Not Classy

Two separate events that I noticed recently have set me thinking about our notions of class and what constitutes it, therefore affecting our ideas on how we ought to behave towards ‘People like us’ and ‘People Not like us’. Make no mistake, PLUs and PNLUs are two very distinct sets of people entitled to different norms of respect or even just, ordinary courtesy.

The first of these wasn’t actually an event. I’ve been watching recently the new HP laptops advertising, with the King Khan as model. Now, the King Khan changes whatever he touches to gold, or so it seems the makers of the ad do think. Why else would someone bother with such a silly ad. The execution is poor, with a simpering ‘phoren’ model and little focus on the brand itself. The hope is that the charm of white skin will seduce all male viewers since fair can never fail to attract, never mind how un-lovely the acting. Besides that, there was one scene which caught my attention. The attendant at the HP showroom interrupts Shakrukh while he is trying to impress the girl (posing as an attendant himself), and Shakrukh shooes away the poor man, saying “Go, go…..”. Now this Go, go is uttered in a tone much like one would use with a stray dog. On second thoughts, I take that back – one would probably be kinder to a stray dog, but yes, it is ofcourse acceptable to speak like that to a sales attendant. It was quite trivial, but it struck me that we don’t seem to think twice before speaking to a certain class of people in a certain manner, namely, leaving out all the common courtesies which we would otherwise use with PLUs. This is reflected in turn, in our advertising.

Now to real life. Today, while in queue at the ATM, I saw a woman outside the door knocking for the security guard to open the door for her. The guy inside was just on his way out, so the guard asked her to wait for a minute. I could practically see the filmi dialogue inside her mind, “Iski aukaad kaise…” She didn’t actually say that, but she shook her fist at him and mouthed clearly, “you stupid”. I wondered, would she have dared to talk like that to any of the other well dressed people standing in the queue.

So what is it which makes us forget all our norms of nice-ness and feel that it is ok to be obnoxious to some people – salespersons, security guards, delivery boys, office peons, assorted people who just don’t look as well educated as us or speak the English with the right accent that we have? I’ve read occasionally about how the original system of caste has played a role in how we see us versus others. Still, in urban areas these days, notions of caste are breaking down. It is perhaps true though that the caste system has left us with notions of which professions are superior and which are not. So, anything intellectual with three and a half degrees attached to it is great, while anything related to physical labor or non-intellectual activity is rubbish. I could ofcourse be wrong here, not being an academic in these matters, but in practice, it does seem to work that way.

Another reason seems to do with power by virtue of superior economic or other status. We can be obnoxious in situations where we feel we can get away with it by and the other person does not have the power to confront us for our obnoxiousness. Imagine a waiter asking a nauseatingly loud and offensive customer to pipe down. The chaos that would ensue!

Never having lived in another culture, I am not sure if this is something unique to Indians. If power is the key (and the economics behind power), then it would seem that such behavior based on class distinction should be the norm everywhere. Popular fiction and movies seem to belie this however.

Whether or not this is something unique to us as a culture, there is no justification for it – I mean, even if the whole world behaves this way, surely it is wrong to deny some human beings the dignity to which they are entitled, simply because we don’t think they are educated enough or wealthy enough or any other reason that makes sense to us. I think its time we started doing a little introspection on the way we behave, not just to PLUs, but PNLUs and everyone else out there…Why, maybe, its time we started looking at the underlying basis of those classifications, and see if we can’t break them down a little!

Another world

Last night I dreamt that I was walking through my old school again. It was larger and cleaner than it had ever been. I walked through the old cycle shed behind the classrooms where we used to pile up our bikes, slanted against the wall, falling one on top of another until you couldn’t tell spinning handlebar from wheel. So I walked through the cycle shed and discovered that everything had changed. There were no cycles anymore, no dirty walls to prop them on – it was a wide field with grass high enough to skim my knees, and when I looked further, I could see a swing on which a kangaroo was swinging. His spindly legs were on the slat, well above my head, and his head was towering up in the air, bobbing side to side as the swing went up and down.

