Desicritics Category: Culture: Social Issues

Alone, White, and Female in India

Deepa Krishnan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:53:23 EDT

On a travel forum recently, a young Polish woman asked: "I am planning to go to India and would be grateful if you could tell me whether it is safe for me to go there alone. If someone has any experience in travelling on his/her own, please post your comments"

Lots of people offered her advice; most of which centered around dressing modestly (preferably in a salwar kameez!), not getting too familiar with strangers, avoiding isolated areas and dark alleys, and so on. Among the many people who offered advice, there was one gentleman who suggested she carry pepper-spray. This led to a protest by some others - What?? Pepper spray!!?? Why are you scaring tourists away from India??

Co-incidentally, I had just been reading a city magazine, a 'Women's Special', with a whole page devoted to staying safe in cities - and among the five things they listed was pepper spray!

So what's the right advice for this lady? Should she stick to big cities? Are they safer, or are they more dangerous than smaller towns? Are some states safer than others? As I heard various points of view, I felt obliged to conclude that there is no single truth when it comes to female safety in India.

But that doesn't mean there are no conclusions to be drawn! I travel alone, frequently, to different parts of the country, and from my own interactions with men, I find that some parts of the country are disconcertingly hostile to women and disparaging of their bodies, whereas other places are a delight.

I was in Orissa recently, and I have to say I did not encounter one single lecherous man; it was a fantastic experience. I have spent two years in Calcutta, again, without so much as a single nasty incident in spite of late nights and odd hours.

I would rank Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi among my list of difficult places for solo women travellers. (I have not been to Bihar, but I confess I have no great expectations from the state that produced Laloo Prasad Yadav). Other than Orissa and Bengal, I would rank Kerala among my nicest travel experiences, followed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa (in no particular order). I have no experience of the north-eastern states.

Of course, this is all based on personal and anecdotal stuff, and is therefore open to bias, but I suspect many Indian women would agree with me. If you don't agree, that's fine too. There is no necessity for consensus here. Irrespective of which state is better and which is worse, what I'm trying to say is that there seem to be some regional trends in the behaviour of men towards women.

I am puzzled by these differences. Surely we are all not that different from each other? Maybe it’s just that places which are more hidebound and stuck in the dark ages are more difficult for women? With a social structure that does not value women, it is that much more difficult to get the basic respect you deserve. But Tamil Nadu with its high female foeticide doesn't value women either...so it's hard to explain why I feel safer in Chennai than in Delhi. Again, this is also a sweeping generalisation. Some parts of Delhi (and I am writing this sitting in Delhi) are extremely safe and very nice to be, and some very nice guys I know are from Delhi. But I don't feel the same "body freedom" in the crowded lanes of Chandni Chowk as I do in the equally crowded Pondy Bazaar or Bhuleshwar or Gariahaat markets. Why? I wish I knew.

Sigh - so - going back to the young Polish woman - while there is no single truth about the Indian men she will encounter, the fact remains that she is likely to go through some not-so-pleasant experiences if she is travelling solo. Let's face it, this is a difficult country for single white women to travel. The average Indian man assumes that white women are alley cats and are potentially available - why else would they flaunt their bodies in public places, right? To add to this is the depressingly common lesson which most young men receive at the hands of their older friends - that's it's perfectly alright to ogle and whistle and grope and treat women badly. Indeed, it is very *masculine* to do so, as Hindi movies so brilliantly illustrate. It's not just white women who get the lecherous idiocy - the same disgusting treatment is accorded to very modestly dressed local women as well. It's a grim story, and one that always makes me want to decimate the entire male race :)

To the lady who asked the original question, I say, pack that pepper spray, girl! You may not need it, but you'll feel better with it in your purse.

Abusing the British Welfare State

DesiGirl — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:38:59 EDT

The BBC’s Famous, Rich and Jobless (telecast at 9.00 pm on March 10, 2010) seems another in the long list of “Celebrity tourism”, as the Guardian puts it, to grace our television. A bunch of “celebs” visited various members of the public who are living purely on benefits to see if they can help them.

That the rationale behind the show was shaky as hell is another topic altogether. What I want to discuss is the issue raised by one of the celebs, Diarmuid Gavin, as he visited a big family receiving £29,500 a year from the state. 28-year-old Mum and 29-year-old dad are both jobless and mum is pregnant with her sixth child. They live in a massive six-bedroom detached house and the dad hadn’t had a paying job in seven years.

Of course, this small fact doesn’t deter him from having more and more babies, that the taxpayer pays for. When Diarmuid asks the wife what she feels about sponging off the state, she points to her husband and goes “it is his fault! He wants a big family.”

That left me speechless.

