Karnataka, from the ground up

2011-12-26T08:40:00.000-08:00

For the past month and a half, I have been getting to know my neighbouring state a little bit better. With some of my colleagues from the University of Hyderabad's Department of Communication, I've had the opportunity to visit different parts of Karnataka and speak with some of those who are trying to bring public health care to the poorest communities in both rural and urban areas. As part of the wide-ranging public health initiative known as the National Rural Health Mission, the Karnataka State Department of Health and Family Welfare has been attempting to scale up the intensity and range of its activities. The specific project that drew us in was the strengthening of the Department's IEC activities (Information-Education-Communication), particularly, building the capacity of its frontrunners (the block level health education officers) in social and behaviour change communication (known in the profession as SBCC). Supported by UNICEF, this effort involves training the 170 or so BHEOs from the state's 30 districts in new ways of approaching health communication, focusing more on interpersonal communication and participatory methods of engaging communities.

It's been a challenge, to say the least. The diversity of issues across the districts, representing relatively affluent and high literacy areas like Udipi and Shimoga to extremely disadvantaged regions like Raichur and Bidar, the structural hurdles and entrenched corruption in the system, all serve to create a very dubious foundation upon which to build the dream of equitable, accessible, good quality health care. The NRHM is a beginning, and in its seventh year of implementation, it seems, a very small beginning. The BHEOs--many of them in their 25th or 26th year of service, sometimes more--are doing what they can, travelling among the villages they serve, talking to mothers and panchayati raj institutions, persuading medical professionals and para professionals, mobilizing self help groups to pitch in...and somehow keeping their heads above the water.

I have no idea whether or not our feeble efforts to provide some new ideas and new ways of doing will have any impact. But for us (and I know I speak for the whole team here) it's been a learning experience. Now when I travel to Mysore I will look beyond the perimeter of the royal city to see the infant mortality rates that continue to pose a challenge to the villages in Mandya, or when I decide to take that holiday in Coorg, at the back of my mind will dance the awareness of the hill communities in Kodagu that have little or no access to a doctor's healing hands in an emergency. When I trek through the fort in Bidar, a part of me will be thinking of the young women who are not sure they will get to a hospital in time to have their babies there.

There is still a lot to understand, about health care in Karnataka, about how communities can become more active and informed participants in decisions about their own health, and about how the system can be truly strengthened on all fronts.

But there's been another side to the travels as well. There's been the incredible hospitality and warmth of the health workers we've met. The varied landscape of the state, from the rocks and boulders along the Mysore highway to the thickly forested tracts of Uttara Kannada to the deep valleys of Hospet and dramatic ruins of Hampi. In the pauses between workshop sessions, and at the end of long interactive days, we have managed to see a little more of the other side of the places we've visited. Stopping to sample the sugarcane straight from the fields in Mandya, or taking a walk in Brindavan gardens with not a single tourist in sight, walking along Malpe Beach after a long day of talking about communicable diseases, or stepping on the very rock from which Rama is said to have shot at Vali in the area now known as Anegundi near Hampi, the state has unfolded, bit by bit.

Rediscovering Sunday morning on Abid Road

2011-12-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

After months of wanting to get out there on a Sunday morning and scrounge around the street bazaar for more books to stuff into my already bursting-at-the-margins shelves, we finally made it! Three regulars and one newcomer from our three-month old Book Club met on a Sunday morning, bright and early (well...tennish) near St George's Grammar School (remember those grey school tunics?) and set off to stare at the books on the footpath. The first few displays we came across, just past the Taj Mahal hotel (we could already smell the dosas we had promised ourselves), were not very inspiring, despite snazzy titles and lurid pictures of women in sixties' hairdos on the cover. One title in particular caught my eye: "The curse of the singles table: A true story of 1001 nights without sex" by Suzanne Schlossberg. Intriguing, that, and perhaps nothing like Sheherezade's tales spanning a similar period!

Gouri was the first to spot something she liked, and before we knew it, she was on a mission, to pick up books that had been adapted into movies. Emboldened by Gouri's purposive acquisitions, Binit began looking in earnest for titles that would justify purchase--something that would fall under the broad rubric of "academic"! I had no such qualms, and half an hour later I was about five hundred rupees poorer and had three volumes in my bag: including a nice fat Calvin and Hobbes collection. But the film adaptations far surpassed my collection in number...and beat me in terms of price! Amit too had his share of fun looking at a dozen different editions of classics in translation and sundry coffee table books (which, by the way, Binit had loads of fun looking at!). Old bestsellers at ten rupees each and slightly better reading at forty rupees, and the very real chance of finding that rare edition...doesn't really get better than that for a bibliophile.

Two hours later we began to feel the heat of the midday sun and retired gracefully to the Taj to savour our dosas. I had my Calvin and Hobbes; Binit her visions of Scandinavian villas; and Gauri her collection of movie inspirations. Satisfaction!

The last time I went to the Abids Sunday book market was over 30 years ago (sobering thought), with my friend Suroor and her sister in law Gina, and a five-year-old Imran. We rounded off that morning with dosas too, but at Sarovar, which now no longer exists, the building having been turned into a multi-specialty hospital. The Abids second-hand book bazaar is a Hyderabadi institution. It's a great place to find cheap text books, rummy novels you wouldn't pay full price for, and those colourful Archie spectaculars that bring back a yearning for a comic-filled childhood. And the best part? Crisp masala dosas--or button idlis and wadas--at the Abids Taj!

Always on

2011-12-02T09:50:00.001-08:00

It's close to midnight on the second full day of my winter vacation--or what is supposed to be one. I find that I am sitting here at my laptop catching up on email, listening to rough cuts of the upcoming shows on Bol Hyderabad (the campus community radio station of the University of Hyderabad), reading student work that needs to be commented upon, preparing for a series of workshops I have committed to... in short, it doesn't look like a promising beginning for a vacation! And I thought University life was going to be a picnic compared to the corporate or NGO sectors! Whatever happened to the life of quiet reflection peppered with the occasional ruminative lecture that academics are supposed to be privileged to have? When I switched jobs last year, I thought I was entering a space where there would be time for some amount of purposeless reading, for writing (things other than reports and promotional materials), and for stimulating intellectual debate (unlike the heated arguments over paper texture or background colour that I had grown used to having periodically). It's been twelve months now, and those three things have remained mirages.

I'm not complaining, really. I love the work. I absolutely love the highs that come from being in a classroom full of young people who believe in you and what you have to say (for the most part--and I try to ignore the texting that is happening in one corner, or the surreptitious surfing in another). I enjoy the conversations I have with students who walk into my open office and talk about their confusions and their hopes. And I enjoy being able to work with my own deadlines, the independence with which I can organize what and how I will teach. I have no one but myself to blame for the add-ons...the papers I choose to write, the chapters I agree to contribute, the workshops I get involved in, etc. And of course the love affair with radio that has resumed after three long decades of being out of touch with the medium.

Not to forget, there's also another thing that keeps me busy even when the University is closed. Teacher Plus. I've just downloaded 16 articles to be given an editorial once-over for the coming month's issue. There are papers to look at and deal with. There is the next issue of Edu-Care that needs to be planned.

There's a pile of novels by my bed that I'm hoping to get to this month, and tonight, I just might get to the crossword. But for now, I guess I had better get back to work. Yes, it is vacation time. But some of us can't bear to turn ourselves off.

More conversations with cabbies

2011-10-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

As we travel into town on an uncharacteristically quiet Sunday evening, the Bangalore roads are relatively traffic free, but the driver of the Meru cab decides to take me by the "easy route" where we will drive uninterrupted by traffic lights. He swings off the four lane highway into a quiet side street that seems to go on and on in the darkness, and I am beginning to wonder if I should have insisted on the bright lights of the main road. But just as my anxiety is beginning to take a dangerous turn, he points out to me a looming wall on my left. It is very high, and soon we come to a pair of massive gates that seem to hide something very important inside. "That's YSR's son's house," the driver notes. "Jagan. That's where he stays when he comes to Bangalore. He owns this whole stretch of land." I made suitably amazed-disbelieving-indignant sounding noises. Just enough to make him go on. "I once took a passenger in there, he was a guest of YSR's, when he was still alive." He went on to talk about how he ended up staying with the guest for his entire visit, driving him around town, being served his meals at the mansion in between. A veritable palace inside those high walls, it seems. You must meet some interesting people, I say, warming up to what promises to be a good way to keep my mind of the long, dark, unfamiliar road. But he was right, we haven't seen a single traffic signal. No traffic to signal.

I learn about the economics of running a Meru cab (Rs 1100 per day goes to the company for use of the cab and their GPS tracking services; he makes around Rs 300 to 500 a day after dues have been paid; no work, no profit, only dues) and the system of quality control (speed violations are recorded immediately, as are any complaints from clients). But there are unexpected bonuses. Mahesh recounts how he had done dedicated duty for a Dutch software professional who was in the city for two days and liked the fact that he spoke English (he was delighted to speak with me in Telugu). When she returned to Bangalore 3 years later she tracked him down (despite the fact that he had switched vehicles). He had forgotten her and wondered who this foreigner was who had asked for him, specifically. Of course, when he met her he remembered having driven her around. When she left, she took him to a Raymond's store and bought him a suit length. "I had never in my life gone into a store like that," he told me.

The next morning I was in another Meru cab, with Santosh, who had been caught in the melee the previous day when thousands of people thronged the streets to catch a glimpse of the Tamil actor Vijay, hailed as the next Ranjnikanth, who was in Bangalore to open a jewelry store near Commercial Street. "It was crazy, people were climbing over cars to see him--and he was here for barely five minutes. I thought my vehicle was going to be damaged," recalls Santosh.

You just never know where the next story awaits you. Sometimes on long dark stretches of road where the conversation lights up the lonely miles. Or on an early morning drive that would have been otherwise occupied by anxious wonderings about the workshop ahead.

Class struggle

2011-10-02T04:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when the students in my writing class toil over their assignment (though toil may be an extreme description of the level of engagement, sometimes!), I decide to take a mental walk with my own words. A couple of weeks ago, this is what resulted:

You walk in,
the world on your shoulders
and in the undependable ink
of the whiteboard marker,
you're ready to deliver it,
spell it out,
deconstruct
and analyze it,
so that they can pick up the pieces
and fit them into a jigsaw
of their own desires
and motivations
(parentally fed/denied/rebelled against).
There are alternative words
for ambition
that escape you,
as your gaze flits
from furrowed brow
to glazed eye
to drumming fingers
and snapping ball point pens.
Perhaps that's too strong a description
for this pressure--
a heavy, blanketing, blinkering
cloak--
they wear to the classroom.
The world stays on my shoulder
but it feels different,
lighter, made less serious
by the skeptical minds
that have beheld it
for the better part
of two hours.

22 September 2011

Mapping the contours of grief

2011-09-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

They run through your head like a series of faded pictures; a smile here, a laugh there, a couple of sentences spoken in a voice just beginning to become familiar, a few sentences scribbled in haste in a classroom, an unopened email, an image of a young man sitting on the steps or lounging in a chair with his friends, answers given with a bit of nervousness and a lot of motivation during an interview.

The feelings and thoughts that populate the room where we sit, remembering Rattan, choke the air, the smiles have disappeared from the faces of a normally boisterous group of students from both years of the MA program. We make our polite speeches that hide more than they reveal, because emotion is something that can only be referred to in a controlled, structured manner in an official forum. But this is necessary too, this acknowledgment that we all share regret at a life cut short all too rudely, that we recognize the irreparable loss that this has forced upon a family and on friends, that we think and reflect on what the particularities of this loss can tell us and teach us.

Entering the home, where we are forced to intrude upon the irreconcilable despair of the parents, who have lost a child, a wrenched-from-the-gut loss, we are faced with yet another reality. A different space of absence. We express our sorrow with bent head and pressed-together palms, we speak in hushed tones of how much promise we had discerned, and we sit for a while, wishing we could wish away the hours that have passed, the split-second decisions that have resulted in a tragedy that will forever mark this space.

And I wonder how I will walk into my class, two days from now, and face those forty-odd students whose sense of the room, of their work, their interactions with each other and this beautiful landscape that they inhabit, has been deeply changed. How do we go on as if nothing has happened? How can we reclaim those ordinary conversations that now (for a long time) will carry an undercurrent of this terrible tragedy? How do we look each other in the eye and find something other than the awareness of the fact that there has been a death amidst us? How long will it take for us to not look involuntarily at that seat in the back row and stop to catch a breath?

I've spoken about this before, about how, the older you get, the more loss one experiences--one of the "perks" of living and feeling intensely, of having an ever widening network of people one cares about, even if in different ways and to varying extents. I've know good friends and relations who have lost a child, and this much one knows, that it never gets easier. Of course, this does not mean that we cease to find joy in things and people around us, or that life becomes a burden. Clearly, that's not the case. What time does have the capacity to do is to bring new interests and occupations that fill our minds and our days. Memories recede, they get put away, but they don't disappear. They lose their edge somewhat, maybe, but sometimes, at the most unexpected moments, they resurface to remind us of things that could have been.

Yes, life goes on, but it goes on without those persons who could have been a part of it, and that sense of loss, the absence, becomes a permanent presence.

Book Club, anyone?

2011-09-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from an hour talking about something I find it difficult to stop talking about, with four others who appear to be somewhat similarly inclined. Not a crowd by any standards, but a group that represents a beginning. The idea to start a book club has been brewing for a while now; every time I find myself in conversation with someone about a book I've read, or a friend asks me to recommend reading for a child with a voracious appetite for the printed word, I can feel a certain excitement about words and the ways in which they turn into stories, offering windows into lives of others, worlds that I would never have access to without the channel created by imagination. Oftentimes these conversations have ended with the suggestion that we should start a book club. After many months of prevarication and a bit of a push from a young friend, it finally happened, and that's how I found myself in the brightly painted library of Little People Tree with four others, talking books.

We were/are all a little bit clueless about what exactly a book club was supposed to do. So we spent the hour bouncing around ideas, talking about what we liked or did not like about the books we'd read, trying to decide where we wanted to go and how. Why do people love Chetan Bhagat or hate him? What makes works in translation work? Is Orhan Pamuk obscure or fascinating?

And how do we like our books? Dog eared and well handled, or pristine and crisp? Does writing in the margins give a book character or become an unwelcome and unruly intrusion into a reader's relationship with the text? How do we deal with book borrowers who forget the fact and appropriate our tomes? What do we think about books turned into movies (and now, vice versa, too!)?

The conversation did not peter out, it was brought to a close. We've decided to meet two weeks from now, hopefully in a larger group. In the meantime, here's the book we will be discovering (or rediscovering): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

If you'd like to read along, please do join us. October 14, 6 p.m. at Little People Tree, Secunderabad.

Poems of a different hue

2011-09-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I listened to a Professor of English and Ethnic Studies, Dr Wilfred Samuels, read (rather, sing) the poetry of a man I had heard of but only vaguely. While I am no stranger to African American literature (Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are among my favorite writers), the poetry I was less familiar with--other than of course Maya Angelou whose "I know why the caged bird sings" has inspired many a high school student to delve further into the poetry that breaks free from centuries of oppression. But I suppose those who know African-American literature would know that you cannot speak of the poetry of Black America without speaking of Langston Hughes. Dr Samuel's, in a deep and resonant voice reminiscent of the negro spiritual, gave the audience a Hughes poem that runs as deep as its title: The Negro Speaks of RiversSays Hughes, in a refrain that runs through the rendering of the poem like an undercurrent to the river of thought itself, "My soul has grown deep like the rivers", a line that conveys both the anguish of the speaker and the hope that comes from a belief that the world we see is not entirety of knowledge or life. It's also a line that recalls the spirit of resistance--not of a violent kind, but a resistance of the spirit, that marks long struggles against injustices of various kinds, from slavery to apartheid to genocide to displacement. For us in India, perhaps it recalls the struggle in the Narmada and other valleys, marked by as much poetry and music to keep them alive. "Ma Rewa", a folk song adapted by Indian Ocean is one such. The poetry of Langston Hughes does something else. It makes an essential connection between the history of the African-American and the contemporary Black identity. In "Theme for English B" he raises an issue that is felt just as much by the marginalised Indian child in an average classroom--how much of the "we" in a teacher's mind is constituted by his or her experience and history? Is there space for us "to know what is true for you or me" in a way that goes beyond the superficiality of well constructed words?As Dr Samuels emphasized, one cannot understand text without context.. And the gift of poetry is that is opens the door to worlds through a lace-like arrangement of words. Context through text. So through the poetry of Langston Hughes, I enter the world of blues poetry, as musical to the verbal ear as the tripping notes of a jazz band. And a side door takes me to the verse of Lawrence Dunbar and the irrepressible rhythm of "Jump back, honey, jump back" (A Negro Love Song by Paul Lawrence Dunbar), performed by Dr Samuels with a smile and a lilt, urging participation from the staid audience at Hyderabad's Poetry Society meeting.

Reading Teachers

2011-09-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Three books, a dozen teachers, two expert voices, and a brightly painted room. The result was an hour of reflection and enjoyment, an escape into a space we had forgotten existed. Our own pleasure in the magic woven by words, the ability to travel into experiences not our own, and the possibility of discovering empathies--if not answers--in these narratives. When we at Teacher Plus were wondering what we could do to make the day special for our own community of teachers, we hit upon the idea of a session where teachers would turn listeners--not for the purpose of taking ideas back into their classrooms but to rediscover the simple pleasures of listening to a good story. The books we chose were simple, easy to obtain volumes that told stories that, despite their varied setting, were universal in the themes they addressed: boisterous classrooms, distracted students, difficult teenagers, and the never quite defined aims of education. But these themes were not wrapped in polemic or abstract intellectualisms. They were at the centre of real teacher interactions in the everyday. The first of these was an extract from what some may dismiss as an exercise in sentimentalism: A Cup of Comfort for Teachers, from which we drew a piece called "Why I teach". How doubts and uncertainties about children are revealed as nothing more than prejudice and misconception and how, so often, these are proven wrong once we just open our minds and listen. Children surprise us constantly, but we need to be ready to experience surprise.The second set of readings came from a book that is perhaps less familiar to many--Frank McCourt's Teacher Man. Those who have read Angela's Ashes would know his style, and this one does not disappoint. Whether it is talking about facing a class of hostile adolescents from troubled and poverty stricken homes, or wondering about how and why we teach, McCourt delights and strikes a chord with many of us. The bit we read was from McCourt's experiment with the word "gibberish" to drive home a grammar point in English class. Suddenly boys who had nothing but impatience with parsing sentences were alert and interested in playing with words.And finally, that old classic, To Sir with Love. The song by Lulu that never fails to give me goosebumps opened our memory banks and many of us traveled back to the well-loved film of our childhood. Our readers, Aarti Phatarphekar and Ranjan Ranganathan, brought the text alive with their evocative reading. We laughed with Braithwaite and his rough kids, and thought back wistfully to the last scenes in the movie, which underscored the transformation that is possible when a teacher cares about his/her work and the children who are part of it.We find answers and echoes in books, both fiction and non-fiction, in unexpected ways. They open our minds to different ways of thinking and doing that we, in our limited worlds, would never have encountered first hand. More than one teacher remarked that she was going to the nearest bookstore to look for a copy of one or other book.

