Reflections

Dear Diary,

I was re-reading an earlier entry where I have been able to perceive the goodness of a new workplace so quickly whereas the hard-hitting, complicated, 'grey stuff' that people's personalities (including my own) are made of came out through the following months of close engagement.  Quite amazingly, I seemed to know even then that this could be 'the perfect honeymoon phase' and that it could get over soon (and it did!) leaving behind a list of learnings from the overall experience. What's more interesting for me is that as I look back I realise how a human mind or human condition is wired quite predictably for most of the people I know. Most of us tend to choose fear over love by default, and most of us forget to forgive and love ourseleves before we think we can forgive others... Anyway, a lot has happened since we parted ways. A lot of water has flown under the bridge and it's time to now share some good news and move forward, slowly but surely.

I changed my kid's school (yayie :) ) from a mainstream one to an alternative one. This was a very important and sensitive decision that I was able to take thanks to the exposure that good friends and the media have afforded me in today's day and age. This is not to say that one is less grateful to my kid's last school that unwittingly taught us lessons for life and some people there have been exceptioanlly kind to us also, but the new school has a far better teacher:student ratio. That is the need of the hour for my child and any other small child also for that matter. 

As this change begins to settle in all its dimensions, I feel that small children generally deserve more considered time of all the elders in their lives especially from the parents and teachers, and especially when they are beginning to comprehend the world that they are born in. Not only my child and I are able to spend more quality time with each other now, we have both graduated into developing a more solid understanding of each other in the last ten days. 

In other words, we seem to have freed ourselves from the pressures of rote learning and coming first (in grade one!)... We have done ourselves a favour and freed ourselevs from mugging up words and re-producing them in impeccable handwriting at breakneck speed in the class room. My child doesn't have a great handwriting right now, and it's ok because he is too small for that kind of pressure but his grades and class work speed both have improved dramatically in the recent past (in his earlier school). Despite prioritising rote learning over everything else that a balanced childhod should be made of, I felt his academic progress was not emphasised or lauded as much in class. He was often made to feel 'lacking' something, in one way or another, through the complaints of his teachers in his notebooks - always looking for a 'perfectly completed CW' but not actually knowing how to really help each child with conceptual clarity (perhaps because they are so many children per teacher among other reasons). So at the end of a hard day, neither my child nor I felt fulfilled or happy irrespective of the long man hours going into study-time. My effort at home with say trying to teach him maths through concrete examples was being mis-matched at school through a hurried approach considering there is the huge syllabus to be covered and the pressure on everyone involved in this kind of a mainstream educational system. 

But now, by God's kind grace, at least all this pressure has been lifted off. We can finally breathe better through the day, pace it slowly and don't need to prioritise memorizing lessons over play time and nap time, especially during 'examinations' and pre-pre-tests before that. I am a product of that system and I remember now how I sufferred through it for some pieces of medals that just hang in some dark corner of my cupboard today. But our parents had no alternatives that were easily available to them so I thank them with all my heart for bringing us up the way they did. It is only through that lens that today I was able to decide what will be a more suitable exposure for my child, more suitable for his age and need. I feel bad for my other co-parents who feel these observations are 'not valid' or I am being 'extra sensitive' as most people choose the convenient, mainstream path. Some of these parents also believe that they are not doing enough, or they are a 'bad parent' so they would rather hire private tutors in primary school than think that something is wrong with the fundamental way we approach educating our children. I am not surprised why such young children crumble under this kind of a performance pressure these days, and we know from media reports the extreme and unfortunate ways in which they do. Parents also feel the heat of experiences of children at school, from mild to extreme in nature.

For now I believe that as a parent, this is yet another honeymoon period ( :) ) that we are going through here at the new school. That we must continue to engage with this alternative educational model as well in every detail so that we can maximise our holistic learning experiences here irrespective of the imperfections of the human nature, including our own. 

Silent peace march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar

Yesterday was an eventful day in many ways. It started with a meeting with a yoga and naturopathy doctor at the close-by government-run yoga and natural cure centre. On our way back home, news spread about the loss of the gang rape victim in Singapore. So the day ended with thoughts about the girl and how different people responded to her journey to death. Some even believe she had passed away much earlier and that a scared government was trying to evade from telling the truth in a timely way.

