R.I.P Nirbhaya - Fearless daughter of India!

No. We will not forget!
Shame!
What a tragic way to end 2012.
Au revoir, injustice!
 2013 will see a changed India.
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Blogdosts. It's time to say good bye to our shared space for now.
Till next year.... and new beginnings.

Just to take my mind away from the young woman hanging on to life  in Delhi, I am posting this image of Skittles - a proud and beautiful mother. Her littlest one, will be mine soon...I have named her Gong Li! Merry X'Mas.... stay positive. Believe in life...

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                                The rape of  Delhi…

I refuse to pack chilly powder in my hand bag each time I step out of the house. I will not advise my daughters to master martial arts or acquire cans of pepper spray - ‘just in case’. I will encourage them to wear what they want, when they want. And I certainly won’t be looking over my shoulder constantly when I leave home. This is no way to live. This is no way to deal with a crisis. We are making an even bigger mess of an already horrific reality by running scared. By hiding. By diving for cover. The streets, stations, subways, buses, autos, trains, over bridges, cabs belong to women as much as they do to men. We should reclaim what is rightfully ours, without being browbeaten into scampering away in fright. Why retreat at this stage? If anything, the moment to go ahead and change the rules of this dastardly game is now. If we weaken our resolve and move even an inch from the position taken, we’ll have surrendered a basic right. The right to freedom. The right to safety. Worst of all, we will be passing on a nasty message to our daughters and their daughters that all men are potential rapists – it’s only about opportunity.

It takes one incident to galvanise people. Nobody can predict which that incident could be. Why this particular rape? Newspapers carry worse reports involving equally brutal acts of violence against women on a daily basis. Often, there are as many as six blood curdling stories on the same day, each one as grisly as what happened to the brave 23- year- old  girl in Delhi earlier this week. Yet, it was this gruesome rape that   has outraged and shaken up India. One can only hope this case won’t become another played up tragedy that goes nowhere once something ‘more important’ hits the headlines. But what can be more important than the lives of our women? Or am I asking a stupid question? We know the answer. A female foetus is not safe even in a mother’s womb. And we are discussing the safety of women who are ‘allowed to live’.  But this is not the time to feel martyred. There is no room for self pity. This is the time to demand real change. And by that, I don’t mean the death penalty. Ironically, it is other hardened criminals locked up with the accused in Tihar jail, who have decided to teach the beasts a lesson that goes beyond beatings. Reports say, one of them was made to eat his own excreta. Humiliation can’t get any worse.

But that is not a ‘solution’. It is merely a reaction. The solution lies in our hands. And those hands need not reach for chilly powder. If we adopt defensive strategies to ‘protect’ ourselves, we are admitting weakness and anticipating defeat.How many women in scary circumstances will have the physical strength and the presence of mind to reach for those chilies ? The onus of staying safe was never on us. Let’s not foolishly take it on ourselves at this critical stage and let the real culprits off the hook. And those culprits aren’t  the rapists. Criminals take their cues from society at large. A society that condones and looks the other way when politicians rape, loot, kidnap and murder with impunity, is a society that is inviting trouble from the lumpen. Men like the Delhi rapists who must have believed they’d get away with the crime – just like all those netas whizzing around the Capital,followed by a convoy of security cars to ‘protect’ them. It is this blatant abuse of power that we need to put up a fight against. Until that changes, our women will remain soft targets.  Sheila Dixit, the Chief Minister of  Delhi has displayed very little real concern. The top cop has been shockingly blasé, resorting to platitudes and excuses to cover up his force’s lapses.Through all this, an extraordinarily courageous woman continues to fight for her life and let the world know she wants to live. It’s a poignant war cry from what could soon become her death bed. Yes. The situation is grim. And this is a national emergency which must be recognized as one. No woman in India should ever be told to arm herself with chilly powder. No woman should even feel the need to do so. This is what the fight is about. Get real, Sheila Dixit.Women must be able to take safety for granted. Just like men do.  For, when Delhi gets raped, India gets raped.

Santa Arundhati...