How can you have a child without figuring out how you are going to provide for its future? When you yourself do not have a job, how can you have more and more children?

Answer: Quite easy. Get the state to pay for it.

There was some sob story in the offing, of course, why the dad hadn’t got off his backside and found himself a paying job in 7 years but I don’t buy it. Both husband and wife used to do menial jobs before and chances of them pulling in £30000 a year are slim. But now, thanks to the gazillion kids, they not only have the money, they even have other perks like rent, council tax etc that are paid by the state, aka, taxpaying mugs like you and me.

Apparently, the sick bastard labelled ‘British Fritzl’ was “driven by child benefit greed” and kept raping his daughters and having babies with them because he got child benefits! Ba$tard wants a plush lifestyle and instead of going out there and working his butt for it, he impregnates his daughters repeatedly and bills the state for the childcare.

If these are not examples of gross abuse of the British welfare state system, I do not know what is.

I say give the benefits to the old, the infirm, those who cannot fend for themselves. The OAPs who die every winter because they cannot afford to pay their heating bills, give them the money. The disabled person who cannot go out there and earn her daily bread, give her the money to look after herself. The others, able-bodied ones who are sitting in the comfort of their six-bed taxpayer-funded life, get over yourself and go out there and get a paying job.

I used to work for a social research agency and one of my projects was working on the incapacity benefits – who was receiving them, how much and what was their status. The findings made my blood boil. Whilst there were genuine applicants, there were many who, despite their claims to go out there and work if given a chance, would rather sit comfortably and watch the benefit cheques come in month after month.

I say the simplest way to reduce the massive deficit is to completely rehaul the benefits system. If guys like the father-of-five-with-one-on-the-way had to pay their own way, I am sure they would stop whingeing and get a vasectomy first and a job next.

Systems Thinking and Counter-intuitive Nature of Social Systems

Sumanth — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:01:15 EDT

In the forward to the book "Order out of Chaos" by Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine, Futurist Alvin Toffler wrote:

One of the highly developed skills in contemporary Western Civilization is dissection: The split-up of problems into smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again.

What Alvin Toffler said was profound. He actually pointed at obsessive reductionism and lack of wisdom in Western civilizations in understanding and designing systems to solve complex social problems. I do not have to give examples from recent history of Middle East, Iraq or Afghanistan to prove this fact.

In the 90s, I spent couple of years doing research on complexity, computer simulation of complex process and learning systems apart from avidly reading some of Alvin Toffler’s books. I was passionate about the whole “Systems Science”. I wondered if mathematics of dynamical systems(link) can be applied to complex disciplines like management, sociology and psychological Sciences.

Then, I came across some work on “Systems Thinking” by Peter Senge, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. That led me to work that Jay Forrester did on “Systems Dynamics” at MIT. That made a connection between Control Theory(link) and Social Dynamics. (Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge, System Dynamics)

Systems Thinking is, more than anything else, a mindset for understanding how things work. It is a perspective for going beyond events, to looking for patterns of behavior, to seeking underlying systemic interrelationships which are responsible for the patterns of behavior and the events. Systems Thinking embodies a world-view; A world-view which implies that the foundation for understanding lies in interpreting interrelationships within systems; Interrelationships which are responsible for the manner in which systems operate. Interrelationships which result in the patterns of behavior and events we perceive.

When we go beyond the linear cause and effect paradigm to study patterns of behavior and then to study the systemic interrelationships among the parts of systems we develop a much deeper understanding of the nature of the way things operate; an operational understanding, which can allow us to work with the system rather than against it. An understanding which allows for the development of interventions to create lasting change within the system, if that is the desired intent.

Jay Forrester writes

Society becomes frustrated as repeated attacks on deficiencies in social systems lead only to worse symptoms. Legislation is debated and passed with great hope, but many programs prove to be ineffective. Results are often far short of expectations. Because dynamic behavior of social systems is not understood, government programs often cause exactly the reverse of desired results.

The field of system dynamics now can explain how such contrary results happen. Fundamental reasons cause people to misjudge behaviour of social systems. Orderly processes in creating human judgment and intuition lead people to wrong decisions when faced with complex and highly interacting systems. Until we reach a much better public understanding of social systems, attempts to develop corrective programs for social troubles will continue to be disappointing.

Then, he throws the bombshell:

The human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave. Social systems belong to the class called multi-loop nonlinear feedback systems.

The basic principles of Systems Thinking are listed below and they are based on mathematics of dynamical systems. Their application is very simple. Whenever, a policy maker violates any of these principles (which can be used as a checklist), then one can look for a disaster waiting to happen.

1) Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."

2) The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.

3) Behavior will grow worse before it grows better.

4) The easy way out usually leads back in.