Cut, stir, simmer and serve, spiced with a running train of thought

2011-08-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

It's a quarter past five and I walk sleepily into the kitchen, my hand reaches for the medium-sized coffee filter and I not-so-precisely measure five heaping spoons of fresh grounds into it and with the other half of my brain pull out the milk to boil. I put away last night's clean and dry dishes as silently as possible, knowing the early morning stillness magnifies the sound of a tinkling spoon into something resembling cannon fire in the slumbering mind of the still-sleeping household. I watch the milk first slowly and then rapidly rise to a boil thinking of Kanthiamma, my maternal grandmother, tell me it's a good sign if the milk boils over. (Well it's done that several times over and I haven't noticed any unusual good luck coming my way.) I make my coffee and as I lift the tumbler to my lips I wonder whether it will be a "perfect coffee day". My friend Mahrookh visits my wandering mind at that moment, saying in her inimitable Tamil imitation "sariya iruka di?" A quick fade and there's my cousin Rajee who insists that you add the decoction to the hot milk, and not the other way round, to get the perfect cup. Then it's Elle's turn, sitting at her window seat in Jittery Joe's (I wonder if it's still there, the seat and the window and Jittery Joe's) joining me in an outsize cup while over a spillover discussion from the culture club. Then can Carolina be far behind, an image of her outside the downtown coffee bar where we last met in Athens, talking about the culture club in its current avatar, more graduate students, less Elle. I must pull my mind back to my kitchen in the here and now but while I am visiting Athens how can I not stop by Sarita's kitchen and glance at the two big filters made ready in the night by Ganesh, the official coffee maker of the Beechwood house? And of course there is Tonya, who loved the coffee I made for her, to go with the chocolate croissants from Harris Teeter, and here is Melinda, another comrade in graduate-school arms. Now I must turn my attention to the beans, and as I string them I think of Ramana in the huge kitchen at the base of Arunachala, lining up the beans and the strings in neat piles, my mind's image to Amma's recounting...but somewhere in the middle of that journey of consciousness I remember learning a new method of making paruppu usili by microwaving the dal instead of steaming it (thank you, Malati). From beans to the sambar is a quick journey interrupted by a long mental detour that takes me past many cooks who have added flavour to my life and many good meals I have shared with friends, cousins and others. By the time the rice and dal are done, and the lunch boxes are packed, I feel like I am back from a nice long visit over many cups of tea and coffee, having had a whiff of the aromas wafting from every kitchen I've been in and every table I've sat at. The most surprising memories, pop into my head when I am closeted in the kitchen every morning. More people than I send birthday greetings to or call even once a year, many whom I have not met in decades and am unlikely to ever meet again (some being in what we may call "a better place"). Some people with whom I share no connection other than a fleeting smile or a quick shake of the hand. It's amazing how many people touch you. And leave fingerprints in your memory.

Found in Translation

2011-08-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

As I scanned my bookshelf and ticked off in my mind the books I had finished reading, it struck me that works in translation comprised about 80 percent of my list last year. I don't consciously look for translated work, other than those by writers in Indian languages (being handicapped by my relative inability to fully appreciate the written word in the Indian languages I am familiar with) but it turns out that many of the non-Indian writers I had read last year were also in translation. Allowing works of imagination (and information of course) to travel across linguistic and cultural boundaries leads to a wonderful movement of ideas, creating connections in a relatively effortless manner. Of course, I completely appreciate that the act of translation is certainly not without effort, in fact requires a special talent that is able to transfer mood and meaning to an alien language in a way that leaves no sense of a "foreign tongue" in a reader's head. The best translations are fluent transmissions of meaning, in which you are able to appreciate the context/content of the original without being hindered by an unfamiliar idiom.

Our reading lives are enriched by work in translation, right from short stories by Tagore in our sixth grade "non-detailed" books to the passages from Homer in high school or college. And we don't even notice that they are meanings twice-born (respectful apologies to the late Prof Meenakshi Mukherjee who used the term "twice born" to describe Indian writing in English), first in the author's mind and then in the translator's.

Of the wonderful twice born books I have read these last few months, the one that is almost definitely top of the list is The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. The translation carries the light elegance that must have defined the original. The story of an unlikely but beautiful friendship between a concierge, a precocious thirteen year old who discovers the concierge's carefully hidden intelligence, and a Japanese widower with a heightened aesthetic awareness. And then, a single copy hidden amongst the best sellers I found another translated work, this time from the Portuguese, Night Train to Lisbon. This provided a slightly bumpier ride through the story but gave me plenty of contextual information in case I need to take that train ride myself.

The past year also saw me venturing into more recent works from Indian writers in translation. The hour past midnight by Salma took me on a journey into the kind of Tamil home that I have not have the privilege of entering, while the translated edition of Sivasankari's "Palangal" (Bridges in English) gives me the opportunity to match my impressions with my mother's reading of the same novel in the original.

I'm grateful to these translators, these painstaking purveyors of other people's stories, these men and women who undertake to retell in a manner that gives you entry to worlds that would otherwise be walled off by language. My world would be poorer without them, as would that of many others who cherish stories of a million tongues.

Won't you sign my e-book please?

2011-08-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I came home from a book launch with a nice fat hardbound copy of the novel, Amitav Ghosh's "River of Smoke", signed by the author with an inscription to my daughter. This copy joined my set of three of Ghosh's books, each with a signature and a personal note. Then there's the signed copy of Chimamanda Adichie's "Half of a Yellow Sun" alongside Alexander McCall Smith's "No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" with his name scrawled on the fly-leaf. Other authors have scrawled their unrecognizable or distinctive black-ink John Hancocks on other books, from Mark Tully to William Dalrymple to Kaveri Nambisan. Each of the inscriptions brings back a story of a meeting, of a specific context of experiencing the book. And I treasure them all. I know, ten or twenty years from now, when my bibliophile daughter takes over my bookshelves, she will feel the same fondness for those old volumes, maybe a bit yellowed and dog-eared, but with the charming smell of ink and thick paper that refuses to get old. Each time someone tells me about a recent conversion to Kindle or the Nook or books on the iPad, I think to myself, oh how convenient, to be able to travel with one slim gadget that carries a thousand books in it, and to read in comfort wherever you go without worrying about "running out" of reading material!

But I am also equally convinced that the paper and ink version of the book will not go the way of the dinosaur and steam engine just yet. Apart from the raw commerce surrounding the production of hard copy books, there is just too much cultural meaning surrounding them for people to give them up easily. There is the charm of marginalia--and better still, second-hand marginalia that makes us smile or mutter as we leaf through a pre-owned copy. I think there are at least two good reasons for predicted a long life for the printed book. One, most of us still feel the delight and excitement of tearing off the pretty wrapping from a book-sized object and exclaiming, "Oh, but just what I wanted to read!" And two, there is a special meaning attached to author-signed copies of books, no matter how obscure or distant the author. Pradeep Sebastian writes in his column in The Hindu about precious "association copies" , books that have been inscribed and signed for a particular person. There is a special feeling about owning a book with the writer's own [pen and ink] mark on it. In this, the e-book just cannot compete. After all, can you imagine someone going up to an author with an e-gadget and asking, "could you sign my ebook please?"

Remembering Husain saab

2011-06-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Walking down the middle circle of Connaught Place, New Delhi, one does not expect to run into celebrities--it's sort of the back alley to the corporate world, lined with rear entrances to offices and the occasional restaurant kitchen that serves the capital's circular centre. We were on our way to the bus stop after a long day's work, in a rush to reach Jantar Mantar before the 5:45 bus to RK Puram. Approaching us was this tall, slim, black-clad figure...walking barefoot, and instantly recognizable behind his dark glasses. Like the starry-eyed twenty-somethings we were, we stopped him and instantly whipped out any paper we had and demanded an autograph. He stopped, smiled pleasantly, and wished us in his soft Hindustani, and signed. While we stood there gawking and overcome that we had had an exclusive encounter with the country's most celebrated artist in this unlikeliest of places, and away from gheraoing crowds.

I have no idea where that signed notepad went--perhaps is lodged inside one of the numerous cardboard boxes that hold my memorabilia from the different phases of my life. But the memory is stark and fresh.

More than two decades later I met him again, this time a planned visit to his home-turned-museum in Hyderabad, Cinema Ghar. It was also an occasion for me to meet another old acquaintance, Khalid Mohammed, who was "hanging out" with Husain saab in the process of writing his authorized biography. The formal outcome of the meeting with M F Husain is recorded here, in The Hindu Metro Plus.http://www.hindu.com/mp/2004/04/19/stories/2004041901010100.htm

But I left the interview with more than a story for the local paper. It was a sense of ordinariness, a politeness that characterized the first meeting too, that pervaded our conversation. Yes, Husain saab may be criticised for his strategic use of public attention to purvey his goods and stoke his reputation. He may be vilified for taking tongue-in-cheek jabs (and sometimes not so tongue in cheek) at mainstream morality and populist politics. But one cannot deny that his couldn't-care-less-ness is sincere. His only truth is his art.

And I also left with one other thing. A signed, numbered graphic print of his Joan of Arc.

The amazing women in my life--Part 2/Lessons in living and loving

2011-05-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

How does one talk about one’s parents without falling into the usual traps of sentimentality or its opposite? Without recourse to familiar narratives of support, opposition, nurturing or its absence? There is the temptation to qualify every statement I make with a disclaimer, a sign of embarrassment perhaps, so I shall do this all at once before I begin.

Everyone has stories to tell about their parents.
Each one of these stories is unique, touching, formative.
Every parent-child relationship forms and grows within specific circumstances which render it special.
Within every nurturing relationship there is the possibility of its absence, its distortion, its corruption.
Laughter, love, anger, sadness, conflict, confusion...these and other emotions/states of mind are the building blocks of all relationships, and the claim of their presence in one acknowledges both the unique and the universal nature of the relationship being described.

And the list could go on.

But I suppose I should set aside the hesitations I feel and go on with my own narrative. The fear that it will at once say too much and too little must be overcome. But saying that this fear exists to some extent (perhaps) exonerates me from judgment of either kind.

Okay, here I go....

One of my earliest memories of my mother and me together is of us in a park; she is painting while I am doing something close by, maybe scribbling or colouring. We are in Canada, and it is the 1960s. There are other memories, but few of my childhood where it was just the two of us.

I didn’t think of it as such then, but I suppose I have always shared her with many, many people. And perhaps that is the essence of her, the feeling that she is always available for everyone. In the family, it meant my father could be available for his extended family, no matter what the need. For her sisters, nieces and nephews, it meant she could be called upon for moral and emotional support whenever they needed it.

For me...well for me, it showed me how to be.

My mother--Lakshmi--was married a few weeks before she turned nineteen. She was in her third year of a BA, and suddenly from being a student, she found herself as the eldest daughter in law in a family of seven siblings, the youngest of whom was just five years old. My grandfather had passed away several years earlier, leaving my father as de facto “head” and main support of the family. Within the year, they sat in loco parentis at two weddings, and then became parents themselves.

For the first fifteen years of my life, we lived mostly in a joint family, with periods now and then when one or the other brothers traveled abroad or on short transfers within the country. The household consisted of two married brothers and their children (by 1968 it was two each), the youngest brother who was just seven years older than me, and Chitti, my grandmother (but more about her some other time). Between her duties as a mother, daughter in law, wife, sister in law and other sundry roles, she found a little time to explore other interests. She taught school briefly, kept in touch with tailoring and embroidery, and of course gave of herself--something that is I think essential to who she is. In 1965, when she had to follow my father to Canada--then a cold, completely unfamiliar country--I can only imagine the sense of uncertainty and apprehension (never fear) that she may have felt. In the three years we lived in Calgary, she discovered what it was like to live without family, waiting three weeks or more for a response to a letter (remember, those were the days before direct dialing and the internet was a secret hidden deep in the defense department), experiencing cold that could not even be imagined in south India, and getting used to being stared at as she walked around in her sari and long plait. She learned how to drive, to punch computer cards, to shop in large supermarkets, and also, to manage the early months of pregnancy without the doting attentions of family (my brother was born soon after we returned to India in 1968).

We came back once again to life in a joint family, with its own joys and frustrations, good times and bad. Decisions had to be shared, time was never one’s own. But it is perhaps to her credit (and of course the other adults in the house) that for the children, it was a wonderful place to be. There was always someone to play and fight with, and someone to stand up for you when one of the parents was mad with you. Amma and my aunt, Vijaya Chitti, did most things together. They sewed together, shopped together, planned festivals together, took trips apart so there was always someone at home to take care of things while the other was away...in all, it appeared to be a completely harmonious existence. Only now, as an adult and mother myself, do I understand the dreams and desires that a young woman (she was 28 when we returned) may have had to set aside to create such harmony.

Amma went back to teaching many years later, having done a BEd through correspondence after she was done with “mothering”--I had gone off to the US to do my master’s and my brother was “safely” in college. When my father retired and they moved into their own house in Secunderabad, she went back to being a full time homemaker. Her weekends were filled with visits from grandchildren, and she rediscovered some of her other interests--gardening, reading, and craft.

Her ability to give of herself found fulfilment during this time, when she joined a group of like minded people who were running a counseling centre called Seva. It was in Seva I think that she has found a space that nurtures this part of herself, her ability to give unstintingly and without favor. She listens with as much compassion and interest to a young girl who has been left in the city by poor parents, to fend for herself, as she does to a middle class housewife experiencing domestic discord, or a software professional trying to come to terms with varying expectations from family and work.

I suppose you could say hers is an ordinary life--insofar as any of us live "ordinary" lives. But for me, I cannot begin to count the ways in which she has contributed to the person I am. It is more about what she has not done--or more correctly, what she has abstained from doing. She has never told me what she expects of me, or what I must do or not do. My life has been remarkably empty of parental force or direction, but it is precisely because of that that I have found a direction that is my own, and I am stronger for that. She listens without judgment, and when I complain, she neither supports me nor tells me what to do--but that tells me more than any specific piece of advice could. She is perhaps the most noninterfering and nonjudgmental person I know. One of my friends said "there's a quietness" about her that radiates a sense of peace and comfort.

I have much more of her now than I ever did as a child. She makes it possible for me to have a successful career, for me to pursue my own dreams and desires, and her home continues to be an extension of my own. It’s a space that begs to be shared, just like its owner, and we have taken full advantage of that. She, along with her friend, my mother in law, have added touches like the kolam on the terracotta walls of our compound, that make our home a welcoming and friendly space. My friends have often said that they feel more welcome in my mother’s house than my own, and my children lounge around with their friends in “Ammamma’s house” more often than they do in mine. She continues to be engaged with art and craft, and spreads her work around generously. Almost every member of the family has received a Thanjavur painting done by her, and almost every child has worn a smock or a frock embroidered and tailored by her. She has been available for nieces and nephews, sisters and sisters in law, just as much as she has for me. What it’s meant for me is a legacy of goodwill and affection, the spoils of her exercises in giving!

And that continues to be a lesson for life. It’s a tough one to learn--but watching her, I am amazed at how easily it comes to her. To give of herself--her time, her attention, her energies--is first nature to her.

Monkey mayhem!

2011-04-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

This morning my friend and colleague Sushma texted me to say she would be coming in late to the office. Given that we all deal with such things as children's exams, admissions, dropping them off some place and picking them up at another, I did not think much of it, and did not ask why. But when she did come in, with a somewhat harassed expression, we just had to sit down and listen to why.

The corridor outside her house, a green space of potted plants and a bird's nest, a sort of oasis in her urban high-rise, had been totally trashed by rampaging monkeys! Thinking the abundant greenery housed more than just pretty leaves, a gang of four hefty monkeys tore through the vines, pulled down cables that interfered with their search, and finally broke some pots in anger, not having found any fruit or other comestibles. When they finally ran away, Sushma and her husband were faced with a disaster coloured in terracotta and spotted green--bits of broken pots, scattered mud, leaves and tendrils torn and hanging everywhere....

"Our telephone line has snapped," cried one irate neighbour."Make sure you clean our balcony too, there are bits of broken pots here too," said another, one floor below. "My television isn't working--it's your responsibility to see the cable is up and running," demanded a third.

"But when people have a problem like this, don't the neighbours help?" I asked.

"Well, they blamed us for having so many pots and leading the monkeys to think there may be fruit behind all that greenery," said Sushma.

So Sushma and her husband Anup spent the next hour gathering the debris, cleaning their space then then their neighbours', and fixing whatever cables they could, while angry neighbours either looked on or walked away.

The incident brought up several questions, some directly related and others (in the manner thoughts run across mental networks) not.

First of all, why do people immediately jump on others, blaming instead of looking to see how they could work together? Don't they see that this could happen to anyone, that monkeys could have just as easily come to the first floor or anywhere else and created the same havoc there. As on an earlier "invasion" in Sushma's house, the monkeys could have taken a look inside a fridge, sampled their dal and curry, and made a royal mess of their kitchens. When something happens, in our homes, in our streets, in our neighbourhoods, why is the first impulse to look for whom to blame rather than to see what we can do to take care of the situation? Fixing blame can help us find out why it happened and perhaps try to ensure that it doesn't happen again, but it does not help take care of the situation that has arisen in the moment. For that we just need to set aside the why and pitch with a how and a what!

