Huntington's Death

In April 2008 a strange incident occurred. My best friend P- emailed me and asked me if I wanted to help her drive Amartya Sen to his lecture series at Stanford. Now P- is a student at SJSU and I go to UCB, so the odds of this happening were pretty off. It seems P- had answered an email request on a listserv and had got chauffer duties for Mr. Sen. Now P- being P- was super-excited and when she asked me to be her co-driver, I accepted. Amartya Sen is a hard man to meet (if you're not at Harvard) and here we would be in the same car as him for a grand total of about 10 minutes (if she drove real slow). Since I am a die-hard Sen fanatic and had just finished shoving his book Poverty and Famines down the throats of an unsuspecting bunch of students, I was naturally quite eager.

I thought quite hard about what I would say to him. And to cut a long story short, we got him from his hotel on University Avenue and drove him to the Oval at Stanford and of course Sen was charming, he sat on the front seat due to a knee injury and proceeded to turn P- to stone behind the wheel when he accidentally brushed her arm. I tried to conceal my cache of Sen's books which I had brought along for signatures (sigh.. I am a total groupie for Nobel Laureates) and if he noticed, he didn't say anything. A golf cart was supposed to meet Sen at the Oval and it never arrived. But I seized this chance to talk to him about this and that, the weather, his jacket, his wife, etc. I also asked him the one question which I had hoped I would not ask him, but I did anyhow, I asked, "Mr Sen, what goes through your mind when you see Sam Huntington in the halls of Harvard?" I don't know what bout of verbal diarrhoea brought this question out, an infinitely stupid and asinine question. But he answered with that evil glint in his eye which gainsays his stooped frame and age-wizened features. He said, "Well he is a friend, of course, and poor man, he is very very very ill.. but I do still think he is completely wrong as well and I never miss an opportunity to tell him this."

The problem with being an academic is that we revel in academic gossip. Like for instance, the time Prof. K- told me that Sam Huntington had failed his comparative exam three times, I think I cartwheeled in my head a few times. Or that Sen's book The Argumentative Indian and Identity and Violence were responses to Huntington's "Clash" thesis. And yes, the first time I read Huntington in 1999 as an intern with World Report Productions writing a brief for my boss who was going to interview Yasser Arafat, I did think he was completely off the mark. Nine years later, here I was having a fifteen minute conversation on Sam Huntington, with one of his most vocal critics while I helped him up a flight of stairs and held his files for him.

I never knew Huntington, except through his work. And I rolled my eyes everytime someone seemed to support the Clash thesis. I even accused an Indophile like William Dalrymple for embodying this thesis in The Last Mughal, until I saw him in person and revised my opinion a bit. There are rumors that The Clash of Civilizations was translated into 32 languages and was sold across the world. The political class in many nations had devoured this book. I once even wondered out loud if Osama bin Laden had read it. I answered questions on the book in various exams, cited Huntington and found him referenced almost everywhere.

I read about the news of his death on a train journey back to Gwalior, a few days ago. And I kept thinking to myself about how this man who had influenced four generations of policy makers in the US and apparently "cowered under his desk during the seventies as people were lobbing bombs into his office" (according to a rather credible source, one of his students) was no longer going to churn out essays which began offensively with "Jose can you see...".

At some point though I did tangle extensively with his writing and found myself agreeing with some of what he forcefully said about the developing world in Political Order and Decay. I agreed order was essential, till I interrogated this again sitting in remote border areas of my own country. I saw first hand how Westphalian notions of sovereignty did not work. How Huntington claimed to be a democracy evangelist and yet was haunted by the idea that people could and did want different things from the state.

I have to say encountering Huntington's work did push my thinking forward. I disagreed rabidly in discussions and waded through Mamdani and Sen to bolster my own arguments against his. He had managed to fashion the dominant discourse and many from the developing world were trying counter it. Yet he remained a good writer. I have to revisit the 'Clash' every semester I teach because someone always prescribes it. And each time I am stunned by his clarity, his unwavering style and the no-nonsense way in which he clearly always laid out whatever theory he wanted to present. Perhaps that is half the reason why he was so convincing.

And the philosopher in me wonders about passports to immortality through the written word and also thinks ... can we actually really grieve for someone we never knew?

ITL: Indian Terror League

I have finally turned off my telly and am breathing a little easier after almost two entire days of being glued to it. It has been like watching a cricket match and keeping score, as a friend said. The entire nation was keeping score - one dead, two down, three, four. Shots fired - one, two.. twenty. The final death toll ranges from 125 - 155. Bodies are still being brought out the back door of the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai. We will know the official count tomorrow. 327 have been injured. Many may still succumb to their wounds. After all help has not been able to reach some people for more than a day.

Here's where I come in. What on earth is the Deccan Mujahideen? What is the NDFB, ULFA, Huji in Assam? Who are the HNLC in Meghalaya? Paralleling the Indian Premier League of regional cricket teams, we have the Indian Terror League of regional militant outfits operating quite comfortably within the borders of our country in separate regions. For more information and data on a state-wise breakup of militant groups visit the South Asia Terrorism Portal website and try not to drown in the alphabet soup.

I have never been a xenophobic patriot and am not one even as I write this. But watching all of this unfolding live on TV, I cannot help but wonder if this is a turning point for many of us. We all need to draw the line at the killing of innocents. If we could all come together and condemn 9/11 and feel for the American nation even though many of us had never set foot on American soil, we can certainly come together to condemn this act as a nation.

But the question really is - what makes a nation? And are we a nation at all? My recent experiences traveling to the borders and marginalized corners of this country makes me answer my own question in the negative. For some parts of 'India', the CRPF, NSG, army, paramilitary are heroes. For people sitting in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland these are agents of oppression.

'India' stands contested by the Indian Terror League, but we seem to notice only after 125 people are confirmed killed, the entire Anti-Terror Squad leadership is annhilated and our media vociferously froths at the mouth, journalists weep openly while reporting and the media actually AIRS footage of young men shouting anti-Pakistan slogans. Yes, we are all brave. Yes, the media has given us a sense of being part of something exciting and adventurous. We feel invigorated, varying amounts of adrenalin pumps through our bodies. But really what have we done to resolve any of this. Absolutely nothing!

To me targeting one set of terrorist organizations, which also just happen to be Muslim ones, is to single out an entire community for attack. The NDFB, led by Ranjan Daimary, is a Bodo outfit. It is apparently responsible for the Guwahati blasts. NOT, as was initially reported the Muslim outfit called Huji and the ULFA. Many newspapers in India did not correct this story. They let people believe that the Bangladeshi backed Huji and ULFA had orchestrated the blasts. And the Indian Mujahideen supposedly made up now of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has become the new agent of terror. The point I am simply trying to make is this - there are various kinds of terrorist outfits in our country and not all of them are Islamic in nature. Yes, the top brass of the ULFA, HNLC, etc have crossed over to Bangladesh and they conduct their operations remotely. But the top brass of many other outfits have also crossed over into Burma.