5) The cure can be worse than the disease.

6) Faster is slower.

7) Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.

8) Small changes can produce big results...but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. (Most obvious solutions for complex social problems can be at best useless and at worst dangerous)

9) You can have your cake and eat it too ---but not all at once.

10) Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.

11) There is no blame.

It is very easy to see that a lot of these principles get violated by political parties and governments worldwide. The feedback systems create havoc across the world economies as the bubbles get burst and the coupled systems swing wildly impacting lives of billions of people.

These principles of systems thinking can result in different patterns or structures of behaviour called “archetypes”. Some examples of Archetypes are: Fixes that fail, Accidental adversaries, shifting the burden.

Why are Social Systems counter-intuitive?

Humans are inherently limited in thinking that cause and effect are closely linked in time and space. For example, you touch a hot stove and you immediately feel a burning sensation on your hand. However, in social systems, the cause and effect are often far removed in time and space, which completely deceives the policy makers.

The simple example is: Imagine there is 8 second delay in the steering wheel of your Car. That is, when you turn it left, it does not respond immediately and it starts turning only after 8 seconds. Now, consider there is a 20 second time delay in your accelerator pedal. Imagine when someone calls you on cellphone, the speed of your car doubles. Now, imagine driving such a Car at 50 miles per hour in a test track. That Car will take you for a ride.

Social systems seem to be slow, but they are much more complex than this example and they take the policies and interventions for a ride. That is what dangerous time delays and couplings in space and time can do. Human mind is not adapted to interpret such multi-loop nonlinear feedback systems. One policy intervention creates multiple effects and side effects over different periods of time at different locations in space (say in the country). These side effects in turn are misinterpreted and polices are implemented to counter these side effects. This entire process takes one very far from real solution or original intentions. The problems do not get solved, but the interventions produce some more severe problems. Then, societies deal with both.

We just have to look at problems in Middle East, Iraq or Afganistan to appreciate this idea.

Jay Forrester adds further.

Social systems exhibit a conflict between short-term and long-term consequences of a policy change. A policy that produces improvement in the short run is usually one that degrades a system in the long run. Likewise, policies that produce long-run improvement may initially depress behavior of a system. This is especially treacherous. The short run is more visible and more compelling. Short-run pressures speak loudly for immediate attention.

Attractive Policies can Create Disaster.

For example, usage of certain pesticides in a farm can lead to reduction in pests for some months and then the pests increase rapidly in spite of usage of the same pesticide. So, what happened? The pesticide initially started killing off one category of pests. However, this category of pests used to feed on other pests more immune to the pesticide. As the pesticide killed the predatory pests, the other pests immune to pesticide started breeding and took over the farm.(link)

Then, I read in newspapers that dowry problem has spread all over India as more and more laws are enacted, crime against women is increasing at a rapid rate and women in US are unhappier compared their grandmothers after 40 years of campaigns and struggles. Now, I know, why India has much less crime rate than US in spite of India's corrupt police and dysfunctional judicial system.

What happened? When you push a complex system harder, the harder it pushes you back. There are only a very few points of influence in such chaotic systems(link), which are highly sensitive to initial conditions. These points of influence are not at all obvious. It’s like those kid’s fairy tales, where a demon has hidden his heart in some box somewhere and to kill him, you need to locate that box. It is very certain that the System pushed the policies back harder as the counter-intuitive non-obvious solutions were discarded due to rhetoric, populism or lack of understanding of how systems work.

I have every reason to believe that wild rhetoric on victimhood of women with false statistics, contributed to a rise of “female foeticide” in urban India and it worsened the already existing situation by disempowering educated parents, who may have actually fought against the bias.

Similarly, a law against acid attacks may actually lead to rapid increase in incidents. The massive newspaper coverage of enactment of the law followed by victim stories may spread the idea (of use of acid) to many pathologically sick criminals. At present a few hundred people get attacked by acid every year. After the news, thousands may in fact think of storing acid at home as a weapon for their own self defense and that will create a far worse problem than what it is today.

If 33% seats are reserved for women in Parliament, it may lead to more laws in favour of women. However, soon there can be a small strongly held “male vote bank” and women candidates may compete with each other for “appeasement of males” in the constituency. Being women, these elected representatives will face less chance of being labeled as anti-women, so they will be more confident in cutting off privileges bestowed up on women now.

Systems Thinking can be applied to all dynamical systems starting from teams in corporates, to management, economic systems, stock markets, social movements for change and Government policies. All it requires for one is to train oneself in this alternate way of thinking by taking non-linearity, circular influences/feedbacks and multiple side-effects in time and space into account. One can also use various computer simulation and modeling tools to simulate and play with the complexity. It’s like a “social or management flight simulator”. One can see some such simulations in Wikipedia link on Systems Dynamics.