Secondly, how do monkeys experience urbania? What is it that prompts them to leave the shelter of their trees and jump into our homes? Sushma tells me that in this case, the monkeys may have mistaken the lush potted foliage outside her door for a tree-like growth, and they were hoping to find something edible among the leaves. In Hyderabad, and in many other Indian cities, monkeys are not an unusual sight, sometimes travelling in large groups, complete extended families, settling down on terraces and in parks where we see mothers tending to young ones, and aggressive males scouring the dumps and margins of homes for food. Summers seem to bring them out into the city in larger numbers, maybe because of the arid conditions in what's left of our surrounding forests. Just as people travel to the city seeking jobs in the off seasons of agriculture, they too come here for sustenance. And when they don't find it in the "natural" places they move into what we consider our preserve, the built up forests of the city.

All sorts of boundaries blur in the relentless growth of the city. And some new walls are built. We may as well accept that if we destroy the countryside to gain new plush gated communities, some of us will have to deal with the living things that used to populate those areas. So as we move outward, searching for pristine spaces in which to create our billboard communities, the monkeys move further into the city, claiming all manner of spaces where they can find the one thing they are looking for--food.

Summer arrives in Hyderabad, with Haiku

2011-04-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

The trees along the road, overlooking people's compound walls, peeping over the crumbling walls of historic sites, and of course, the view from my balcony...all have together given me some great moments the past few weeks. And so the Haiku emerges, distracting me, of course, from the traffic, but also bringing a smile to my lips as I navigate the rushing hours of the day. The very amateurish photos are grabbed by me as I rush through the day.

Please read this as a work in progress...as new images and words come together, they will find their way here. And I must mention the debt of gratitude I owe my friend Sadhana, whose enthusiasm for the wonders of nature is infectious!

26/3

Quotidian joys:

the purple jacaranda

against the blue sky

27/3

Copper pods burst into

flame, blazing a bold yellow

along the highway

30/3

Silver oaks witness

Traffic’s mad, rude rowdy rush

To distant nowheres

1/4

The rain trees' branches

spread their generous arms

like waiting grandfathers

2/4

An open blossom

reveals a whole world within

--faith, beauty, and peace

4/4

The pink touched blooms of

the temple tree now welcome

summer’s mango scent

9/4

Swinging mangoes wait

pregnant with pungent promise--

green to yellow soon!

9/4

Overhead, around

it’s blooming summer, smiles, sweat...

holidays arrive!

The Power of the Fast, the Power of Poetry

2011-04-08T01:25:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, one of the "last men standing" in the name of Gandhi has been fasting in Delhi. His protest has captured the minds and hearts of millions of people across this country, sparking rallies in support and signature campaigns to add power to the very simple demand he is making: to enable a mechanism to fight corruption in politics and other public institutions. Civil society groups in most parts of the country are organizing their own protest events, going on relay fasts and drumming up support via every possible medium from Facebook to Twitter to plain old text messaging to get people into public spaces to silently and sensibly express their anger and frustration with the system and support the demand for one sort of a clean-up mechanism. In Delhi, where Anna Hazare is confronting the government with his fast-unto-death (or fast unto the death of corruption), hundreds are people are thronging Jantar Mantar and the Boat Club lawns, carrying candles and placards, singing bhajans and signing hope. While there are some who are joining the bandwagon to gain publicity for themselves and their organizations, many feel truly and strongly that this is a common fight, one that we must all join if something is to be achieved.

Maybe it's the mood of the world. People everywhere, from Egypt to Iran to Libya to the heartlands of Chattisgarh and Vizianagaram, are saying enough is enough. Enough oppression. Enough discrimination. Enough corruption. What was once a helpless frustration has turned into a determined anger (Bapu too said there are uses for anger, and we must find those uses and channel the energy that anger carries with it) that has now been catalysed into a specific movement by Anna Hazare.

Why is fasting such a powerful tool of protest? What does one person's threat to refuse sustenance achieve, and what does it symbolise? It seems to be a peculiarly Eastern way of indicating protest and inciting guilt. It lays the burden of action on the object that is being confronted--in this case, it appeals to the conscience of government to admit its guilt and expiate it by acceding to the demand of the protestor. The fast is a powerful means of activating social conscience, particularly in this time of excess. Most of us consume much more than we need, so to be brought face to face with denial for a purpose does something to us--or at least to those of us who feel some sense of outrage at injustice of different kinds.

That "fount" of digital knowledge Wikipedia, tells us that the hunger strike as a means of protest, to draw the attention of the powerful to the problems of the people, dates back millennia, and is recorded in texts dating back to 400 BC or earlier. But most of us instinctively associate the hunger strike with the non-violent activism of Gandhi, and later with those who carried on the tradition, such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Anna Hazare, and of course the indomitable Irom Sharmila.

Anna Hazare's fast comes in the wake of the exposure of some of the country's worst scams: CWG, land deals in the capital and elsewhere, 2G spectrum sale, mining contracts in Karnataka, votes for sale...and the list goes on. We are all so sick of reading about corrupt politicians yet feel we cannot do anything to stem the rot. But the proposed Lok Pal bill offered a glimmer of hope, and one that Anna Hazare is determined to force the government to make real. So we now have a face to that protest, and a means which seems within our reach. Perhaps that's why this time, the fast has sparked off such a deeply felt reaction across Indians of all ages and persuasions.

At the University of Hyderabad, students plan a candle light march on the evening of April 9.
On Hyderabad's Necklace Road, people gathered in the morning of April 9 holding candles to show their support, and began a signature campaign as well as a relay hunger strike that will go on until there is a clear response to Anna Hazare's demand.
In Cyberabad, people took time off from their high paying IT jobs on Tuesday April 5 to gather together and show their support, some fasting for a whole day, others committing to skip a meal.
Quietly, in homes, people are performing their own symbolic acts of support--foregoing a meal, adding their votes and signatures to forwarded emails and messages, talking about it and spreading the culture of resistance to corruption.

And some write. Prose and poetry. Art and Music. To fire the embers of peaceful protest and energise the hope that change can happen.

The link below is a great example of the power of words, and their capacity to make us feel and think, and perhaps also, act.

Suheir Hammad's amazing poetry performed">

The view from my balcony

2011-03-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

This is something I do fairly often, but this morning I just stopped to enjoy the moment a little longer, and I realized that it made all the difference. Almost every morning, I open the wire mesh door to our little balcony and look down at the greenery and think to myself (apologies to Mr Armstrong) it's a wonderful world....well yes, there is the devastation in Japan, the people's struggles that turn violent in the face of oppressive state mechanisms, hunger and deprivation, repressive dictatorships in North Korea, Libya and smaller pockets around the globe....but still there is my tiny patch of a garden, with its blooming lilies and alamander, the hardy bougainvillea, the hibiscus that strains toward the sun from under the branching mango tree, and the beautiful bilwa (Bael) that stands by the front gate. And how could I forget the double jasmine, its plump, thickly packed petals holding in their scent until just the right moment touches them open, and then they can't stop perfuming the air until they are completely spent, brown and droopy against the dark green leaves.

It's just a small patch of garden, rocky for the most part, and rather sandy and unfertile. My mother tries to coax it into fecundity with persuasive additions of topsoil and compost, and loving sprays of water. But for the most part, it doesn't respond. When it does, however, it makes us sit up and take note. Suddenly, it seems like there are flowers to look at and smell, enough for my mother in law's puja and enough to put into a bowl and drink in the scent for a day or two. Straight down, the branches of the temple tree, almost bare of leaves but starkly beautiful with its smooth branches holding out flowers, their pink tinged petals holding a warm yellow centre. A little to the right is one of the three tall coconut palms, reaching up to the sky in an ever more hopeful bid to touch a cloud. Behind me is the faithful mango, which turns out a good crop year after year. Right now it is the hot and sour "manga thalar", raw mango cut into small pieces and seasoned liberally with mustard seeds and hing and chili powder and salt. And further to my left is the guava, which we had almost given up for lacking the ability to generate or grow good fruit. In between is the extravagant Ixora, its orange-red inflorescence demanding your attention. I'm keenly aware that in a city such as the one I live in, a garden of any kind is a luxury, despite the many hoardings advertising new homes in "sylvan" surroundings. So this morning I took an extra moment to soak in the little greenery I am privileged to look down on every time I go out on to the balcony.

As I go back inside and let the door swing shut behind me, I think yes, I can do this. I can face another day of rude car drivers and badly planned roads, buses that overtake from the wrong side and motorcyclists who weave trouble into the traffic. Part of my energy shot each day comes from this view of the garden.

Bread and roses, a hundred years on...

2011-03-08T03:20:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I was called upon to write a story about International Women's Day for the local feature supplement, and each year (I think it was three or four years in a row) I had to search my mind to see if there were new issues to write about. Balancing different roles, women and security, support groups, perceptions and stereotypes, etc. etc....I can see your eyes glaze over as you think, "same old, same old". That's true. But then, think about it, in 100 years, the issues are no different. Equal wages for equal work. The right to self-determination. The right to personhood on equal terms. The right to property. The right to not be treated as an object or possession. The same list. Year after year.

So this year I found myself wondering, are the speakers this year going to say anything different>

The newspaper stories are the same. What's different is that people now think it is a day to "celebrate" and not "agitate". So there are flowers for the women in the office, and phone calls and SMSs being passed around. But when we allow people (media) to turn this day of reflecting upon issues into a Hallmark event that allows us to parade beauties (pretty things) on our feature supplements in celebration of womanhood, are we not allowing the day to be subverted, and overtaken by the market, instead of retaining its essentially provocative and agitational purpose?

I'm not sure how or what to think about this. Although how and what I think about women's "issues" in general and gender-based (or anything-based) discrimination remains the same. Of course, within all the hype, there are occasions for true debate and unhurried, deep discussion, and the opportunity to introduce a new generation of thinking young women to the complexities of the issues that continue to be important and that continue to require urgent action and continued commitment. For instance, at a film screening this evening, women young, middle aged and old, and a few men, discussed the institution of marriage and what it means in these changing times. On television, a talk show host parleyed with a cross section of society about the need to reform the rape laws. So there are spaces for such conversation, and avenues for change.

To recap, a few of those earlier articles that have a gender dimension can be found here, here, and here.

The perils of multitasking

2011-02-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

Mornings demand multitasking. For most of us, whether we work at home or elsewhere, it's a time when we are rushing to open the door to ten different service providers from the milkman to the newspaperwallah to the trash collector to the next-door neighbour asking for a cup of sugar, while the phone rings to give you the latest on whether the bandh will affect your organization or your child's school or not, and the other phone, of the mobile variety, beeps insistently with messages ranging from bill alerts to not-to-miss sale alerts. Breathless already? Well that's the reality most of us whizz through every morning--we just don't stop long enough to make that list!

When the morning is complicated by a television turned on and tuned into Oscar fever, things don't get helped much. The milk boils over while you are watching Jake Gyllenhall smile at Amy Adams or trying to not watch Aish and Abhishek sound trite and plastic. The toast burns in the toaster that doesn't pop up (yes, the one you've sworn to fix next weekend) while you wish for the tenth time that you could go watch a movie in a real theatre eating real buttered popcorn instead of on your laptop off a CD that might get you into trouble with the piracy police.

Before you know it, you have all of half an hour in which to shower, make yourself look presentable, pack the high-energy lunchboxes, wolf down some breakfast, stuff your satchel with every paper and book you are likely to need and some that you just might...and make it to work on time.

It's a rush (and not the pleasurable kind) that gets complicated by the presumed ability to work on many different things at the same time. It's not just that many things need to get done within a limited amount of time, so you stack them up on the same time slot and handle one with one arm and another with one leg while the other two limbs get ready to handle the next two tasks. It's that all this while, your mind is multitasking too. One track has its eye on the simmering pot but the other is planning the morning's lecture (and not the "to-the-kids" variety) while yet another is thinking about the grocery list and a fourth is thinking you need to get to the phone and make that call before you forget...and as you turn to swear at the boiled-over milk, you forget.

Music on wheels

2011-02-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has driven in Hyderabad, or has been a participant of some kind in what passes for traffic here, will empathise with the daily frustrations of dealing with bad road etiquette, the total absence of lane consciousness, the aggressiveness of large and small vehicles, and the absolute belief that one's schedule and need to reach a destination supersedes every other person's. Until recently, I was able to block out the madness by losing myself in a book, safe in the back seat, while my driver battled the daily cruelties of the city's streets. About a month ago, my driver decided to move to greener pastures (and possibly, a more interesting route to navigate each day) so I was back behind the steering wheel and had to leave my set of unread novels in the back, so I could concentrate on the road ahead (not that I had at any point planned to bring my reading to rest on the dashboard).

I face a fairly long drive each morning. Twenty six kilometers each way, through the thick of the Secunderabad commercial district to the broad Bungalow lined avenues of Jubilee Hills (fast giving way to shopfronts of the haute variety) and the otherworldliness of Hi-Tech City, by the last lung-space of the Botanical Gardens and finally across what used to be a peripheral village now swallowed by the city. When I reach the gates of the University, my odometer has just ticked past the twenty fifth kilometer and I speed past the last one to make it my class on time.

I distract myself from the traffic and the rude drivers by looking at the screaming signboards along the way, the missing apostrophes and bad spellings on the posters populating the median, and the sale notices that keep popping up in unexpected places. There are also the poor pedestrians, resigned to their fate along the margins of the roads, waiting for the rare motorist who will spare a few seconds to allow them safe passage across the street. But this can't hold my attention long, and besides, I do need to heed the happenings on the road ahead of me and behind me (and of course beside me, as my car has suffered from the closeness of scooters and autorickshaws).

So I turn on the music. And the meditation begins. The inside of the car is transformed into sanctuary, a bubble that insulates me from the desperation and the pettiness of the street, from the noise and the rudeness that it seems to inspire. I begin, then, to function at two levels. A part of me keeps in touch with the road, paying attention to the stop and go signs, the switching-lane signals, and the flashing lights that demand that I move aside. Another part of me retreats into the envelope of the music.

What do I listen to in the car? It's an eclectic variety, ranging from the Monkees to Dido, from Lata-Rafi duets to Farhan Akhtar playing the rock star, from Joan Baez to Indian Ocean. And as the songs shuffle across the soundscape, they bring along with them memories, pictures from different segments of my life, occasionally drawing out images that I had given up for lost. The Monkees, for instance, a group from the late sixties (Davy Jones, an idol in my eight-year-old eyes) can take me back to Calgary, Canada, with "Daydream Believer" just as quickly as Simon & Garfunkel can transport me to a football stadium in Atlanta, August 15, 1983, opening their act with "Cecilia", or Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust recalls the smoky haze of college, the dreams and loves that seemed at the time to hold the promise of forever.

When my iPod switches unexpectedly to a more recent chord, perhaps something put in by my daughters, I am forced back into the present. The shift is not entirely unpleasant, as it allows me to share the aural memories of my children and through these, something of their perspective as well. The Scientist by Coldplay reminds me of Achala's time at Valley School, and her schoolgirl fantasies associated with the song, while Dido takes me to a more contemporary hopescape, one that seems, somehow, to occupy a space in a small seaside cottage in an artists' village. And of course the extravagant aspirations of Iqbal or Chak De give me a little insight into Ananya's sporting ambitions.

And then I always come back with a smile to the comfort of the Beatles, Moody Blues, and the occasional Springsteen number, reminders of youth and good times. I wonder, sometimes, as I involuntarily break into song and nod my greying head in time to the beat of "Come Together", whether the person in the Honda City in the next lane is just a bit worried about the sanity of his neighbour.

The music is what makes my 52-kilometer trek more than bearable. The parallel journeys into memory and imagination blanket me from the daily struggle with the traffic and the noise and the rudeness. Instead, I find myself in that dark New Jersey bar with the Piano Man, or with Ringo and company in the Octopus' Garden, or better still, somewhere Across the Universe with Lennon....

The amazing women in my life. Part 1: Painted bottles and patchwork

2011-02-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking of doing this for a while now, as a sort of personal tribute and a series of memoires for those who care. I look at my life and am overwhelmed by the presence of these wonderful people in it. While my life, perhaps like that of most others, has been helped along considerably by both men and women, I now live in a house full of women--until three years ago, it was four generations thick. Each one of these people, and the many women outside my home that I have been fortunate to be touched by, is special, in a different way. And I just need to do this for them. And for myself.

So, about painted bottles and patchwork....

People who walk into our home marvel at the Thanjavur paintings on the walls and the patchwork covered cushions on the divan. And more recently, a walk into the kitchen might reward them with a view of sunlight dancing off the painted glass bottles that hold a variety of dals and spices. My embroidered sarees and block printed duppattas have fetched me several compliments. And I have to deflect them all, saying, "Well, it's my mother in law!" Right from the needlepoint purse I was given as part of my welcome goody bag at my wedding, to the most recent silk saree embellished with the delicacy of kantha work, my mother in law--or Shubamma, as my children call her--has had a hand in making me (and my home) look good.

Whether it is her obsession for order and neatness (something that she has reluctantly had to compromise on given the madness of our everyday lives now), or the amazingly organized way in which she manages not only her beautiful collection of sarees but also the various details of our bank accounts and savings (where would I be without her record keeping?), she has set standards that I find difficult to match.

There's never any rancour in her tone when she talks about how she did not have the opportunity to go to college or to study the things she would have wanted to. Perhaps it is because she married a man who held learning and the life of the mind above most else, or because of her own strong will, she continued to gain an education from life and from her own reading. She is, even today, one of the most well informed persons I know--she watches the news and reads every paper and magazine that enters the home, and does all of this critically.