Anyway, what was equally meaningful for me was how my brother responded to the whole situation. My brother is a software engineer by training, who is thankfully less of a 'professional activist' than what JNU is infamous for producing (irregardless of political affiliation). So i tend to give merit to his opinion because i know that his head is less cloudy than mine. He is more directly connected with his inner voice as there is no obvious reason why he should 'sound in a particular way' to meet his own pre-set agendas. His job is to create software and he does a decent job out of it while choosing where to involve himself whereas i over-react many times (let me accept it), cry hoarse and take to heart  almost each and every event that happens in my immediate surrounding. If you think further, as if there is nothing better to do :), there is 'good' and 'bad' in both life choices, anyway.

So, he volunteered to drive me to the peace march yesterday, and expressed his willingness to participate in the march, his first, despite having a forever-in-protest-mode sister like me. 

Photos credit Rahul

Due to  lack of parking space, and my eager, bony a.. just dying to jump out of the moving vehicle in solidarity with the peacefully marching crowd on the other side of the road, we decided to drop me off right there. (Had been a while since i participated in any protest march so was itching to step on familiar ground. Was 'bed-bound' earlier in hospital or was physically removed to an Ashram in Meerut for subsequent therapy post typhoid). My brother was supposed to meet me at any point during the march after parking his car. So his much anticipated participation depended upon availability of parking space! How silly...?!

Two of my centre seniors welcomed me in the long queue on the left side of the road. So i walked with the crowd, without any banner or shouting any slogan, just in a quiet, silent way, the way it was meant to be perhaps. There was mild tension among people carrying cameras, who were trying to click photographs of every moment while themselves sidestepping it (!). They were desperately trying to capture every small movement to encash the 'best shot' later. Talk about competitive photography or media coverage at such events. Some one can very rightly point out that i have done a lot of this too so should drop the righteous face, well i am trying to :). After all, that is the reason why i can easily sense the anxiety behind the constant clicking of shutterbugs, the agendas behind various angles, what gets clicked and what gets cut out of the frame. Most of us know that a photograph first gets clicked in the head just like an article first gets conceptualised in the mind.

While we walked through the traffic exchanging brief updates about recent whereabouts interrupting our own silence, to our embarrassment, a differently-abled lady became a constant centre of attraction for most with cameras. It was as if that lady 'should have' been doing something else, considering her 'condition' BUT, she is so brave or has an extraordinary heart that she came out in protest on her battery-run wheelchair. We don't know what it is to get photographed like that but we did continue getting embarrassed for the lady till quite some time. For all we know she may have been enjoying the extra attention or would be so used to it by now! Her level of comfort in that environment suggested that she too was most likely a 'professional', a rehearsed activist in all probability, who most likely knew her way  around better than others.

In the mean time, my brother had reached Jantar Mantar and was thrown in the midst of a typical  activist environment, with people carrying banners on both sides, police battalions ready for some ugly play in anticipation. When our group was beginning to converge with the larger group present there, i called him to know his location. He just told me how he was wondering why he came there at all! What were some of the activists doing there, competing with each other in terms of who shouted the 'most appropriate' slogan, how many times, whether s/he was followed by an adequate number in rehearsed chorus and at what decibel level? Was that the reason why people do 'peaceful' activism, especially in memory of someone who had to face such a tragic end, my brother wondered. Of course i figured this out by interpreting the pauses and intonations he offered as he disappointingly spoke.

All four of us decided to be on the 'left' side of the group and sat down quietly on the road to offer silent condolences and to absorb the vibration of the place. Unfortunately and frequently, we were disturbed by what we saw or was it our own mind that created the way we viewed unfolding scenarios. Even in supposed moments of mourning, there was constant restlessness among many as they jostled for visibility in front of TV crew or journalists. Not naming names (there is no point in doing that), but one knows workings of familiar faces from organisations and one can't help but observe the often repeated drama. After playing this role in the field, there is competition about who circulates photographs first or writes an e-note about the event first. As expected, before i reached home, news had already started flooding my inbox. Of course i relate to all this because i have been there and done that too. 

