Agartala, Tripura

I am standing in the middle of an amusement park. There is no one else around, except the workers who operate the rides. It is 35 degrees Celsius in the shade. I am melting in my linen kurta and gently burning in the sun. The carousel is silent; the horses look like candied wax, silently staring down at their suspended hooves. On the sound system an unfortunate song blares.

No no no no
NO no no no
No- na no no no no
No no no no
No no no no
No no
NO ENTRY!

Who is the veritable Einstein who thought that up? It seemed to have worked. No one was there. Except me, the melting visitor.

ROSE VALLEY! The sign had said.

I sneer!

Where the fuck are the bloody roses? They’re burning in the sun like my sanity and patience.

I paid a dollar to get in. Outside the amusement park in the little casbah people no doubt lived on a dollar a day or even lesser, even as a big billboard proclaims Tripura Rising.

I am so bloody sick of these empty promises.

INDIA SHINING

TRIPURA RISING

JAI HO

Give me a frackin’ break!

The local Congress MLA is contesting Lok Sabha elections so he can make some money off the AICC. He gets 70-80 lakhs for his constituency. He will lose the election, but he can still make some money. The commies keep winning. Hurrah!

I have been told not to venture into the interiors. Meningitis and militants can kill me. I am not too keen on going to the interiors anyhow. I know what its like to drive where there are no roads. Its not pleasant and your lungs exchange places with your kidneys. NO no, I am assured. The roads are there. Maybe 16 villages don’t have road connectivity or electricity. I am pleased to hear this. The commies are doing SOMETHING right, even if it is the obsession to get people from point A to point B and giving them the ability to reflect on their own poverty in the glow of a naked bulb. So if you have meningitis you can’t blame the government for killing you. They gave you a road right? Get on it and get to a hospital!

I am somehow reminded of the Potato Eaters.

My heart bleeds a bit!

The sun is killing me now. I can feel beads of sweat trickle under my kurta, down my spine. It is beginning to cling to me. The FabIndia label digs into my neck. I have wrapped the strap of my Nikon around my wrist, so I don’t drop it. If it falls, the marriage is certainly over. I begin clicking. The workers wonder if I will actually take a ride. I will not. I smile at them and wave. They are a bit stunned. Not many women wave at them I guess. I am just being nice. Appreciating them for doing a thankless job.

In India we don’t thank the hired help. It is one way of asserting superiority over them. Make them feel like scum, so you can escape feeling like scum. I’m nice. I thank everyone. I don’t feel like scum. I feel like me.

We’re a very scummy country. And when we get tired of the “u”, we turn into a very scammy country. We love mixing our vowels and moving our bowels.

I return to my vehicle. I reflect as the uniformed driver drives me away from my amusement park experience. CHECK!

How was it madam?

Nice. Very nice.

I am a bloody born liar and actress.

The unsettling feeling returns. My lips curl of their own accord and settle again in a sneer.

Amidst indicators that at some point resemble those from sub-Saharan Africa, someone clever thought people needed to amuse themselves. That’s not such a bad idea I muse. Give them an amusement park, in the middle of nowhere, charge a dollar to get in and hope someone makes some money. Amusement parks encourage family time, and after all, is not the foundation of a stable state rooted in a holistic concept of family, the basic unit of society. Aristotle anyone?

We race to the Indo-Bangla border.

Ten minutes later we are there. The uniformed driver tells me to wait. He runs up to a couple of other uniformed BSF men and nods his head in my direction. I observe from behind my sunglasses. After a few brief words. The three men walk up to me. One opens the door.

Good afternoon madam.

Can I take my camera with me, sahib.

I do not ask. This is a command. I know it will be respected.

Yes madam, of course, please come with us.

They escort me to Bangladesh and back, weapons dangling carelessly. There is some bonhomie between nations after all. The sahib (non-commissioned officers need to be called sahibs, my dad had said, you cannot reduce them to bhaiyyas or sahayaks, titles reserved for normal jawans. I am good at reading ranks.)

Madam where are you from?

Delhi.

What job do you do?

Journalist.

Explaining researcher, Ph.D candidate is difficult. I point at the heavy-duty Nikon as I say journalist. They are satisfied.

I take pictures of the zero line, Bangladesh (looks the same as India) and a border village that straddles the two countries. No Mans Land is a narrow strip of green territory. They cannot broaden it because it reduces arable farmland for both sides. I am done with the border in ten minutes.

I return to the BSF camp, peel of my sticky clothing and turn on the air-conditioning. I wait to die. It doesn’t happen.

If I meet another pot-bellied neta who is sugary sweet, but who gets so incensed with my line of questioning about the opposition that he starts dictating what I should write down in my little notebook, snitching and bitching about the ruling party, I will bludgeon him to death.

Something about pot-bellied men and women when there is so much rampant starvation in India bothers me. But I understand. We live in a country where the poor want to look like the pot-bellied rich, and the pot-bellied rich (especially the women) want to look as emaciated as the poor.

Makes complete sense!

I meet a group of journalists. Their office is tiny with worn out and threadbare carpeting.

Good afternoon. I am V.S.S.

I fold my hands in a Namaste. I never extend my hand, don’t know how men will react to women wanting to shake hands. Journo 1 extends his hand. I take it delicately.

Please sit.

*I intend to, brother*

I introduce myself, give him my visiting card and explain what the hell has brought me here. There are a few men sitting on terminals. I see them trying to listen and watch without so much as turning. One man appears from an inside room and smiling takes my card into the other room.

Eat your heart out buster.

I suddenly wish I could speak Bengali. I am missing some humorous subtext of which I am most certainly the subject.