Subhashini Subhrahmanian was born in Polur, Tamil Nadu, in 1934 as Kamakoti, seventh in a family of eight siblings. Her father was a wealthy landowner and businessman, and the family had the name "Vaidyam" as they were credited with healing knowledge. She lost her mother when she was just six or seven years old and in the large family with several older siblings and their spouses, the irreplaceable vacuum that is created by the loss of a mother was not particularly remarked upon, because the caregiving is ostensibly taken over by the older members of the extended family. Her early years of schooling were in Polur but later moved to stay with her sister's family in Villupuram where she completed her high school. On her marriage to a college teacher, K Subrahmanian, her name was changed (as was the convention in many families at the time) to Subhashini and she moved to Chennai, and to a life of relative simplicity. After having grown up in a wealthy family, with several servants, in a village where the family name drew both respect and awe, this was a big change for her. She had to learn how to live the simple and rather frugal life necessitated by a teacher's salary. But it was also a shift to another kind of lifestyle, one where books and learning were more the subject of discussion than the yield of the paddy fields or the family's contribution to the maintenance of the local temple. By her own admission, it wasn't an easy transition, but she made it--with grace and commitment. A Fulbright scholarship took the family to Indiana University in Bloomington, USA, and that was another major shift in her life, but again, she adapted and learnt, also learning how to type (she typed my father in law's dissertation and later most of his articles) and supplement the graduate student's meagre scholarship. In 1969, the family moved back to India, finally to Hyderabad, where she found her space and created a permanent home. Arts and craft have remained central to her existence, giving her a creative outlet in the middle of these many transitions and adjustments. She's tried practically everything, from doll making to needlepoint and tapestry to Kashmiri and Kutchi embroidery to reverse glass painting and Thanjavur painting. Most recently, she had a young artist come home to teach her "single stroke" floral painting, and this is what she has adapted to the medium of glass.

About a year ago, Subha (as her friends call her) fell and fractured her spine. She was in bed for four excruciating months, unable to even turn on her side. All handwork came to a standstill, and she spent her time listening to music and stilling her mind, willing herself to get back on her feet. Gradually, she improved, and has been able to return to doing some of the things she loves. All through this convalescence, she remained focused and cheerful, never submitting to depression or self pity--actually making herself better because of this attitude.

She's past her three-quarter-century mark but not a day goes by when she has not applied her hand to some craft or art, despite the several setbacks in her health that have affected body but not spirit or mind. She comes across as a super-efficient, somewhat forbidding woman, always impeccably groomed, her keen eye observing the minutest detail. But over the years, we have come to understand each other, and appreciate each other's point of view. Our conversations often go beyond the routine of family and home, venturing into politics and philosophy and society. From her, I have learned that it is possible to build a home and yet be an independent thinker, that it is possible to have an open mind even when possibilities of discovery and exploration have been denied to you.

When I look at those glass bottles on my kitchen shelf, it is not the sunlight that captures my eye, or even the prettiness of the flowers and leaves that adorn it, but it is the reflected image of her hand holding the brush, a fleeting movement of colour against the window that frames a life.

When the new year got old

2011-01-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

On this new year's day, it's difficult to feel too hopeful about anything. Yet we begin each year summoning up (or simulating?) a fresh stock of hope and enthusiasm, somehow believing (for the moment at least) that the passage of time will change things, and change them in some dramatically positive way. In addition, we have collectively bought into the myth that it is necessary to celebrate this particular turning of time, one more routine passage of day into night, one more rotation of the earth around its axis. We suspend reason for a while, we throw ourselves into frenzied celebrations, and if we happen to find ourselves without plans (OMG as my daughters might say) we feel somehow cheated and deprived, quite out of the social loop.

So where do we find ourselves--as individuals, as members of family groups, as parts of an organization or other collective, as citizens of a country--this year? Even if we can count ourselves as happy, fulfilled and at peace with ourselves and with those immediately around us, most of us cannot deny moments of disquiet that hit us, quite hard at times, when we think of circles even slightly outside the immediate ones of self and family. In Hyderabad, we are on edge waiting to see what the fallout from the SriKrishna report will be; students wonder whether they will have a full and productive academic year, while the rest of us wonder whether there will be madness on the streets. The outrage against Binayak Sen's incarceration and the imposition of a life sentence grows among significant sections of the public but we do not know whether this will have any effect on the powers that be. Vegetable prices continue to soar, farmers continue to die, compromises and corrupt pacts continue to be made in the bureaucracy, judiciary and in parliament, traffic continues to be chaotic,....and the list continues, a depressing litany.

Oh yes, there's still a lot of beauty around us, there is much to be joyful about. But what I find difficult to understand is this swelling of hope at this time each year, as if the past and all its hurt and sorrow will be wiped out the moment the clock strikes twelve, and Cinderella-like, we will all move into a magic kingdom of happiness and prosperity. While hope is innate, isn't it also an underlying constant? Why do we give up on it as we advance into the year and pull it out of our hats at the end, dust it off and pretend it is new at this midnight hour?

I don't mean to be a Scrooge about New Year celebrations. I have nothing against those who want to set off fireworks and light up the sky with their hope, or those who prefer to drink themselves into oblivion and hope to wake up the next morning having forgotten past excesses and looking forward to new ones...nor do I have anything against those who couch their hope and pack away their hopelessness in quieter ways. Perhaps it is a necessary ritual, and one that would leave a vacuum if not observed.

But for the first time, this year I did not feel compelled to join in the celebrations, preferring instead to acknowledge the change in the last two digits of the dateline quietly, in my sleep, only woken up by the happy wishes of those who stayed up to witness the shifting of the second hand. And it was fine. 2010 quietly slipped into the next day, which happened to be the next year, and when I woke up it was just another morning....

The nice thing about it was that there were lots of phone calls and messages reminding me that I had friends and family around the world who cared enough to take a moment to call or write.

And maybe that's what New Year (and every holiday) is about. Just keeping in touch. With ourselves. With the world. And with those who matter to us.

Kind words from a voice on the telephone

2010-12-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

Last month my young friend Chintan forwarded a short news item from a Kolkata newspaper, announcing the demise of one of the city's (and indeed the country's) most respected literary figures, Professor P Lal. There had been no mention of this in any of the other papers, and a couple of my friends in the publishing industry had not heard the news either. Today, a little over a month later, The Hindu's Literary Review carries a full page tribute, combining perspectives from Shashi Deshpande, Keki Daruwalla and Gopikrishnan Kottoor. All three writers have similar recollections of Prof Lal, all three mention his generosity of spirit and his dedication to the art and craft of literary publishing.

I've been thinking of writing something on this blog ever since Chintan sent me the news. Prof Lal helped me realise a long standing dream of having my own work published. He helped me get beyond the sense that my wish was a mere indulgence. After many months (years?) of dithering, I had put together my collection of poems and decided to seek a publisher. I had of course heard of the Writers Workshop and read many of the collections, both fiction and poetry, put out by them. The hand-bound gold lettered covers were quite familiar and so were the names represented on many of them. Having grown used to an online mode of functioning, I sent off an email to the address indicated on the web site, and received a prompt reply--read the terms and conditions mentioned on our site, and if in agreement, send us the manuscript in hard copy and we will get back to you if we consider it suitable. So I did.

About ten days later, one evening, I received a phone call on my landline (my daughter picked it up and she said, someone called Professor Lal from Calcutta)... yes, it was him, and he was calling to tell me that he liked my work and would be happy to publish it. "But why don't you send it to a commercial publisher, it is really very good," he said. I suppose all of us who write do have a certain sense of the quality of our work, but it always helps reinforce one's confidence to hear it from someone else (especially when that person is not an indulgent parent or a kind friend). We spoke about some of the formalities and then he said, "You must keep writing."

There were a couple more conversations, mostly routine chats about proofs and postage, and as promised, two months later, my book was out, in the beautiful cloth binding that characterises WW. These are moments I won't forget. The phone call and those words. Opening the advance copy of my book.

I do agree that some vanity is involved, and as other commentators have observed, WW has over the years published work of excellence as well as indifference, and it is up to the reader to make the distinction, But Prof Lal's work nevertheless has allowed many of us to emerge from the woodwork more confident, and more willing to take on the sometimes cruel gaze of the critical audience.

Fifty/50? Milestones, markers and moments that make life

2010-09-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

If we count the milestones in our life by the years we pass, then last Sunday was, I guess, a marker of sorts. Two score and ten, a score short of Milton's defined life span for man. But why should one birthday, even if it is the beginning or end of a decade, be particularly noteworthy? That's one of those unnecessary questions, I guess, but having turned the half-century mark (and please note how it seems more significant once you attach the "c" word to it!) I suppose I must be granted the luxury of wondering.

Phone calls, emails, the occasional actual paper-card that comes in the snail mail, handshakes at work and hugs at home (and sometimes vice versa), frantic messages the day after saying "OMG I forgot!" and (the best part) presents you said were not really important but were happy to unwrap anyway. Did I forget the sugar highs and the blind eye to blood glucose levels? What about the arthritic knee that is beginning to makes its presence felt every time I leap up to pick up my mobile and cheerily answer yet another well wisher?

Seriously, when I tried to pause for a moment (between answering the mobile phone and hanging up on the landline) to wonder what all the fuss was about, it struck me that it's largely about reinforcement and guilt. And maybe, sometimes, unfortunately, also regret.

Reinforcement? Well, let's face it, even though we know deep inside that the people around us (well, most) really do care, it's good to be reminded when they completely unexpectedly throw you a surprise or give you an extra warm hug, or even just tap you on the shoulder to say so. It reminds you of the network one has built up over the years, and tells you that the hours that you spent listening to someone or bothering to respond do add up to something. You also realise that networks can't help but grow when they've been fed right. So as we grow older, our circles of friendship reach further and further, and on such days they spring back to gently remind you of the places you've been and the hearts you've connected with. Mushy stuff, I know, but then life does have its real Hallmark moments (is that a contradiction of sorts--you can't have a 'real' yet branded moment?).

And why guilt? Well, this works in at least two ways. One, birthdays give us an opportunity to throw away guilt or at least lay it aside for a while. We pick up the phone and call that elderly aunt we had been meaning to ask after for months, or we re-connect with a friend whose emails have gone unanswered for--has it been a whole year? Some of us wrap this guilt in fancy paper and others simply decide to make up and resolve to not let another year go by before picking up the phone. It's also about dealing with or facing up to another sort of guilt--the guilt of promises made to yourself and not kept. And the older you get, it's this sort of guilt--maybe a better word is regret--that catches up on you more often.

So what I decided to do this year was to revisit some of those promises and see if I could make good on them and give myself a big present: the time and the space to try and deliver on these. I don't want to face the next birthday with too many regrets--while we all know that "would have if I could have" is something that we can't entirely avoid, we also know that many of the "can'ts" are really only because we don't make them happen, that the excuses seem too many to brush away.

Birthdays also offer us an opportunity to reminisce.
Where was I when I turned 10 or 20 or 30?
Who was I with?
What was I doing?

What are the milestones by which we mark our progress through life? Those of us who keep meticulous photo albums probably just need to turn back a few of those old black pages and look at fading pictures, or the younger among us flip back through Picasa albums. But the rest of us must make do with delving into our storehouse of memories and trying to identify the significant moments. That can be fun, and also a bit painful, because one of the things that happens as one gets older is that many of those we've grown up with, many of those who have played important roles in our lives, can only be recalled in memory.

So, reinforcement, guilt/regret, milestones and all, what does it mean to be 50? Indeed, what does it mean to be any age?

It feels good to have lived so many years without too many regrets and still a lot to look forward to.

It feels great to know that you are keeping pace with life (despite having to be told by your 18 year old daughter how to use your cell phone) and still making new friends and that relationships continue to deepen and grow.

And fifty is a nice round number, what? (and in case you get the wrong idea, I say that not because I am round, though I will admit to being nice!)

The art of choosing...a book

2010-08-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read Columbia University professor Sheena Iyengar's thought provoking and hugely successful book, The Art of Choosing, then I would highly recommend it (if you're into non-fiction trendspotting books), Of course I speak only from the experience of having read a good review in nothing less than the New York Times and having watched a TED Talk. But the review, combined with an interview of the charming woman, made the book sound very promising...and soon enough, it seems to reached the front display in Indian bookstores as well.

But this was not what I was looking for as I browsed my way through a Landmark store this afternoon. I was in search of the perfect gift for a friend who is currently into Indian writing in English. No dearth of books in this genre, you would think, rightly, in fact a plethora of choices. What used to be a short dusty shelf of books by a handful of authors has now grown to an entire section in the bookstore, with women writers dominating the colourful spines. Writers in translation, chick-lit from a variety of perspectives and age ranges, right from college romances to older women in search of themselves, more serious investigations into life and learning and loss, and a whole variety of other themes. "Preferably stories set in pre-Independence India," she had said, "and maybe, southern India?"

Having recently been introduced to Usha K R's writing through an evocatively titled story, "A Girl and a River", I thought a book by her might do the trick and satisfy my choosy friend. I chanced upon her latest title, "Monkey Man", also, like the former, set in her home city of Bangalore but in more contemporary times, exploring issues that force consideration following the rapid modernisation that has transformed the city. My friend Mahrookh had enormously enjoyed "A Girl and a River", a story about a childhood lost to family tempers amid the political turmoil of the early twentieth century, so the author seemed to be a safe bet. This, along with Ali Sethi's "The Wish Maker" rounded off the purchases...well, almost. I also ended up buying two more books, for myself--"Blindness" by Jose Saramago, of whose writing I have heard so much, and a random pick, "The Yacoubian Building", an urban tale by an Egyptian writer, Alaa Al Aswamy, a first-time read for me.

It's always exciting to discover a writer that has not come to you by recommendation or by fame, but instead has lain quietly waiting to be read, the book selling purely on the strength of the cover blurb and a certain "atmosphere" conveyed by the cover design. You might pick up the book with a little bit of trepidation, but something tells you--maybe it is the font of the title, or the colours used on the jacket, or the grammatical structure of the opening line--that it is going to be a good read.

While I do often file away notes from the Hindu Literary Review or the NYT Review of Books about "must reads", I usually end up buying the unknown, the unrecommended, the less recognised titles--and then, a few months later, I find these names on the fame list. At this point I must confess I do feel a certain vindication for having "found" the author on my own!

So then, how does one go about choosing a book--for oneself or for another? If you want to go beyond the usual suspects and find that something different, then you do have to spend some time picking things off the shelf, smelling them, noting the nuances of the typography of title and text, letting the sound of the first few lines (and then a few here and there sampled from the inner pages) play in your inner ear, and waiting a moment or two to see if the story feels like it is going to "catch" a hook in your brain. And most times, it works. Well, it's worked for me. That's how I "found" Boman Desai's "Memory of Elephants" and Ursula Le Guin's "Changing Planes". And a host of others who will no doubt find a space on this blog.

Reading in the car

2010-08-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of being driven is that I have more time to read. Now, having earlier been torn between giving up control of the wheel and having a little more time to think, stare out the window and actually see what is going on instead of being disturbed by the aggressive hoardings that have colonised our skyline, I find that the time gained has its uses. Significantly, I am catching up on my reading. This serves two purposes. One, instead of getting tense and irritable over what seems to me like reckless driving, I distract myself with a book or newspaper. Two, I am able to read uninterruptedly, and the time I have at my disposal is increasing by the day, as the Hyderabad traffic reaches new levels of congestion.

I've taken to leaving a couple of books in the car--just in case--apart from carrying one in my bag. The one I carry in my bag is the more serious, long-haul book, while those left in the car tend to be the "dip into" variety or non-fiction that can be read in bits and pieces. Having just finished an emotionally draining novel, "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, I have now moved to one of the books that's been sitting in the backseat pouch for a while. Margaret Atwood's "Moral Disorder". Atwood is one of my favourite writers. I discovered her only a few years ago, and am amazed at how prolific she is (my daughter tells me that there have been others more prolific--Alexander McCall Smith, for instance, who rises at 3 a.m. to begin writing!) and at the range of her writing.

I encountered Atwood first in a dusty, old edition of "The Handmaid's Tale", a dark and disturbing view of a dystopic future in which reproductive rights and rights of association are nonexistent. I moved on to "The Robber Bride", also somewhat dark but not without touches of humour. There are many other titles sitting on my shelves waiting to be read, but for now let me talk about the two that have been consumed in the car. These are two volumes of short stories: "Wilderness Tips" and "Moral Disorder". I finished the first a while ago, and am about half way through the second. But it's the sort of book where I have to stop now and then in sheer amazement at her felicity of expression and the way in which she is able to capture a moment, look deeply into it, and emerge with sharp insights into human nature. In doing so she presents us with aspects of her characters and their lives that bear so much resemblance to our own meanderings through life, in a way that we are moved to both laugh and cry over them.

"Wilderness Tips" is a collection of stories with a shared theme--everyday decisions, everyday events that forever change us or define who we become. So there is Lois (Death by Landscape) who wanders into the woods out of camp, with a friend, and returns alone, her companion having gone into the trees and disappeared. And Susanna, who danced on a soapbox to win the smiles and approval of her uncles, and grew up to forever seek the same approval from other avuncular figures in her personal and professional life. The book is about the "single instance that shapes a whole life", as the book jacket says. "Moral Disorder" is different; it follows the confusions of a single character from adolescence through womanhood, stopping along the way to peer into instances that make her life. As a teenager poring over Browning's "The Last Duchess" (a poem many of us may have encountered in English literature classes), she comes to realise that every door one walks through is a pathway to the afterlife. And as an older woman driving to see her mother, she discovers a new kinship with a kid sister who tormented her as a child. It's funny, sad, and above all, insightful.

Atwood's prose is simple and no-nonsense, the simplicity of her writing makes the truths she presents that much more forceful.

I suppose that is what a gifted writer is able to do. Make us stop and look at ourselves in the pages of a book, and find answers to the small and large questions we have in life through the stories they tell. Whether it is on an adventure or in meditation, through the pages of a novel or in the frame of a painting, what we are looking for is a glimmer of the self.

Losing control of the wheel is not so bad, after all. The books make up for it. I'm waiting to get back into the passenger seat and reopen that book. And to smile at the moral disorder that I see in my own life!

New Delhi: Under Construction

2010-07-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

CP: outer circle

Okay this is not the worst view, but take a careful look at the flooring and the scaffolding in the background. Tiles being replaced, pillars being rebuilt, roofing being refurbished...and this is the least of it. Most of CP is much worse. Drive on the roads, and more often than not you find yourself in a bottleneck because of construction on either side. Walk, and it's worse, you might fall into one of the several ditches (in Connaught Place you have to step over several, sometimes walking over precariously placed planks to cross a wide one).