It is possible to create self-organizing and self-replicating learning organizations(link) to bring change, when one uses the principles of systems thinking at its core.
References:
1) A Guide to Learning System Dynamics.

2) Generic Structures: Overshoot and Collapse.

3) Generic Structures:Oscillating Systems

4) Archetypes: Interaction Structures

The Culture of Tips and Service Charges

DeeptiA — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 00:04:38 EST

Tips and service charges were always a surprise to me. Initially, in my childhood, there were not too many places to eat out, and many of them were the neighborhood place where you took food from an open serving place, paid at the time when the food was given to you, and either took the food home, or ate in the open, sitting on some sort of plastic chairs. Voila ! No tips or service charges. And then slowly, as one grew up, more restaurants started showing up and we also started going out more. And, a few years ago, came across this concept of something labelled as service charge (I recall the first time that I had gone to a restaurant where there was a small (*) at the bottom of the menu that stated - 10% service charge extra). I ignored that, but guess what, this was my party, and then I got the bill. There was a charge at the bottom called Service Charge - and 10% of the total, wow ! First reaction, why should I pay !! And then the people whom I was with, looked at me, and were like - is this the first time you have been out? This is normal? So I swallowed my pride, my questions, and paid the full amount.

Then, it started becoming more normal, with more and more restaurants charging service charge (and some of them actually putting a notice on the wall stating 10% service charge extra - very tacky). However, I did put in a policy to the effect that no tips if there is a service charge. Not that I was a heavy tipper, since if the bill came to something like Rs. 2000, I would certainly not pay out Rs. 200 or more as a tip, more like Rs. 80-100. In this one, I had full agreement of friends and family (with some dissenters claiming that I paid too much. I also learned that the waiters and others at such places really did not earn too much, and tips were a good way for them to supplement this income. But if I took a taxi or an auto, there was no concept of paying a tip.

Then I learnt that India has a long way to go. In the US, it soon became apparent that tips were not optional, it was supposed to be 10-15% of the bill. Even when I was returning to India, I had booked a luxury limo (company paying for the limo taxi); with friends over there reminding me to tip the driver. Tip the driver for a taxi? Wow! Anyhow, since it was a long distance with an expected rate of around $80-100, the going rate for tipping was around $10. Imagine paying a tip of Rs. 460 for a taxi.

Then a recent tourist trip to Egypt really showed me how much India is backward in this respect. There, as part of the actual rates provided by the local tour operator, there was a paragraph related to tips; with the expected tipping rate of $6 per person per day, increased to $8 per person per day if this was a Nile cruise. I was flabbergasted, since this was a family trip of 8 people, and those dollars were quickly adding up. And when we met the Egypt travel agent, he quickly reminded us of the same, and told us the total expected tips, since the same tips need to be provided to the taxi driver, the waiter, the cook, the doorman, the person who cleaned the rooms, and everybody else. If I paid the travel agent, they would take care of all this; and this was almost non-negotiable. Apparently, the income levels are so level that tips make up a sizable portion of the salary. If you are traveling somewhere, and need to use the rest room, there will be a person outside the rest room asking for a tip of 1 pound to use the rest room, and he is none too polite if you refuse. If you are in a hotel, and look at the rate, there will be a note at the bottom of the menu that for everything, taxes and service charges will be applied extra, and tips are on top of that.

The Filth That We Are Comfortable With

Priyank Chandra — Wed, 3 Mar 2010 02:43:27 EST

There is beauty in all things. What could be filth and garbage to me could be beautiful to others. I concede this point and therefore I try my best to not judge the world. So without delay, I present to you two photographs I took this morning.

The readers are now invited to share their analysis of the aesthetic beauty inherent in these photographs. And do not pretend that you fail to see it. Why else would this be allowed to exist in the midst of one of the most active IT hubs of Bangalore.

A litte background about these photographs. These were taken right next to Bagmane Tech Park, C V Raman Nagar, Bangalore. The lake is adjacent to the tech park and used to be beautiful a long time ago. This tech park is "an eco-friendly tech park". How these mammoth air conditioned buildings, bereft of vegetation, generating massive amounts of wastes and energy needs are eco-friendly is beyond me but that point is irrelevant at the moment. I want to direct the attention of the reader to the plastic that decorates the lake.

This tech park houses some of the biggest companies in the world - HP, Oracle, Samsung and a lot more. So the people working here are extremely well-educated folks - the engineers and the MBAs. Most drive their air-conditioned cars to the offices and then cocoon themselves in the air-conditioned sanitized worlds of cubicles and work. At regular intervals they take breaks to litter the outside world with tea-cups and cigarette buds, before returning to the cocoons of bliss and indifference.

