What lies beneath?

Its poll time again. And this time it’s in the country’s biggest state – Uttar Pradesh.

The world’s largest democracy is all dressed up to conduct elections in its most populated (and typically Indian) state. What’s at stake? The chief minister’s throne!

I did use the phrase “dressed up”, this is not for want of a better word, but an intentional one. If you haven’t heard, the state has been decorated in pink. The pink being the color of the wrapper (covers) used to cover Mayawati and her elephant statues.

Yes, pink is dainty for lady, but I always thought black was the default color for cover ups!

So why cover up the statues in the first place? The election commission of India believes in the phrase “out of sight, out of mind.” Which according to them would translate to the statues not luring voters to vote for the elephant symbol inspite of their own will not do so .

But, no, this really isn’t out of sight, is it?

The whole thing brings a very catholic memory to mind.

Being raised Catholic meant you religiously went to church every Sunday. Though the crucifix is given central position in the altar, it usually wouldn’t get my attention, due to the redundancy associated with its presence. The exception was during lent.

During lent season, after Palm Sunday till Easter, the crucifix and all statues in church are covered in violet cloth. Not dull stale violet but a clean brilliant violet. This never failed to get me interested. I have at times spend the entire mass staring at the hidden crucifix.

I would try and recollect what the crucifix actually looked like, cringe at the painful memory and the brutality of those who were responsible for it. I would look forward to when they would unveil the crucifix and set it free. But, when it finally did get unveiled it would cease to interest me and we went back to the redundant, ignorant phase again.

Yesterday, a couple of friends and myself took a ride through the Noida expressway and the most interesting conversation we had was on the elephant statues on pillars draped in pink all around. Throughout the journey I kept staring at the pretty pink wrappers. Yes I have been there before, but never bothered to look at the elephant statues, Infact I never knew it was the BSP symbol. But, now I know and will never forget.

Like me, many ignorant but potential voters in UP would now wake up to the elephant now that some “color” has been added to them. The cover up definitely wont be a deterrent but, something that will bring people closer to the silent statues, like the violet cloth got me closer to Jesus suffering during death.

So, the whole out of sight funda really doesn’t work here Mr. Dumass-election-commission. But, will all this actually aid Mayawati in winning the election? We could never tell.

But one thing is sure, once unveiled the statues will get a new life, a reinstatement of its presence, something which Mayawati couldn’t achieve without the EC’s help. Amen!

Where has the romance of the Newsroom gone?

Fifteen days into being a journalist for the country’s No.1 newspaper (according to random sources), I wonder whatever happened to that dreamy cliché’ image of the writer’s world we believed in…

The men in knee length kurta’s with the doped look.
The women in loose T-shirts who never bothered to comb their hair and looked naturally sexy.
The stuffy room with old books strew around everywhere and coffee mugs that need cleaning on the tables.
The ash tray, picked up as a souvenir from a poverty stick country, overflowing with cigarette buds that smelled of more than nicotine.
The editor who speaks in Shakespeare English with an accent that is hard to place and yells for every comma misplaced in a copy.
The walls with pictures of great political movements, anti-war campaigns and hand written phrases of world famous rebels.
The activist who would go any length to put his point across and didn’t care if they paid him peanuts for it.
The hot dude with streaks of silver hair who had an opinion for every issue under the sun.

All these things have disappeared and instead everything here is so corporate-y.

Let me remind you that I used to come from a software office where they make an extra effort to get things tidy and look pompous, the newroom now reminds me of exactly that place. The men are in tucked shirt formals. No "aha" or "eurekha" screams from the next room. Almost no one comes drunk to office. The philosopher and poet does not call you aside to talk about the book she just wrote. They are all just too busy breaking news.

They do not believe you are a natural writer or intellect (which I shall not argue on) and train you as they do in the chop shop corporates (term courtesy : US senator Schumer)
Not to forget the HR takes care of you, making you feel more important than you think you are. Fending for yourself is left to the rat race department and not in actually “fending for yourself.”