Three months to go and nowhere near complete. The news of the day is that the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi will witness a spectacular display of fireworks costing the exchequer some Rs 40 crore. A show up in the sky might distract some from the unfinished work on the roads! Having just returned from a trip to Delhi, I am left with a sense of disenchantment and deep worry. Is this the face we are to present to the world? What has always been a favourite city is now in the throes of a seeming transformation (fortunately, the nicest parts of Central Delhi have been spared) to accommodate the Games, the events, the people and the vehicles. My friend's colony in Central Delhi has had to close one of its main gates to allow parking on that side of the street, while students in Delhi University have had to do without recreational facilities for more than two years in anticipation of a Games makeover to their grounds. While the Metro snakes southward in a promising advance of mass transit, the sidewalks on the University campus have disappeared (hopefully, only temporarily) to give way to wider roads to hold more cars. And when the rain comes down, as it does with regularity in July, not only does it provide relief from the muggy heat, but also spawns rivers of free flowing mud.

In short, the road to the Games is a capital Mess.

But maybe, as sometimes happens in our charmed country, by some miracle that defies bad weather and corrupt contractors, the work will get finished and New Delhi will put up a good show. Most residents won't be around to see it. They've been advised to leave the city during the two-week enforced break and leave it to the visitors--so that parking and water both remain in plentiful supply!

Harley-Davidson in Hyderabad

2010-07-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

The rapid proliferation of Western brand names on Indian streets is nothing new; it's been happening since the beginning of the "LPG" era (thanks to my mass comm students who taught me that acronym for liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation). Coca Cola, Pepsi, Levi's, etc. And more recently, Chevrolet, Volkswagen, and other such motorables. But this morning as I was driving to work I saw one that threw me just a little bit--the iconic motorcycle company, Harley-Davidson, has a showroom in (where else?) Banjara Hills! While one might say that the VW Beetle is as much a style and attitude product as the HD, the latter belongs to a culture that somehow feels a bit out of place in the rarefied corporate environs of main street Banjara Hills. Okay, accepted, the motorbikes perhaps got very bad rap based on mythologies created by Hollywood, of biker gangs and Hells Angels being the primary HD clientele, but that too is an image that is hard to wipe out of the imagination, which often turns into memory. And my own imagination -spiced memory cannot rid itself of images of leather-clad, chain wielding gangs of long-haired tattoo-armed men looking for vacant car lots and junk yards in which to to commune. But clearly, at an Indian price tag ranging between close to Rs 700,000 and 3.5 million, those who buy these bikes in Hyderabad are not going to be looking at raising dust storms on outer ring road! And truly speaking, Harleys have had more to do with the police force in the US than with violent biker gangs (largely a creation of cinema). I have friends who are devoted Harley owners, and who use their heavy bikes to explore the countryside and seek "wholesome" outdoor adventure. In fact, the more recent HD ads note "millions of Harley Davidsons, and not a leather jacket in sight." To be honest, neither of the two HD owners I know wears leather or has a tattoo, and one is a smiling grandfather who rides with his lovely wife and a group of friends on weekends, just to feel the wind on their faces and the sun on their backs!

So it's time to set aside my erroneous and imagination-rich ideas and accept that Harley Davidsons are just as likely to be ridden by the youngsters populating the glass palaces in Hi-Tec city as by forty-somethings who once idolize Peter Fonda. In fact, market research shows the average age of a HD biker is now 46, compared to the late 20s of three decades ago! Perhaps that's where the money is...but it's also where the imagination is!

And the HD showroom in Banjara Hills...well, I guess in a couple of weeks it will be just another sign joining the blur that borders my drive to work!

Frankly grey

2010-07-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

I’m just back from a wedding in the city of mandapams and katcheris, and of marriages made as a result of discussions over good strong decoction kaapi. I’m also just back from one of those weddings, this one of course not decided by the exchange of yellow and red dotted jadakams (horoscopes) but by the meeting of two young minds that had grown up together. The wedding is incidental to this post, however, which bears upon matters much more trivial. But the wedding provided the context, the backdrop, against which my determination to not be lured by the promoters of “youngistan” was sorely tested.

You see, I’ve entered the “grey zone” in the past year or so, having decided not to give in to increasingly strident voices in advertising that urge one to “stay young” and buy into the cult of youth, that treats ageing as a pathology to be aggressively tackled and stayed at any cost. The cult of youth comes with a huge price tag, hung innocuously on off-the-shelf goods like anti-wrinkle cream and hair colour (remember the young girl who tells her sister—“Safed baal! Didi, my life is over!”) as well as more visibly on hoardings that advertise brow lifts and anti-ageing treatments that “keep you looking young”. Those who are allowed to turn grey are no longer the parents, but only the grandparents who are safely in their seventies and eighties with no hope of a “life” as the youthful copywriters imagine it. Those in the middle zone—the 40s, 50s and 60s, must look young if they are to partake in that “life” in any way!

So, here I am, pushing the half century (very hard) and like Clarissa Vaughn in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, very decidedly and “defiantly” grey. And strangely enough, I meet with a subtle disapproval, not unlike that meted out to outrageous piercings and tattoos sported by those much younger. Comments range from a fairly even “Oh, so you’ve decided to take the gracefully ageing route?” to “You seem to be really busy, you’ve gone quite grey!” (implying that I do not have the time or the inclination to take care of my appearance). I’m still not totally immune to these reactions that vary from the said disapproval to pity but I do take refuge in my mental images of the stately and still beautiful and very grey Nafisa Ali and many other silver-haired women I know, and stick to my guns, usually responding with no more than a smile.

My greyness is as much a cultural and political statement as it is a matter of convenience. I have no quarrel at all with those who choose to “stay the grey” with L’Oreal or Revlon or even good old kali mehndi and tea leaves, in fact I admire how they look. But I myself do not have the patience or the perseverance to check my roots week after week and ensure that they are adequately covered with the right dash of colour—not too black, not too brown, just the right shade in between. But there’s another side to the story. And that’s the argument that holds in the long run. Why have we as a race privileged youth above all other stages in life? The market is geared to their appetites and whims, often sacrificing good taste and good values in order to pander to their tastes in everything from the texture of fabric to the storylines of soap operas. They are the big consumers, so everything fit to be consumed is directed at their wallets and their eyeballs and earlobes.

Of course, the youth cult is nothing new; now it just has a bigger machine to fuel it and sell to it. And there are more places where it can be worshipped. I haven’t yet been able to find a nice, stylish coffee bar where the music is muted, the magazines on the tables are cerebral, and there are people of all ages, maybe just as many with salt and pepper hair as those with gelled spikes. Or a bookstore where I am not pointed to the spirituality section just because of the color of my hair!

I know a lot of really “cool” people, many of whom have radical and very progressive opinions and lifestyles, and who have chosen to let the silver spread through their hair without resistance. While we talk about getting past superficial judgments based on how we look and dress and speak, what about avoiding judgments based on the level of grey in one’s hair?

The wellness industry has expanded its horizons by making age a pathology, and moving closer to the beauty industry so that the margins between the two are now blurred. Is Botox a treatment for nervous tics and muscular spasms or is it a means of erasing lines and the signs of age? Is a brow lift a means of treating a potential threat to vision or is it a way of defining the eye so as to prettify it? But these and other such treatments take us into another area all together, a totally different ball game.

Of course, another way of looking at this is to say that we now have more choices; we can choose to look the way we feel, and we have the means to make our inner selves visible. If I have the inner vitality of a 25 year old, why can’t I do what it takes to look as close to that age as possible? If I feel young, why can’t I do what it takes to look young?

But my point is, why should I look young in order to prove to someone else that I feel young? Today, I look in the mirror, and yes, I confess, I am a little alarmed at the rate at which silvery glints in my hair are increasing; but a moment later I turn away, and I forget how I look. I am what I feel; I am what I think; I am what I like to do. And all you need to do is to talk to me to figure out if you can relate to the person I am…not the age I am at!

taking measure of 21 years

2010-06-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

How does one measure the usefulness of anything? Does it lie in its quantum of influence--spatially, numerically, intellectually, materially? Does it lie in its ability to survive over time? Or (as some in this age would have it) in the number of mentions it generates on social media?

An idea that was born just over 21 years ago is now in the process of being put to rest. Not quite given up on as an idea, but in its material form, designated "unsustainable".

Teacher Plus was mooted in the second half of 1988, and given shape to in the first half of 1989, in the offices of Orient Longman Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad. The ELT team in the publishing house, of whom Lakshmi Rameshwar Rao (Buchamma), Usha Aroor and Rema Gnanadickam were a part, originated the idea of a professional magazine for school teachers that would serve as a forum for the sharing of teaching ideas and experiences, and perhaps motivate teachers to play a catalyzing role in reforming classroom practice. I was recruited in January 1989 to help give shape to the idea, as the company lacked experience in magazine publishing. I had just moved back to Hyderabad after a two-year stint with Living Media in New Delhi, helping start up and run their magazine, Computers Today. Rema and I, with help from others in the Orient Longman office in Hyderabad worked with graphic artist Ranjit Roy Choudhury to create the bright orange logo and identity for the tabloid, which was launched as a bimonthly in July 1989, three months ahead of my first daughter Achala's birth. (Aside: Pradeep, now MD of Orient Blackswan, drove me around on his motorbike in Chennai, when I was six months pregnant, on marketing rounds for TP!) Usha Aroor served as the senior editor but as she was based in Madras, the day to day planning and operations were handled by Rema and me.

Later in the year, I moved to a part time role as consultant editor of the magazine and Rema moved to Australia, leaving the magazine in the hands of Deepa Chattopadhyay, an editor and linguistics scholar who had returned to India a short while before after completing a PhD in the US. Deepa ran the magazine with a skeleton staff for the next decade, helped by various part timers including Sumana Kasturi and Aditi. I continued to be involved as a consultant, except for the years 1994 to '98, when I was working on my own PhD in the US. The magazine never left my mindspace for very long though, even while I was abroad.

In 2001, Sheel joined the magazine as a part time editor, and Deepa moved out. From then on, Sheel and I steered the magazine with help from itinerant junior editors and the OL production team (significantly, Nayab). In 2002, Buchamma, her friend Tanvir and Sheel entered into a partnership and formed Spark-India, a firm devoted to the production of educational resource materials. The development and production of Teacher Plus was then outsourced by OL to Spark-India. My role as consultant continued, and I helped plan the issue and source articles while Sheel handled day to day follow up and coordinated production--I tend to be good with the big picture while Sheel is great with details. Buchamma and Tanvir provided guidance and occasional editorial inputs. We drew in additional editorial assistance from Sujata C, a freelance writer and editor who also felt strongly about education and the need to empower teachers. Then Nirmala, who had been with The Hindu for over two decades, joined Teacher Plus in February 2006 and the magazine took on a more streamlined, professional structure with her inputs. Kamakshi Balasubramanian, a friend, spent time with us, working as a writing coach and doing a column on thinkers in education. Neha Kamdar, who had been my student at Hyderabad University, joined the team in 2006 and worked for a few months before her departure to the US for a doctoral programme, and her position was taken by Meghana Rao (also a former student at HCU), who worked with us for a year before her journey westward began. Another person who worked with us and brought a lot of smiles into Sudarshan, where the magazine was housed, was Temjenwabang, a doctoral student at HCU. Teacher Plus (and Spark) was becoming a great place for people who wanted to learn and who cared about education!

In 2006 we lost Tanvir who succumbed to cancer and left the third place in the partnership vacant. I stepped in at that point to make up the partnership and to take a more active part in producing Teacher Plus.

Around this time, IT giant Wipro's corporate social responsibility arm known as Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS) became interested in floating a magazine for teachers, something they thought would help the overall project of education reform that they were engaged in, with a variety of other organisations ranging from Ekalavya (Bhopal) to Digantar (Rajasthan). After Anand Swaminathan and Vijay Gupta came to meet us and had a few rounds of discussion, they began supporting the magazine in 2005, and in January 2007, enabled Spark-India to acquire the magazine from Orient Longman (which is now known as Orient Blackswan). The WATIS support (later coordinated by Prakash Iyer) also helped Spark invest in a new design and format for the magazine and re-launch it in June 2007 as a monthly. The new design was overseen by Vinay Jain, a Delhi-based designer who had worked on The Hindu's Folio series. Soon after the launch of the monthly edition, the Teacher Plus team consolidated with a few additions and a few farewells. Shalini joined Nirmala as a second editor in July 2007; Kumar came on board as a full time layout artist/designer at the same time. In addition, now Shweta handles accounts and circulation while Sushma manages the team and looks at marketing. For a year, we also had Pawan Singh (the writer of many Last Words) and for a summer, Chintan Modi (a fellow from Seagull Books). And so the learning space continued to grow. Toward the middle of 2009, we relaunched the web site and brought much of the new content online. The site was designed by Ochre Media and the entire process was coordinated by Divya Sripraphul (yes, yet another former student from the Communications Dept, HCU!).

The magazine reached out to practising teachers across the country, and built up a small but committed readership, comprising educators in alternative spaces as well as government school teachers and teacher trainers. The focus right from the start was to provide a mix of hands-on tips, discussions of issues related to classroom management, child development, curriculum planning and delivery, and the larger politics of education, as well as commentary on current developments in the field. Our contributors included practising teachers at all levels, many who had never really considered themselves writers, and people who felt strongly about education and wanted to share their viewpoints. For many, it was the first such forum they had participated in; the idea of a teachers' magazine was novel and exciting, offering the opportunity to share things as mundane but crucial as how to teach fractions or spellings or even burnout.

Over the years, we have built up an amazing network of people with many different ideas and approaches to education but one common passion; child education in the broadest sense of the word. The pages of Teacher Plus have carried articles that have appealed to the primary school teacher as well as the one handling board-facing students, and principals worried about teacher recruitment and retention or the design of playgrounds. This has resulted in a large editorial bank of ideas and resources: projects, activity sheets, and teaching tips. Orient Longman published one collection of Teacher Plus projects in the mid 1990s that is now out of print, but the rest lies in the pages of the magazine, in staff rooms and teachers' bookshelves around the country.

But what is the point of this long history?

Because the story has an end, one that is coming up in the next month. July 2010 will be the last issue of Teacher Plus. An ongoing struggle to build up the subscriber base and the resultant challenge to become financially sustainable has forced this decision. Even under OL, the magazine had struggled to stay afloat, with the subscription base never going beyond 2000, and only a very strong organizational commitment keeping it alive. The first year after Spark took it over, an energetic drive by Buchamma added a few hundred subscriptions, still not enough to take it to a break even point. The WATIS support, it was hoped, would infuse fresh energy and bring a wider audience to the magazine, and while there is no question the former has happened, the latter has been a huge challenge. Those who handle media products know that huge marketing inputs are needed to create visibility and buy in from potential readers. This has not been possible with Teacher Plus. Our efforts have been largely word of mouth and small mailing drives, clearly not enough to lead to the 10,000 we need to stay afloat.

So now, three years later, we stand at a point where we have to ask ourselves: does 2500 subscriptions count for "significant impact"?

Impact yes, significant, no.

Does an estimated readership of 10,000+ count for anything?

I suspect each of the teachers and educators that makes up that number would say yes to both.

But as an enterprise that needs to achieve both quality and business survival, Teacher Plus falls short. There is no doubt that we have built a magazine that makes sense. In terms of quality of production and content, we've achieved a standard of excellence that does not exist in scholastic journalism in the country. I for one firmly believe that teachers need and deserve a good looking, engaging magazine that affirms their professional identity, and Teacher Plus has attempted to be that. But in terms of business survival, we have not yet hit upon the formula that works. We need more teachers to read such a magazine, and draw advertisers to it, if it is to remain alive. But 21 years of trying (not in the right way, maybe) hasn't worked.

So, it's time for the idea to take a rest.

In this case, 21 hasn't really meant a coming of age, but a transition of another kind. And a learning, nonetheless.

Making lists

2010-05-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Such comfort one can take from striking items off a long list of to-dos. It gives you a keen sense of satisfaction, the feeling that you have been productive, that things have been accomplished, that you can get on with life having set it in some sort of order....

So on my refrigerator is a magnet-backed notepad and on my desk is a colorful post-it pad, and next to my telephone is a set of one-side used paper caught into a pad with a giant butterfly clip. And the assortment of pens to go along with these bits of stationery must be seen to be believed. Pencils ranging in length from an inch to 8, ballpoint pens in varying degrees of dryness, gel pens with their refills missing and caps thrown away, markers that don't mark, crayons waxed over with disuse, fountain pens that have stopped flowing many moons ago...so you get the picture!

But let's set the tools aside for a moment and focus on the lists themselves. Long lists and short lists, today's must-dos and weekly goals, and better still, year-long resolutions that hopefully will be forgotten and trashed by the time the next one comes along. What makes us make lists? What makes it easy for us to so easily strike some items off, count them as accomplished, and others as un-accomplishable?

My friend Sarika swears by her lists. And I take much comfort from them, being as I am so scatterbrained and likely to continuously re-prioritize and therefore forget. She starts each workday morning with a glance down her current list and then looks up at the whiteboard in our office to see what lists she has made for our graphics team. What's going to be finished today? And what has to be started? With determined swipes of her marker, she removes items deemed to be completed before adding others (unlike me, who keeps adding and sadly enough finds little to strike off). It's a good ten minutes before she deigns to look up at the rest of us and pronounce her verdict on the upcoming hours. Are we going to be caught in a tizzy of finishing up so she can strike things off the list? Or are we going to settle into a thinking mode as we begin some new tasks? The mood of the office often depends on Sarika's sense of how well she has progressed down her list!

So I then quietly sidle into my cabin, daunted by my inability to strike things off. But it puzzles me. I seem to be busy, working, handing over papers that have been handed to me, sending off emails in response to others sent to me (with attachments duly tracked and renamed). So why is it that my lists never grow any shorter? Or make that impressive array of red checks against the numbered items? Am I like the basketball player who runs all over the court, sweating and shouting, but never scores?

I'm pretty sure I am not that unproductive. Maybe I do run in different directions and am often out of breath without having gotten very far, but I must get some things done!