My point is to say that yesterday, other than remembering to pray several times for the gang rape victim, i could see more clearly the spaces people choose to occupy publicly. One could pray silently and generate love and goodwill for the departed soul at home, or one could also partially or fully indulge in calculating how to take mileage out of 'the event'. Anyway, to each his own. 

Well, writing this blog post is not any better than what the 'professionals' were doing at Jantar Mantar. Signing off on that note.

Pyar ka parantha

In the last week of May 2012, I was diagnosed with typhoid fever. For one whole month, I was heavily relying on antibiotics, was even admitted to hospital twice, once to cure typhoid and once to deal with subsequently acquired acid peptic disease (later became a form of Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) leading to dramatic weight-loss). Simply put, by the end of July 2012, I had acute constipation, heartburn, a lot of acidity, insomnia, and gradually my food pipe had swollen. Due to all this, even lying down and resting had become challenging. Often, stomach acid would get refluxed into the food pipe (instead of naturally flowing downwards) as the digestive and excretory systems had become weak at the base.

It had been two months since I had been running from one allopathic doctor to another, adding on Ayurvedic medicine to the list of all that I was taking. Even tried homeopathy and naturopathy briefly. Overall, we ended up spending about Rs 50,000/= on my treatment (could be more) besides slowly piling on hopelessness inside. To deal with the latter part, I (fortunately) invested heavily in spiritual literature too, thanks to ready references given by Dr. Subhash Sethi, who is an avid reader and a wonderful person to say the least. A medical doctor by training and a Vipassana meditation (www.dhamma.org) teacher by calling, he continues to be one of the most shining guiding lights for me. (God bless you Sir!)

Dr. Sethi distributes ‘Jeevani Shakti Kaise Jagaye’ free of cost to people in need. He also gave me a copy of the Hindi book. Desperate for something to work out and considering my trust in Dr. Sethi and the common Vipassana connection, I took to reading it, however unenthusiastically.

‘Food is not the source of energy’ was one of the first weird statements I came across. Here I was panic-stricken and fearing for the worst along with my family, as all I was taking were a few glasses of fruit juice daily. That was when I had to be hospitalized for positive ketones in the urine. (Medically, ‘positive ketones’ denote starvation of the body that appears only after a long fast. It is a trade mark of ‘professional’ activists ;), who sit for dharnas at the drop of a hat.)

Fortunately for me, Dr. Sethi helped me in making a raw food diet chart (mostly fruit-based) for the coming months, but for some reason, taking regular enema alongside wasn't an important consideration back then. July, August and September went in building trust in the new diet regime prescribed in the book but with apprehensions and fears regarding its success-rate. Allopathic and Ayurvedic medicines continued simultaneously till a realisation of uselessness of what i was consuming prompted me to quit all of them one fine day. I had had enough of 'foreign and chemical things' being forcibly added to my body that seemed to reject these superficial interventions at various levels.

I finally came to Badari Narayan Sevagram i.e. the Meerut Ashram of International Association for Scientific Spiritualism (IASS) in October first week, few days before their famous biannual navratra fasting camp. (They had published the book I was trying to follow since two-three months.) I was convinced of changing base because the atmosphere at home had become quite tense and depressing (for understandable reasons) and chances of recovery there seemed bleak as everyone seemed short of treatment options.

The one thing that was causing most fear in our collective consciousness was that despite best efforts of so many people, including the best, most expensive and experienced medical professionals, I kept losing weight progressively. I had reduced to 44.9 kgs at a height of 5 feet, 2.5 inches while last year, I was plump and pink at about 60 kgs. At that time, being plump was still a mark of being healthy and fit as opposed to being thin, but full of energy and vigour.

So here at the Ashram, Dr. Gopal Shastri gave me the most unusual prescription and allowed me to stay and understand what they term as ‘eashwariya chikitsa’ (divine cure) through the principles of tap (ideal dietary system), seva (cultivating habit of sharing with others whatever one possesses materially) and sumiran (meditation). Once I was mentally prepared to give it a shot, the next challenge was to send my parents home peacefully because obviously, they didn't want to leave me alone at a new place. Dr. Shastri, btw, is another spiritual, straightforward person, who deserves a lot of goodwill and blessings from all the beings he has generously helped. He has a knack for calling a spade a spade, which was the most important input at least for my healing. For instance, when we met, he immediately recognized where I was stuck at the mental level and advised accordingly.  His message was that 98 percent of our body is actually made up of the mind, so I should quit worrying about the remaining two percent! His constant courage and honest feedback about my progress gave me courage, pushing me forward consistently. His fearlessness and trust in 'God' ('Universe' for me, call it anything!) is from where I could generate mine, from where my parents derived some peace of mind too. God bless you! 