I am suddenly threatened. I stop smiling. I will not let people make sport of me. My game face comes on. The serious one- when I don’t blink, or move a muscle. When my nostrils flare a little bit, but only because I only want to show the right bit of emotion. And aggression. I have decided I need to be aggressive here, these guys have decided not to take me seriously. I meet Journo 1’s eyes and don’t look away. I pretend the room has dissolved around me.

I keep talking. Journo 1 starts listening. Finally, I have his attention. He throws something about Anthony Smith. I have read the book. I throw a critique of the book back at him. I bloody taught nations and nationalism. Journo 1 and me have an understanding now. I know what I am talking about, and I muse he is not a complete idiot. We start chatting a little more amicably.

I don’t blink or take my eyes off his face… for about an hour.

He gets uncomfortable.

I get tea.

He lights up, then remembers he should ask me if I mind him smoking.

I shake my head.

*Not my funeral, Journo 1.*

I hate people smoking in windowless rooms. I hate my hair smelling of cigarette smoke. That’s my biggest grouse against smoking. I hate the way my hair smells when someone blows ciggy-smoke into it.

I have shampooed my hair that morning.

SHIT! I will be shampooing like mad again.

Journo 2 walks in.

He is jovial and cordial, but also prepared to be non-serious. He is older than me. I stand up, and take his extended hand.

I am not going to waste my time anymore. I begin talking. He asks me for a poll prediction. I give him one as detailed as I can. Someone from one of the terminals turns and smirks.

The game face is still on.

My analysis is based on CSDS predictions. Yogendra Yadav zindabad.

I think of Seinfeld and “SERENITY NOW” to calm down.

I imagine everyone naked. A smile appears and disappears faintly around the corners of my mouth.

I like Journo 2 a little more readily. He begins lecturing on the militants in the state.

Save your breath, I have known about the NLFT for a very long time. How? Well, they tried to kill my uncle twice. I heard about this even before I knew I was going to work on the northeast. They blew up his cavalcade many years ago. They hit his ambassador car, misfired and the projectile hit a wheel. The car flew up into the air, tumbled several times and fell on the ground burning. He is my mom’s brother. He survived. His reinforced and bulletproofed ambassador had somehow protected him. The bonnet and the windshield, he said, had fused together. He lost a few men that day.

That was the first time a state called Tripura had become relevant for me.

He swears by ambassador cars and was very certain that when I went to Agartala I would not stay in a civilian area by myself. I understand his concern and I respect it.

Two days ago I spent an entire day reading confessions of NLFT militants. I was left alone in the room with two huge folders full of neat, typed up reports. I now know motivations, names, training camps, points of exit and entry. I could not take notes, scan, and copy or do anything else. I only read. Like an exciting spy novel. Except these are real 18 -25 year olds, with real names, real families and real lives. They are weak, affected youth with no jobs. I am sorry for them. Some of them are married. Others are just running away from something. But their lives are al here in these typed up reports. Who they know, whether they have a preference for ‘ladies’, what they wear, what they were caught with, names of their families, friends and associates.

These are people – starving, suppurating, severed from land, socially dislocated, straying, and dealing with meningitis in some pockets, surviving on limited means and still standing.

Yes, Mr. Sarkar, we surely need another amusement park here to take their minds off their own individually tragic lives.

I am somehow reminded of the song Naxalite, by the Asian Dub Foundation...

Brothers and sisters of the soul unite
We are one, indivisible and strong
They may try to break us
But they dare not underestimate us
They know our memories are long
A mass of sleeping villages
That's how they're pitching it
At least that's what they try to pretend
But check out our history
So rich and revolutionary
A prophecy
That we will rise again!

Like springing tigers
We encircle the cities
To the future we will take an oath
High up in the mountains
Deep in the forest
Our home is the undergrowth.

And we must never give up
Until the land is ours
No never give in
'Til we have taken the power.

Because, I am just a Naxalite Warrior
Fighting for survival and Equality
Policeman beating up me, my brother and my father
My mother crying 'can't believe this reality'

Iron like a lion from Zion
This one going out to all youth, man and woman
Original Master 'D' 'pon the microphone stand
Cater for no sceptical man me don't give a damn!

'Cos me a Naxalite Warrior.....

Naxalite warriors sitting in the comfort of London, right ADF? All this sounds great on a full stomach and a full wallet. Reality is different, it is not color-saturated and packaged for consumption. It just IS... and I am here visiting it, brushing with it, making it a part of me and dying of grief a little bit everyday.

So say we all!

Anwar and Me

Currently, I sit in my over-expensive coffee shop in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Earth. This Valley saw the largest wealth creation in the history of the world, that we now call the software/dotcom bubble. I sip my now-cold cappuccino and lick the three-dollar foam from the rim. Anwar's memory haunts me. A year and a half has passed and I wonder how tall he has grown, if he is starving, if his sister is alright.

Anwar is another faceless entity in the emotional morass that is poverty in India or anywhere. I think about my arena of privilege and am utterly humbled by the memory of his smile - the broadest, most earnest smile on the planet. So contagious and touching, that it dragged me out of severe field-work related trauma. I smiled back for Anwar; in a smile that reached my eyes after a long, long time of having nothing to smile about.

I smile now as I think of him. And I am suddenly content. The constant trauma of two years dissolves for an instant and nothing is more real right now than my memory of Anwar. I am suddenly ashamed that this life in which I have so much to smile about, I spend most of my time grieving, obsessing, thinking, over analyzing, spending myself on people who do not deserve it. Self-indulgence is a luxury.

The more topsy-turvy your life becomes, the more perspective you gain. I find this to be true. And in my darkest hour of trial, for some reason the one person whose story I keep returning to is a beggar-boy from the streets of Guwahati. There must be a reason for this. And so I share....