Our political class, our intelligence gathering agencies have failed us time and again. Electoral calculations have trumped actual democratic representation. In Meghalaya, according to a source, the army intelligence actually taps the phones of Meghalaya police officials because no one will tell army intelligence anything. This is a ridiculous state of affairs for any country. We need to be very worried when our own security agencies refuse to cooperate with each other. The Meghalaya state police has been very successful in eliminating HNLC from the state because the one thing they dread more than this outfit is the presence of active, centrally deployed paramilitary troops. So they clean up their house very well, because they don't want the head janitor to come in.

Instead of now singling out one community of people as terrorists, we need a policy which treats terror uniformly across the country. We apparently have something like this in place, but terrorism in the mainland always gets more attention than terror elsewhere. In the northeast, militant outfits encounter troops and police everyday. Police patrols every night in jungles. But since the place is so removed from the imagining of 'India', frankly no one gives a damn.

So we don't need to just combat the Indian Mujahideen specifically or the Deccan Mujahideen (whoever these guys are). We need to combat the Indian Terror League by first and foremost stepping up our intelligence gathering.

If some of you are surprised that I am coming across as a bit of a hardliner, it has something to do with the fact that recently I have become really disappointed with the democratic process in 'India'. But I will reiterate, I am not a blind, xenophobic patriot. I am someone who has seen too much terror recently at very close quarters. In two cities Delhi and Guwahati I had just managed to leave areas where serial blasts then occured. I also saw entirely burnt down Muslim and Bodo villages in Udalguri and Darrang in Assam and since I am not a politician or a bureaucrat, I could not promise the people in refugee camps any relief. I wrote, I nodded, I looked at the collection of bullets the inmates from camps laid on a table for the National Commission of Minorities and I left. I filed my report. It may have reached the government. I made recommendations through the Commission members. It may translate into policy.

But what has remained with me through all of this and the two day vigil I kept on the news channels for Mumbai, is the need for concerted political action. After all that happened, FINALLY Manmohan Singh asked the ISI chief to be sent down to India. We had an apologetic Pakistani foreign minister on the line with Prannoy Roy and instead of asking him hard hitting questions, we asked, "Why should we trust you?"

The drama is over for now. We will see repeat telecasts of some poignant moments on the telly for the next week or so. In all of this stage-management, few paid attention to the death of VP Singh, a former Prime Minister, who implemented OBC reservations in government services.

On September 11, 2001 as I walked back to my hostel in JNU, New Delhi a cocky class mate came up to me and said, "Hey.. The Pentagon is now square." For some reason, these words keep coming back to me. What smart comment can one make about Mumbai, I wonder!!

The Re-telling of a Conflict

It is now winter and the mist of the morning cloaks cop and robber alike. There is a distance between man and mortality at this point. There is left of the previous night, nothing but leftovers and between the daylight and the dying light of the moon, there exists the dark and the people who dwell in it; cop and robber alike. Perhaps I should be more specific. Cop and insurgent. Robbers are welcome here. They are the lesser criminals. The self-interested idiots who think only of small gain, not concerning themselves with matters of state and government, regime change and gun-running. The evil ones are the cops. The gallant ones are the militants. And between cop and militant there is an understanding, battle time is battle time. And not all times are battle times. One can go to a popular club and find in one corner a group of surrendered and current militants and in the other the cop with his girlfriend. They nod to each other and continue to drink.

This world is topsy turvy in more ways that I can describe. Normalcy in everyday affairs seems deviant. It is an interloper. I can go to a coffee shop and sip cappuccino and at the same time, someone in the corner is looking online on the relative merits and demerits of RDX and how to make a pipe bomb. I do not understand the language, but I see their eyes and I know they think of me as a privileged outsider. What am I doing here they wonder. There is less hostility and more curiosity.

Samuel was all of 19 years old. He had joined the camp a month ago and had just learnt how to deal with the AK like it was part of his body. An extra limb that needed to be accepted and cradled. This weapon, his commander had said, can save your life and bring down the government.

The policeman shot Samuel dead in cold blood in the pre dawn sleep hour. He didn’t have a chance. The counter insurgency team swarmed the hideout in the middle of the forest and silently made their way to the main cluster of small huts on stilts, under which the rebels slept. The lookout for the camp had already been silenced by a quick switchblade operation by one cop.

But Samuel breathed his last thinking that some heavy object had fallen on his chest. Perhaps the whole hut had collapsed on him. He slept on a bed of bamboo branches held together with some string. He was still asleep when the two bullets from the cop’s Glock were pumped into his chest. He didn’t have a chance to wake up except for vaguely recollecting an important mission he had run for the HNLC that day. Some of the camp members got away that night. But most didn’t. They were killed where they slept and the Meghalaya state police notched another win in the battle against militancy. But they had to do it, they reasoned. It was the MLP doing an efficient job or the central forces coming in to do they dirty clean up job for them. An outside police force was unwelcome and would lead to more human rights violations. More women being raped, more women at risk, less mobility and more incessant and indiscriminate killing.

The exercise of sovereignty was never easy for any central government. And here it is more difficult than ever. The lack of public institutions and the failure of parties have led to a vast and immense political vacuum which is increasingly being filled by youth organizations, the legitimate voice of the people.

And everyone seems dysfunctional. And everyone plays a game. And I am expected to play even though I am an outsider. I am release for some people here, who cannot express their thoughts to anyone else without any consequences. But in gathering this excess information, which I have no need of, I may have become a small-time player, a confidante, a person on whom burdens of knowledge can be placed. My own inability to process this information is limited. And personally I try not to care. But hearing about how person A shot person B and then being shown a video of the same can screw up the best of us. I do not like to pretend that I can watch an encounter video without a chill running down my spine and a feeling of loss and senselessness at the madness of conflict. But, who am I to spurn privileged insight? Is not this my job, to understand how people and societies tick in the worst of circumstances and situations?

I write because it is a process of debriefing for me. I write because I find it cathartic and I always write from my heart, with a little bit of head thrown in just so I don’t become another Arundhati Roy. But at the other extreme lies the swarm of numbers that calls itself American Political Science and I think I am about to secede from it. I understand now why people and researchers take refuge in numbers. I understand how it keeps emotions at bay and I understand quite correctly that reducing everything to a model-able game helps keep things impersonal. Distance is crucial.

But a part of me wants this to be personal. The people I have met breathe, eat, sleep, and fornicate too. And they are all polar opposites of each other. I cannot reveal who they are and what they do. But I think for the trust they placed in me, I cannot reduce them to a number on a data table. I just can’t. That would just be simply – wrong.

So how do I write about my conflict zone and talk about what is going on in my states of research. These garrison states where people live and people die and are ruled by reluctant, elected lords, turning their constituencies into fiefdoms. I cannot bear the thought of presenting a paper at a forum in the US about these living spaces and talk about direct correlations between phenomenon A and variable B. So I think I must find myself another medium of expression.

Recently, I was at a friend’s book launch and one of things he said stood out in my mind, “This book of mine”, he said, “is a political act”. And the more I think about it, I believe him to be right. Academia has for too long tried to Sanskritize itself and has dipped itself in jargon. Beyond this world of academia, there IS something real. The telling of complex stories can be kept simple. We don’t need clever concepts and worry about whether they stretch or don’t stretch to other parts of the world. We just need to tell the truth as simply as possible.