So I've come to the conclusion that it's not about making lists, really, but making realistic lists, lists that are full of things one can get done. My problem, I've discovered, is that my lists end up being more like wish lists. Large, long term projects that depend on at least two other people and a flow of information that is often interrupted before it rounds the first bend. Sarika, on the other hand, operates on the wisdom of the pragmatist. She puts down small, doable items that are important to achieve in the way to achieving larger goals. So each day, she can look forward to going home with a list made considerably shorter.

My lists are full of large goals, and I am overwhelmed the moment I look at the list each morning. Two weeks later, a month later, I find I have been busy doing things that are not on the list but the items on there have received no attention. They are too big even to begin thinking about. I seem to have not paid enough attention in the classes on goal setting and planning. Yes, I do know all about SMART goals but when it comes to organizing my day, I seem to forget that bit of the lecture. I can’t seem to draw back from the big picture to focus on the details, and it’s the details, I have learned from my friends, that make the list move.

Now I find that the Web is full of handy tips on list making, with several sites devoted to “the art” of making lists. Diaries and calendars offer spaces to create one’s hourly schedules and prioritize them. eHow.com, for instance, tells you how to do “just about anything” with sage advice to “spend a little time each day in planning”, while the “Ta Da List” (www.tadlist.com) claims to be simpler than writing on paper. And of course, rememberthemilk, iGoogle’s task manager, and umpteen others. There are tools for grocery lists and time-bound lists, with scheduled prompts built in.

I wonder, though, if these tools will accommodate the grand nature of my own day-to-day plans, each item designed to change the world of my workplace. What I need is a tool that will take these individual grand plans and break them down into small, baby steps that I can just maybe begin ticking off.

I already have a set of markers, in three different colours, to code that list. And a pad of nice yellow sticky notes that is waiting on my desk.

Black dogs and other imagined realities

2010-05-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve just finished my second Ian McEwan book in a row, and my fifth overall. I’m sure this happens with many of us, that we find ourselves caught up with a writer we enjoy and whose work engages us in a deep, intimate way, and we are loath to leave. We immerse ourselves in book after book and just do not want to part company. The book I just finished is “Black Dogs” and the one just before was “Enduring Love”. For anyone who has read Ian McEwan, you would sense a certain comforting sameness across his writing—not a boring, tedious sameness, but a common thread of deeply felt humanity (and perhaps many writers have this) that is at once despairing and hopeful. There’s a recognition of a core of evil and ugliness that runs through all individuals, and it is in overcoming this or confronting it with the goodness that also runs through us that a story emerges. It’s also the specificity with which large-scale events affect each one of us, and changes our lives, forever.

Take, for instance, this extract:

“As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores, whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions…each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise…. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths,… which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories….. what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

(Black Dogs, Vintage, 1998, p.165)

All novelists capture our minds and hearts with something that is universal, yet particular, in a way that we are able to become part of the story, a fly on the wall, feeling everything that every character is feeling:

If one ever wanted proof of Darwin’s contention that the many expressions of emotion in humans are universal, genetically inscribed, then a few minutes by the arrivals gate in Heathrow’s Terminal Four should suffice. I saw the same joy, the same uncontrollable smile, in the faces of a Nigerian earth mama, a thin-lipped Scottish grany and a pale, correct Japanese businessman as they wheeled their trolleys in and recognized a figure in the expectant crowd…. I kept hearing the same signing sound on a downward note, often breathed through a name as two people pressed forward to go into their embrace.

(Enduring Love, Vintage, 2004, p. 4)

That one reminded me of my own private drama at an airport, one of those unforgettable cinematic scenes that one goes back to time and again. 1993, October 20. Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. Three days before my younger daughter turned two and my older one, four. I had been in the US for a little under two months, and my husband and children were arriving from India to join me. I had not seen my little girls for almost two months. We arrived at the airport, my friend Ganesh and I, a little early as may be expected, for anxious parents who have not seen their children for a while! Finally, after what seems to be an interminable wait, the glass doors slide open and people, tired, travel worn, unsure, expectant, begin walking through into the arrivals area. It is a good five minutes before we spot them, an adult pushing a trolley with one hand and holding a sleepy but wide-eyed toddler on the other arm, and a little blue-frocked pony-tailed girl, my four-year-old Achala hanging on to his tee shirt by the side. Then she sees me, and in an instant, catapults through the doorway, straight into my arms, the stuffed animal she had been clutching forgotten and on the floor. Six weeks or more melted away and we were together again.

It took a little longer for two-year-old Ananya…she refused to recognize me, perhaps punishing me for having left without her, so there was no “arrival” for her, only a transition from one comfortable, familiar space, to another that took some time to become home.

But back to McEwan and his writing. Atonement showed us how, one person’s mistaken perception and subsequent action could tear apart lives, while Saturday takes us on a minutely experienced 24 hours culminating in a dramatic event that again, breaks down the ordinariness of our everydays, and Chesil Beach places under the microscope one evening in two lifetimes, one which changes their directions forever.

These are the book’s I’ve read. And I’m looking forward to the others….

One house at a time

2010-05-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening, 6 p.m. The work day is over for many of us, at least those for whom it who began in the morning. The bell rings. A slightly built man is at the door, two thick plastic folders under his arm and a cloth bag over his shoulder. "Census madam," he says, a bit hesitantly (because, I discover later, he expects to be chewed over by the irate inhabitants of this colony, as he has been warned). I invite him inside and ask if he wants a glass of water, seeing as it is really really hot, 42 degrees and no rain. "Later, madam. First, I need to ask some questions." He sits down on a chair in the fan-less verandah, refusing to come inside where there is a bit more air and the whiff of breeze from a cooler. A. Ramesh, the forty-ish schoolteacher who has come to do "census duty" asks me diligently about my antecedents, qualifications, and occupation, and then moves on to the head of the household and others. His hesitant manner slips a bit as he tells me about the work he has been "conscripted" into. He has been walking through colonies like mine for the past two weeks and will do the same for the next two. The data for Hyderabad's 8 million or so inhabitants is to be collected by June 10. This is the first phase of the Census, also known as the Housing and Houselisting Survey. Some people answer with a smile, making his job in the heat of the summer just a bit easier. Others turn him away saying they do not have the time to answer, telling him to come later. He will return once or twice, or as many times as it takes him to get the information, but before the deadline. Fortunately Ramesh does not have to deal with a classroom just now, as summer holidays have begun. So while his students take a break from his science lessons, he beats the streets with this two plastic folders, a stock of pencils and an eraser (I noticed because he was able to amend the form after I had given him a couple of unnecessary answers that he had to delete!). Those who do remain inaccessible will be covered in the next sweep, after which the data are consolidated.

After the glass of cold water that follows his data entry and my counter questions, Ramesh finally leans back and allows himself to relax just a little bit, before he moves on to the next house. He leaves me with a scrap of paper, a receipt which is to be produced after my face and fingerprints are captured so that a e Unique Identification Number can be assigned. This will be another mammoth task, and both together will give the Government of India its single biggest planning tool, to be then combined with formulae for resource use and generation, social services and their distribution, and projections of all kinds.

Ramesh is one of 2,500,000 individuals who have been called upon to help bring in this data. School teachers like him are the foot soldiers of these initiatives, and while they do earn a small additional allowance for their participation, it is certainly not voluntary--for those in government schools and government aided schools, such tasks often take up so much time that they cannot do justice to their primary occupation, teaching. In this case, the enumeration has been scheduled so that teaching schedules are minimally affected.

The exercise is huge, the largest of its kind, barring perhaps a Census that might be done in China. The Indian Census for the first time will also record details such as each household's connectivity and access to water, sanitation and power. The sheer logistics of the operation, along with the possibilities that come from good use of the data, are amazing (a word I do not like, but find useful here).

So, I guess, it's time for us all to stand up and be counted...and to let those who count into our homes with a glass of water at least, to give them a bit of respite from the blazing summer sun!

http://www.thehindu.com/2010/04/02/stories/2010040250640100.htm
http://www.fullhyderabad.com/hyderabad-news/india-census-2010-starts-indias-largest-initiative-ever-492
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/01/india-census-worlds-bigge_n_521224.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8598159.stm

Streetside love stories

2010-05-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

On the old Bombay Highway, the road that snakes through Mehdipatnam and Rethi Bowli and whizzees past the shiny new DLF complex to lead to the University of Hyderabad after crossing a beautiful bougainvillea lined stretch, is a tiny cafe called "Time to Time", Held up in a traffic jam I find myself watching lives unfold outside its colourful signboard. A couple walks by, slowly, the girl with a college bag slung over one shoulder and the boy carrying a backpack, dawdling their way to college, perhaps, carrying excuses in their pockets. Another woman stands at the adjoining bus shelter carrying a shopping bag, next to her is an older man, greying and a tiredness visible in his sloping shoulders. He turns to her and takes the bag from her in an almost proprietary manner. She looks at him and smiles.

The most poignant love stories are not the ones that are enacted on desert sands silhouetted against burning skies, or amidst warring families and blood feuds. They happen in prosaic everyday moments, to people in everyday clothes, with humdrum needs and wants, families, homes, meals-to-be-cooked and shopping-to-be-done, involving lives entwined, enmeshed in ordinary circumstances, in spaces that fall between bills-to-be-paid and livings-to-be-earned. They are built of feelings that are felt during those mundane responsibilities and realities, their romance woven into the threads of existence that cannot be separated from the routine

Do such love stories lose their cinematic, other-worldly appeal simply because they happen to people with wrinkled hands, slouched shoulders, dark-circles-under-the-eyes or splotchy skin and greying hair? There is no make up person to touch up the oily spots or darken those pale lips and un-lustrous eyes. There's only emotion, felt keenly, strongly, truly, an emotion that totally occupies the spaces that contain the quotidian, the spaces that fill the pauses between everyday moments.

And where do these love stories find a telling? Or a viewing? Are they too precious to be given on loan to the realm of words and images, to be corrupted by the sight-smell-touch and ultimately, the mis-interpretation by minds unprepared, or too, too prepared, for the extra-ordinary?

Good works

2010-05-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

As we turned the corner off a little lane off another lane off a road everyone knows as "the East Maredpally Main Road", my friend Havovi remarked, "We think we know the city but we probably know less than five percent of it!" Most likely, much less, given the fact that is is growing both inward and outward every day.

We arrived a few minutes later at the "Dalith Women's Home", an old age shelter for destitute women, run by Kamalamma, who retired from the Indian Railways and put her superannuation benefits into this project. The Home offers a space for women who find themselves without caregivers or support, some single and destitute, some abandoned by their families, and others who simply have no place to go. There are around 30 people living in this rather ramshackle semi-detached building which is itself on the edges of an area that has been forgotten by city developers. An old railway track runs just by it, providing a huge source of entertainment to the children in the area, who run to watch the occasional goods train or engine on its way to the Lallaguda yard, less than half a kilometer away. Across from the Home is a small open space where the children play, The children are mostly from the surrounding basti; some are the children of the young women who, like their older home-mates, have nowhere else to go. One arrived at Kamalamma's doorstep heavy with child, her older son barely two years old. There are others like her, who have now become part of this support system, lending their youth and their agility to keeping the place going from day to day.

Kamalamma keeps the place going with whatever help comes her way. A few charitable groups have pledged short term or incidental support, a wet grinder here, a water pump there, a few cots and blankets now and then, and the occasional visitors like us who, bemused by the extent of need, give a little and leave feeling inadequate and helpless, promising to come back with more. "What do you need?" we ask her. (The question seems a bit superfluous, when Need, with a capital N, is everything they feel.) "We don;t refuse anything," she responds. "Everything that is given can be made use of in some way." So we put our minds to work, thinking of all the excess in our own lives that we can slough off, and make our hearts and minds a bit lighter in the process.

Notebooks for the children to use, sheets and blankets for the old women, money for a pucca roof, vessels and containers for food, clothes, ...and then all the other things that do not bear listing because we know it will be an aeon before they are given...better sanitation (the 35-odd people have use of three toilets located just outside the facility, their metal doors almost falling off the hinges), a more organized layout..the list of needs is endless. Havovi, who has asked about the toilets, remarks, "I read the other day that India has more cell phones than toilets!"

We talk to her and some of the other women for a few more minutes and make our way back to the car, which now looks indecently large in this small space that goes for a road, next to the railway line. And as we prepare to leave we hear the sound of a train approaching. One little girl runs toward the track, in anticipation of the view she will soon have, a promise of the means to escape the known, and everything it represents. Other children run toward the track, too, and soon one of the young mothers comes out, shouting at them to keep a safe distance. One of the little girls has never seen a train before, and the others begin to describe it to her. The engine comes lumbering up the track. That's all it is, an engine, moving tiredly on a track that few people, in the railways and elsewhere, remember.

We leave the little girl, dressed in a bright red salwar kameez that's a bit too big for her, her eyes wide and hopeful, as she stares at the receding engine. And we leave the little island of support that Kamalamma has created for the women, feeling a bit sad at how much more needs to be done. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and turn away, cloaking ourselves in the idea that we cannot really do much. It's much harder to stay and do the little one can. It might just mean that a little girl in a red salwar kameez is able to look at other things in wonder, and in hope.

Stumbling around sarcophagi...doesn't have to be morbid!

2010-04-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

A green-flagged gateway marks the entry to Paigah Tombs, a group of forgotten graves that lie in an oasis-like bubble off a major vehicular artery on the southeastern fringes of Hyderabad. Then, stepping through a veritable hole in the wall of untidy urban sprawl, we walk into space waiting to be discovered by the occasional tourist who draws her travel maps from memories left behind by others, now so easily archived on the world wide web. The intricacies of the delicate stuccoed walls shading and protecting the numerous sarcophagi are not immediately apparent, curtained as they are by several mango and neem trees that populate this irregular quadrangle, bounded by a mosque (with its own reflecting pool) on the west (predictably), an older, brown walled building (sheltering the oldest graves) on the south, and a dilapidated complex on the north that has been turned into dwellings for the caretaker family. The shaded pathway directs you inside, across marble steps where you leave your footwear and your tired-tourist skepticism, to the long line of archways bordering the entry to the tombs.

The Paigahs seem to have been a large and (by the standards of the day) illustrious family. Their generational connections branched wide and deep, across lines of royalty and power that trails off into an indistinct delta with streams so finely drawn they cannot be seen in the present. The Paigahs were nobles of the highest order, next only to the ruling family (the Asaf Jahs or the Nizams) in the hierarchy of the old kingdom of Hyderabad. Their sons married the daughters of the ruling family, and many were offered positions of power and prestige, handling the coffers and managing the estates of the Nizams. The Paigahs reached the zenith of their power under the sixth Nizam, Mahboob Ali Pasha (the "Beloved"), when their influence over matters of the court and its assets was unquestioned. During these years, from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, the Paigahs consolidated their wealth in real estate, building large mansions (havelis) and populating them with art and furniture from Europe. The famed Falaknuma ("the eye in the sky") Palace, the Asman Garh Palace, and the Paigah Palace complex in Begumpet were built during this period. Vicar ul Umra, who built Falaknuma (and the Spanish mosque on the grounds of the Begumpet Palace complex), and sold it to Mahboob Ali Pasha for a mere Rs 35 lakhs. Asman Garh Palace, built by Sir Asman Jah Bahadur, was also handed over--gifted--to Mahboob Ali Pasha who had commented on its beauty.

So it is perhaps only to be expected that the Paigahs conceived of and commissioned a final resting place that reflected their taste for architectural and artistic beauty.

The Paigah Tombs are located just off the very busy 6-lane Santoshnagar highway, but are still quite difficult to find. They are now a crumbling complex of marble and limestone, visited only by the most committed tourists and history buffs.

So how did we find ourselves here?

The enthusiasm of the student group mentioned in the last post had dwindled in the face of an increasingly hot summer and end of semester commitments but three young women decided to brave a burning Tuesday morning to make the visit.

We met at Charminar bus stop and hired an auto-wallah to take us there and back for Rs 300. (Don't believe the maps, the distance from Charminar is not as small as it seems!) It took us a good half hour to get there, driving past Falaknuma on the hill (now newly painted a bright white), and making many stops to ask for directions. We finally found the green-flagged arch diagonally opposite the large Owaisi Hospital. Once we turned into the lane under the arch, there were signs leading right up to the compound. We entered the complex through a small green gate and then, it was a different world.

Many generations of Paigahs are buried here, in at least three separate enclosures. There may have been more, but encroachments on the southern and eastern side have eaten into the compound. The long building directly facing the mosque houses most of the graves, the oldest dating back to the early 1800s. The more important members of the family such as Asman Jah, Kurshid Jah (Amir e Kabir, whose grave has an ostrich egg suspended over it) and Vicar ul Umra (whose grave, though simpler, has a couplet written by the last Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, over the doorway) have their own enclosures, as do the senior wives of these men. Others are in groups of two or three. Each of the enclosures is bounded on all sides by walls of exquisite jaali work, each one a different pattern. Heavy wooden doors elaborately carved in styles reminiscent of Rajasthani jharokas lead into these enclosures. Some of the gravestones are still inlaid with semi precious stones, while the others are more weathered.

After spending many minutes gazing longingly at the doors, particularly (and wondering if it would be possible to replicate one for our own home fronts!), being suitably impressed by the mid-day reflection of the mosque in the pool outside, and wandering through the other two less impressive buildings, we made our way back to the busy-ness of the outside world, where our auto-wallah awaited us and his fare.

I first visited the tombs in 1988, on an assignment to write a tourist guide to Hyderabad city, and at the time, had struggled to find the tombs, just as I did 22 years later! The tombs were in slightly better condition then, with more of the stucco intact. Although the complex has now been declared a heritage site and has been taken over by the Archaeological Survey of India, restoration and even preservation seem to have been put off indefinitely.

rediscovering the old city

2010-04-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Walking down the lanes of the old city of Hyderabad can be either a nightmare or an adventure, and of course one of the many variants and mixtures in between. If you live or work in Lad Bazaar or Patthergatti of course, it's no more than routine. A group of uncomplaining (actually, enthusiastic) students from the MA-Communication program at the University of Hyderabad agreed to join me on a walk through the old city, giving up a precious Sunday of sleeping in. The Heritage Walk conducted by Andhra Pradesh Tourism invites one to discover history in the routine, by unpacking for the unfamiliar walker, the layers of history that lie beneath the grimy walls of these crowded, dilapidated, yet vibrant marketplaces. Beginning at Charminar, the 16th century monument that has come to symbolise the city's heritage, the walk takes you through the lane known variously as "Lad Bazaar" (the market place of indulgence) or Chudi Bazaar (bangle market). The early morning commencement saves the walkers from the hawkers and the enthusiastic bangle and ittar sellers, and allows you to glimpse under the garishly painted awnings, a bit of the outermost walls, now destroyed, of the Chowmahalla Palace complex. Our walk, on April 11, was led by the articulate and knowledgeable Manisha Gadhalay, who peeled away the present to show us what the area may have looked and felt like when the Qutb Shahis and Asaf Jahis (dynasties that ruled Hyderabad between the 14th and 20th centuries) held court.