Both images are wonderful, don't you think???
The Penguin tree of Classics is superlative...
Arundhati and friends walked around a few areas of South Mumbai distributing sweets....and a few goodies.
As for us, we attended a traditional and beautiful X'Mas dinner at the warm and hospitable Kuruvilla home - great food, terrific people and genuine friends. Perfect!
We also made it to our neighbour's spectacular Silver Wedding Celebrations which saw the launch of the newest jewel on the Mumbai luxury hotels landscape - the Shangri-La, headed by our good friend Farhat Jamal - one of the most dynamic hoteliers in this region.
All in all....a lovely, mellow way to wind down... and gear up for 2013!
 We are leaving for a short break in Alibag.
I'll be back with my Blogdosts on Sunday...
If you guys are interested and free to watch a good show, try and catch Sunil Sethi's 'Just Books'today on NDTV Profit at 6 p.m. The repeats will be on NDTV 24X7, Sunday 8.30 a.m.

What an outstanding professional! Every single person present at Crossword last evening went away singing the praises of Manoj Bajpayee. Here's one actor who could teach a thing or two to several of his contemporaries - acting skills, of course, and more importantly, just basic good manners. His reading from Sethji went off swimmingly well. Author Namita Devidayal provided able support, as she stayed ''ín character'( Amrita's) and confessed she had come bra-less to the event! Manoj spoke with transparent sincerity and responded to audience questions with candour and good humour. It was a terrific session.... after which my husband and I headed out to Amadeus for a celebratory glass of wine ( Chilean).
The weather is great in Mumbai right now... and we are planning to make the most of it!
From tomorrow, I shall take a break from this space for a few days , and chill at our home in Alibag.
 Catch you soon.
 And have a wonderful X'Mas, blogdosts! 

RAPE is just a 4 letter word?

And to think I wrote this before the horrific rape in Delhi....

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By now we have trained ourselves to shrug and take it in our stride. What choice is there? I am talking about the stepped up violence against women in our major cities. This is happening on a daily basis. Women are getting hammered,assaulted,clobbered,stoned,belted,whipped,chained,smothered,gag-ged,slashed,stabbed, maimed, raped,bludgeoned,burnt,stripped…. how many more descriptions does one need?Why is this happening? At such an exaggerated, accelerated pace? Any answers? Well… here’s a theory. Women were once entirely dispensable. One or two dead, here and there, didn’t matter. Nobody counted. Nobody cared. And we aren’t even talking villages right now. City women were considered useful, upto a point… but also replaceable. Our metros were full of recycled women who were expected to play their bit parts and then melt into the sunset. If, for any reason, that did not happen, and the women rewrote the script, they were disposed off efficiently and quickly .Their disappearance was barely noticed. Which was also understandable given that there were dozens of others ready to take their place. Assembly line women – our big towns were crammed with them. That part hasn’t changed. But one thing definitely has – today’s urban female is fighting back as best as she can, with the one weapon she now possesses – her own money. She is earning well.  But here’s the paradox -  her pay check, which should have protected her, has become the noose around her neck. Men are finding it exceedingly hard to like this person. They like what she brings to the party  ( money!). They like the fact that she pays her own bills ( Oh, yes!). They like not having to subsidise dates ( Amazing!). But they still don’t like her! She makes them feel redundant. Even worse, she makes them resentful. They ask themselves, “ Is the bitch going to take away our jobs? Will the boss fall for her wiles and promote her out of turn? Will she outsmart us yet again at that important conference?”       Unable to deal with this new ‘threat’, they do what any cornered animal does – they snarl and bite!

Am I over dramatizing the situation? Maybe a little. But I have seen naked hostility in the eyes of several men as they observe female colleagues working hard and managing several other areas of their lives without fuss. There is unmistakable envy written all over their faces. Sometimes, that envy refuses to go  away. It begins to eat up the most insecure of those men. They start imagining things… that the woman who has done brilliantly during the sales’ conference, is out to grab what rightfully belongs to them - the men. A feeling of persecution sets in. Every woman is seen as a predatory, aggressive creature. She has to be tamed. She has to be fixed. She has to be taught a lesson. If she fights back, or displays attitude, her ‘punishment’ has to be more severe. If she apologises for her wayward ways and promises to behave herself… then  maybe, they can work on a more acceptable solution to the ‘problem’. The problem being gender.