I think one of the reasons why I feel this way about American Political Science and why I successfully avoided taking a single advanced methodology course, is because I was trained as a journalist. And now I find myself thinking about how what matters is the telling of an event, or its re-telling, with people in the story. Not numbers and data. My nose for news is actually ruling my entire operation here and frankly; all the methods courses I did take did not prepare me for the field and what I would find. All my posturing and the six-months spent working on the prospectus were useful because I went prepared with concrete questions, but the answers were counter-intuitive. This makes me happy. I did not know it all when I left Berkeley and I know even lesser now. For some reason I am satisfied with this state of affairs. If I knew everything, the world would be a less interesting place for sure.

But Samuel from the HNLC is still dead at the age of 19. I watched him die on a video shot by one of his own gang on a cell-phone camera. Another man ran and was felled, like an actor in a bad war movie. He slumped forward and was still. The dulled shot of the AK which got him, seemed to be a cue for him to lie down and he did. Yet I am still here and as I sit in my nice little over-expensive hotel room, young boys play cops and insurgents in the dead of night.

Binnaguri

It is 14^th October and I am back in Guwahati from Binnaguri in North Bengal. Binnaguri is an army cantonment an hour away from the Bhutan border. There is an airforce station at Hasimara half an hour away from Binnaguri. MIG 21’s lined up to serve Bhutan in case of Chinese aggression, or so the dominant thinking states.

To get to Binnaguri I had to catch a train at 5 am from Kamakhya station in Guwahati. The train goes over the Brahmputra crosses several river islands (all submerged now) and gets to Binnaguri 7 hours later.

 Binnaguri station is tiny, more like a bus stop. And maybe five trains in all stop there. I got there and called my sister who said she was stuck at the railway crossing. The station was so tiny I could see the crossing and my sister’s car. I almost walked over across the tracks to her. But due to my heavy duty baggage I couldn’t.

Binnaguri does not have a middle class. The only middle class that exists is provided by the Indian army. There is only one street with extremely tiny stores which is the only shopping district there. Most hired help in the cantonment comes from Bangladesh. The place is full of immigrants (legal and illegal). My sister’s maids Amina and Hamida are two Bangla women. They are not allowed to live within the cantonment. They must leave by 4 pm. This restricts their earnings since they do not work the evening or night shifts.

The town is surrounded by tea plantations, owned mostly by Duncans. The tea estates have their own social dynamic between poor migrant workers and the managers who do not hail from Bengal. Needless to say the managers do not form the middle classes either, falling effortlessly in the higher income groups.

To go out of the cantonment jawans (privates) in the army must obtain an out pass from the authorities. Every vehicle is searched before it reenters the cantonment. The reason why jawans are not allowed to go out alone is because of the purported presence of the ISI in the town. Apparently, where there are huge numbers of Bangla immigrants, there are also ISI agents. Unsuspecting jawans are apparently at risk if they step out. They may unknowingly part with information sensitive in nature about the cantonment or its officers.

Like most army cantonments, Binnaguri is surrounded by miles of jungles. It is impossible to go for a walk though. Even on the trails there are tiger leeches – creepy living things that jump up at exposed flesh and suck suck suck your blood, and fall off when fattened. My sister’s dog, Daniel, often has to be de-leeched when he comes back from his morning and evening romps. Luckily he is a furry creature and the leeches have trouble finding flesh on him. But a couple of times they had managed to stick to the area around his nose, which is usually found sniffing in the bushes. To de-leech all you need is some salt. And in front of you, the leech starts shriveling and falls off with all its blood on the floor. It’s pretty gross and the damn leeches don’t give up without a fight.

Phone and GPRS services are limited; the most reliable networks are Vodafone and the army communications system. The theory about Vodafone domination in West Bengal is that the Vodafone signs are all red and resonate very well with the ruling party’s left ideology. Quite obviously, there are no coffee shops or eating out joints apart from roadside vendors.

An hour away from Binnaguri is the Bhutanese border town of Phuen Tsholing. One only has to drive north cross the Indian border at Jaigaon and take a right turn into Bhutan. The only thing we see on the drive are tea estates, mountains (all foothills of the Himalayas) and Gorkhaland agitators (we saw tons of them on the day we drove). The border is friendly and porous. Bhutanese people come and work in West Bengal in Jaigaon, Binnaguri and Hasimara and leave by the evening state transport buses which run between the two countries. Similarly Indians work in Phuen Tsholing and return in the evening. Safe driving is facilitated by the Indian Border Roads Organization, which has zen signs on the highway, which say silly things like

" It is better to be Mister Late than Late Mister..."

"Speed thrills, but kills"

"Slow down, slow down, slow down"

Interestingly, in violation of all rules of market societies, the informal currency contract between people on both sides of the border is at par. So when I went to buy some “Made in France” Longchamp crystal champagne glasses (at this tiny dingy shop –all smuggled goods store) I got change back in Bhutanese currency. I was pretty stunned till the shopkeeper, Manoj, explained to me how this was the norm. So it doesn’t matter what the international exchange rate is (right now the Bhutanese Ngultrum equals the Indian rupee), for the people at the border the two currencies are interchangeable and used as legal tender. 

Phuent Sholing is a pretty town surrounded by pretty mountains on all sides. Looks a bit like Frisco. When you drive over through the gates into the Kingdom, The Bhutanese border guards spray the wheels of your car and wave you through after peeking in and doing a head count. On the way back the lone Indian guard on the opposite side of the street just scratches his head while you drive back into India. The Kingdom is beautiful. And I love the cute little outfits the men wear. Stockings and a short tied robe (called a gho) hitched above the knees and held in place with a broadish belt called a kera. Strangely the first thing one sees once crossing into Bhutan is a huge Bharat Petroleum gas station where the prices are ten rupees lesser than what you get in India. No wonder then that most Indians prefer driving into Bhutan to fill gas. It works out much cheaper.

Druk is the biggest company in Bhutan and makes everything from alcohol to soap to foodstuff. But you do get most Indian products and of course Coke and Pepsi.

Tomorrow I am flying to a place called Lilabari in Upper Assam, from where I will cross over into Arunachal Pradesh and stay in Itanagar. I am going to be interviewing a minister in the state called Dorjee Khandu, whose portfolio is,  "All departments not allocated to any other Cabinet Minister"... :D. I am not joking. 

Very Monty Python portfolio.. like the Ministry of Silly Walks! :D :D 

The Influx Issue in Assam

“AASU badly wants a fence”, said my friend. This about summed it up for me. For a while!

The ‘fence’ that people in Assam want is one on the Indo-Bangladesh border. It seems that over the last 60 years about 4.9 to 5.2 million Bangladeshi refugees (called influx, migrants or Banglas here) have crossed over into India. Samujjal Bhattacharya, the leader/chief advisor of the All Assam Students Union, said to me that Assam had taken the burden of the refugee problem on itself for the rest of India.