I walked past him, with my head pulled down towards the grass, gravity or fear, I could not be certain. Soon the knee high grass gave way to even taller structures that rose to my shoulder as I walked on into the African grasslands, no tear in the fabric of time, as it flowed past me. Where did this world end, and the new one begin? No line was visible, no mark of plough, no stamp of muddy feet, no trail in the sky above, no flowing water as guide. Time was indeterminate, standing still on a landscape of dry grass yellow and somber sky blue stretching to the horizon, which is the end of time.

I found a glimpse of moving ochre, a conjunction of power and audacity, a lioness, pacing the distance slowly. I was no one anymore, struggling to obliterate myself, hoping to disappear from that evil eye so powerful. I waited silently for morning, although I knew there would be no rescue. Sometimes, things are true even when they don’t seem to be.

A writer

“So what do you do, Rama?” Madan enquires politely.
“I am a writer.”
“Oh. Wow.”

Rama laughs. “Well not in the sense that you think. I do content for a few sites. Some brochures and things like that for companies who don’t want to hire a large agency. Its pretty routine stuff actually.“ She finds it hard to insert a line that she is trying hard to be that kind of a writer. She is working on a first novel, that sweetest and most tiresome of all children. Chapter one is ready, only just, but it’s a beginning after all. She is proud of it, and somewhat embarrassed by the pride.

“I think its wonderful, having your own thing to do. I mean, look at us lecturers, always being ordered around. The principal, the HOD, why, these days, my students are beginning to tell me what I should do. Its so nice to see someone who’s escaped all of that.”

But Rama can tell he doesn’t really mean it. Worse, she feels its only a thin sheath for the curiosity lying underneath, for what he really wants to know, why she doesn’t have a real job. A job made real by the solidity of office blocks and desks, the wickedness of grapevine gossip and the reminder at the end of the month, a dimunitive cheque. She doesn’t resent the curiosity though. She’s used to it by now.

She decides to volunteer the information. That way, he will not be embarrassed when he realises that she cannot understand some of what he is saying. “Well, I had a full time job before. I used to teach as well, at the WCC. But five years ago, I had a bad fall from my scooter when a truck pushed me from behind. Since then, I have some difficulty with my hearing. I mean, its not bad, though my doctors tells me that its likely to grow worse as I grow older. I manage to figure out things using the context if people talk slowly enough.”

She doesn’t tell him though that she tried to get back to work at the college and dropped it after some weeks. It was hard enough to explain, even to her own sister. It would be impossible to explain to a new person that illness morphs you into a different person. Everyone at the college had been more than extremely helpful, less than unbearably patient. In the end, her own awareness of the new limitations being imposed on her, had served to make her put in her papers. She was more comfortable now dealing with a few people on a one-on-one basis rather than a classroom full of demanding students. When she looks at him directly, even a little stridently maybe, to see how he is taking this information, it is interesting to see that he is not disconcerted at all. Only a slight parting of his lips and a leaning forward to take in her words carefully, implies that he has heard anything at all. She likes so few new people, these days. Those whom she knows, increasingly, they seem to shout their words at her, as though she is turning not just deaf, but into an idiot as well. And those whom she doesn’t know, it is becoming harder to read them, in every way. Just as well perhaps. Who knows what uncertain benefits understanding may bring!

A girl with a limp

"Heya, heya, heya," the girl with the limp hollered as she moved towards me.
"What’s with the American accent and all?", I said, “Got a second cousin who lives there?” I hadn’t quite meant this to come out so sneeringly, but it was out before I could clamp my lips and put the words back inside.

We had met at the park only two days ago, and it was early days yet for that kind of talk. But I had had a rough day, a one-of-those-days kind of a day where almost everyone had been impatient or unreasonable or both. Sometimes its tough to tell the difference. Still, on those days, I tend to spit out my words faster than a bullet train going off the rails.

The girl with the limp didn’t seem upset though. Maybe she just didn’t get the sarcasm. I used to know a guy like that when I was in school. Fatty, Fatty, we would scream at him, simply because he was so thin. He was so thin that you could sometimes miss seeing him if there were enough other people around. But he never seemed to mind when we called him fatty. He just went on smiling this beatific smile, this wide-angled smile that ranged over everyone in his orbit, whether or not they wanted to be included.