Having sent parents home and after finally finding my own space at the Ashram, the first thing to do was to eat regularly (no tea, coffee and sugar) within the prescribed schedule in the mess. That was quite daunting at first as doctors had well induced the fear of eating the ‘wrong’ kind of food post typhoid and GERD. Anyhow, as per the Ashram schedule, I got down to practicing ‘tap’ (the first principle comprising gradual rational fasting) by hardly eating anything till noon other than soaked dry fruits, green-leaf juice and vegetable soup during late morning. The first solid meal was fruits and vegetable salad (seasonal, always along with sprouted moong) by 1 pm followed by a small snack and herbal tea (comprises saunf, mulethi, elaichi, tulsi, ginger, milk etc.; it’s pink in colour and the powder is produced locally) at about 4 pm. Dinner was served at 8:30 pm where one could eat as much roti, sabji, dal and chawal.

You won’t believe the kind of things I ate here during this time. For evening snacks, I have had everything from samosa, bread pakora, vegetable patteez, to suji halwa and dhokla to besan ka cheela, pakode, kheer, poha, and kala chana. Guddu and Mohan bhaiya made all the dishes so well. By ‘well’, I mean they added oil and masala copiously so that the taste of whatever they were cooking would never get compromised :). So, any medical doctor would pull his hair out if he were told about the kind of things I was beginning to taste and slowly consume liberally post the kind of illness I was coming from. For the mainstream doctors, I must be crazy to leave all medicine, and start eating everything I have been told to stay away from! Of course within the raw-during-day and cooked-food-in-the-evening/night kind of dietary system, there was space for everything 'eatable'.

I only had the usual discomfort in the throat and at any time I would eat something, it was followed by some time spent sitting erect in meditation, watching the discomfort as much as possible. Was sleeping only once at night and for the rest of the day, was busily following activities according to the Ashram schedule.

There were regular morning-evening sittings in the meditation hall where audio-video discourse about Bhagwad Gita and Sri Ramcharitmanas was played towards the end, after sessions of meditation, daily prayer-recitation and reading texts from spiritual literature. Coming from the Vipassana tradition, I was of course selectively participating in whichever activity that I liked despite active attendance. For instance, I was not doing nam jap, mantra chanting or was singing bhajans, (bhakti yog I presume) not that anything is wrong with them! The good thing was that no one made me do anything either since they knew of my spiritual leaning from before. Interestingly, I find no clash between what Krishna or Shiv or Gautama Buddha preached :). It's all a question of interpretation I guess.

Anyway, apart from spending time chopping vegetables in the community kitchen, doing some work for their English magazine (called ‘Tap-Sewa-Sumiran’; website: http://www.tap-seva-sumiran.com/), knitting a blue pair of socks almost by myself and planning (later executing) a general all-Ashram children meeting, I really don’t know how all this time got spent.

My low blood pressure is almost normal, I feel more energetic now despite body weight that has stabalised around 45 kgs. Imagine, as part of my treatment, Dr. Gopal insisted that I learn to exert the body and mop and clean my room, which I started doing, of course gradually. Even beginning to iron my clothes on my own was a big deal. From being someone who sat confused, fearful and crippled on the bed at home, waiting for mummy to do all the chores for me to slowly growing into someone who is nearly self-sufficient, even blogging, it has certainly been a long, worthy journey.