The reporter does not pick up his dusty back-pack and cycle into the desert to meet his character, but picks up the phone to dial the characters number or the cab guy who drives him all the way.

Most of all the big guns (editors) refer to the newspaper/website as the product and the reader as the client. The newsroom/family is called the brand??But, Microsoft, Mercedes, Whirpool, Kingfisher are brands. Aren’t we supposed to be holier than thou?

Alas, my friend this is what we the children of this era of the crisis-of-the-media houses will have to live with. We have to do without the stereotype romantic environment we drooled on when dreaming of the artist world. This we shall do so that the fraternity survives. Cheers to competition and a materialistic world.

The curse of the farmer’s wife

The weekend before women’s day was spend in the company of female friends. A complete girls bash-- alcohol, gossip and talk on how all the good men have gone. These were all middle class late 20-something women who had made a living for themselves, no ring around their fingers, but could pay for the apartments they lived in and more. Thirty years back you had to be a rebel or a very fortunate one to be one of those women, but not today, today the country is filled with these independent women.

One of my friends had just got a pedicure done and was flaunting her feet, when she teased another by pointing at her feet and saying, “look at my pretty feet and your feet .Like a farmer’s wife’s feet.” My friend unknowingly was stating the sad truth of reality. That the illiterate lady in the village who toils all day in the field, grazes her cattle, takes her produce to the market, bargains for a fair price is still seen as the farmer’s wife and never the farmer. She does not get the benefits of a farmer, she is not entitled to the same subsidies. All because the Indian government refuses to recognize her. So what happens if her husband passes away, does she cease to exist?

Today over half of the cultivated land in India is managed by women. But, in the largely patriarchal Indian society it is the man who has ownership of land. The Indian land reforms have not changed much to support the women on the field, thus reducing them from farmers to farmers wives. Despite central and state government laws which allow equality of ownership single ownership or joint ownership of land by women is still unheard of in India’s remotest villages that depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

In many households that depend on farming it is seen that the man in the house is an alcoholic or a loafer and the woman has no choice to take to the fields and bring the food on the table. In Indian social perception, the `farmer' is a landed male with a patta, a patta is a document evidencing lawful possession of the person concerned. But, both Indian land rights and hereditary land ownership culture does not encourage women owning land as property

So women who work on the field and raise families with it are not recognized as farmers and in case she commits suicide her family does not receive the compensation that the government gives for farmer suicides. In fact her death is not even recorded as a farmer suicide.

With more men moving to cities to find jobs it is the women who toil in the sun to bring the grains in the market and food on our plates. But when will the government help her graduate from being the farmer’s wife to the farmer itself? When will it come naturally for us middle and upper class Indians to picture a woman ploughing her field with her two buffalos when we think of a farmer?

Someone asked me if we needed to celebrate women’s day anymore. If all that bra burning and verbal male bashing was necessary since the lady’s presence in the work place was very much felt today and most people were equally glad to have a female child as a male one. I would say yes and we still have a long way to go to reach equality. One reason we need to remember and fight on women’s day would be to break free from the curse of the farmer’s wife.

History repeats itself with Hosni Mubarak

If you are someone who has followed Egyptian history to a decent level you will remember the names— Thutmose 1 and Herod. In case you don’t then you might remember two more popular names if you follow religious history—Moses and Jesus.

Moses and Jesus are believed to be the founders of two very popular religions in the world—Judaism and Christianity respectively. Thutmose 1 is assumed to be the pharaoh of Egypt when Moses was born and Herod the King of Judea when Jesus was born. There is a similarity in the stories of these historical rulers and the present day Egyptian ex-President Mubarak, which cannot be missed.

The Pharaoh and Moses- The Old testament says that the Pharaoh (Thutmose 1) was warned that an Israelite male child born at that time would grow up to overthrow Pharaoh. To defeat fate and the prediction the Pharaoh ordered that all the Hebrew males be killed by drowning them in the river Nile. Moses, only an infant that time was saved by the intelligence of his mother. He grew up to finally overthrow the pharaoh and liberated the Hebrews from their 400 years of slavery.