In some ways the influence of Bangladeshi migrants is felt very clearly. They are the ones that run the mandi at Beltola Bazaar. They are the rickshaw pullers. They are the masons, labor, construction workers, maids, drivers, agriculturalists, sweepers, road workers, fish sellers, etc. What has begun worrying a lot of people these days is also the fact that most Bangladeshi refugees are also Muslim.

Mostly everyone you speak to in Guwahati agrees that the influx issue is a huge problem. N- the biodiversity expert I spoke to, stated that in Manas and Kaziranga national parks encroaching on forest land had increased due to many Bangla migrants making their way to the ample forests and resources therein for survival. In fact, Assamese national parks are still populated with humans. Adivasi groups that have lived there for millennia are now entitled to stay there under the Forest Rights Act 2002. There is raging controversy about this – should animals be kept outside of human contact or can communities which have coexisted with nature and wildlife for centuries be allowed to stay as caretakers of the ecosystem. While this remains unresolved in the Indian context, human rights groups have stated that forcing tribal people out of their ancestral land to protect animals makes little sense.

Anyhow it seems that migrants have been able to make their way to the national parks and a clash of resources seems to have broken out between migrants and the adivasis or indigenous people settled there. Recently, there was an incident where adivasis burnt about 12 migrant settlements. Adivasis have not been reported taking up arms in this region. Quite obviously, discontent and rage at being deprived of resources or having to compete for them has set in motion the wheels of conflict.

Historically Assamese have never been divided on the grounds of religion. Many Assamese did take up Islam when the Mughals ruled here. But language seemed to unify them. It mattered less if you were Hindu or Muslim. What mattered was language. And language has been a very important marker of identity for historical reasons. It seems that when the British took over most of Assam after the Treaty of Yandaboo was signed in 1826, they began introducing Bengalis to perform the clerical and book-keeping functions. Bengalis had an advantage; they spoke English and were good at administration.

By the early 1900’s the Bengalis had begun replacing the old Ahom feudal elite as the new elite and middle class. After independence there was a move to introduce Bengali as the language of the state. But concerted opposition from Assamese people led to the shelving of the project. Strangely, the script for Assamese and Bengali is the same. The languages have much in common. Since I can understand Bengali a little bit thanks to my Bengali friends and being mired in left politics at JNU, following Assamese has not been that challenging.

During the years preceding Independence when the Partition debate was at its peak, it seemed that the Congress was quite comfortable handing Assam over to East Pakistan. This has been the regions greatest travesty – it has never fully entered the imagination of the mainstream Indian or the central government. When the Assamese plus Bengali (now already Assamised) elite realized that a Partition was in the offing they moved to oppose it. They succeeded, and only Bengal was partitioned into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal. It was at about this time that the influx began.

Tangentially, I just noted how when we speak of the Partition of India, we only restrict ourselves to the Partition of Punjab and the events in north India. There was similar unpleasantness and violence experienced by the people of Assam and Bengal, but we scarcely hear it mentioned. As was pointed out to be by a few people the Indian national anthem says “Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkal, Banga”. It ends with Bengal to the east and has a fictitious province called Sind, which actually belongs to Pakistan now.

When borders don’t exist people move freely from one region to another. Even indigenous Assamese (adivasis etc) have practiced shifting agriculture called jhumming for eons. While this changed rapidly thanks to the British starting tea plantations and imposing modern Lockean property rights over the land. Once the Indo-Bangla border was decided, anyone crossing over became a refugee, a migrant. In all honesty, from a human rights perspective, one cannot blame Banglas from crossing over to India. The Brahmaputra wreaks havoc in the delta region annually. Farmland is limited and coastal Bangladesh is submerged and apparently more and more land is coming under water. The military junta and democratic governments of Bangladesh have both been unable to solve problems of inequity and development. Annual cyclones destroy many coastal and inland villages. On the other side of the border there are plentiful forests, land on which anything will grow with little effort and a democratic government that seems unable to deal with the problem of influx.

So why not cross over along the miles of porous borders? I certainly would!

The Assamese do not like this one bit. AASU’s entire spiel today centers around the problem of influx. This is the one issue that keeps the movement alive. There are AASU sympathizers from all sections of society from IAS officers, to former commissioners, politicians, students, local people, etc. They all agree that AASU is the only body/organization which takes this issue up seriously.

So yes, AASU indeed badly wants a fence.

The political parties have been accused of going soft on the migrants. This is because migrants are a bloc which can help parties win elections. The INC that has controlled the state for most of Assam’s post-1947 history has never begun an initiative to seal the borders. The migrants are able to get false papers, ration cards and voter id’s. They go back en masse to vote. As one security advisor states, a day before elections the entire bazaar is empty because everyone has gone back to their constituencies to vote.

Even the Asom Gana Parishad, the regional party which was an outcome of the AASU has gone soft on this issue. It seems playing the electoral game is a tad more important to everyone than actually addressing issues.

Samujjal, Chief Advisor of AASU, told me how for the rest of India 1948 was the cut-off point for refugees. Anyone who entered after 15 August 1948 was deported. During the Assam Accord it was decided that the cut-off point for entry would be 1973. Anyone coming in after 1973 from Bangladesh had to leave. AASU agreed to this concession. The GOI put in place an act called the IMDT Act, where anyone suspected of being a Bangladeshi could be deported. This was a draconian legislation, which allowed the police to decide who was an illegal immigrant and who wasn’t. Often people were hauled in off the streets on suspicion and arrested and tortured. There were great big loopholes in the Act (which I need to research right now). Recently, it came to notice that a migrant had actually been able to contest elections and had WON. He was since deported. But not before the system realized it needed to ACT (pun intended.. :D).

I asked one security advisor how I could identify a Bangla by just looking at him or her. To me everyone here looks the same. You can make out Assamese people quite clearly, they have slightly mongoloid features – a holdover from Ahom kings who came in from Mongolia. But as it goes in South Asia – it is very hard to determine ethnicity from looking at someone. I was told Banglas wear loongis, skull caps (because they are Islamic), their Bengali is very different and recently they have started growing Islamic beards (whatever that means). So an ASSAMESE can actually tell who a Bangla is and who isn’t.

I must admit, I am thoroughly confused. Determination of ethnicity was never my strong point.

The outcome of the influx issue has been the polarization of society to some extent, between those who are the actual influx people and others threatened by insecurity and contestation over jobs.

Thankfully, this has not become a Hindu verus Muslim issue yet. AASU has been very categorically stating that they don’t care if the migrants are Hindu or Muslim they should all just go back. The introduction of the right-wing BJP has complicated matters. The BJP seems more inclined to deport the Muslim migrants and keep the Hindu ones. This makes it almost impossible for an alliance to occur between AASU and the BJP. However, there is a shaky tie-up between the regional AGP and the BJP. The plan is to unite all non-Congress parties. The arrival of the BJP does worry me because it does think in terms of majoritarian democracy. It is easier to parcel society as Hindu and Muslim and then ask for votes, since interests are broadly aggregated this way. Who wants to deal with troublesome tribes, adivasis and tea-estate tribes? Too much trouble running to them for votes. They are neither Hindu nor Muslim. So much better for the parties if they were. But this is not the case.