Anwar came into my life briefly for a very short span of time - two months, to be precise. Yet every time I think of him my heart gets really heavy, but that heaviness is tinged with another strange emotion - warmth.

Anwar was bright-eyed, sprightly, energetic and cheerful. He was always dressed in the same dirty, ragged shirt with half its buttons missing, had no shoes on his feet and nursed a new scrape or bruise everyday. I saw him the first time I walked into the Cafe Coffee Day at Dighli Pukhuri in Guwahati. He had come scampering up to me and laughed and pointed at a small pan-shop across the street. He had been muttering in Assamese/Bengali and I had not understood. I had ignored him like a fine bourgeois woman must, but he had continued to tug at my kurta and smiled like the devil. I had found myself smiling back and had asked him what he wanted. He pointed at the shop again. I walked with him to it. He pointed to a bag of Kurkure. I bought it for him. I asked him if he wanted something a little healthier - like a packet of biscuits. But he settled for the Indian version of Cheetos.

I went back into the CCD and ordered my expensive coffee.

I was to see Anwar everyday for two months, since I used the CCD as an office. I had discovered that my Tata Indicom USB internet modem did not work in Guwahati and had also discovered that my MacBook was powerful enough to catch a wifi signal called "default". I was hooked and became a wardriver. Plus the coffee and sandwiches sustained me. The cooks at the guest house often confused me asking for vegetarian food as asking for fish, which I am allergic to. Apparently "veg" sounds like "waayyyzzz" and fish also sounds like "phayyzz" to some people in Assam. Hence the confusion.

Anwar was a regular fixture at the CCD. He would appear late in the afternoon and run errands for some of the customers fetching cigarettes, water, lights. The moment he saw me come in, he would abandon whoever he was haunting and point at the pan-shop across the street. I would feign an eye-roll and walk across and buy him whatever he wanted. I remained busy leeching of "default" and wrote and scheduled interviews, dealt with severe alienation and basically just worked day and night. I didn't know anyone, met very few people and always sensed that I was being assessed. My views were always under scrutiny. By the end of my stay I had made some really good friends. I would walk down the street to the NDTV office and hang with the rather awesome couple, Kishalay and Gayatri, who ran the show. I learned a lot from them and they continue to be very good friends. I remember being worried about them and their daughter, Bambi, when Guwahati exploded on 30th October. I had driven to Bodoland with the Minorities Commission that day and had been spared the chaos that ensued. The first to go had been the SMS and phone lines.

Anwar interested me more and more as my awareness about Assamese politics and society grew. He was Muslim. Poor. And spoke a different language which I judged to be Bengali. He was not Assamese. One day he came and sat on the floor next to the outdoor table where I was busy scribbling in a Moleskine. Without looking up I said, "You're here. What do you want today?" "The usual", he had said. "First", I had said, "Tell me where you live?" He had gestured vaguely in the general direction of Latashila Pavilion. "Do you go to school?" "Yes", he had said. "Why aren't you in school then?"

"It got over early."

I had looked into his smiling face and been disappointed in the knowledge that he was lying through his teeth. If my reading was correct, Anwar was a Bangla migrant who was on the streets or in a slum with his family. The questioning went on.

Who is at home?

Mom and sister, smaller than me.

Father?

He is dead... long ago.

I had not known how to react to this bit of information.

What does your mother do?

Works in other people's houses.

Anwar's mother was a maid somewhere in the middle-class community that surrounded Dighli Pukhuri. They lived in a small hut somewhere in a slum in the vicinity. Anwar, who I could never tell went to school or not, frequented the CCD for freebies and occasionally some money. He entertained himself, didn't have any friends.

I remained busy, bustling about the city collecting interviews, forcing people to talk to me and buying books. I explored the city by myself, trying to shop for mekhla-chadors and failing miserably. At the back of my mind remained one tiny thought, about Anwar. The sight of his unshod feet had bothered me from day one. And I had done nothing about it. As my stint in Guwahati drew to a close I found myself obsessing about buying him a pair of shoes or slippers. I finally went to the Big Bazaar (hate those places) because I was right outside it and proceeded to maneuver my way through hordes of over-eager weekend shoppers, their kids, ancestors and shopping carts to the shoe section. I realized I did not know how big Anwar's feet were. So I made an educated guess.

I bought a pair of sneakers for Anwar using my thumb and middle finger to span an imaginary shoe-size for him. I paid for the sneakers. Then I thought hard about it. By giving him a snazzy pair of sneakers was I going to expose him to local violence within his slum? Anwar was small, other kids may pick on him for his shoes. Slums weren't exactly pretty places. I didn't want to be the angel of consumerism in his life. I wanted him to not expect similar gifts from everyone like me. And I mused the shoes would solve his problem for about two months until he outgrew them. Was I over thinking everything?

I told myself I was. Being used to overanalysing everything to earn a living, I was projecting my theories of sensitive development on to a boy who simply needed a pair of shoes.

I bought the shoes and tried to find Anwar the next day. He did not appear. I waited past my self-imposed 5 pm curfew.

6 pm.

No Anwar.

I went back to the police guest house at Ulubari.

At night I watched the usual programming schedule. Big Boss on some channel, tried to work up an appetite, but the 15 pound weight loss project was underway. I had pretty much stopped eating about a month into the field. I fell asleep with the lights on as usual and thought of how washing my hair was an ordeal. The water was brown with rust. But it cured me of my OCD. Sometimes life teaches you to appreciate the simple things. Like the fact that water sometimes does come out of a tap, even if it is full of rust, and can be heated in a geyser.