It is tough to put into words the kind of things one saw and experienced here. Not only my fear vis-à-vis ‘the right food’ got largely dealt with, I started eating the normal-for-others-but-prohibited-for-me-kind of food as well. Doctors had instructed me to have boiled water daily after typhoid but here, I drink the regular ‘taaza pani’, straight from the tap, without using even a basic Aquaguard! Sometimes I wonder how much fear one gets used to living with…

This ‘vacation’ is going to end shortly, probably after the three-day children camp that concludes on Christmas. My six-month sick-leave period also ends in late December. Then I will be going back to college-life, picking up threads of PhD field-work from where I had left it in May, albeit slowly. I have learnt that hurrying to do anything is a very bad idea and trying to control life by desperately clinging to it (namely, our action and then its ‘planned’ outcome) is the worst, most-uncalled-for human tendency. Trying to slow down and trying to gradually cultivate trust in the Universe’s wisdom is a great way to experiencing one’s actions, and the gift of life, fully.

So much in between has changed, some things forever, fortunately. For instance, my relationship with those I love and value has developed positively is to say the least.

In terms of tasty food, what I am going to remember very fondly is the post-Satsang prasad (moong dal barfi, peda, tilbugga, gurh-til gachak; never tasted some of these before), Malti Ma’s warm gurh-shakarkandi, Shyama didi’s ‘world-famous’ doodh kulfi-treat (as per Ashram protocol, everyone is called either didi or bhaiya), Radha didi’s ghar ka bana saunth gurh and twin bread mithais, one dipped in gulab jamun chashni and the other called 'shahi toast' with condensed milk and coconut topping (unexpectedly yummy!), Shashi didi’s suji cheela and moong daal (she has given me many kaddu and locky-based food recipes yay!), Meera didi's specially prepared saunf gurh, Leelawati didi's tasty tulsi-adrak evening kadha/herbal chai, Kiran didi’s bathua-aloo parantha, mithi puri, atta and til-gurh laddoo and besan-coconut-til-barfi (she also taught me how to knit woolen socks :) ), Gudia didi’s stuffed idli, pakodi, and muli-saag parantha (we also spent time together working on the magazine), Harbhajan aunty’s aloo-gobi ki sabji and matar-wadi, and the ever-willing-to-help Durgesh didi’s hare pyaaz ki sabzi, aloo and gobi parantha. It is your love, patience and goodwill all through these three months that have got me so far, and of course, the blessed food of the Ashram.

Lots of love and wishes for you all. Have a great New Year!

(Photos:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/113164685386219491475/albums/5803586938464049201).

The rise of Tapusa Singh

I always wanted a 'good' pet name since the time I was very young. A short-form for my long name is just ‘Sha’ which doesn’t make sense or ‘Shaw’ which doesn’t sound right or Punjabi enough either. So what should my pet name be? Once my Czech friend mispronounced my name as ‘Shweti’, and she continues to call me that. Another lawyer friend calls me ‘Shruti’ as that’s what she heard when I introduced myself to her at a restaurant that played loud music, over dinner.

My dad lovingly calls me ‘dabbi-ka-putti-kau’  since ever. This long pet name has no meaning in my reckoning and doesn’t match my official name either. He still calls me ‘dabbi’  though, despite my age because to him, I still am his baby… anyway. Some of my teachers call me ‘Shaaa weta’  as I hurry through JNU corridors just because they are perfectionists and want to pronounce my name the way it is spelt.

Many times, the sounds emanating from my name or inspired by my name slightly ache my ears but I do respond to them because I believe I still am socialized to be convent-school-polite. For one, it’s difficult to completely unlearn everything they teach you at school and secondly, I think it is the intention that counts. So if anyone calls me anything, respectfully, or lovingly, think I can make peace with that.

In a recent you-update-me-I-update-you conversation with my Mumbai-based friend, I naughtily named her ‘Billo Rani’ from the hit Bipasha Basu number because in my understanding, men of our batch still drool over her. It happens to them involuntarily, just the way our vital organs work i.e. without asking. Think my calling her that did boost her ego :), but guess what she ended up naming me in return - Tapusa Singh! She claims profound logic behind the new name. My other Mumbai friend thinks the same too. Think it’s a Mumbai thing rather than what both these women see in me. Let me contextualize my own pet-naming ceremony a little bit :).

After the wedding got over last month, for some of us from the over-enthusiastic, self-proclaimed organizing committee, the exhilaration didn't die down much after we had ordered Thai Chicken in Red Curry dish from Yo!China, immediately after savoring shaadi ke ladoo that had already started going bad. Gluttony is a feeling that can overwhelm the strongest minds at any point if one is not alert.

