A Walk to Emporio and Reflections Thereof...

A couple of days ago I was crashing at my friend A’s place in Vasant Kunj on a weekend in South Delhi. After a lazy Sunday of working on papers (my friend S is writing her dissertation) and reading and discussing headlines and gossiping about common friends, we finally decided we needed to head out. So we decided to go on foot to Emporio Mall on the new highway between Vasant Vihar and Vasant Kunj. I remember this place as a pahadi illaka (hilly terrain). No doubt several hundred sticks of dynamite and some rough bulldozers later there was enough level ground to build not one but three malls in a row.

The most fancy of these malls is Emporio, which houses enough high-end designer brands to shame the Champs-E’lyse in Paris. The cheapest store in the mall is probably the Kenzo store. Now whoever knows me well also knows I never stir out of the house without perfume. This habit that I picked up from my mother and her extremely indulgent taste in perfume, has become a ritual. I would rather miss an appointment than step out without dabbing some on. Given that I had NOT used the opportunity at Hong Kong airport, while on my way to India, to shop for one of my two signature perfumes, I decided I was going to go to Emporio and buy some. My two signature perfumes, in case anyone reading this loves me enough to buy me a little present (hint hint), are Flower by Kenzo and Pleasures. I oscillate between the two depending on my mood. I have rarely ever worn anything else in my adult life. Pleasures does make me sneeze on occasion like an astonished rabbit but I still love it.

Now the mall is not exactly that far from S’s place to justify motoring. So we decided to walk. Soon we realized that this was a terrible idea. There is a sorry excuse for a sidewalk covered with dung-splattered paving. Cars whiz by on the highway at break neck speed and you can possibly not cross the road without risking your life. There is tons of construction material, bulldozers, wires, dust, sand, cement mixers, cows, autos, etc, along the way. There is also a glut of semi-clad labor working to construct, build, and shape places where people can shop. Not exactly a walk in the park.

The pace at which neighborhoods can change in India is staggering. From a nice-ish block in Vasant Kunj to the traffic and general chaos of construction, then to an extremely high-end shoppers paradise. S and I soon realized that we could not find the entrance to the mall. It was assumed that one would drive in; not walk in. Walking is so passé. Of course the general construction of the highways, freeways and mall entrances in Delhi is done in such a manner so as to facilitate the superiority of the mounted human over the human on foot. After ten minutes of trying to find a decent walkway and realizing we would have to back track around half a kilometer and take a dirt path onto a decent paved road leading to the mall, we decided to take extreme measures. Now the malls are slightly sunken in as compared to the road we were on. So we decided to hop over the fence at knee level and drop down three feet to the walkway of the mall. Once we did this, giggling like only S and me are able to and much to the utter disbelief of some goggle-eyed drivers, we raced to the entrance of Emporio where a bevy of pretty women in suits and sarees awaited their European horseless chariots, while toting alphabet soup bags which proudly announced LV, FF, G, C, etc etc.

We walked in and to our utter surprise there was live piano music greeting us. Then we realized we had walked into an art exhibition in the main foyer. I espied the Kenzo store and business done; we walked back to appreciate the art. The artists ranged from Ram Kumar, to MF Hussain, Chitra something (who does paintings in Amar Chitra Katha style). Liveried waiters served champagne and something that looked like a cross between a mushroom and an oyster (allergic to seafood so can’t eat anything of the sort).

S and I breezed through the exhibition and stared at multicolored squiggles resembling Times Square, something that looked like it had been regurgitated from a dog’s tummy, etc. I think the two pieces I found absolutely stunning was one large canvas of a train’s second-class compartment where on the berth sat Ganesha with all his jewels and adornments. A second piece was a charcoal creation of a man bathing in a pitch-black lake with what either looked like a serpent or a hosepipe.

Of course, most of you who know me well also know that I would not spend time writing something like this if I didn’t have a point to make. The fact that we could travel from dusty path to exclusive art exhibition says something about the contradictions and pace of development of our country. On an average the handbags that many of the women in the mall carried, for instance, could have paid for a years supply of food material, education and health care for three families of laborers working on the street outside. My hundred-dollar bottle of perfume could similarly have subsidized a year’s education at a government school for two girl children at least. And before someone comments, “she’s a fine one to talk about this”, let me honestly say I am very aware of the contradictions in my own lifestyle and consumer decisions and the political values I tend to espouse.