The next day was my last in Guwahati. I said goodbye to a few friends - Rakhee and Kishalay and Gayatri. I went as usual to the CCD and began writing and transcribing. Anwar showed up at about 3 pm and made a beeline for me. I was sitting on the patio, melting in the heat to escape the uber-pumped up air conditioning inside. I smiled at Anwar, reached into my bag and pulled out the parcel with his shoes. He took it.

I asked him to try them on. He did. They didn't fit. But he tried to shove his feet in far, so he would not disappoint me.

I told him not to worry that I would get him a bigger pair.

He tried to clean the shoes with his hands. He feared he had soiled them. The shoes had cost me about 500 Rs, 10 US dollars. I spend more than that on so-called fair trade coffee in the US everyday, at bourgeois places pretending to be rebellious as hell. Che-style rebellion, to boot.

I told him to keep the shoes and I caught the first overcharging autowallah to take me back to the Big Bazaar (did I mention I hate big departmental stores?) I fetched a larger pair of shoes and got a pair of 'floaters' for backup. Reached the CCD to find that Anwar had disappeared.

I never saw him again.

I waited until much later that evening and finally walked up to one of the CCD employees and asked if he could give the shoes to the 'beggar boy' Anwar.

Anwar? Is that his name?

Yes, I replied. Anwar.

He is such a nuisance.

No, I said, he is a pesky sweetheart.

Yes Ma'am. We will give him the shoes.

I walked out of the CCD with some amused discussion behind the counter in Assamese about the strange woman buying shoes for beggars.

I didn't look back. It is not in my nature to look back.

------------

Post script: Six months later, in March 2009, I was in Agartala replicating my research design for Tripura. I was being hosted at the Salbagan BSF encampment on the outskirts of Agartala. Ten minutes away from the encampment as one approached the city, a CCD existed in the perimeter of the Ginger Hotel. On days that I was allowed to get away from the BSF encampment with an escort, I would ask the uniformed and armed driver to make unscheduled stops at the CCD. I REALLY wanted my coffee. The first time I walked in, I ordered my coffee from a barista who wouldn't stop smiling at me.

Finally he said - Ma'am its good to see you. How is your research going?

I did a double take.

He said - I was at the CCD in Guwahati. We remember you there. You left shoes for Anwar.

My heart skipped a beat. I frowned in feigned anger, leaned towards him and said - Tell me you gave him the shoes.

He said - yes of course we did!

Sach much (really?)

He said - Yes ma'am.

Life tasted better for the next hour!

Guwahati and Kamakhya

Written on 24 Sept, 2008. I forgot to post this one for some reason..

So I am in Guwahati finally doing some useful fieldwork. This has been a pretty amazing experience in so many ways. Of course I am struggling with the local language, getting cheated by auto rickshaw drivers and surviving on Café Coffee Day sandwiches and coffee. For some reason in most non-metropolitan cities in India a girl still can’t go out and get dinner by herself. Of course I also happen in to be staying in a state classified as a “disturbed area” by the government.

There are lots of police and paramilitary forces everywhere. Men in Khakhi holding Kalashnikovs or AK-47 assault rifles. I feel strangely at home in this environment since I grew up in army cantonments being chaperoned by such men driving us to school and back in Punjab at the height of militancy in the region. I am staying at the police guesthouse here in Ulubari. I guess this is probably the safest place for me to stay in anyway. Outside the gate to the guesthouse there is a little assault post complete with sandbags and men with assault rifles. For some reason everyone thinks I need help. Being the guest of the DIG helps. In the morning when I leave for the interviews, these same men basically wave their assault rifles at auto drivers who meekly accept a lower rate than what they usually charge. Chivalry ain’t that dead.. :D.

In my ten days here I seem to have found out a lot about how people think, how stoic many tribal people are and of course how the pattern of insurgency differs from state to state. But the little things first!

Guwahati is a very pretty city. It is flanked by the big, fat and brown Brahmaputra on one side and hills run through the city making it an interesting place for hikes, etc. I was told by someone that the Brahmaputra is the only male river in the country. Simply because it is so HUGE. And it is! I haven’t gone on the hills yet because many of the little hills are populated by settlers in little village type communities and I have been advised not to venture out by myself in unfamiliar territory. I look different and am a woman. Double risk. In a place riddled with ‘insurgents’ who knows where one may crop up. I think people are unnecessarily just trying to scare me.

Abheek was here for a few days to help me get settled in, and we got ourselves a car from someone so were able to drive through many of the main areas of the city. Kharghuli hills is a cluster of small hills on the other side of which the Brahmaputra twists this way and that. That’s the funny thing about the river. One can’t make out which way the waters are churning. They seem to be swirling in all directions at once. It is a pretty fast river as well. And very, very broad. In all honesty the sight of the river fills me with dread. For some reason I keep thinking of Sanjoy Ghose being ferried across the Brahmaputra by the United Liberation Front of Assam to one of the various river islands and not returning… ever. They have not found his body to date. A summary of his findings on the region are found in an edited volume called Sanjoy’s Assam.

The 17th of September was Bishwakarma Puja day. Apparently this is the one day that everyone worships their tools, modes of transport and other machines used to generate a livelihood for the locals. So small entrepreneurs go to their factories and call in a priest to conduct prayers. All vehicles and machines are cleaned, washed and adorned. I think this is the one day the cleanest of cars vroom around in the city. I call it “Wash-your-mode-of transport-day”. Suraj, the young man from whom we borrowed the tiny Maruti 800, came to collect it for the festivities and returned it to us later in the evening. Poor thing! We had accidentally parked the car under a shady tree that also housed many pigeons bursting with poop. And of course, they pooped all over Suraj’s car. I’m guessing the Puja had to wait till the car was scrubbed clean.