I work in this tech park. I am a part of the indifference. I see the massive amounts of time and resources invested by every company to keep the workplace hygienic. Corporate responsibility dictates that the companies publicly invest money in a lot of noble causes. And yet the surroundings have remained this dirty for many years now. The foreign clients arrive in tinted cars and leave in them, and the employees walk past the garbage without any notice.

This is why I claim that what I see every morning as filth and garbage MUST be beautiful. How else could we the educated and well-off people bear to be pass by it everyday and not feel a sense of repulsion. And kudos to the corporations in playing their part in the indifference that defines the new Bangalore.

Book Review: In an Antique Land

Kim — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:02:09 EST

In an Antique Land was a unique book for me, as its two threads focus on a small town that I grew up in for the first 20+ years of my life and a Country that I have lived in for the last 3 years. So I had a unique connect with this book.

Not so surprisingly, the description of my hometown did not ring a bell as it focused mostly on the town as it existed 800+ years ago. The description of rural Egypt created a veritable clang in my head as I kept thinking to myself "How true" or "Yes, I know someone who would have reacted the exact same way"

This is a book of non fiction. Amitav Ghosh chanced upon a letter between Abraham Ben Yiju, a Jewish merchant living in Mangalore, India, and Khalaf ibn Ishaq from Egypt, written in 1132AD. Part of this narrative focuses on Ghosh's search for more documents relating to Ben Yiju and part of the narrative tries to imagine the world that Ben Yiju lived in.

The other narrative in the book, covers Ghosh's stay in rural Egypt (Mashawy and Lataifa) and it was this section that I found infinitely more interesting and hence hope to pick up his book of essays The Imam and the Indian which promise to shed more light on this phase of his life.

It is in this second narrative that Amitav's gift of story telling is showcased, while in the first narrative it feels stilted, focused on facts and doesn't flow as naturally. Blending history with a a current travelogue is an art perfected by William Dalrymple and sadly in comparison, Ghosh didn't match up.

While Ben Yiju did spend time in Egypt and his letters were written to people living there and most of the surviving documentation came from the Geniza Documents cache from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in the Coptic Cairo area of modern day Cairo and Fustat of Ancient Cairo, this is the only point at which the two narratives seem to meet. For the rest of the book, they just continue parallel to each other.

In the final chapters, when Ghosh heads out towards the tomb of a Jewish Saint in rural Egypt venerated by Muslims and Jews alike, I hoped it would bring about a meeting of the parallel stories, but unfortunately it didn't.

Both narratives on their own are great and very illuminating, I just didn't see the point of putting them together.

Its a great read for someone visiting the Fustat area or interested in observations/revelations from the Geniza Cache or life in Rural Egypt.

The Children of India: A Volunteer Travel Experience

Shelley Seale — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:36:36 EST

The idea of volunteering in another country has long been considered the province of students and recent graduates; images of intrepid twenty-year-old Peace Corps workers in a remote Sierra Leone village might spring to mind. Today, however, the idea has reached far beyond that to become accessible, and highly popular, among travelers of all types and ages.

Even the Peace Corps itself has changed dramatically – from an average age of 24 in its beginning in the 1960s, to 28 as of 2002. Many early retirees and those seeking mid-life career changes are joining up – the oldest Peace Corps Volunteer ever was 86 when he completed his service. Volunteer travel has grown so popular that a term has even been coined for it: Voluntourism.

Companies and websites specializing in voluntourism have sprung up by the hundreds, and volunteer vacations can be found in all parts of the world, doing all kinds of activities – from digging wells for clean water in South America, to working with children living in orphanages. It was this last type of volunteer vacation that hooked me. In 2004, I became involved with a nonprofit based in Austin called The Miracle Foundation, which manages orphanages in India and recruits sponsors and donors to support the children living there. By 2005, I was traveling to India myself, to volunteer in the orphanage.

The children are everywhere in India. They fill the railway stations, the cities, the shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many are homeless, overflowing the orphanages and other institutional homes to live on the streets. I had no way of knowing just how much they would change my life.

India was everything I had imagined it would be – only more so. More colors and smells, more noises and people, more everything. It was an assault on all the senses at once. The cacophony that greeted me was jarring after the peaceful countryside I had gazed down on from the airplane. There seemed no still or quiet space. Instead there were throngs of people everywhere, living and working and sleeping; hundreds of street vendors lined every available inch of sidewalk, while mangy dogs and cows nosed at piles of trash around them.