I am not exonerating myself. In fact more than anything, I am pointing fingers at people like me who are conscious, aware and full of dormant energy and talk about making a change, but still go and buy shoes worth 200 - 500 dollars a pair without batting an eyelid. But there is power in lived experience and I am finding myself changing/responding to visual and circumstantial stimuli. The last eight months have taught me much. But more than anything I have learnt that I am quite indefatigable and stubborn as hell. It’s a shame that I am more likely to apply these qualities to a well turned-out paper or a shopping trip than actual politics.

The developments in India alarm me. I do not think there is anything normal in this pace and state of development. Lopsided is an understatement. When we say ‘lopsided’ development we tend to think that something has gone terribly wrong with a process of development, which if everything went according to plan, would result in even development. Unfortunately, we need to realize that development by itself does not benefit everyone simply because the skills required to participate in this process of development are unavailable to a vast majority of this country. An illiterate woman from Rajasthan cannot (wo)man a call center. And again, I am not saying no development has happened. It has! But it has also led to a disproportionate polarization of income.

I once attended a lecture at the Center for Political Education in San Francisco conducted by my friend Suresh Naidu from Berkeley. His well-developed critique of the stock market for instance, showed that concentration of wealth in the hands of the few is inevitable. Have not the people on Wall Street demonstrated just how individualistic they are and that self-aggrandizement trumps nationalism?

Back in the sub-continent some of our politicians have experienced an asset-inflation of over 700 percent in places like Rajasthan. They are absolutely unapologetic about this. Politics is treated like business; our democratic process is an auction. Posts and tickets go to the highest bidders. Contracts are given out as patronage to maintain links and ties to actual voters. Parties are absent in many areas. Our democracy is fun and entertaining, but it is also a sham!
In the midst of this there are some genuine people who actually do want to make a difference but find themselves constrained by party politics, or other obligations. People like me haven’t the foggiest idea how to go about making a political change, short of picking up arms. We also don’t have dynastic backing, political connections. What a lot of us don’t realize is how close much of the country is to armed rebellion. In fact it is happening in one third of the Indian states – northeast and the Naxal areas. If this is not a response to patterns of development and systematic disenfranchisement of people, I don’t know what is.

And in the midst of all this I will still walk into Emporio, schmooze at an exhibition and buy expensive perfume…

Self-loathing has started coming naturally to me now…

The Redundancy of the Sri Ram Sene

The right-wing group (Sri Ram Sene) also urged police to ban Valentine's day celebrations across Karnataka. "Celebrating Valentine's Day is a vulgar culture. We will not allow it. We will attack places where it is celebrated," Sene's state secretary Krishna Gandalekar told reporters here.

Muthalik, granted conditional bail in the pub attack case, also said the Sene would oppose Valentine's Day celebrations. Reports of fresh threats against ‘indecent dressing’ to young women in Mangalore are also doing the rounds.

Local goons are reported to have issued threats to young women to desist from wearing ‘noodle straps’ and ‘tight jeans’ or face action, in the run-up to Valentine’s Day on February 14.

I stepped off the plane, was in the sub-continent for precisely 12 hours, turned on the news channel in my guest house in Delhi Cantonment and was seething almost immediately. Overdramatic? Perhaps!

But not entirely without merit. Stories of the Sri Ram Sene attacking women for merely being present in a pub in Mangalore does tend to make my hackles rise a bit. When I was growing up, my dad once told me a story about Allahabad University where he went to college. It was pretty fashionable for women to wear sleeveless blouses in the 60's. Once, on a bus, a bunch of young men took razor blades and slashed the exposed arms of women in such blouses. Overnight, it seemed, women stopped wearing them.

The moral policing of women in the public sphere is accompanied by their hypersexualization in the popular media. The shorter the skirts of our item number girls, the more strict social norms are becoming. And strangely, there are enough women who support the moral policing of their own species. This parallel and contradictory process - of women taking on more active roles in the public sphere, in workplaces, educational institutions, the military, and simultaneously having sanctions placed on their mobility, their dress and just how far they can go in experiencing their states of freedom- has been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of the Hindu right.