After getting the car we decided to go visit the Kamakhya Devi temple. The drive up to the temple is quite pretty. You need to drive up a couple of miles of green hills. At the top there is a huge parking lot where you have to leave your vehicle. Then you have to walk up a longish stairway and enter a little settlement where shopkeepers will incite you to buy offerings for the Goddess, lest you come away with curses rather than blessings.

Yep, I have always maintained most Gods and Goddesses were petulant brats who have been spared a spanking in their childhood. Had they been spanked they wouldn’t be so capricious and may actually operate with some maturity.

It takes very little to annoy Hindu Gods and Godesses and the way I am going I have probably annoyed gods of every single religion on earth. When I am in Hell do drop in to say hi people…

Anyhow, I did not end up buying any offerings and of course Abheek stuck out like a real tourist thanks to his huge Nikon camera which can effectively be used to mug anyone. So people called us with “Mish-ter, mish-ter, take take!” And of course since Abheek goes to Business school and there is a healthy recession around in the US economy Mish-ter did not take take anything from anyone. Besides I think we’re both a little curious about Hell.

At the penultimate entrance to the complex which houses the temple people hollered at us in Assamese to take our shoes off. Actually we didn’t know what they were saying but from the frowns and the frantic finger pointing at our feet, we understood. OK, if you ever go to an Indian temple TAKE YOUR BLOODY SOCKS WITH YOU. The place is usually filthy and you will willingly want to amputate your own feet after the experience. Gurudwaras, on the other hand, are much much cleaner. I was wearing Gandhi style chappals from BATA (cost only 200 rupees.. :D) and slipped them off. Abheek faithfully took off his sneakers AND his socks. I am a complete idiot, I should have borrowed his socks.

It turned out that the frowning and finger pointing was actually a ploy to get us to leave out shoes out for ‘safekeeping’ by these young boys, whom we would later have to tip. So we basically took our shoes and stuffed them in with my laptop in the backpack. There is a metal detector at the gate that you have to walk through. While Abheek struggled with his shoes and my backpack I decided to go in. Except this huge, black, buffalo had decided to try and walk through the metal detector towards me. Now buffaloes, unlike cows, are a little wider around the middle and have larger flanks. So this one didn’t really fit through the detector. So after poking its head in and deciding against going through my buffalo went around it. I walked in. From behind the gate I saw Abheek looking around frantically for me (I’m sure convinced that I had already been kidnapped or something). I waved and waved at him while some priests sat around looking pretty annoyed with everyone. So Abheek came in, camera, backpack and shoes intact. Whew!!

In the little courtyard behind the gate there were many goats, pigeons, monkeys and a couple of bulls. Two monkeys were hitting each other near the temple’s dome fighting over a scrap of food. Then one of them came to where the birds pecked at some grain and meanly swiped a few. Pretty funny. Then there were the goats. The meanest of the goats had two little horns sticking out of his head and I christened him “Rammy” instantly. Rammy decided he was going to be mean to the other goats and promptly went and butted this one weakling goat. It was pretty cute until I realized why all the goats and bulls were there – sacrifice!

Kamakhya smells weird! It is a smell I have not smelt anywhere else on the planet. It is a fetid, rancid sort of smell. It took me a while to figure out what I smelt was the stench of animal fear at being led to the slaughter mixed with smell of people and of course the excretions of animals waiting to be killed.

Let’s just say since I have a very powerful nose that was wrinkling of its own accord I was in a pretty big rush to get out. The priests have tried to clean up the place well. But there are still remnants of dung in the courtyard and goat and pigeon droppings. And we had to walk barefoot on these things. I have a pretty bad case of OCD and one can imagine the inner conflict going on in my mind – between bolting to the nearest water tap and scrubbing my feet and the curiosity to see what comes inside the sanctum sanctorum.

The sanctum sanctorum of Indian temples are very hard to access. You either have to walk up several kilometers, crawl through a claustrophobic cave and then most horribly wait in line for HOURS sometimes to meet with the god or goddess of your choice. And then you barely get five seconds in front of the ‘very holy of places/idols/strange natural phenomenon’. So you mutter your prayers in fast forward, clasp your hands or simply prostrate yourself in front of the deity (or do it several times in rapid succession to impress the deity) and hope you have conveyed your fervor and faith.

Now you understand why I am not a big fan of religious places. Crowds bother me, I don’t understand the rituals (and in all honesty have never bothered to) and since Marx corrupted my mind, I tend to take religion as salad dressing – too much and it ruins your meal. Also, my OCD prevents me from willingly leaping into a very dirty cave and crawling along on my elbows, while someone else’s feet try to get into my mouth.

But Kamakhya I wanted to see for many reasons. Many moons ago a former roommate once mentioned how her father, Colonel Jolly, went to Kamakhya once and when he announced his name to the head priest the priest shook his head and spoke rapidly to another priest. It turned out that someone had asked for a rooster to be sacrificed in the Jolly Colonel’s name. Apparently if you want someone to be demoted or not make it to brigadier a dead rooster usually does the trick.

Then I heard from someone that when Goddess Parvati died and was chopped up into several pieces and flung around the world, her uterus and vagina apparently fell here at Kamakhya. The sanctum sanctorum, located much below the temple and accessible only through a narrow staircase, is where the Goddesses uterus still lies today and annually menstruates.