Rickshaw drivers pedaled through traffic alongside schoolgirls with their braided hair and backpacks. The smell of curry and incense hung thick in the air along with soft chanting from nearby temples. The dusty roads peppered with potholes were filled with a constant stream of buses, bicycles, rickshaws, cars and cows and rising over it all was the constant, blaring beep-beep of the horns. It was the most alive place I had ever been. India is too big to describe adequately, too big perhaps to absorb in a single lifetime. The country simply wrapped itself around me and refused to let go.

There was also what everyone, including myself, expected of India – despair, filth, destitution. The trash that lined the roads and the beggars that tapped at car windows. The deteriorating buildings, the ragged street hawkers, the shanty village along the river banks. The frantic poverty that would not let me rest.

At home, these things are hidden neatly away as much as it is possible to do so. But in India, everything is in full view; nothing is hidden. Its rawness of life strips away the unnecessary - distractions, superficial attachments, trivial worries. Without this safety net life becomes fundamental, only the essentials of being, and causes you to be fully present in your own existence. You become lost, in order to find.

And even still, there was beauty in the midst of it. The vitality of life teeming all around, the jangling of bangles and ankle bracelets, the colorful saris, the carved temples with swaying trees surrounding it all. The tremendous scale of the monuments, palaces and art from one of the first great civilizations left me stunned, as did the strange way there was a deep-seated peace even in the midst of tumultuous movement and clamor. The wonderful and the abject co-exist side by side. Though the country struggles with the indigence of large numbers of its population, it is far from a poor place.

And in the children this beauty seemed to come alive, almost making me believe it was a living entity I could capture in my hands. I arrived at the orphanage expecting it to be a sad place, an emotionally wrenching experience. But those expectations were turned on their head. Yes, there were stories behind each of the children – many of them painful and tragic. Stories of death, abandonment, abuse, poverty. They all had a past.

Yet the couple who ran the home, the house mothers and teachers there, the other volunteers, all made these kids their own in a community of sharing and acceptance. They were poor in wealth but not in spirit; limited in resources but not in joy and laughter. An interior peace shown from inside them that was unknown – unsought even – by many people rich in resources. Their hope and resilience amazed me time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired me.

Even in the most deprived circumstances they are still kids – they laugh and play, perhaps far less frequently than others; they develop strong bonds and relationships to create family where none exists; and most of all they have an enormous amount of love to give - for nothing more than showing up. The very existence of these children forever altered both the person I was and my view of the world. India shows us where our suffering lies, and in this way becomes more than anything else a teacher, if only we are open to learn from her.

Photography Times: The Sumatran Tiger

Vidhya — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:41:50 EST

It was a bright sunny warm winter afternoon. And the objective of the day was to get a few shots of one of the most majestic creatures of the human times. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorizes the Tiger as "Critically Endangered", which makes it just one step away from being "Extinct in the wild" and two steps from "Extinct".

My first sight of the Sumatran tiger was when he was fast asleep. The ranger told me the Tiger was done with its midday meal, so not surprising. But what was surprising, was how the Tiger slept!

He rested his head on the arm of the wooden bed that became the pillow and rested its arms over the side planks that looked as if he was hugging another pillow.

It was time to wait until I could catch more glimpses of the tiger. There was a shady corner where I took seat over an overgrown root of a tree and started munching some Bourbon biscuits. The sun was warm overhead on an otherwise great day for photographing tigers.

The wait was finally over as the Tiger raised his head and stared at the pile of rocks, trees and the onlookers right ahead. I sprang to my feet forgetting I was actually recovering from a ligament sprain and sprinted into the corner that would keep me at a comfortable angle to watch the tiger. He got up from his slumber and walked past and down his rocky bed as majestically as only he could.

The walk continued for the next minute as he seemed to look around searching for a shady corner. Wonder if he had spent too much time outside of his native land, that he got used to alien weather, rather than the hot and humid conditions of Sumatra. Once he found a corner protected by the shade of the large rocks, he made himself comfortable to cool down from his sleep.

Now came the yawn.

Statistics say, there are less than 500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild. Deforestation is a major threat to the Sumatran Tiger and the continuing loss of habitat is intensifying the crisis to save this tiger.

Movie Review: Dharm - Unfairly Snubbed

Aditi Nadkarni — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:39:00 EST

Dharm, a Sanskrit word that for some means duty and for yet others signifies religion. We often hear this word used by religious preachers and at other times by leaders of political parties looking to pander to the majority Hindus in India. This term was heard when a mob needed some sort of a philosophy to bind them as they went about adhering to no scripture, driven by fury alone.