It is only going to get worse. If that sounds alarmist, so be it. The genie is out of the bottle. The she-elephant is very much in the room. And she isn’t going anywhere. As for those coveted jobs , given the tattered state of most economies, the scramble  to grab whatever is going will get still more aggressive. Shrinking jobs across the globe mean heightened levels of frustration. Everybody is fighting for that single piece of juicy bone. More and more women are managing to reach it first. Men are not at all happy about this development. Their anger and rage find avenues that are frequently volatile enough to lead to random attacks on the first woman who crosses their path. Any excuse will do – her skirt’s too short. Her breasts too large. She’s smiling more than required. She seems HAPPY! That’s the bloody limit. First, she takes away our jobs. Now she invades our space ( what business does she have enjoying a drink at a bar?). At the rate she is going, soon she’ll tell us what to do. Who wants to take orders from a woman? Why can’t she stick to her place? Go back to being obedient and duty bound? If she hasn’t got the message so far, it’s time she was taught a lesson. And that’s pretty much the way it is. Men will protest and say this is utter rubbish. But there is really no other explanation. Men react when their pockets hurt. Right now, their pockets are hurting.

And their heads are exploding with anger. So, what do we do? Reaching their hearts is the obvious answer. Even the most demonic of men have hearts. As always the onus is on women – find a solution. Or perish.

Jacintha's tragic tale....

This appeared in Asian Age today....

                                              What really happened to Jacintha?

A couple of days after the news of  nurse Jacinta’s tragic death in her quarters near the King Edward VII’s  Hospital in London, I was having dinner with two very bright Australian ladies. What began as a light hearted gossipy session involving  Liz Hurley and Shane Warne, soon transformed into a serious discussion on ‘The Prank’ that cost Jacintha, a mother of two her life. Since that prank was the brainchild of two Australian radio jockeys, inevitably the conversation took a sharp turn. One of the ladies couldn’t stop chortling over how the RJ’s had embarrassed the Queen by mimicking her voice and accent, while the other applauded the genius of the RJ who pretended to be the Queen’s pet Corgi barking noisily in the background. The ladies also mocked the lax security at the London hospital and laughed at the ease with which the pranksters were connected to the nurse on duty ( Jacintha), who naively believed she was indeed talking  to the Queen of  England. Before our conversation was further reduced to a monumental joke, we quickly got back on track and spoke about Jacintha. The ladies were slightly confused. It was a perfectly harmless trick which went terribly wrong, insisted one. The other said it was all the fault of the silly telephone operators at the hospital for putting through a supposedly ‘royal’ call that had not been screened. Both these opinions are largely acceptable. But that still leaves a dead woman, with  grieving family members who are unable to make the slightest sense of what really happened. Why did the forty-six year old hang herself three days after the hoax  hit the headlines? The answer is pretty simple : it was a cultural thing. Perhaps , even a deeply Indian or Asian one. This ‘thing’ has a name. It’s called ‘sharam’. And ‘sharam’ really does not translate well. It is more, much more, than mere ‘shame’. Sharam is such a complex emotion , it defies transliteration . Sharam goes well beyond ‘disgrace’. It encompasses family honour. Just as ‘naam’ and ‘izzat’ do not mean just ‘name’ and  ‘self-respect’. Had Jacintha been an English nurse, her response to the scandal would almost certainly have been different. Perhaps,she would have shrugged and laughed it off. She would most certainly  have worried about hanging on to her job. Or, she would have jauntily phoned a tabloid and tried to make some money out of the story. She might also have received offers to pose topless , enter Big Brother’s house, host a talk show, appear on prime time… write her memoirs. She would have been converted into a grotesque mini-celebrity…. and cashed out. But our Jacintha saw the whole episode through a desi filter. It filled her with sharam…. and  she paid for it with her life.

That filter is hard to understand if you aren’t Indian. There are those who’d argue it was really very foolish of Jacintha to commit suicide for something that wasn’t even her fault. All she did was transfer that bloody call to a colleague. No big deal, right? Well, clearly Jacintha saw it differently. It was a big deal for her. Such a big deal, in fact, that she preferred death over the ignominy of facing the world as ‘the nurse who fell for a prank call’. One wonders what she must have gone through during those three days after the story hit headlines across the world. Did she feel that humiliated, that devastated, over what was nothing more serious than a tiny human error? Was she over sensitive as an Asian person? Another woman , even an Indian one, may have brazened it out and waited for the tabloids to pounce on another sensational story.  But Jacintha held herself solely responsible for the gaffe. The troubling aspect of this sad story is again connected to cultural cross signals.There are those who’ll ask howcome neither Jacintha nor her colleague could figure out that the persons they were talking to were not the Queen and Prince Charles in the first place? Shouldn’t that have been obvious from their accents? Aha – this where the problems kick in.  Jacintha really couldn’t tell between a posh British accent and a fake Aussie-trying-to-be-posh one. She simply did not know the difference! An English nurse may have seen through the joke and disconnected. But sweet, trusting Jacintha fell for it . We shall never know the depth of her self-degradation as she created a noose with a scarf and hanged herself, rather than face the taunts and jeers of her colleagues.