At that point last month, different types of foods in more-than-adequate quantities ended up getting mish-mashed in my poor stomach. Being used to digesting simple vegetarian food for a long time, my stomach couldn’t tolerate the gastronomic torture unleashed upon it, quicker than it could literally digest.

In retrospect, I do realise that the shaadi-food was only a trigger to regular over-consumption of rice (I am primarily a wheat-eater) and too much caffeine intake through tea, coffee, chocolates and my favorite choco-chip hide-and-seek biscuits since few months. This condition was worsened by unprecedented lethargy leading to a discontinuation of physical exercise, including the gym and morning walks around the JNU ring road.

Pic from ny.eater.com

The pill-for-everything allopathic doctor gave me strong medicines that made me vomit anyway, or feel dizzy and worthless during most of the day. Besides acid reflux (liquid from stomach leaking back into food pipe) and heartburn, what I additionally got were terrible skin rashes every time I took bath. A gentle soul advised me to apply coconut oil which continues to work well for me. My allopathic doctor however handed me cetrizine tablets to cure the medicine reaction. Still have those tablets in my bag in case some day I am not able to tolerate skin irritation in exasperation.

After visiting two allopathic doctors over two weeks who diagnosed my state differently but gave me one common advice about the kind of food to eat, I decided to quit all pills and start a healing-by-food diet. But after having water-porridge cooked over hostel heater for so many weeks, with often tea in between, I realised there is something more wrong than what I was able to comprehend. The skin irritation and eruptions continued all through.

Bless my friend who told me about ‘Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala’ last week. Once there, the doctor consoled me and prescribed me herbal medicine for fourteen days. She diagnosed my condition as ‘aggravated pitta dosha’ that is the imbalance of fire element in the body, which is basically an imbalance of the digestive energies.

According to her, due to prolonged intake of spicy/oily/heavy food or even over-eating, I got excessive heat/pitta in the body, even though it is winter-time. Usually, pitta-dosha occurs during summer months. The one good thing I learnt from this experience was that there are cooling food items like cucumber, cauliflower, beans, peas, sweet apples, coconut, cool badam milk etc. that I should prefer to eat anyway since I do have an intense pitta personality. It is from a description of this pitta personality that my Mumbai friend thought of the name ‘Tapusa Singh’ for me.

In Punjabi, the word ‘tapusi’ means a jump/movement from one place to another. The time I was conversing with my friend, I was walking up and down the house after lunch, making up for the lack of exercise in my life. The moment I called her ‘Billo Rani’ in some context she reverted back by calling me ‘Tapusa Singh’ in another.

Love for movement due to pitta dosha or not, most of my friends seem to agree with my new pet name. Happy that I finally have a ‘good' and meaningful pet name luckily suggested by a really thoughtful academic. Glad I am not called Golo, Pinky, Baby, Guddi, Bubli, Bittu, Babbu, Babbi or Gudia. Have nothing against these names. Just that with any of those names, I’d have to work harder to get taken seriously.

'Happy' Diwali

Have been exchanging Diwali wishes since the last few days. But that day has arrived where one can think of hiding under the bed in a room, whose doors and windows have been tightly latched from the inside. This is a strategy of saving myself from inhaling tonnes of smoke released by Diwali crackers without even knowing 'how much' actually went inside. Earlier it was only the birds, asthmatics, or the old and ailing who couldn't bear smoke and noise from crackers. I am neither a harmless bird, nor an asthmatic or an ailing person (not in any way that I know of), but I cannot seem to tolerate the warm, yet poisonous, blanket of smoke that'll gradually wrap me up from the inside tonight, especially gripping the lungs to reduce their oxygen breathing capacity...

Was chatting with a friend from Maharashtra who said that her state had just witnessed a string of 'festivals of pollution' like Ganapati, Navaratri and Dussehra, where the river bodies choked. But, one can conveniently close ones eyes to that and pretend that those are 'just far-away rivers'. However, aquatic plants and animals would disagree as rivers comprise their complete life source so they cannot take their own gagging lightly. Maybe if living creatures of water could speak with living creatures of the land, and in a language they understood, maybe the latter could have considered finding ecologically healthier ways of appeasing-Gods-at-any-cost. I don't think any 'real' Gods would appreciate so much killing to boost their own ego annually, i.e. just once a year.