This film tells the story of Pandit Chaturvedi (Pankaj Kapur), a well-respected and stringent Hindu priest who adheres strictly to the writ words of Hindu scriptures. The pandit provides key religious advice to the families residing in the holy city of Benaras, at the banks of river Ganga. The touch of a low caste prompts him to bathe in the holy waters and his wife (Supriya Pathak) has to cleanse herself before she prepares his meals. Then one day an orphan left at their doorstep makes his way into their lives and warms the heart of the otherwise stoic and unyielding priest. Little Kartikeya grows up, his adoptive father's pet, performing religious rites, reciting verses alongside his beloved "babuji". His innocence remains untouched by the mounting communal discontent that occasionally disrupts into religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in the city. Amidst these tensions, Kartikeya's birth mother shows up to claim her son. As she walks into the pandit's door clad in a burkha, neighbors and patrons gather to watch, aghast. The boy is sent away with his Muslim birth mother in a heart wrenching scene, his cries are drowned in the enormity of the religious calamity that has fallen upon the priest's family for having adopted a Muslim child. The pandit's home is promptly cleansed, severe religious penances are performed and yet the priest's inner struggle continues, eating him up inside. He is torn between the love he feels for the child he sent away in a heartbeat and his duty towards the religion he represents. As the self-proclaimed protectors of Hinduism crazed with vendetta unleash violence through the city, this Hindu priest defies all that he has valued and reaches a revelation that changes not only his own life but of those that surround him and revere him.

When watching the film, the sensitivity with which each scene had been conducted immediately suggested the touch of a female director. Bhavana Talwar's handling of the characters is remarkable. She seems to have identified real people rather than characters for her film. Whether it be the staunch Pandit, his obedient wife or the child that tugs at your heartstrings, Talwar takes her time with each persona. Pankaj Kapur's performance is a testimony to the neglected and yet prodigious talent our film industry houses. An actor who has given us films like Ek Doctor Ki Maut and Ek Ruka Hua Faisla continues to loyally work in the shadow of a giant, the all consuming commercial film industry that allows little to no platform for performers like him. Hrishita Bhatt, stands out in the role of a young girl who falls in love with a foreigner seeking spiritual guidance under the tutelage of Pandit Chaturvedi.

This film is excruciatingly moving. It forces one to empathize with characters who in our every day lives we could never relate to. The religious discontent juxtaposed with the innocence of a child offers a stark contrast that leaves one emotionally and spiritually exhausted. The blood shed and the inciters of these harrowing incidents that swallow our cities are all revealed, their intentions, insecurities and motives scrutinized. The upholders of religion are exposed and so is the true character of those whose spiritual awakening finally leads us out of darkness. This film is not about the chaos that hatred leads us into but of the humanity that pulls us out of it, unscathed.

I found this film on Netflix after I searched for films starring Pankaj Kapur, one of my favorite actors who I have not seen since the Blue Umbrella. Having watched this film, I was so overcome with curiosity at never having heard about it before, that I did some quick online searches for it and found out what sounded like a joke, an April Fool's prank. How I was not aware of this blunder committed almost three years ago is beyond me. Apparently, this spectacular film about religious relations in India that is especially relevant in today's times was passed over as India's Oscar submission in favor of, get this, a mediocre film called Eklavya starring Amitabh Bachhan and Saif Ali Khan.

Eklavya had all the makings of a commercial film and a story with as many holes in it as Swiss cheese. It was a glossy entertainer with great cinematic visuals and the beautiful backdrop of Rajasthan and yet was most certainly not a moving film with a global appeal. All it had was an established and commercially viable star cast. Yet it beat out a film like Dharm which won our National Award and the Nargis Dutt Award for a film promoting national integration. It is even more shocking that our media and our audience does not create adequate hue and cry over such blatant unfairness by the subcommittee that decides the film that is submitted for an Oscar. In a film fraternity that goes weak in the knees at the mention of the name Bachhan, local awards are hard to come by for such films as well. In the year that Eklavya was sent in as India's official entry to the Oscars, brilliant films such as Dharm, Vanaja and Black Friday stood as major contenders and were duly ignored. I wonder how these filmmakers must feel when their masterpieces are dismissed in this manner by their peers in the arts and performance industry which should ideally define a haven for nurturing talent and relatively devoid of political corruptness. Who are these people on the committee that send out films on behalf of an entire nation? Year after year they send out stories, that to a foreign audience represents us Indians. I do not know enough about the process that goes into nominating a film for Oscar submission but the selection of films such as Heena, Jeans, Devdas and Eklavya would suggest that these members are not qualified to be making decisions about what kind of a film would be appreciated by a universal audience and that at times their decisions seem to be motivated by inexplicable political derivatives. Have of them watched an Oscar winning foreign film?