I've been through the old city, and this route, many times, and each time I cannot hold the excitement I feel when I notice a small piece of stucco work I had not seen before, or catch a sense of space that tells me something about how life was lived. And when you share this love of a city that has grown on you, with a group of young and receptive minds, it's doubly exciting. Cameras clicked and notes were taken as Manisha led us through Lad Bazaar to the north wall of Mecca Masjid, then again through what used to be the jilau-khana (stables) to Mahbook Chowk and the 19th century clock tower that is now surrounded by a bird market, locksmiths selling every conceivable shape and size of lock, a maze of meat stalls, to the front courtyard of what remains of a once grand deorhi. Then out again, to walk down another pathway to Kurshid Jah's baradari, its large compound now taken over by Sunday cricket teams and footballers, to a brief pause in the archways of the grand portico, now watched over by a family of goats and a woman cooking the morning meal in what may have once been a mirrored parlour, an aina-khana.

Bemoaning the disappearing sense of historicity, we pass a tight discussion group who turn out to be members of a civic group interested in the preservation of the heritage sites in the old city. Hope, maybe?

Manisha points out the front of another mansion--a panel beneath the roof holds symbols of a cultural unity; the face of Surya and the crescent of Islam. And finally, the gates of Chowmahalla, the complex of four palaces that housed the Hyderabadi royalty. The Chowmahalla has been written about extensively in recent times, interest in its treasures renewed when Princess Esra, wife of the older grandson of the seventh and last Nizam, decided to throw open its gates to the public and restore its interiors. Restoration is a work in progress, and every visit reveals a new facet of a culture overtaken by time. The Heritage Walk ends with breakfast in one of the shaded courtyards of the palace, and Manisha leaves us with some final stories of the old city, and a desire to see more, learn more.

So we decided not to stop there, and continue, a few days later, with a visit to the Paigah Tombs, another forgotten landmark on the map of the old city. But that's another story.

Notes from the classroom

2010-03-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

Having assigned the ten students in my feature writing class a short assignment, in which they were to write the first instalment of a column to be called "The personal is political", I could not stop my pen from picking itself up and joining them in the furious scratching on paper. This is what emerged....

Sitting in the classroom, the fan whirrs above my head, casting a rapidly rippling shadow over the lined book-page (does a moving object "cast" a shadow?), making my words seem like they are emerging from under the waters of a flowing river. How is the act of writing, this movement of thought from mind to page, a political act? What is the exercise and expression of power that it implies? Is the political resident inherently in the symbols we create, consciously and otherwise (for one might argue that there can be no true unconscious, everything one does is the sum of deliberations over time)? The fact that I use one turn of phrase rather than another--is that political? Is it that I carry ten pens, none of them costing more than twenty rupees, to ensure that my words do not run into an inkless vacuum? Is it that I write--and mostly think--in English? Is it that I sit here, at the head of this cloth-covered table, striking the pose of writing teacher, with the power to tell my students to bend over their books and apply themselves to a task of my choosing? Does the labeling of these acts and their attendant intentions trivialise what most of us understand as politics? Is the political in fact restricted to the popular understanding of the term "politics"? Or does the fact of being a human being occupying--naturally and otherwise--certain positions in relation to others (always, in relation to others), constitute an essential politic-ality? And here my pen pauses.

Because what that implies is that every act, every thought, whether in performance or interpretation, must be framed, unframed, reframed, as political.

And that's what this space is about. About looking at our lives--one's life--with a microscopic intensity, bringing to bear on it all the harshness of ethical illumination, so that it is rendered clear, its antecedents and possible consequences made visible.

Why?

So that we can then take each step that we do take (and reflect on those we do not take) with full awareness and responsibility.

One might then say that such intense reflectivity/reflexivity robs life of spontaneity. On one level, perhaps this is true. But on another, it calls for an internalisation of the process of reflection in a way that makes all thought, all action, ethical, or sensitive to consequence.

And maybe that is one way in which we can hope to live the good life.

driving on outer ring road

2009-12-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of months, almost every other day, I have been driving on the new Outer Ring Road circling Hyderabad, and watching the city eat into the rocky wilderness of the Deccan Plateau. I've grown to recognise and in a strange way commune with the large boulders along the road, and each time I notice a new pile of rubble I realise it's one more rock that's found its way into the building materials of the real estate developers. I am amazed at the speed at which the rocks are disappearing into hills of rough gravel, first, and then flattened to make way for the large steel and concrete buildings that will house commerce of various kinds. Profitable, no doubt, and with a logic difficult to argue with.

There's one rock that I've named the Wise Old Man. He has a large forehead and exposed teeth; sometimes it is like he has bared them in a permanent grin, mocking, or just sad. I wonder how much longer he will stand in the way of Cyberabad's expansion. After all, many young families are awaiting plush homes in gated communities, many international schools are awaiting land for spacious new campuses, and of course, there are businesses waiting to be realised.

The Wise Old Man looks on, but he doesn't have too long, I'm afraid. The blasts will sound, the huge cranes will swing, and that smile will soon be wiped off....

A Story of Villages and Vision

2009-02-05T01:51:00.000-08:00

In Peddanandipadu, a village in Prakasam district, at the end of a bumpy, dusty road where cyclists, goats, buffaloes—and the occasional jeep--jostle for space, one suddenly meets a low dapper building with a board prominently featuring the words “Free eye examination”. A clutch of elderly men, some wearing the spectacles that announce the arrival of diminished accommodation, settle comfortably at the base of the steps. Their casual appropriation of the space seems symbolic of a sense of ownership. The Vision Centre, dubbed so because it is a place where people come to regain—with the help of a pair of spectacles—sight once lost, or to seek a solution to something that is bothering their eyes. Inside the room, stepping back into position on the shiny new tiles, a young man in a professional’s white coat puts his display of spectacles in order and walks into his examination room to check a pair of lenses.

Y Srinivasa Rao, the young Vision Technician who has taken over this Vision Centre after a stint in the LVPEI Service Centre in Adilabad clearly knows his job, and those who use his services, like the elderly men at the steps, just as clearly, trust him to take care of their eyes. For us, mostly city slickers from the L V Prasad Eye Institute's (www.lvpei.org) tertiary centres in Hyderabad,Vizag and Bhubaneswar, this first stop on a tour of self-discovery was both energizing and humbling. Energizing because words and ideas that had only been abstract concepts were now brought to life—quality eye care for all in need at their doorsteps, training human resources for rural eye health—these were not just catchphrases any more, they were real things to real people. Humbling because of the dedication and commitment we could see on the faces of the young Vision Technicians we saw in each of the four centres. The difference they –and through them, LVPEI—make to these rural communities is measurable by the individuals they have been able to help. Y Lalitha, who manages the centre in Parchuru village, described to us how she was able to detect the inkling of a congenital cataract in a six-month old baby and tell the parents to go to the linked service centre.

For the men and woman who work in the paddy fields, the brick kilns, the sugarcane mills and the myriad small industries along this stretch of Coastal Andhra, running from Guntur to Nellore in the south, basic eye care is now within reach. They no longer have to suffer the threat of vision loss because of an injury in the field or struggle to handle their daily tasks because of the lack (and the knowledge of the use) of a simple pair of spectacles. And for more complex needs, the young men and women like Lalitha and Srinivasa know enough to refer them to the service centre that even in the most distant cases is no more than 50 kms away.

The Technicians’ sparkling white coats and the clean counter tops in one Vision Centre after another served to reinforce the idea that quality does not have to be a preserve of the urban corporate hospital, or that quiet efficiency does not have to come at a price unaffordable to the rural poor.

Connectedness to the community was strongly visible in Parchuru village, where the rent for the two room facility was underwritten by four young men, each running a different type of modest business. This type of community “pitching in” took different forms; in Peddanandipadu, it was the donation of the facility in fond memory of deceased parents, while in another village, it was the Panchayat that stepped in to provide space.

Community ownership is what has also made the linkages with the next level of care possible. From Parchuru village, we passed through two more villages (Chinaganjam and Nagaluppalapadu) in Prakasam before we reached the brand new campus of the new LVPEI Service Centre in the small town of Kandukuru. Set in a large and very green campus populated by mango trees in full flower, the Centre is funded by the Ravi brothers of Silicon Valley, and adds to the two other secondary centres that are part of the District Eye Health Initiative. The new team at this centre, led by a Comprehensive Fellow from LVPEI, is all set to begin service delivery. Just after the red ribbon was cut to open the centre, Dr Balasubramanian, Director, Brien Holden Eye Research Centre, LVPEI, filled the first paying patient slot!

After the formal inaugural speeches, a member of the audience stood up and made an offer of space for a vision centre in his village, saying that he would be proud to be associated with LVPEI in this manner.

From Kandukuru it was a short drive in the deepening twilight to Nellore, where within the campus of the Swarna Bharathi Trust, LVPEI runs a secondary centre that serves part of the population of Nellore District. The still-new building, inaugurated in July 2007, has other good works for neighbours—a bridge school for disadvantaged children, a vocational training centre for unemployed youth, and a home for destitute senior citizens. The network in Nellore District is as yet building up, but judging from the enthusiasm of all the stakeholders, this is only a matter of time!

The next morning put us on the road to Madanapalle. From the relative fertility of Nellore, the dry and rocky landscape of this part of Chittoor District was a stark contrast. Forlorn looking tomato vines, fruit sagging and unpicked, were evidence of an unreliable market and its impact on the subsistence farmer. Siloam Eye Hospital suddenly greets you in the middle of this barrenness, its gardens reminiscent of something that has become characteristic of LVPEI hospitals no matter which part of the semi-arid tropics they are!

Dr Shobha not only had laid out an impressive repast for the tired and dusty busload, but had a model eye hospital to show off as well. The inner courtyard, paved with red bricks and its four sectors planted with colourful herbs and cacti, was, she confessed, “laid overnight” by her and her husband Naveen just before the inaugural two years before. Many of the clinical aides were familiar faces, having been trained in Hyderabad. The Centre is also building bridges with the community through an extensive outreach program, screening children and adults in villages on and off the rocky roads of the district. Though cost recovery is an issue in a district as impoverished as Chittoor, the staff of the centre is undeterred in their commitment to providing quality eye care to all, most unmoved even by offers to relocate to more remunerative or professionally productive settings!

Madanapalle provided a perfect end to the tour, encapsulating all the things that LVPEI stands for. Commitment to rural communities that lack eye care and often, even basic health care. Motivation to work in difficult and often demoralizing conditions. And always, an eye on excellence.

On the road to Bangalore, the bus was quiet. We’d covered a large distance, from our comfortable offices in Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam, away from the super-busy surgical and outpatient routines that consume us and often eclipse a sense of the bigger picture, to the fields of Guntur and Prakasam districts and the hills and boulders of Chittoor. We’d also “descended” from the apex of the pyramid to the base, touching and feeling all the levels in between and understanding how they worked together. We were sobered by the enormity of the possibility and also the impact. But all of us, without exception, were also inspired—by the people, the systems, and the vision that had made it all come together.

looking around the empty nest

2008-11-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

What is it that I miss most about being away from my children?

Not being able to feel the texture of their days.
Not knowing the turns they take as they move from sleep to wakefulness.
Not having the moment of watching a sleep-covered face, to pull the covers over a shoulder exposed in the night.
And yes,
The messiness of rooms strewn with books and papers and notes falling apart from having been passed through too many hands under the unwatchful eye of a teacher focused on Q & A, holding in their folds the stimulus for silent laughter.
Unfinished conversations.
Scolding.
Passing on bits of advice in the hope that they will find a space amidst the flashing synapses of their minds, now busy making connections of importance to a young life.
In missing these moments I also miss the passage into new phases of life. Womanhood. Adulthood. New personhood.

Conversations with cabbies

2007-10-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

"Is it a difficult drive to the airport at this time of day?" I ask the balding gentleman in the front seat who drives my car to the airport in Melbourne. He looks up at me in the rear view mirror and smiles patiently. "It depends," he says. Before I can jump to "on what?" he continues: "If you begin the drive thinking that it's going to be easy, considering that most people are on the roads heading home, then you're bound to find it difficult. But if you just know that's the way it is, that five o'clock traffic can't be any different, and simply focus on getting there, it's just another drive."

That wise comment was prelude to one of the most interesting conversations I've had, one that made the 45-minute drive in peak Melbourne traffic go by like a breeze. We discussed religion, working class politics in Australia and (a topic close to my heart) school education. He told me about his 11-year-old son who goes to a charter school where most of the children come from very affluent families. "I usually drop clients home to these areas, and now my son was attending birthday parties here...we had to have a few talks about aligning expectations with reality and coming to terms with economic differences." He was just as curious about life in India, and not in the usual "oh tell us about the poverty" way.

For a streetside view of a city, there's nothing quite like a tour by cab, particularly if the tour is accompanied by commentary from the cabbie. Over the past four years or so, I've been treated to many unique views of interesting cities, glimpses into lives I would otherwise not have the privilege of knowing, particularly in my role as an itinerant business traveller or tourist. We rarely exchange names but we trade snapshots of our lives, and the person behind the wheel always gives me a perspective that fills out the fringes of a strange city for me.

In Sydney, I've spoken with a Bangladeshi father who despairs of ever speaking Ozzie like his son and teenage daughter, a Pakistani who is eager to know about the "other Hyderabad" that I come from, a Chinese immigrant who drives a cab by night and runs a construction business by day, and a Jamaican jazz singer who left with me a card and an invitation to his next performance. And I mustn't forget the Ghanaian named just like the then United Nations Secretary General who told me about how children in Ghana were named, for the day of the week, so one was likely to find many many people with the same name!

In Pretoria, I was treated to a story about the Jacaranda city that forever changed the way I look at that lovely purple bloom. Michael, my driver and tour guide of an afternoon, told me how a shipment of Jacaranda saplings bound for China from South America ended up in Pretoria, and the local government, stuck with hundreds of trees that needed planting in a very short time before they died, drafted school children and community members to plant trees all along the city's main avenues. When the trees bloomed in the following years, Pretoria took pride in their beauty and soon came to be known as the Jacaranda city. A few years down the line, however, it was discovered that the deep rooted, water guzzling trees had so depleted the water table that a moratorium was placed on the Jacaranda, and it was forbidden to plant any more trees!

In Geneva, a Lebanese cabbie wanted to know all about Raj Kapoor and the latest Bollywood tamasha, and in exchange he told me his tale of coming home to a new land with no family but a lot of hope, and how things had changed, for his family and for him, with his move to Switzerland.

In Buenos Aires my smattering of Spanish drew an eloquent explanation of the Plaza de Mayo, a place of pilgrimage for me.

And in London? Well, the cabbies in London (the few I met--London is a city for buses and the tube and walking) were either too polite or too indifferent to enter into conversation with an Asian woman, just one more of the scores he must have driven from work, to home, or to play.

For me, almost every taxi ride in a strange city has offered an education. Given that most cab drivers in developed countries are immigrants, it's taken the immigrant experience out of novels and films into real life for me. When one travels on business, it is difficult to get "under the skin" of a city, and at best one is taken out to dinner by a kind local colleague or invited into the home of another. But a cab ride offers a special bubble of a space, one in which the conversation does not have to have a beginning or end; it's sort of like a parenthetical experience that happens in the continuum of the day. Rarely are names exchanged, or linear life stories shared. it's bits and pieces, things that fit into the space between the two clicks of a meter.

For these stories, the tip I leave always seems too little.

Global, local or in limbo?

2007-03-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

Travelling through the streets of any large city, one finds billboards screaming the promise of ‘world class’ education combined with a pledge to ‘create global citizens’ or ‘future ready’ graduates. Many of these promises and pledges come from schools carrying the tag “international”. They show pictures of happy pink-cheeked children smiling against a backdrop of spacious lawns or well furnished playgrounds; some show children performing activities ranging from playing the guitar to working on an airplane model, or interacting with a well groomed adult playing the role of teacher.

Much before FDI in higher education became a reality, or even a hotly debated proposal, the international had seeped into elementary schooling. And arguably, it goes even farther back than most of us care to or are equipped to look. For years and years, we’ve had inputs from abroad coming into schools, whether in the form of textbooks that were clones of western readers, or pedagogy styles that had been tried and tested abroad, the design of schools and classrooms, or—at the simplest level—in the kinds of uniforms we have seen fit to adopt into our schools. There’s been no dearth of ‘foreign inputs’ into our education system.

Systems of education have been imported, and investments made, if not directly, indirectly, into the business of schooling. In colonial India, each colonizing power brought with it an army of missionaries. Even those that had no “colonial presence” in India had a missionary presence. And the missionaries brought with them systems of schooling, governed by a philosophy and run with funds that were largely from abroad. In the initial days, even those who implemented these philosophies of education—the nuns and the priests—were foreigners. Until, that is, enough ‘natives’ were converted and co-opted into the orders. While to their credit many of these institutions did take and learn from local contexts, the overarching framework was European. The “Senior Cambridge” which morphed into the Indian Council of Secondary Education, at one time had direct links with Cambridge University. And then there were the handful of “International” schools that offered the International Baccalaureate. Now this group has been joined by the IGCSE, a British system of school certification, while the IB itself has recognized many more schools in India.