A third legend says that a god once instructed Narakasur (trans. Demon from Hell), a demon, to make this temple before the rooster crowed at dawn. He worked very hard, but the god (being petulant and spoilt) chopped off the roosters head and while it died the silly bird crowed for its life. Narakasur lost the bet and was killed. But this temple still stands. Dating the temple is very difficult. One of the priests inside told us that the sculptures on the wall are from the Iron Age. Not hard to believe actually. The figures were straight lines and squareish bodies vaguely resembling Picasso. Unidimensional figures.

It seemed to me, architecturally speaking, that over this iron age temple a new Hindu one was layered on much later. I am a bit sketchy on the details but it seems that around the 11th century a king who had converted to Islam destroyed the temple. It seems to have been later rebuilt with a very clear Hindu edifice. Although it possibly started out being a sacrificial site for the Khasi tribe.

Given the contradictory nature of legends that surround the place I OBVIOUSLY had to go in. Ok, so I am quite the meanie and I played a game. I asked a few people selected at random what the story of the temple was. With the exception of two local female friends everyone went with the Narakasur story.

The main entrance to the inner temple has a short walkway at the end of which you enter a set of three rooms. You can also hear chanting. On entering the middle room you go down a few steps and come to the main prayer room. There is a heavily decorated idol or something in the middle of the room under a grand canopy. Puja materials are arranged ritualistically around it. Also on one side sitting innocuously, was a bull’s head. I freaked out when I saw it. I am very tolerant of religions and practices, but I draw the line at animal sacrifice. I was NOT happy. In fact, I think I wanted to run out and swoon at the same time. I actually do not know what I felt at that point. I kept saying “oh my god, oh my god and ‘jesus’ and “f***” and “holy S***” in my head and under my breath. Am sure I looked pretty devout, mumbling lips and all.

Then Abheek came up and I said, “ Did you see it? Did you see it.. the head, the head!” And he of course hadn’t. So I told him to look again at the pandal. And then Abheek got the silly smile he gets when we watch a movie like Alien vs Predator: Requiem. His eyes turned bright and then glazed over a bit and the silly smile came on and I knew he felt he was watching a bad horror flick. In 3-D!!

So very stupidly, we pretended to be devout and folded our hands and trooped up the wrong set of steps. Obviously the Nikon and backpack and our little exchange in English had made the priest notice us. So he came up to us and said in good English, “Come this way, this way”. Apparently there was more. We went to this little staircase with some crudely cut stairs and were placed in what I now call the ex-pat line. We basically got down to the sanctum sanctorum before the line of real believers. I think my huge purse may have nudged someone in the crown because he sounded annoyed. Anyhow, the whole place was very poorly lit and the walls had a reddish hue. I was pretty freaked out anyway and my imagination was running wild? What is that sound of water up ahead?

At the end of the few stairs there is a cave (not to be confused with a room). This is the cave where she dwells. Parvati and her uterus. Menstruating annually. In the center there was a little pool of water and a rock on which were placed tons of flowers and red, embroidered chunnis and chadors. Honestly, it was hard to make much out in the dim light. A lady in front of me tried to lean in to touch the rock. The priest yelled, “chchuna nahin, khoon aa jayega”. Don’t touch it, blood will come. So she touched the water and the priest told her she could drink it. An elderly lady repeated what the priest said. I had had enough. I scampered back up the stairs.

Ok so I am a bit of a wimp. But I was scared that I would be forced to indulge in the water drinking. The pool is supposed to be flavored with her bodily fluids and runs red in color for a few days. Women unable to conceive go there to drink, touch or store this water and apparently the waters make them fertile. Often the women pay for a bull to be sacrificed as well beforehand.

Once back in the room with the bull’s head, the priest asked us to kneel before the wall. And another priest said, “see this sculpture, Iron Age.” He asked me my name and I mumbled “Bonnie”. The priest put a red dot on my forehead and then asked for money. I think we both snapped then. Why does someone have to pay to get anyone’s blessings? These priests always have a little racket running. Anyhow, we paid with a 500 rupee note. Then we left with our expensive red dots. I think to keep the myth intact vermillion becomes a symbolic part of the rituals there. It has been speculated that the goddesses ‘period’ is actually induced by an infusion of vermillion in the pool by the clever priests. Of course these seven days attract throngs of visitors and richer voluntary contributions to the Devi.

Apparently the inner sanctum is now air-conditioned. But when we were there, it was hot and humid and we could see no AC vents. So either the system was down, or there were too many people. We tried to rationalize paying for the visit. I said it was alright since we gladly paid 10 dollars to watch really bad horror movies in a movie theater. This was WAY better than any other film. I actually got the creeps and was royally frightened. Worth every rupee.

I inspected my feet while wearing my chappals. Not pretty, caked with dirt and filth. And traces of red vermillion. The goddess has a sense of humor.

In a very strange way this temple also shows how tolerant the Hindu religion is. In no other part of the world would I possibly find this open valorization of female sex organs. This acceptance of the uterus as holy and the practice of recognizing the sacred feminine. To be fair even the Shiv ling (the penis of Shiva) is mounted on a yoni (vagina) to symbolize fertility and creation. But the lingam always takes precedence. The one big question I asked myself was what happens to the meat after the sacrifice? I got an answer from an architect who also happened to be a part of the 6 year long Assam Agitation. It seems once the animal is killed and the peace offering made to the Goddess, you get to take the meat back with you. Although it seems the sacrifices don’t come cheap.

The Vatican and Washing Machines

Vatican’s praise for washing machine

London: The Vatican’s official newspaper has said the washing machine has done more to “liberate” women than the contraceptive pill.

In a long editorial marking International Women’s Day, L’Osservatore Romano pronounced the washing machine to be more important in the liberation of women than the pill as it freed generations of them from the drudgery of household chores.