Crimes against women are on the rise across the country, even in places like the northeast where women have traditionally enjoyed a somewhat more 'equal' status in society than the rest of India. Many, like Prem Chowdhry, have linked this to the enhanced visibility of women on the streets, work places, parks, restaurants, etc. There is something about this visibility, or this assertion by women, that is threatening the north Indian male. This combined with horribly skewed sex-ratios, has led to an almost manic cycle of attacks on women.

Organizations like the Sri Ram Sene invoke an ancient and absoluetly impractical version of 'morality'. The problem is not so much that they try to define what morality is for a vast chunk of the population, it is more that they selectively deploy it on women. They perceive and indeed actively construct women as being the repositories of this ambiguous category called 'culture'. So a man can drink, make merry, engage in promiscuity. But a woman can't. A man can dress in any way he finds fashionable, but a woman can't. A man can exercise his sexual, professional and other choices with impunity, but a woman can't.

The separation of male and female behaviours in such a manner in obviously problematic. As Jug Suraiya wrote recently, we have reached a stage where women can be and are astronauts, tecahers, doctors, lawyers, olympians, CEO's of multinationals, tennis stars, award winning actresses, but somehow it is still not OK for them to sip a beer.

The SRS has specifically targeted pub-going women. This automatically includes women in the new tertiary sector, recent entrants into the workforce and of course by extension women from the middle, upper middle and high income classes. The question really it seems, is this - is a woman's participation in behaviour which has traditionally been associated with men really threaten Indian culture? Or does it simply threaten a certain type of Indian man? One thing is clear, women's visibility and participation in the workforce has upset traditional gender roles in the country. As Lloyd Rudolph once put it, "It is hard to push women back into the kitchen once they've learnt to step out." Yes, once women begin earning they also become more vocal, they assume more control over their lives, they make independent sexual choices, and are less likely to take kindly to a man who asserts his authority over them.

The backlash against such women has been pretty phenomenal. In the US, for instance, Naomi Wolfe talks about how the emergence and success of women in the workforce was countered by the invention of the 'beauty myth'. It was not enough to be good at what you did. You also had to be drop dead gorgeous. So the paradox emerged as Wolfe so eloquently put it, "Never before in the history of human society have women ever enjoyed such freedom of choice and been able to earn so much. Never before have women also been this insecure about how they look."

In neo-liberal India the process of layering on roles for women has begun and is well underway. Now women are expected to work, be excellent housewives and also be naturally pretty. Eating disorders which I never heard of while growing up are now increasing in incidence. And many people do not know that anorexia can turn into an epidemic in boarding schools and residential colleges amongst women. This is still not a concern for most of society. Even the most successful amongst us women are still judged on the basis of the color of our skin (fairer means better/prettier) and the sizes of our waists (thin means attractive).

I think women in the sub-continent are under enough stress from existing cultural restrictions. We still find it difficult to marry the men we want. Our in-laws are still myopic enough to treat us like 14th century bahus when we are working women who do not have the luxury to keep fasts for the healths of our husbands and cook like gourmet chefs. We labor under deep insecurities about not being fair and how this affects our matrimonial prospects. We worry about showing too much skin in public because we don't want to be stared at. We don't travel alone at night by ourselves. We are constantly aware of men brushing past in buses. We keep our faces stoic when men comment on the sizes of our assets. We try to ignore catcalls and nasty comments. We have to be extra stern in the work place or we will be given unflattering labels. We cannot let our guards down for even a minute at work, or we are seen as unprofessional. We have to work extra hard to be taken seriously as professionals. We cannot succeed in politics without donning the image of a mother, sister, bahu, or religous figure. We don't get very many meaty roles in Bollywood. We are only expected to wear tiny outfits and prance around men. We are objectified, stereotyped, criticised for what we wear, who we meet, what we eat and drink.

We don't need another moral brigade. We don't need men to tell us how to live our lives. And we certainly don't need anyone taking away the few guilty pleasures we can still enjoy. We also don't need more women supporting outfits like the SRS or the Bajrang Dal. We do, however, need to do away with Saas-Bahu shows, which have invented a negative divide between good Indian women and cat-eyed, bad Indian women. We need the government to ban outfits like the SRS, the RSS, the Bajrang Dal for indulging in extra-legal activities (like attacking groups of people in public spaces). We need young people to read and understand for themselves what Indian history and culture is.