What has this meant for our system as a whole? On the one hand, it has made it easier for our children—at least those who have access to the best western clones—to fit into a globalised economy and a global urban culture. This is more and more true for the new elite institutions mentioned at the beginning of this article—their children have access to facilities on par with upper-crust schools in the West, and thereafter are groomed to enter an awaiting corporate culture. These schools are ‘feeders’ in a sense, to Western-type higher education models and indeed, many end up going abroad to enter college. But on the other hand, the system has also generated a large class of misfits whose schooling has been of little relevance to their immediate contexts and has in some cases fed aspirations that cannot be fulfilled in the spaces they are confined to.

Extrapolate this to higher education, where the focus on ‘internationalisation’ has meant mainly being able to feed the global economy—and right now, that translates into creating enough warm bodies with just enough education to handle the lines and lines of code that have to be written, debugged and tested to automate the information society. It has meant outward looking, foreign focused curricula, and a not-so-gradual erosion of areas of study relevant to our own needs.

The recent debates on education reform, primarily the National Curriculum Framework 2006, took a good long look at the needs of the country and how we could make schools sites of individual and social transformation. The changes suggested, apart from curriculum reform, had to do with changing the way we thought about education outcomes. Just as community schools everywhere have always done, what is taught in schools must relate to the child’s immediate environment and from there radiate outward. In the long run, this should not only bring in a high degree of connectivity between school and its context, but also help children develop a sense of rootedness while simultaneously broadening their outlook.

The hundreds of small ‘alternative’ schools across the country are doing exactly this. They aim to develop a strong sense of caring about community and local linkages through a variety of projects within and outside the academic curriculum without sacrificing quality in terms of the rigour of learning. They set their educational priorities and learning outcomes based on a bottom-up approach—what do the children know, where do they come from, what do they need to know most, and how can it be imparted without threatening their identities in any way? Superimposed on this is of course a broader understanding of the world we live in and all the content that goes to feed into that understanding.

There is no question that the western model of education has, over the decades, created a class of alienated individuals who despite their best intentions feel more foreign than Indian, or whose Indianness is defined by foreign expectations. It’s meant that their dreams have been fuelled and built on frames that define success and failure in terms not entirely our own. It’s meant that in order to meet those criteria of success, the context had to be changed, so that it resembled more closely the context from which those frames had been imported.

This is not to deny that there are advantages of education as we have known it and institutionalized it. It has given us the means to build bridges with other countries, perhaps though, on terms not always in our favour. It has given us an infrastructure of sorts, both in a material and non-material sense. It has allowed many Indians to become global citizens and many of them, having discovered themselves in the process, have come back to undo some of the things that their education has mis-done. But these efforts have been patchy and like the ‘alternative’ schools, have had a limited—and always contested--impact on the system as a whole. And in the meantime, the hangover of history has taken its toll. It has resulted in a terrible unevenness in the reach and quality of education across the country, apart from the fact that the process of alienation has continued.

So the question to ask ourselves now, when there is so much talk of foreign direct investment in education, is—what are we going to do differently with these foreign labels that will create an impact on our education system? Is it simply a matter of importing or transplanting structures from abroad, so that the product can be ‘bought back’, much in the manner of ‘100 percent export-oriented manufacturing units’? Or is it going to more deeply entrench the disconnect between what is studied and what is lived, what is seen and what is heard of, what is possible and what can only be dreamt of? Is it going to make us feel even more foreign in a place that is supposed to be home?

(This article first appeared in Edu-Care, a forum for education concerns, published by Centre for Learning, an alternative education organisation, in Hyderabad, March 2007)

long time, no post

2007-02-20T06:13:00.000-08:00

Wonder what keeps us writing and wanting to be visible in this space that has no boundaries other than the ability to access and use a computer. I realise that the impulse to put the freewheeling movements of one's mind on to a screen is not as strong as I had expected when I first signed on to this thing called a blog. The conversations I wish to have happen in real time and with people I can see and hear and touch. But the excitement of being online is just the opposite...who knows what strange turns on the bylanes of the Internet will bring friendship to you?

Conversations in chat rooms that were once simulations of social spaces and then substitutes for social spaces, and now are social spaces in their own right. I hear of young people who 'meet' online and then progress to intense conversations where they move into private areas of chat rooms and then, offline into real spaces where the relationship might take on a 'really' serious nature. What are the expectations that are built up through words on a screen in relational terms? How do these expectations fare when selves move from being things constructed of words and perhaps a few photographs, to flesh-and-blood and all else that physical presence brings? Is it similar to what happens when we hear a disembodied voice on the telephone, when we conjure up an image, a body, that we think goes with the voice? What qualities do we ascribe voices and words that are borne out (or not) by physical selves?

These are some of the questions that plague me as I think of you who is reading this (more often than not someone whom I know in 'meat space'), you whom I have not seen or heard, you who are a presence that comes to my words by way of a mouse-click...

capturing the moment

2006-12-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

if nothing else, poetry captures the moment and stretches it in a way that can be held, felt and wound around oneself... recollections from a morning walk:

Nothingness
(22-12-06)

The bird
outlines
a black shadow
on a still
colourless cloudless blue sky;
A wing flutters
ever
so
slightly
as it swims
across my upward view.
The tree stump
waits
in patience, hope
and a certain
sense of fatalism
(or fatality?)
for a new twig
to burst into leaf.
There's a quiet
in the crisp crunch
of footfall
on gravel.
Heads nod
hands rise
in a hello;
Morning walkers
polite
alone
breathing in
and out
and feet
move on
another mile.

accident of birth

2006-12-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

I read the other day about a rally organised in New Delhi to protest female foeticide and call attention to the deteriorating male:female ratio, particularly in the states of northern India. Just reminded me of something I wrote a long time ago...in fact, much before I became a mother, perhaps in response to a similar discussion in the eighties, perhaps recalled from 'the depths of neo-natal' memory...? But I must say that memory and imagination are partners in a writer's mind, and empathy often makes curious turns into the space usually occupied by experience, and in doing so, touches memory with a brush that recalls feelings unfelt!

A daughter is born

17-3-86

Dredged up
From the depths of neo-natal experience
A memory stirs.
While head and hands groped for life
In the womb-darkness
Of pre-birth,
Tiny feet found
Their first breath
In the bright hospital air.
A little body
Inched out into
The adult world, defined
By adult-set hopes.
Before even,
The baby eyes saw
Their first rays of light,
The voices fell—
“It’s a girl”.

losing people, gaining memories

2006-10-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

It seems like I've been talking a lot about the past, about people and times passing. Perhaps that's the way it is when you get to a certain age. There's more to talk about what one has done and seen rather than get breathless about plans for the future! But this year has been more about loss than any year before. Since the beginning of the year, I have lost three people I have been associated with closely, people who have been engaged in my life at different points and have made differently-shaped dents in my personality.

One was a fellow student who later turned into a colleague, an intense young man who became an even more intense adult, whose intensity lingers in his poetry and his sharp visual sketches, some of which surface, unexpectedly, on the Internet when one is browsing late at night looking for traces of a past that seemingly has vanished but has found a nook in some strange corner of this realm called cyberspace.

The next to go was a gentle presence who just barely touched my life before she was gone, victim also to the same cancer that claimed the other friend (and yet another before him). Smiling quietly even when she was making a point firmly, ensuring that her lightness of touch was not mistaken for a frailty of will, she showed me how firmness could be accompanied by a laugh, that affection did not have to be rationed like some commodity in short supply.

And then there was my friend Ja, someone I first bumped into on the stairway to my newly-married academic campus home, someone who showed me how the "other half" lived or did not live, whose thirty years on me disappeared with a shared thought, a shared smile, who showed me that friendship did not have to be packaged in any way, that it was a free-flowing thing that simply took up residence in one's heart, yet remained weightless and formless.

Perhaps it's just the age I'm at...

Relative relations

2006-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder at our capacity to handle such a wide variety of interactions, each with a separate set of parameters, expectations, obligations and rewards (or otherwise). In each we are a different person, or show a different side of ourselves. Inside, we may feel quite complete, but those who watch us across contexts often find that we turn unrecognizable as we move from one to the other. We are able to move across ages—we are children to some, parents to others, lovers with an infinite range of visages and friends with an even greater range of faces, and all the shades of no-name relationships in between. So many people within each person.

Do any of us have a true measure of ourselves as people? While we may outwardly marvel at how little we know of others, and how they constantly show us different sides of their selves, we usually explain it away by attributing it to a latent schizophrenia in the other—and only half jokingly! The person most of us know the least, because we observe her/him the least, is oneself. We measure ourselves by others’ reactions to us, not by any sense of who we are. We judge our success or failure at relationships based on how well we are able to hold on to other people’s interests or affections, not by the intrinsic nature of the relationship and what we bring to it.

But beyond this there is a question that puzzles me…and I’d be happy to hear thoughts on this…how is it that we are able to sustain so many different kinds of relationships, in so many ways, and yet have so little tolerance for differences outside of ourselves?

school and all that

2006-08-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

Here's something that came to me by way of a text message from a friend--

Those ‘night outs’,
those ‘midnight coffees’,
those ‘birthday bumps’,
those ‘old torn jeans’,
those ‘late night walks’,
those ‘long chats’, those
‘pinches ‘n slaps’,
those ‘crushes on pals’,
those ‘getting kicked out of classes’,
those ‘struggle for marks’,
those ‘writing on desks’,
those ‘fights with teachers’,
those ‘tears for love’,
those ‘fake project reports’.

Just everything that’s in all of us that’s called school life.

I call it Heaven.

(from Lakshmi Rameshwar Rao, aka Buchamma, August 1, 2006)

Got me thinking about that special space within us called childhood...or as it may be, not so special place, for some. I was myself relatively untouched by major trauma in school, but again, school does mark us in certain ways, for good or bad. For those of us who went to convent schools, there was the dark fascination with the concept of SIN and eternal damnation, and many of us lived in fear that we would never be saved if we prayed (or did not) to any gods other than the ONE we were told gave us the Word. And for others, I'm sure there were different but comparable fears and hopes that were dished out with the daily lesson plans. Ultimately, what we remember from school is more the 'sense' of learning rather than the content. The nice (or not-so-nice) things our teachers told us, the sense of self-esteem that we did or did not develop, the friends we made or failed to keep...these are the things that make our patchwork of memories from school, not the history or geography or science or maths lessons. Those were merely the context within which life happened. And now, as a teacher myself, I find that the things students come back to me with are rarely the debates we had in class, or the questions we grappled with about this theory or that. Instead, they come back with memories of the things we said around our lessons, the smiles, the frowns, that gave them a good or a bad feeling, the talks about life, rather than about the texts that they were required to read. Those are the lessons they keep and take with them, and bring back to me, for me to learn from, all over again. And each time I interact with a person who was once my student (and continues to be, in a way), I am full of gratitude for these moments of shared learning. It's great to be a teacher...it means, always, to be a learner.

And that's a long walk from a little text message that came in on my mobile phone!

Wednesday, the 'hump' day

2006-07-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

My friend Gina (and roommate from another age, another era) called Wednesday the 'hump' day of the week...the day that was right in the middle, the day when you were just over the weekend euphoria and not quite into the anticipatory haze of the approaching friday. The day when, perhaps, it hit you that you were already into the middle of the week and your "to do" list was not even halfway checked!

I think Wednesday could just as easily be designated 'slump' day...if you're the kind who comes back to work on Monday feeling all energized and motivated after a refreshing weekend ("What kind of strange species feels energetic on Monday?" I hear you mumble, through your own mid-week mind-haze. Monday, morning, you walk into your work space, and you look at all the bright little post-it notes on your desk top and in various strategic locations around your desk (if you're lucky enough to have one that doesn't get swept off every morning but an over-enthusiastic housekeeping lady with her extra long broom), feeling, "okay, now I am going to deal with those post it notes, one by one, systematically and ruthlessly". You sit down, turn on your computer, open your diary, and begin on "to do" note number 1. The phone rings and a colleague begins to drone about how his weekend just did not go as planned....before you know it that bright little post it note has joined a bunch of its companions in the trash can, crumpled by frustrated fingers that could not bang down the receiver to cut off that drone. And that was only resolution number one.

So the days progress, from the Motivated Monday to Try-to-keep-the-tempo Tuesday and before you know it, it's the middle of the week, and you're in the middle of a slump. It's Wednesday. Another two days to go before you can even begin to smell the distant dream of a weekend...

Of course, all that means is that the cycle will begin again...and again...

Moral of the story. Get rid of all those post-it notes Friday afternoon before you leave work. Better still, get rid of all those blocks of post-its that you bought from your last indulgent visit to a stationery store (where you had gone, in the first place, just looking for a card for a distant relative).

old friends

2006-07-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

There's something about the monsoon that triggers memories. As i was driving home yesterday trying to avoid the puddles on the road in case they were cover-ups for deep potholes, I passed by several carts of tender corn, makka buttas, and as the aroma of charcoal and slightly burning corn kernels followed me, i remembered....

Mahrookh and i used to walk along Parade Grounds on rainy afternoons, with fifty-paise coins given by indulgent mothers, fifty paise to buy whatever we wanted with. And what could fifty paise buy, in the mid 1970s? well, a lot, really. anything from ten sticks of vanilla ice cream to two 'rainbow' ice lollies to a few guavas sliced and peppered with chilli powder and salt, and, in season, tender light yellow buttas, the blonde strands of their fibrous coats still stuck to the cobs. "Kanvla wala dena," Mahrookh would insist. Until then, I had assumed that the darker the gold, the bigger the cob, the better the butta. But no, it was the lightest, smallest ones that were tender and almost juicy. And when roasted and smothered in lime and pepper and salt, they were the most delicious. And so, with our fifty-paise roasted buttas in hand, we would continue our walk, nodding at the old Parsi aunties who occasionally passed us by on their weekday promenade, chatting about this and that, complaining about our teachers and groaning and moaning about homework yet to be done. It was a great time to be fourteen. The world had not yet discovered the Internet or multiplexes. Television, if I remember right, had not yet made a space for itself in our living rooms, and of course, public spaces still belonged to the public at large. This meant that children could run and play in places like community gardens without fear of being 'scoped' by 'antisocial' elements, and teenagers could take long walks or ride their bicycles around town without fear of being knocked over by speeding lorries or MPVs.

I'm sure accounts of idyllic pasts before technology-as-we-know-it-now abound and I don't want to add to that, except to reiterate that things were simpler, joys were easier to discover, and parents had fewer fears about letting their children out to roam the streets!

But the rain tends to do that. It makes you wistful, nostalgic, and sometimes, just plain maudlin!

And as I write this, all traces of rain have vanished from the Hyderabad sky. Where has the monsoon disappeared? It continues to lash and nourish (depending on where you are placed and how you look at it) different parts of the country, but here, it has taken a temporary leave of absence.

Listen to the falling rain...

2006-07-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

Listen to the falling rain, listen to it fall...

For those of us who grew up in the seventies, this song by the visually impaired singer Jose Feliciano may bring back many memories of monsoons past. Having just returned from rain-lashed Bhubaneswar, and inundated by reports of a rain-battered Mumbai, the sound of the rain brings a mixed bag of memories.

A good friend said that the sound of the rain is the same, no matter where you are, so it's hard to forget. But I wonder. The rain has a different rhythm at different times of year, when it falls on different surfaces, and when it curtains different landscapes. The rain on a beach in Goa is both poetic and devastating, coconut palms bending submissively to the force of the lashing sheets of water. The rain that washes the PVC hoardings that otherwise beam seductively at distracted drivers on the main roads of Hyderabad is a harsh reminder of the transcience of urban desire. And the rain on the slushy, potholed roads of Chennai's vegetable bazaar is messy and therapeutic, forcing us to drag our mud-soaked heels through waste of various kinds.

And of course, the rain in Mumbai will forever raise the ghost of July 2005, when children were held hostage in schools, when old people who had beds drew their tired and fragile feet up to their chins and hoped for a reprieve before the water reached the base of the mattress. And the old people who had no beds lay back and hoped for escape, or rescue. When mothers searched and fathers and brothers and sisters searched under the deluge for news of their loved ones; when people held hands to draw neighbours and strangers to safety, when memories were washed away, only to rise each year with the falling rain....

2006-06-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Another morning, another day...but I am yet to feel comfortable with this new space. Writing into oblivion is a strange feeling. Your words go out there, and someone, somewhere, whose only link to you is a few strokes on a keyboard, reads what you write--maybe--or comes upon it by an accidental detour on the streets of cyberspace. And you create a sense of who you are through your words.

So, if you've actually stayed this far on this page, here's something to think about... this is from my own archives, a quarter of a century old (imagine, before this space came into public use!).

Maya

30-3-81

My mirror forms
an image in my mind
I draw myself
in colours I want to see.
I am
a figment of
your imagination,
as you are too,
of mine.

breathless beginnings

2006-06-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

I guess I have arrived...in today's terms. I now have my own few square feet on that strange space called the Web. And what will I say? Will what I say make sense--to myself, to others, both known and unknown?

Perhaps a good way to begin is to talk about what's uppermost on my mind. Being a wordsmith who takes on different avatars--biomedical editor, teacher, writer of features and fiction, and of course, that something that is closest to my heart--poetry (I can see some of you cringe--"oh, no, not another of that sort!")--it seems particularly fitting to subject my readers to my most recent exploration of emotion in verse.

Caregiving for people of various ages is a challenge, and it's important to remember some basic human truths--which is what this expresses.

For my grandmother and yours…

In the half-light of
The naked light bulb
Shaded only by
The clouds in your eyes
And the tears in mine,
We float
Through times past and present
Wondering where our selves are lost
While we, trapped in these bodily prisons
Rue our physicality.

When you look at me,
Do you wonder
What I am thinking,
How I am feeling—
As I turn
Your tired and twisted body over
To give the skin on your back
Another lease of life?

Do you ask yourself
And, with those silent eyes, ask me—

“What do you see, as you hold my
Gnarled-wrinkled-spotted hand
In yours?
Can you feel the love
That cooked-washed-cleaned
For children, grandchildren
And sundry others?
Do you sense
The unyielding, unending patience
That tied us together, you and I and many more
Disparate, distracted,
So that they would be knit
Into a fabric of memory, caring
And commitment?
Or do you only feel fatigue,
A mind-numbing tedium,
And are you just waiting
For the inevitable release
Hoping, yet afraid to voice hope
That it will be sooner
Not later?”