“The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax,” reads the headline, above a black and white picture of two women in the 1950s admiring a front-loading machine.

“In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of western women? The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine,” it said.

The first rudimentary washing machines appeared in 1767, noted the article

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So it seems the biggest thing to liberate women is the washing machine. While I can follow a slightly warped logic to this discussion and pronouncement, I have to say I disagree. The problem for me is the definition of 'liberation' which the Vatican seems to have employed. Liberation, it seems, is not about role-changing, it is about making existing roles easier to perform. The washing machine may have made certain tasks that women have traditionally peformed, easier, but it has not led to a re-evaluation of the roles that women play in the house. Marginally, due to the washing machine, more men may be doing laundry too. And I will concede that having appliances of various kinds has reduced time spent in maintaining house, with the result that more women are able to work outside the home.

Also, most of the women across the Third World still cannot afford washing machines (or a roof over their heads, or three square meals a day) and although I may be talking through my head here, their combined number has GOT to be more than women with washing machines. The Vatican obviously concerns itself only with the so-called 'liberation' of some women in a select group of countries

Yes, in these small ways the washing machine is perhaps liberating. However, it does not rewrite the roles women play. Whether you do laundry by hand or by machine, you're still doing laundry...

The Constant Deviant

It is International Women's Day and I thought of letting this day go by in silence, but my head got the better of me. Nandita Das wrote a nice, little, rambling piece in the Sunday Times which touched a raw nerve somewhere. She talked about what it might feel like to be treated as a person instead of someone whose identity was drawn in relation to other men. This statement took me back to when I was an ambitious 17 year old, who had just enrolled in Lady Shri Ram, fresh out of an all-girls school. From day one in college I tried to define myself in relation to how capable I was at work/academic life.

And once at a family gathering when asked what my life's goal was, I said that I wanted to be known for ME and not who I was married to, or whose daughter I was. This caused much amusement. The only problem was, I was dead serious! These were not empty words of empowerment for me.

I come from a background where our parents never told us we couldn't do something because we were girls, my sister and I that is. We were never stopped from voicing our opinions, our parents never answered for us when we were asked questions about what we did, we took horse-riding lessons, badminton lessons, tennis (at some point, I think), swimming lessons, ill-fated golf lessons from dad (an avid golfer),etc. We were encouraged to debate and declamate, and keep focused on academics. The option of marrying and settling down was never openly discussed; we were expected to be working women. At times when we got really vocal and mad about something, my mom would despair jokingly about finding men strong enough to withstand us. After I got an MA and an M.Phil, my dad joked about how hard it would be to find Rajput boys to marry me because I was much too qualified. But this was all humor in the family. My parents remained extremely proud of us.

My sister and me went to the same college in Delhi, both equally ambitious and we continue to be. She has a sprightly daughter now, a six-year old exceedingly vocal brat, who is perhaps one of the most precocious six-year-olds I have ever encountered. I am glad that being surrounded by strong and resilient women will also trickle down into her behavior and choices she makes in life.

At that point, while growing up under this parental authority which actually allowed for us to develop as capable individuals, I never once realized that even girls living next door to me in secluded army cantonments did not have such an upbringing. In Delhi I stayed in a hostel for daughters of army personnel, a secluded, institutionalized place in South Delhi where we were much insulated from the vagaries of Delhi student life, under the watchful gaze of a very unpopular warden. I met many phenomenal women there, but I also met women who would discuss how much money their fathers had saved up for their dowries. And then there was the beauty contest craze. Many women from the hostel ended up as contestants in various beauty pageants and the Miss India contest, some also ended up in serial bad relationships. But many others also ended up as anchors on TV, in movies, made excellent fashion models. I was never very sure what to make of these women who willingly entered the beauty industry. I was at a college where the administration frowned upon pageants as a matter of principle. Yet that year one of the Miss India finalists was an ex-student of the college.

At one award interview in college I was asked by the faculty panel, "what do you think about women contesting in beauty pageants?" This was the last question, which came (as I still remember) after a long discussion with MG (the famous principal of LSR) over Ben Okri's work. I remember taking a deep breath and saying, "Ma'am in this college we teach women to make independent choices; free from the influence of the patriarchal structure and other men. So if a woman makes a conscious choice to enter the fashion/beauty industry, we should be supporting her, not punishing her. It's about choice and the right of women to decide what they want to do with their bodies, publicly and privately." I would personally never have chosen to step into this industry, but I would defend the right of every woman who wanted to do so, and I did - as one of my best friends went on to be pretty successful in this industry, till she too left the country.

At the end of three years there I transitioned to another student space - JNU. This was my first exposure to REAL India, as it were, with all its contradictions and complications. One of the most formative experiences in JNU was stumbling downstairs for breakfast in a pair of shorts on day one, to the utter horror of having 30 pairs of male eyes staring at you shell-shocked. I had not realized wearing shorts to breakfast was a big deal. I had spent six years in exclusive female places - school, college and hostel. Now I was in a "co-ed" hostel in JNU sharing a room with Bong, my old buddy from LSR. Co-ed in JNU meant that the hostel had two wings - a girls' wing and a boys one. The dining hall was common, which explained how my "short" transgression had led to some hastily swallowed omelets. I had not known for sure if it was the shorts, or the fact that I was a new girl that had generated the reaction, but I had gone back up, changed into my trackies and come back down to fetch tea for Bong and me. I had realized instantly that JNU was unlike any other space I had ever inhabited. Much was not permissible there and more than anything the mingling of the urban and the rural created certain norms of behaviour amongst the student community. There was much lost in translation between the people from Bharat and India, especially with respect to women. One could sense a certain disapproval and aloofness from some men if a female student was too familiar with members of the opposite sex, or dressed provocatively. In a couple of hair-raising cases, urbanite women were stalked by boys from small towns who had inferred from the woman's free manner of speech and body language, a declaration of undying love and affection.