The tribes have a mind of their own. So far I have been in contact with Bodo students, Koch Rajbhanshi student sympathizers. But apparently there are Tai Ahoms, Dimasas, Motoks, Karbi, Rabha, Tewa, Tea Tribes, etc. Pretty complicated. Not all tribes are Scheduled Tribes. Some are just adivasis and are vying for ST status. Other tribes want to be included as OBC’s. Some others like the Bodo Liberation Tigers wanted an autonomous district council now called Bodoland Territorial Council. But within the Bodo itself a new group called the NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland) wants a separate Bodoland country.

I can’t imagine why no one has ever done concerted work on this region. It is definitely the most splintered place on the face of the earth. Several hundred Ph.D type questions can be found here. Also once you come here, you realize just how remote this place is. I will speak about the telecom rules and services here in another post.

My Meeting with a former ULFA

Imagine my absolute happiness when a former wannabe ULFA and actual AASU Agitator who got packed off to study architecture in Chandigarh (and so didn’t join ULFA), was more than happy to introduce me to his friend, S.

Mr. S. it seems was a member of All Assam Students Union, got tired and read a little Marx, moved on to the United Liberation Front of Assam which engaged the Indian government in a low intensity armed conflict for almost two decades. He was the official spokesperson for the ULFA. When ULFA wanted to make a statement, Mr. S spoke for them to the press (all in undisclosed locations).

So Mr. S. walked into our rendezvous that was set up by my architect friend. He arrived in a great big SUV, and apparently had a few others to keep this SUV company. He was pretty nice and welcoming. He chain-smoked but that didn’t bother me. I wanted the stories.

So we started talking. He jumped right in. “When we were young”, he says, “we were tired of the center’s neglect. There are no jobs, where is Assam for the Assamese? The Chinese come in and take the region over and the only thing Nehru can say, “My heart goes out for the people of Assam.” That’s it! When the GOI couldn’t protect us, we had to protect ourselves. The language agitation galvanizes us. AASU comes out of this history of protest. We realize AASU itself is pretty middle-class set-up and at the same time ULFA comes in.”

The CPI(ML) apparently had an important role to play in the ULFA indoctrination. The ideas of class-conflict and the deprivation of indigenous peoples of Assam by the Bengali middle class was a common refrain in the movement.

The Assam Agitation came directly out of the language agitation of the 1960’s in the state. The forced imposition of Bengali as the language of the state was not a move welcomed by anyone. According to me it introduced a certain level of insecurity and uncertainty in the lives of ordinary folk. If the language of the administration and that of employment were to change overnight, those who did not speak the tongue would lose out.

It seems to me that many such movements acquire a momentum of their own. The language agitation directly affected students. The students mobilized against this condition of uncertainty and in doing so inadvertently galvanized another movement. They dissent against the central Indian state that has historically been guilty of neglecting this region of the country politically, administratively and developmentally. But AASU also reacts to the threat posed by Bangladeshi migrants which today are numbered at about 49 -50 lakh. A number which has been kep under wraps till very recently.

This dissent against the existing political structure fed off the energy of young people. During the years from 1978 – 1985 everyone was part of AASU. You didn’t have to be a registered member. And then again the movement branched out into a moderate and extremist line. When I spoke to some people, they mentioned how this was similar to the two strands that existed in India during the national movement – the naram dal (soft bloc) and the garam dal (hot blooded bloc). The ULFA was a direct outcome of the hardliner stance taken against the Indian state. Assam for Assamese, it cried!

There was free-floating membership of each organization. Two of the people I spoke to had started out as AASU members. One had progressed to the Asom Jatiyawadi Yuva Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) and then onto ULFA. Many of the top leaders of the ULFA came from the AJYCP. Then others moved from AASU directly to ULFA. They thought AASU was too moderate and was unable to capture the center’s attention. But ULFA itself had a couple of factions. It seemed that some of the top leaders of ULFA (Gogoi, for one) belonged to the old Ahom feudal class and aristocracy. The others joined ULFA because they truly believed in a socialist Assam. A third group of people joined as they were economically deprived and joining in the insurgency made for good business in the absence of employment opportunities.

My interviewee surrendered when he realized that the top leadership was feudal and envisioned a neo-kingdom of sorts for Assam, which would reinstate their own lost positions of power and privilege. Assam was only for the aristocratic Assamese, in their vision.

It seems surrendering to the Indian forces itself was a great strategy for most insurgents. Many realized there would be hell to pay once the bumbling Indian forces did catch up with them, they began planning group surrenders. But they had a strong incentive. The Government had announced a reward of 2 lakh rupees and no prosecution under the Criminal Code. The money was to help them reintegrate back into society. And many jumped at the chance. In fact this law made it possible for poor men from villages to join ULFA, wave a gun around for a while and then go stand in front of a police station in surrender. They pocketed the sum and went back home.

But the legacy of their involvement in ULFA lived on. They came to be feared in society, became entrepreneurs and because they embodied a certain threat of violence or monopoly over coercion, they got hard to get licenses and were able to become ‘local notables’. This group of people came to be known as SULFA or Surrendered ULFA. I was told that many of the big malls, Cineplex’s and even the Big Bazaar in Guwahati were owned by SULFA. They began to command a high prize in the marriage market. Women from noted families were willing to marry a SULFA because of the social capital SULFA had as a group, and the money and ‘connections’ it entailed for them. Today the SULFA is part of what a couple of people have referred to as a ‘legalized mafia’. Everyone knows who they are, but they are also incredibly influential in politics and society.

ULFA still exists with a highly depleted force which today stands at about 500 combatants. It has apparently changed tactics now. ULFA’s leaders live in Bangladesh and remote control operations in India from there. They have significant backing amongst political parties in Bangladesh because they fund them. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, which admittedly has a presence in Bangladesh has begun steering the ULFA. While this may seem to be an overstatement for many, it nonetheless has some element of truth if Intelligence Bureau reports and security analysts that I spoke to are to be believed. ULFA leaders are deeply entrenched in Bangladeshi politics and in many ways their source of rent continues to be extortion based and now, contributions from the ISI.

According to a bio-diversity expert here in Guwhati, ULFA has also changed its strategy. Now instead of cadres it recruits mercenary-type villagers, who are given responsibility to plant a bomb here and arrange a lockout there. A one-time deal! This way there are no backward linkages that might compromise the top leadership.

At the height of their power ULFA made money by forced contributions (read extortion) made by tea estates, shopkeepers and business men, factory owners and some genuine sympathizers pumped in money to the outfit. Extorting from tea estates was relatively easy. Most estates are located in extremely remote areas and access is not very easy. The CRPF and army mostly sent periodic patrols. Once a manager received an extortion note, he had to drive 45 kms away to the nearest police station and file an FIR. After which, he got protection for 48 hours. The ULFA simply waited for the policemen to leave and went and got their money including a raised fee for calling the cops.