It all boils down to identity and a sense of belonging. Jacintha may have been a superb nurse (or else she would not have been working in such a top drawer hospital). But her training as a nurse didn’t include some other training –  which includes the ability to deal with situations that are peculiarly English or in this case, Australian. Nobody takes such calls seriously. Young people from different parts of the world make similar ones all the time. Jacintha’s upbringing didn’t prepare her for this. She thought she had failed, and failed miserably. Eventually,the ‘sharam’ of  it all would have killed her anyway. She preferred a shorter cut. Jacintha opted for instant death.Bechari Jacintha.

Aayush Goel who works for The Week, shot this image at the Health Summit in Delhi , a few days ago. I was there to talk about Women and health issues.... an area of special concern.

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This appeared in The Week....

                                        Power and sex….

At a recent Festival of  Erotica , I was asked to speak about Power and Sex. I wanted to alter the title and call it ‘Power IS sex.” And this power is not supposed to be gender sensitive. One sees the connection between the two ( power and sex) wherever one looks. So it has always been through the ages… throughout documented history. From Cleopatra’s time to now. When a mighty , and highly naughty American General has been caught with his camouflage pants down and a money man called Dominique Kahn Strauss has paid a lowly chamber maid a hefty ‘Keep your trap shut’ fee ( partly borrowed from his understanding wife) all we can do is laugh at these two fools.. These men are the most recent examples of extraordinarily powerful fellows who have behaved in an extraordinarily idiotic way. And one wonders : are the brains of such people actually located in the groin and not inside the cranium? Or, do they do what they do (stake their wealth, position,marriage,family life and career), because they start believing in their own infinite power ?Do they behave like pre-pubescent, callow idiots with zero control over those raging hormones in the hope that they’ll get away with it – because they are who they are? Really! Isn’t that seriously dumb? Instances of women misusing high office are not unknown, but how many such women exist in the world? And let’s not start counting. We’ll be able to compile the list in under fifteen minutes and count the ladies on the fingers of our hands. While it is true that there have been documented instances of sexual harassment at the work place where a woman is the boss lady, these are again pretty scanty given the pathetic number of boss ladies floating around to start with.

I have an interesting theory : men who taste a huge amount of power get an equally huge sexual kick out of it. They acquire confidence in abundance. In fact, in such abundance that  even their own reflection in the mirror lies to them. They see themselves as Hercules, Atlas, Bradley Cooper,Brad Pitt,Salman Khan, Adonis, Shiva all rolled into one. Their self image goes into stratosphere and after that happens, there’s no stopping them. I mean, look at Dominique… or  General David Petraeus. Neither is a Greek God. Sorry to say this, but which woman would willingly want to bed either of these two sad specimens? Are they that stupid to think gorgeous ladies are falling head over in heels with their… err… personality? Prowess in bed? The startling answer is - yes! I have watched absolute toads in action, hitting on women across the board, convinced it was their physical attractiveness the gals were succumbing to. I have noted the contemptuous expression in the eyes of the women playing this dangerous game as they flatter these toads and lead them on…. to their eventual ( and deserved) doom. I have sympathized with the long suffering wives cringing on the sidelines. That’s how power affects certain men.

Funny, but powerful women generally pay for success with their sexuality. They swiftly lose it! They cannot afford to be seen as sexually active creatures once they are in that hot seat. For such women, power provides those elusive orgasms. They no longer need a man for that basic pleasure. It is rare to come across a really serious Power Lady who regards power as an aphrodisiac. Most such women wind down sexually and focus all their energies on getting ahead in their chosen fields. There is also that little statistic that has to do with age. Women who get to the top are generally on the other side of thirty five, if not older. Their sex drive at this critical stage is not at its most aggressive, in any case. If they want ‘it’ and don’t have the time or energy for it, they are not about to curl up and die of frustration. Men who are in a position to get it up and get ‘it’  even at the age of seventy and over, will rarely pass up…. or lie back and think of their country instead. Are things about to change? Who knows? There is all that useless talk about Cougars on the prowl. About predatory women who behave like Strauss Kahn and worse. I am not convinced. When was the last time we heard about a majorly successful female executive attacking a butler in her hotel suite? In her position, what she’s likely to want more – much more – than instant sex with a stranger, is some quiet time and sleep! Both are in short supply. And a whole lot cheaper, too!