   

Anyway, between the two realities i.e. river choking and subsequent dying of aquatic life in Maharashtra and direct, almost inevitable, human-lung-choking during Diwali in Delhi, the latter seemed like a much more immediate concern for me. Just when I was convinced about the importance of what I was thinking, Aruna Roy's group Diwali message beeped on the mobile phone. It said: "Join us on 5th November at 5pm at Statue Circle, Jaipur, with unlit diyas to celebrate kali diwali and demand payment of minimum wages in MNREGA."

(Source: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/diya-collage-card.htm)

Mussourie highs- July 2010

I had forgotten about Ruskin Bond, that he lived in Mussourie but once there, others in the girl-gang remembered and took me to the shop he still visits every Saturday. We got some books autographed by him. I also ended up buying 'Eat, pray and love' that is now being made into a Hollywood film. It's an amazing book. Glad I bought it.

Btw, Amit Sengupta, my senior at Hardnews, made this trip possible for me. He said, "You have every right to take a break after a hard month's work", his kindness despite being 'boss' taking me by complete surprise. It is because he let me out of office that I could reach this quiet space inside of me, and unwind. But before any of that happened, I remember typing the women's reservation dharna story on my new mobile phone early morning while train travelling to reach Mussourie. This, within two days of having an animated argument in office about worthlessness of mobile technology in context of a magazine story :).

View outside our room in Mussourie















Of course when Amit had said 'after a month's hardwork,' I heard MONTHS in my head, not just 'a month'.

 

Anyway, this hill-station getaway (bless the boss and Indu for organising it) was very meaningful despite the non-exciting visit to heavily commercialised and noisy Kempty Falls, a quick taxi-ride to Dhanaulti in rain and limited sight-seeing along the Mall road.

 

Garden in Dhanaulti

The unexpected fun-part was eating out at different food joints everyday, especially at this Thai place called Kalsung (or something like that). We also went to 'Whispering Windows' restaurant on a request made by Indu's mother. The soup there was delicious.

 

Tasty food, oxygen and lack of honking cars and deadlines were making me high effortlessly. As if that wasn't enough, the million pasty shops at Mall road made us all go nearly berserk over the warm chocolate coating on any piece of cake. Not satiated with having one or two of them, we got some more pastries packed to the hotel room for mindless consumption through mindless, but pleasurable midnight chatter.

  

Protecting the pastry box from rain

 

Yummy!!!

Anyway, the weekend ended soon and we were on our way back to Delhi... :(

Paid news controversy...some reflections

The whole ‘paid news’ controversy in India, when a certain Maharashtra minister used local newspapers to write favourable ‘advertorials’ for him, leaves bad taste in the mouth.  It’s not only politicians wanting to deride the fourth pillar, few media houses use an ‘extortionist’ approach for making big bucks by offering potential buyers ‘rate cards’ and ‘package deals’ akin to soliciting done by women in prostitution. 

However, these ‘public women’ are rebuked often even though their job is known to one and all. They do it to survive a stigmatised existence, forced to break social ‘moral codes’ by commoditising their bodies. But what about members of these elite and protected media groups, who solicit the moneyed class the same way, by selling off their minds and souls. And for what — another luxury vacation, this time with special massages? On second thoughts, how will penalising anyone change an all-pervading mind-set?

In its report discussed on April 26, 2010, the sub-committee of the Press Council of India (PCI), raised pertinent questions including the definition of journalism and election malpractices in the era of paid news, where fraud is at three levels: what appears to be an advertisement is actually paid content; candidates contesting elections do not disclose the true expenditure incurred during election campaigns and thirdly, concerned newspapers and TV channels do not disclose their source of earning. Of course, as expected and as the report notes too, there is mostly denial from all sides.

Though self-regulation by media houses is something highly rated in the report, besides seeking a set of real teeth for the PCI, what seems at the heart of issue is not so much about who lost their ethics in the media houses or political ghettos individually. It is where we are headed as a society where greed is not a bad word, where making astounding sums of money, at any cost, is considered a marker of success. Corruption within is acceptable, as long as it brings in currency notes. This attitude is becoming universal, so why pull down a few? In fact, this attitudinal shift is quite visible if I were to jog my memory from the time I enrolled in journalism school, getting disillusioned again and again since.