Interestingly, the tea estate management could never count on protection from their workers, usually tribal men and women. This is because, according to Rakhee Kalita (a professor of English at Cotton College), the managers kept a very strict distance between themselves and the workers, following an age-old British pattern of separating themselves from natives or commoners. This separation not only occurred in manager-worker relations, but also in terms of living quarters and campuses for ‘officers’ as opposed to those for ‘workers’. Simply speaking, most tribal workers did not bother themselves with the fate of the management. If the ULFA extorted, so be it. The ULFA at the end of the day was on the workers’ side.

Assam is undoubtedly in a state of crisis. The ULFA story is only one dimension. In Assam caste breaks down in the face of the influx issue, language and tribe. With the arrival on the scene of the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party, the influx issue has moved beyond concentrating on numbers of migrants to the number of Muslim migrants – colloquially called the ‘ali’s’. Most student organizations in the state with the exception of AASU are tribal in nature. While someone who sides with Huntington will argue that this is evidence of a revival of tribalism and/or primordialism, I think I may have a slightly evolved explanation of the same phenomenon hinging on states of insecurity and institutional design throwing up certain incentives for political parties on the one hand and students and communities on the other. 

Mt. Everest and the Flooding of Bihar

This is a hurried blog post written from Bagdogra airport, while waiting for the next leg to commence from Bagdogra to Guwahati. I just saw the most amazing and terrible sights. I saw Mt. Everest in the distance sticking out of the Himalayan mountain range and also saw the devastation left in Bihar by the flooding of the river Kosi. The landscape looked like someone ran a particularly bleak, black, green and brown impressionist painting under a water tap. Several thousand have died in the floods and 2 million people are reported to be affected.

In case you're wondering how I got to see these two things together, my Kingfisher Red flight basically flies east over UP and Bihar, pretty close to Nepal. You can see the entire Himalayan range in the distance and look at the landscape below. The contrast is pretty vivid.

I'm Not Fair, But I'm Lovely

I was walking around Connaught Place today with a bunch of friends and came across this advertisement. A dark complexioned woman glances over her bare shoulder and proclaims that she is worthy of being called beautiful even though she is darker than most other Indians. While I know that many Indians consider white skin as a sign of beauty, I must admit to being completely confused by this ad and its message. It wasn't really selling a fairness cream and at the right hand bottom corner there is a picture of Obama *??!!??*

My interpretation of this ad for a newsmag is this - the content of news in this paper is not exactly "fair" or "balanced", but it's a good read anyway. The cryptic lines at below the first two lines read, "I'm not Yesterday!" HUH?

Anyhoo, this ad stands out because in a way it reflects the extension of the practice of apologizing for darker skin into ads for products which are not even selling a skin cream.

The promise of all good things falling into your lap if a woman is fair is a common refrain in ads which sell skin-whitening, lightening products. An old Fair and Lovely Fairness Cream ad depicted a father giving his daughter a tube of the magic cream. After four weeks of use she was fairer than before and grooms began soliciting her hand in marriage. The massive insecurity in Indian women about the shade of their brown skin (and no matter how fair one is we are still BROWN) has been created by a colonial hangover and perpetuated by cosmetic companies exploiting a ready market.

Preference for fair brides, fair air-hostesses, fair-skinned office girls and secretaries has led to some extreme skin-whitening treatements. The Kaaya Skin Clinic, Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves (VLCC), and several beauty salons offer such treatment. In many cases the cosmetics prescribed contain products called "penetration enhancers" which facilitate the breakdown of melanin in the skin. An EWG report on cosmetics labels these as "cancer causing" agents.

Even more interestingly, the same products are sold in the US as "radiance boosters". L'Oreal has a line called "Blanc Expert" where a bottle of magic fluid retails for 125 dollars. Other companies offer similar products all priced above 30 dollars for a 100 ml bottle.

I guess the highly evolved debate on race in the US has made it virtually impossible for any company to openly sell a skin-whitening product that suggests that darker people should be unhappy with their skin color. The recent controversy surrounding Beyonce's artificially enhanced fair skin in a L'Oreal ad drew attention to the growing influence of this new kind of skin care product. No longer is it enough to have good, clean, healthy skin. Your skin, if you are female, has to be white as snow.

All of this is very sad indeed and reminds me of this book I read a long time ago where a female offspring of a British army officer and an Indian maid, when sent to live in London in the wee 1900's; spends much time concealing her brown skin by over-powdering it. The cost of being discovered as 'not exactly white' are too horrific for her to imagine.

I am still waiting for a day when I can actually tromp around India and not have some one comment on how fair or dark I am (the comments vary depending on how fair or dark the commentators are). In the meanwhile I am going to satisfy myself by putting my cell-phone camera to good use to take more incriminating pictures of this insidious form of racism.

And in case the men think they're exempt from this pressure, try searching for "Fair and Handsome Fairness Cream".

Baby girls and high heels

Something about this website makes me sick to the stomach. Baby girls wearing high heels. Now we're thrusting sexuality on them even before they can say 'goo-goo' let alone 'I'm hot'.

It's bad enough that young girls have to deal with men (and women) sexualizing them even before they have a chance to come to grips with their own sexuality. But now we're turning little babies into objects of desire...

Whose gonna lead the charge against this one?

Rape as a war crime!

Finally! The UN has recognized the use of rape as a weapon of war and in genocide and ethnic cleansing. An article discussing the issue is found in the LA Times,

The question is, how long before many countries begin adopting this domestically? How long before law makers come up with a code that recognizes rape in peacetime and rape in a time of conflict as different?

Neighbour's Envy, Owner's Pride - II

Product envy occurs when people disparage another person's possession of some THING, for no apparent reason. Men and women succumb to product envy for different kinds of products. Men's product envy is more gadget based (at least judging from the overwhelmingly techie sample I am exposed to). Women's product envy encompasses everything - house, car, shoes, bags, clothes, etc. I must qualify here that not everyone has product envy. I think product envy is most pronounced in insecure people. I have seen people insecure about career, weight, looks, height, color of skin surround themselves with several products. Apparently it keeps them secure.

Perhaps I too shop because of some insecurity. But for the most part (and this is a confession) I am insecure only about my weight. That's where I slip most easily and shamelessly give in to the Beauty Myth. But I usually catch myself in time to do something constructive about it. The heaviest I have ever been is 130 pounds, or 61 kilograms. At about 61 kgs I can no longer peer down at my face without seeing the puffy outline of my cheeks and I realize I ought to let go of those mochas and brownies for a while. Sigh!!

Mostly, I am neutral to someone else's possessions, and enthusiastic if anyone acquires anything. It doesn't affect me. I am happy if someone else is. But I do wish this were universally true. It isn't.