JNU changed as well, the demography changed and shorts became more common. With the GSCASH rules, women felt safer and privileged. GSCASH is the Gender Sensitization Committee Against Sexual Harassment, a body mandated for all universities in the country under the Supreme Court's Vishaka Judgement of 1994. And the men on campus learned as well, that mingling was alright, that women had a right to dress any which way they wanted. Some of the most brilliant defenses of women's free will came from a boy from rural Bihar who had embraced Buddhism. On the other hand, an upper-caste boy from Bihar once commented that women enjoy being raped because it couldn't happen otherwise. Bong and I had passionately risen collectively as righteous demons against this man before realizing at some level, we were wasting our breath.

Years passed and I left for the US coming back only on vacation, running projects in the summer to write on. I got married to a non-Rajput man of my choice, with no parental opposition and considered myself fortunate. All was well.

I came back to spend an extended year in India completing fieldwork for my Ph.D. It involved traveling places I had never visited, leaving my comfort zone and seeing if I could live by myself as an outsider in the northeast. I found that I could, mainly due to the kindness and love utter strangers (now friends) lavished on me; but also because I realized I had some really good instincts which saw me through some pretty hair-raising situations - the type where you're not sure if you're going to walk out in one piece.

Unfortunately, people in India, especially north India are still getting used to married women putting career before husband (and till I was categorically told that) I had no idea I was actually doing this and that it was a big no-no. I also didn't think husband minded. In fact, he accompanied me to the northeast for a few days to make sure I would be OK. The sudden restrictions on mobility and decision-making, and having roles thrust by society on me, made me react in pretty aggressive ways. My productivity was compromised and I was not ready to give up my identity, my last name or my economic freedom. I constantly felt guilty because it seemed I could do no right. I felt the full-force of patriarchy come crashing down on me. It was different and strange for me to adhere to roles I had not been prepared for. I considered my husband and me as equals, in a partnership. Indian society told me that was not the case. I made career a priority, reasoning that I would never be this young or this energetic again and that I could not go back and do a 'better' dissertation. I was not used to playing homely roles, I was not brought up that way. I did not dream about getting married to a hunk or a savior. I did not play with dolls, mom made sure of that. Instead we played quiz games, strategy games, word games and outdoor sport. The concept of marriage had never entered my mind. It was a possibility that might occur in the future, but it was not what I was training for. This didn't mean that I was incapable of playing wife. I just found that I couldn't do it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I just couldn't! And I think it is horribly debilitating to expect a capable, educated, working woman to be forced to play this role for the better part of her waking hours. If some women choose to do housework and it makes them happy, so be it. If some women are able to handle home and career and work two shifts in this way, so be it. I just couldn't be one of them.

In some ways all of this has been an eye-opening experience for me. I realized once more how the way we think, even us liberated women, is conditioned by the force of patriarchy. Even when we do no wrong and make an independent choice to place career before home, we feel terribly guilty. We believe we are doing something wrong. It took me a while to recognize this paradox. There is hell to pay for any deviation from the norm. All of this only makes me marvel at my parents, who reveled in bringing up their two daughters in contrarian ways and protected us from the real world the best way they could, by making sure we only inhabited those exclusive spaces where we would be allowed full self-expression and be treated as persons, not girls.

That bubble has burst since at some point everyone has to confront the real world. And the real world for women is no longer something I read about in World Development Reports, data on female marginalization in the workforce and other such material. It is now something I see on a daily basis - the multitude of men who throng the streets of north India and the fewer number of women, the wonderful woman who could divorce her husband only in UK, where she went on an academic fellowship, because under Syrian Christian law divorce by women was not recognized (or so she said). The wonderful friend who got out of an abusive relationship with her husband and again escaped to foreign shores. The fellowship godzilla whose brilliant career in academia still came second to her role as a daughter in law. The fantastic female buddy who walked out on her boyfriend because his family demanded a dowry for their marriage (illegal under law). The amazing woman who ran out on her controlling father and fought her way through to the toughest universities in the country to forge an independent academic career.

Yes, women pay a price for being too good at what we do. Society still clamps down around the best of us. Some phenomenal women are able to make the best of a bad situation and work things out by signing a truce with the structure. Some of us are incapable of that and indeed small victories, small baby steps against patriarchy is essential so that our daughters don't have to deal with controlling men who have an inflated sense of their own self worth. People say, well they're old, it's hard for them to change. I disagree. I have seen men change. I have been able to win the respect of male family members who thought it was amusing that I wanted to be known for myself and not as an extension of any man.

But the most disappointing of all has been the participation of women in this structure. I tried very hard to understand it, and I have failed. I have had women ask me, "how does your husband allow you to go so far away, for so long." I always respond by saying, "It's work for me and work does not need permission. And he supports my enterprise, just so you know...". To me it seems women never ask me the question, "how have you allowed your husband to go away for one month to Scandinavia, or Peru?" The common assumption is that men can make such independent choices, but women need permission. Similarly, men don't ask other men, "how has your wife allowed you to stay away for so long?", except in jest.

I guess the point is in many ways we do feel like we have done something wrong if we mimic 'masculine' behavior in India. So in many ways all of our learning and our own upbringing is countermined by the learning and norms society thrusts on us, and to my utter horror I realized I had in fact internalized some of it, or I wouldn't have felt so guilty for putting career before home for a span of one year. It's good to have realized this at age 29. I have another 29 years at least in which to fix some of this.