An Oscar may not define our successes in cinema, but the submission process and the errors, political gaffes or unscrupulous actions committed during the submission process sheds light on why the largest film industry in the world has still failed to make it's mark as far as world cinema is concerned. In Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Pankaj Kapur plays the role of a doctor who through years of hard work comes upon a major medical breakthrough. His elation at having made this groundbreaking discovery however is short lived when he realizes that his jealous and less talented peers have decided to snub him and are making every effort to ensure that he does not receive credit for his work, much like the committee that decided to ignore Talwar's superb effort.

Homosexuality Versus Violation of Privacy

Aditi Nadkarni — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:04:22 EST

Dr.Siras, reader and chairman of Modern Indian Languages at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), was filmed having consensual sex with a same sex partner in his on-campus home without his knowledge. This video was then sent to his university employees. This likely seems the work of a group of pranksters looking for either entertainment or the settling of some scores. Some media outlets speculate that a local news channel may have been involved in this "outing" which I find bizarre.

Our media is now invested in splashing private sex lives over the news? When did that happen? It is very easy for the decent and thinking ones among us to pick out the victim and the perpetrator in this situation. If a heterosexual couple were filmed having sex in their own home, practically everyone would immediately conclude that the couple were innocent victims of a gross violation of their privacy. Would it matter if they were doing it doggy style or in the missionary position when they were filmed without their knowledge? I don't think so. It would be a slam dunk case where police would have gone after the people who filmed the video without Dr.Siras's knowledge and Dr.Siras would've eventually been able to file a lawsuit against the perpetrators. Right? Well, apparently, our societal morals and ethics depend upon a person's sexual orientation. AMU has pronounced this as grievous conduct on part of the professor to have sex in his own home and has suspended him.

It is an interesting time in India for homosexuality and sexuality in general. We as a society have never been openly homophobic or openly opinionated at all about anything remotely sexual. We don't talk about it. We just do it and then shush other people when they bring it up. As a nation we are all secretly homophobic, especially the men of our masses, the ones who adjust their crotches in public and molest women in trains as a mark of their machoism. They might not go around bashing homosexuality in public like the right-wing Christians do in the United States but they do their bit. Raani, chhakka, hijhda, all code for eunuch, are the terms they have coined to add to the existing offensive nomenclature for those whose sexual orientation does not quite fit with rigid ideas of who should sleep with who. Our commercial filmmakers gingerly broach homosexuality in films, often doing more damage than good for the LGBT community in India. Gay men are portrayed as weak, overtly effeminate and used mostly as comic relief in films thus successfully reinforcing popular and damaging stereotypes. I have personally witnessed college kids torment a classmate who is not into girls or does not invest into building a macho image. We all watch people being teased or left out but how many of us speak up? I grew up in this very society and yet when I see a gay couple, I see a couple. When I see homophobia, I see irrationality driven by fear of the unknown.

When I first read about this case, I desperately hoped that the story would be about how AMU stood by their professor and how the police immediately were on the case, looking for the people who had violated Dr.Siras's privacy. I set myself up for disappointment. In my mind, academia and media are the the outer, growing fringe of our society's thought map defining how progressive we are as a populace, they make up the forward moving wave on which intellectuals ride out and set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd. In this case, it was television reporters who allegedly filmed a man having sexual relations within the confines of his own home and then a university condoned this by castigating the professor because the form of sex he was having was not appealing to them. When media and academia promote regressive thinking it comes as more of a shock than it would have if it were say a political party doing it to pander to voters or a religious group looking to recruit. This sort of thing could happen to any of us. Even if you, my reader, may not be a homosexual, I am pretty sure you do things in your own home that you would not want media filming and showing to your employers, right? I guess 15th August is just a public holiday then.

History is witness that it takes times like these to brew a revolution. It takes nerve to side with the right kind of morality, the one that does not pause in doubt and morph into something unrecognizable when overcome with prejudice, intolerance or fear. In my opinion, the LGBT community in India needs to empower themselves and be more vocal. A lot of homosexual individuals do not make their presence known. They prefer to lead privately gay lives often offering up the understandable explanation of "My sex life is nobody's business". Sure. And this attitude may afford them a relatively drama free life, but as a community it will not bring them to the status of equal citizens with equal treatment unless they come forward and fight for it. Today in the face of this scandal, Dr.Siras according to a news report is voluntarily leaving the university. There are so many gay individuals who avoid a scandal and walk away from the mess, not demanding their rights or questioning the raw deal they are dealt.

Last year, Chief Justices Shah and Muralidhar made me proud when they mandated that Section 377 was inapplicable to consenting sex between adults in private. They noted that, “Constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view.” It was a small, yet mighty step in the right direction. And now, a group of idiotic television reporters and the Aligarh Muslim University has brought us a few steps back again.