But consumption of products doesn't just generate 'product envy'. Sometimes what you consume becomes who you are. It seems these days you get singled out for what you consume. If you want to to fit into geekdom, you need to dress informally, have tons of gadgets, an X-box and an unlocked iphone. If you want to fit into housewife-dom you need to ENJOY Gray's Anatomy. If you want to fit into MBA-dom you need to have a sexy phone, crisp pants and a subscription to the Economist. To fit into Ritual Roasters in SF you better have tons of Apple products. So every culture and counter-culture has a certain consumption pattern linked to it, which gives it legitimacy in a very weird way. If you consume something in common with someone else you are considered part of a clique. No one expresses it better than the makers of Coach Handbags, who have something called a 'Coach Clique' online. I have two Coach handbags and found this out when trying to figure out what the return policy was. I have refrained from joining the Clique online, but realize that by virtue of carrying such a handbag I demonstrate myself as a part of some larger collective of women who possess such a handbag.

What is really mind-boggling about this phenomenon is how 'possession' has become a marker for inclusion. No one talks about the group of deprived people. To be in possession of something ( a home, a car, a diamond ring) is to be empowered, organized, successful. Alternatively, to NOT own something is to be disorganized, nomadic, poor... and..(this is going to be controversial but I'm going to say it anyway) have a right to whining about how you don't have something. Of course there are extremes of deprivation. The really really very poor people (RRVPP) who have NOTHING. Then those whining, suburbans who crib about not having money to eat at fancy restaurants every week.

On a national scale what you consume becomes a marker for whether you can be included in a national community or not. Does anyone remember the case of the Islamic girl in NYC called Tashnuba who was called in for questioning in 2005 because she listened to Mullah Omar on the radio and not to Bon Jovi, as a girl her age was 'supposed' to do? The fact that she did not consume a typical product from the music industry meant she was weird, plotting against the country. Her donning of the burqa meant a rejection of current Abercrombie&Fitch sort of consumption pattern.

I have digressed substantially from the original intention of writing about product envy. I keep thinking back to Onida's catchphrase - and wonder if a lot of domestic squabbles are about not possessing enough to arrive at some nondescript social status. Such anxieties do drive many people crazy. Many times product envy degenerates into intense personal dislike for the person who possesses these things. She/He becomes an object of criticism. A woman, for instance, who has a large diamond ring is accused of showing off or orchestrating/manipulating the man who gave it to her. Wearers of teeny-weeny clothes and high heels, if women, are Barbies. Shoppers like me are PROBABLY (or so the assumption goes) really dumb and stupid (to fit in with the stereotype) or should dress shabbily and be LEFTY.

In popular culture people who 'possess' more than others are now getting celebrity status. The focus on their shoes, clothes, bags and alcohol-induced antics has given birth to an entire industry of celebrity watchers- tmz.com, E!, etc etc.

Ending is better than Mending! Brave New World's little slogan can't be more true than it is today. Rene Descartes will probably turn several times in his little grave when I say this - I HAVE, therefore I am!

Neighbour's Envy, Owner's Pride - I

In India there is this little television making company called Onida, which used to have an advertising campaign with the catchphrase "Neighbour's Envy, Owner's Pride". The TV usually had a satanic/demonic sort of masculine creature (complete with forked tail, trident and horns) draped all over the telly. In the background you could hear a neighboring couple squabbling about something. Apparently, the campaign deployed a very 'keep up with the Joneses" sort of logic. The neighboring family quarreled because they didn't have the Onida telly.

It is very recently, that I have started thinking of creating a concept to explain this phenomenon (and I contend it IS one). I call it 'product envy'. Product envy occurs when the acquisition of something by an individual leads to a desire to acquire the same in another individual in a sort of demonstration effect.

Now most people find it really problematic to reconcile the fact that I am lefty with the fact that I also have a penchant for nice clothes (not necessarily expensive) and shoes. To me being lefty is an aspect of my personal politics. I don't think one has to look like a complete slob t0 be considered lefty. But to many people if you are lefty, you can't be shopping, you can't be hoarding shoes in your closet (as I do) and you certainly can't be wearing perfume all the time. The JNU-jhola lefty is also just an indigenous stereo-type. It is a fashion statement and many JNU types (also like me) shop regularly at a brand name clothes line, namely FabIndia (which is not exactly cheap either).

To me consuming products was a way of life. Something I had grown up with. The politics of the left entered my life much later than the time that my personal fashion preferences were forged. Apparently, the argument often goes, I need not bash up on neo-liberalism if I consume the very products neo-liberalism produces. I should instead embrace neo-liberalism. The reason why these arguments often take the shape they do is simply because many people elide the fact that one is left-leaning with the supposition that one is also deeply communist, opposed to capitalism, etc. Nothing could be further from the mark. Being anti-capitalist does not necessarily stand for someone who hates all brands and everything with the established order. It means one dissents against certain production regimes, unfair trade practices, the exploitation of labor in the developing world, etc and hence pushes for change.

So to many people who disagree with the left (and those who don't truly know anything about the left and hence disagree with it) I am a very easy target. If I stand in nice shoes and say something about getting rid of sweatshops in China, most people have a knee-jerk reaction, "look who's talking". Pejoratively, people like me are called BoBo's or bourgeois bohemian.

So I have struggled for some time to understand this. Would people find my politics more palatable if I dressed down? If I wore the torn sneakers or frayed jeans and flipflops. If I had unkempt hair or if I wore hippie skirts, kurta and jeans? In many ways if you dress in the expected way people have an easier time mapping your politics onto your appearance. But for the most part, they react in pretty much the same way regardless of how you dress.

In the last two years I have seen many couples fighting. Most often the fights boil down to finances - either too much or too little. Wives coming in from India to the US and wives in India have certain expectations. They want to be taken care of and indulged. This doesn't always happen. Men prefer saving for a new car, laptop or down payment for a house. I have heard women complain about not having eaten at expensive restaurants, not getting birthday gifts, or tricking husbands out of money to have some more to spend. Men are curious about other men's salaries, they compete in a very different manner, which I must confess I don't fully understand, so I will mostly restrict my comments to the female side. A friend of mine recently told me how in the middle-east men compete to give gifts to their wives. So if person A gives a Chanel handbag to his wife, person B cannot gift her a bag from XoXo.

Often I have seen people (both men and women) withhold approval of another person's house, car and gadgets for no apparent reason. Alternatively, they find fault with it. Almost as if finding fault is an exercise in asserting power. A control-drama, if you will! I usually gush when I like something, but just observing other people's behavior I realize others become sour and quiet when they see something they like and don't possess it themselves. Some people will also focus on the things that are 'not right' during a dinner party, for instance - the potatoes have too much salt, etc. (I remember this one incident a 15 years ago when a very critical woman called Pinky Aunty once told my Mom, "Everything was perfect, but I found one mistake. The cake in your Alaska Bombe should have been a sponge cake". My mom, a career educator for two decades, who was refreshingly not obsessed with cooking (but could cook up a storm if she decided too) was pretty annoyed, but thanked Pinky Aunty for the input. At the time I didn't understand the manner in which adult women compete. Reflecting on this incident, I realize my reaction to this comment would have been absolutely virulent. My mom, on the other hand, handled it gracefully with a smile, always the perfect hostess. Note to self: should learn something from my mom about handling situations in which I get angry, instead of turning into the Incredible Sulk.)

To be continued...