I can vividly recollect my journalism class of 1999. Our teacher, who is now a professor at Guru Gobind Singh IP University, emphatically told us one day: “Be fair, unbiased and objective as you report real-life stories. Remember, you’re doing it for the sake of getting people justice. This is not for yourself.”  

We were also given a dictum to practice — when in doubt leave out — instead of reporting incorrectly. There was immense value attached to truthful reporting. I am so grateful to all those teachers for having stressed on this so-called useless idealism because it’s necessary to deal with pressures of becoming a journalist today. As also mentioned already, the parameters of new-age success and wisdom are no longer how much you questioned and rebelled for a cause, but how much you gave in and helped in maintaining status-quo.

In 2005, when I joined The Times of India, Delhi, as a trainee, there was tangible high-handedness with which a bunch of us were dealt with, assumption being that we must be Lilliputians in the present world order. The feeling we ordinarily got was that since the last 25 years, we must have preserved nothing but intellectual vacuum inside our empty minds and souls, especially the good-looking women amongst us.  

The induction (or brainwashing) sessions were generally monologues and in one of the sessions, it was clearly stated that ‘those of you who want to change the word with a pen may please step out of the room because we’re a business organisation.’ Aghast at the unabashed marriage between capitalism and journalism, my friend and I somehow knew we wouldn’t last here for long, and gladly enough, we didn’t. But it’s good to know these things from direct experience because if basic ideologies are so hugely mismatched, then that alliance will inevitably turn unholy.

Four years later, I got to hear the same thing from a veteran journalist from the Sunday Guardian, who drove a swanky S-class Mercedes to workplace. I was job-hunting after completing higher education, which according to me, is a personal fight against a system where ‘thinking’ or ‘questioning’ is not a desirable attribute if you want to get-rich-quick as that’s what seems to 'finally' matter. In a five-minute interview, the old man’s reply was to-the-point, and pierced my heart like a poisoned arrow. I started questioning everything I had believed in so far, despite having dealt with an overwhelmingly opposite mainstream opinion through and through. This is what the journalism expert said to me: “You cannot become a reporter. Why do you want to switch lines from public work (he meant social work etc) and enter a different business altogether?” Trying to hold my nerve, I politely asked him, “But isn’t researching and reporting about problems of people, ‘public work’?” Of course he wasn’t convinced and assigned me back to recession blues.

This is not about naming names because how many can one take and how would that help? This corporatised system rubs onto you, eventually, as you keep ‘surviving’ the colonisation of everything that’s inside. I often hear this from a dear friend, who is also a successful journalist, “Who will take me seriously if I carry a stupid-looking phone, or if I don’t drive a particular car or move around with a certain attitude about myself?” Mind you, he comes from an unknown place on the world map but today, after success has knocked his door all over, he wears only branded attire — from underwear to handkerchief — guzzles expensive whiskey alone at night, eats food with a fork and knife and reads the paper perched on a leather sofa, severely multitasking all the time, even in his sleep!  

What does he reveal to us? Is this mind-set peculiar to my friend alone? I don’t think so. Remember giving preparation tips to a friend’s younger sister for clearing viva voce for admission to the journalism department of the same college I went to. I told her, “First understand that by becoming a journalist you want to play the role of a public servant. It’s a job ‘not for you’, it’s a job ‘for the people’ blah blah blah,” just like my teachers taught me. Guess what, she failed the test because I probably pumped her up with too much idealism, which is probably getting more outdated with every passing hour. 

So there are many more people who do not think journalists are to be seen as torchbearers of hope in society. Journalists themselves feel like they’re doing ‘just another corporate job’. Today’s wannabe journalists want to get into the profession for a certain lifestyle it brings along.

Today, one hardly meets anyone who says journalism has something to do with investigating causes of misery in lives of so many people or living a life fighting for causes larger than self.  There is no politician who says I want to ‘be with the masses and sound their voice’ either. So no matter what PCI recommends to journalists or politicians, I have a hunch that like a giant-wheel in fast motion, we’re headed towards further degradation of pillars of a healthy democracy, inherent in which is slow-destruction of basic humanity.