Herod the great and Jesus- It is said in the bible and believed that wise men from the east, Magi visited Herod the king to know the whereabouts of the new born “king of the Jews” after having seen his star in the east. Herod was filled with a fear that the new born King might overthrow him and thus ordered that all male Israelites below 2 years be killed. But Jesus parents took him away and he grew up to be labeled the king of kings.

Mubarak and the internet savvy rebels- Wikileaks released a U.S state cable dated March 30, 2009 revealing the fears the Mubarak government had regarding the threat posed to it by the internet. The cable also said how Mubarak’s government went on the jail bloggers and made an effort to block internet access in the country. But on Feb. 11^th Hosni Mubarak was eventually ousted by the internet generation who used social media to organize a country wide revolution.

Just like the Pharaoh and Herod, Mubarak wasn’t successful in eradicating who he thought would be his enemy and who would lead to his downfall. Maybe Mubarak too was warned in a dream, maybe the spirits of the land had let him know his end was near and it would be mastered by the internet. We will never know. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is that after 30 years of ruling Egypt Mubarak is finally gone. No, Mubarak has been finally kicked out.

The Mischievous Dalai Lama

The 14^th Dalai Lama, the Nobel peace prize laureate was at St.Joseph’s college, Bangalore on January 30^th. It was then that I got to meet him. Me, seated on the floor, right in front on the reserved VIP seats, with my camera in hand. All thanks to the power of the press card.

He is a good example of someone who uses something that comes naturally to him to make everyone love him—his sense of humor. Yes, at times he is sarcastic, he does score his goals at the right time, he does poke you were it hurts most with his jokes. But when you look at the larger picture you do realize that he makes statements using his sense of humor. Statements that could hurt feelings if said in any other way, his jokes are on reality.

He eulogized the college and the Church for doing so much in the field of education all over the world. “Whether it is in the West or in the East, you Christians have built lots of academic institutions, especially for the poor and needy. That’s really good,” the Dalai Lama said. But after praising them he did convey a few things about the church that he dint think was in the interest of the public, like forced conversions in Mongolia.

“If you have a highly priced(expensive) ring, and if you kiss it; will you get any response from the ring? Never, never. But if you show your genuine love to a small cat or dog, then they will respond accordingly, wagging their tail and then licking,” this was what his holiness said to convey his views on the catholic tradition of kissing the bishops ring. Even the principal of the college, a priest couldn’t control his laughter watching the animated actions that Dalai Lama used to speak. He actually checked the fingers of both the priests sitting next to him on the podium to see if they had fingers and kissed their fingers, and imitated the wagging tail with his hands. When the priest explained that it was only bishops who had the rings the Dalai Lama fondly remembered that South African Archbishop Tutu, his close friend often refers to him as the “mischievous Dalai Lama”.

I cannot think of a better adjective to describe him from what he spoke. With his cute little eyes almost shutting whenever he gives us his mischievous smile. The animated actions he uses whenever he doesn’t know the English term for a word is amusing to say the least. If some people use their hands to talk, and some their eyes the present Dalai Lama uses actions to talk. This must work better for him, cause that is another way he can cross the language barrier in his cross cultured audience.

He did not attempt to remind his Tibetan friends about his long exile India with any sad stories filled with despair. Instead he told us a story, a story on why he calls himself “a son of India”. He said that his thoughts were a product of the Nalanda university(Bihar) ideas and his body was a product of Indian chapattis, daal, rice which he has been eating for the past 50years.

Reminding everyone present that that India had a history of thousands of years of religious harmony he said that it was time “we” focused on reducing inter-religious conflicts and conflicts within sections of the same religion like the Catholics & Protestants and the Shia and Sunni groups within the Muslim community.

I wish we had more such leaders in the world and I don’t necessarily imply the religious type. I mean of any kind—politicians, teachers, who spoke in such simple language with innocent jokes and not full of themselves. We would be so much more inspired and so much more involved then.