State of Denial

I just read this in the WSJ, dated June 13, 2008.

"Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal are expressing more confidence in the Federal Reserve and Chairman Ben Bernanke, though they foresee slow growth and suggest it is likely the US is in a recession or will soon tumble into one."

WOW! These guys catch on FAST! :D

Lash-Back to the Backlash

Ok.. seems like I need to up the ante!

I got a surprising backlash against my first post. Some friends took it personally, even though the post was not connected to them and did not talk about them at all, except as the jesting and friendly voice on the other end of the line.

I was told the blog was shoddy material. I actually agree. I was trying to write something and rehashed something from an old post that I wrote. For anyone who has looked at my computer, I have this really heavy folder called 'Writing' where I store unpublished blog posts, movie reviews, short stories, tidbits of pretty writing, etc. Once in six months I browse through this folder, like something I wrote several years ago and decide to put it online. The '11 things I want to tell people' are a rehashed version of something I wrote a long time ago. 

My husband also thinks I should be doing more with the blog and not just venting. I do agree. But sometimes I do need to vent, especially because there are certain things you cannot tell friends or family. Sometimes no one has the time or patience to hear you out and I sort of see my blogs as a nameless entity to whom I can unburden myself. But the contradiction is, why do I then want people to read it? I would say it is simply vanity. I write something, I want people to read it and comment on its brilliance. 

The problem with the old post is that it is NOT brilliant. In fact it's silly, petulant, foot-stomping writing. But honestly, I did enjoy writing it. Got to sharpen my claws a little bit. And I kept most of my fur. Sometimes writing anything, even just nonsense and gibberish, is so therapeutic, I would do it without taking into account the consequences of what I am writing. But I do understand that once you get on a public forum, there is a certain level of responsibility that comes with circulating material. People do form opinions based on words arranged in particular sequences, they do judge you by what you are saying. They choose to associate or dissociate with you based on what you say and how you say it. Nothing wrong with that. 

I am prepared to face the consequences of what I write. But can writing exist simply for the sake of writing itself, or can I employ this at the service of something bigger. Ideally, I would like to do that, but being human, I do get caught up in the nitty-gritty of corporeal living - making tea, doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, socializing, etc etc. Sometimes the writing that comes forth is frustrated with this living and its pointlessness and even more angered at being caught in this cycle and having no escape. The writing leads the charge against those who enjoy this life, and CANNOT SEE the big picture, cannot experience their own slavery as anything more than a ubiquitous culture of consumption. I experience my slavery every single day, but I also see how by just living the way I do I enslave others - the Chinese sweatshop workers, the dead birds I eat on beds of rice, the people who have to care for me and deal with me - the unstable, indifferent, nihilistic chick.

Some individuals get caught up in this bee-swarm of alphabets, words, sentences and grammar. And they get angry, or hurt or feel insulted. But for the most part they also live their lives making others angry, hurting other people and insulting them too. I have been angered, hurt and insulted as well by several people many times over. Perhaps this is how the world is supposed to weave itself. As a series of lash-backs against backlashes. This is how we proceed - thesis! Anti-thesis! Synthesis! 

The pen is not only mightier, but sharper, more precise and infinitely more damaging than the sword. So say we all!

This blog will get better! That is a promise!

Best

V

Another ho-hum week

So I have just spent another week of loafing around and contributing absolutely nothing to the world. Am becoming intellectually lazy and increasingly affronted and annoyed by people who contradict me in spite of knowing absolutely nothing about what I am talking about. It's like when a woman who doesn't watch the news or read a paper and gets all her information second hand suddenly rears her head and grunts through clenched teeth, "but don't you think this is what YOU think and not what is true for someone else..". NEWS FLASH - make an argument relevant to the topic being discussed, don't state the obvious!! Makes you look really stupid since it becomes obvious you don't have anything constructive to contribute! ARRGH I wish freedom of speech didn't come with strings attached. Like social boycott for instance, or the 'feel bad' syndrome. The FBS occurs when people expect you to do something that you didn't know you had to do - like calling every time you poop, informing everyone when you buy a new pair of shoes or telling someone that you're going out for coffee or to the gym by yourself. I'm really bad at dealing with people who suffer from FBS. I go out of my way to apologize and be nice to them for something that technically isn't even a fault. And I get some upturned noses for a while and brusque hi's, but that's really amusing. 

The top 11 things I would tell certain people if I could

1. Please buy deodorant

2.  Don't you think you should wax more often? I say this with some flourish to a man. 

3. Read a book!!

4. Stop being such a lazy ass.

5. I know you cheated on your wife and now she won't say anything 'cos she went around telling everyone how great you are and she thinks she looks really stupid. What she needs to do is kick you out of the home. Oh wait, she thinks you're making all the money for her in the future.. Oh well I guess she deserves what she gets. But even though she is downright stupid, that doesn't change the fact that you're an ass. 

6. Stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time. It's very draining on everyone around you.

7. Get over your nationalistic attitude. You sound like a rabid nut job.

8. Get a life!

9. You REALLY need to get laid

10. You CAN say something nice about another person once in a while. When you don't, you just appear jealous or like you have an ulcer up your butt. 

11. Related to 10 above. Stop bitching about your best friend.. not fair when the poor girl can't even speak the same language as you. 

Oh and if I know you and you're reading this, don't try and guess if I am writing about you. You're giving yourself far too much importance. Save me the embarrassment of saying this straight to your face. 

Gosh! It IS liberating to be writing freely after all this while. Since I was feeling really guilty tonight about neglecting my grey cells and ignoring my cerebral fluids I decided to liven things up in my head a bit by FINALLY reading Madness and Civilization from scratch. I also have to confess that there is something liberating about Foucault talking about the orchestrated exclusion of people in the 'interior of the exterior'. This stuff makes perfect sense to me. Although apparently it is fashionable to pretend that Foucault DOESN'T make sense to you.  

It's becoming harder to voice opinions because most people have a pre-conceived notion of how much your opinion matters if you wear really high heels, giggle often and/or are chatty. I have been nicknamed Barbie so many times, it's becoming pretty tedious. Someone once called me a trophy wife also and as I put the phone down chuckling to myself while guzzling the second cuppa in two hours, I kinda said out loud, "a trophy wife who earns her own living?" That's gotta be new! 

I wish people could come up with a new moniker for me. Something like BITCH PH.D, or PINKO FEMINIST HELLCAT in HIGH HEELS!! (For those of you really smart 'uns reading this, you've probably caught on to those names by now.. and if not, you're probably scrambling to Google these names and figure out what contemporary reference you missed, so as not to look to stupid in front of your own laptop.)

So what is this blog about? Well, I'm still deciding. I really liked the title when I saw a cauldron with the words written across it in an issue of B.I.T.C.H magazine. Googled it and found out that Bitchcraft is apparently a porn flick as well... and for some perverse reason, I was completely sold on the name. I want to make this an informal, easy to read blog about troubling issues, but also use some space for personal venting. I also thought I would invite three co-authors for this blog, but have changed my mind since. Please don't subject me to the FBS for this. Comments and suggestions are welcome.