I didn’t know much about the girl yet. Not what she did, not what she liked, not why she had that peculiar limp, not even her name. Her limp wasn’t like the ones you saw on people whose parents had carelessly forgotten about the polio drops. No, it wasn’t that obvious. Infact, if you saw her from a distance, you would just think that she was walking very slowly, very very slowly, perhaps pausing to watch the poinsettias in the park or halting because of a pinching shoe. But when she came towards you, the limp was visible. It was an abstract imperfection of the legs, a straining caused by no noticeable deformity, and yet manifest in the distance of ten seconds between the contact of one leg with the ground, and then, another.

My white shirt was flecked with mud and grass from the park, leftovers from the few green spots still unpaved by concrete. She perched herself on the railing next to me, only a smile in response to my question. I wanted to ask her many things, didn’t she have anything to do with her evenings, why did she hang out at the park where nothing interesting ever happened, what did she do with her day, what was the mystery about the limp.

She was a bright eyed lady of shalott, her face glowing in the borrowed light of the setting sun. Her smile was slow and subtle, pulling me in too fast, too soon. I was overset by a peculiar attraction, made more attractive by its very strangeness. The limp seemed the key to it, a perverse addition to the appeal.

I stopped analyzing, for a moment, letting myself enjoy the beauty, of a moment that would pass by too soon.

Shanti ki dukaan

I am a South Indian who grew up learning Hindi as a second language; The logic was that my dad working at a transferable job, it would be easier to move schools across the country with a good knowledge of Hindi. As a result, I never learnt my own language Tamil, beyond what my mother taught me at home and a smattering of reading that came from Ananda Vikatan jokes. Not the best way to become familiar with any of the great literature that Tamil has to offer.

What is worse is that neither did I become really really proficient in Hindi. I mean, I can speak fluently, but I am never going to talk like a native speaker. Nor have I developed any intimacy with Hindi literature, despite 12-odd years of Suryakant Tripathi Nirala and Harivansh Rai Bachchan being drilled into my head. Or perhaps because of it. I mean, it would be hard to find more uninspiring, dull and incorrect Hindi teaching than I had. Many Hindi teachers in the South (where I ultimately landed up) had awful pronunciation, sometimes even incorrect grammar, in those days. I am not sure how different the situation is now.

Its only years later when I read Nirmala on my own and not as mandatory course material that I realized that I could enjoy reading Hindi. Still, I’ve ended up as sort of one-language reader primarily, which is sad considering the number of languages I had access to. I am not labeling it sad, just because that one language happens to be English, supposedly a non-English language. I believe that today English has become as Indian a language as any other, yet, access to and familiarity with many languages, I believe, broadens ones horizons. Yes, there is translation, but not everything can match up to the quality of the original. Also, the beauty of the language itself, how do you capture that? Last year, I read the entire Ponniyin Selvan series, in English, and something told me that while the translation sounded smooth, without the awkwardness that sometimes comes from literal rendering, something told me, that I was still missing out on part of the experience.

Infact, these days, I hardly read anything in any language other than English. Scary thought – Am I seeing a gradual lessening of myself, or the self that I could be? Two days ago though, I read some beautiful poetry, courtesy the
Poetry International Site by a poet I haven’t read before: Kunwar Narain.

There was this one poem which particularly appealed to me, called Shanti ki dukaan (A shop that sells peace). I am reproducing it here in English script, since I don’t have devanagari facility. It goes like this:

Mohalle me wah shanti bechta hai
Loudspeakeron ki
Ek dukan hai uski
Mere ghar se bilkul lagi hui

Subeh subeh munhandhere do ghante
Loudspeaker na bajaane ke
Wah mujhse sau rupye maheene leta hai

Wah jaanta hai ki mein
Un abhaagon me se hoon
Jo shanti ke bina
Jeevit nahin reh sakte!

Wah jaanta hai ki aanewale wakton me
Saaf paani aur saaf hawa se bhi jyada
Shanti ki killat rahegi
Wah jaanta hai
Ki kranti ke zamane ab lad chuke:
Ab use apna pet paalne ke liye
Shanti ka dhandha apnaana hai

Mein uska aabhari hoon
Bharat jaise desh me
Jahan keemten aasmaan choo rahi
Sau rupye mahine ki dar se
Agar do ghanta roz bhi shanti mil sake
To mehngi nahin!

Courtesy Poetry International

For those who don’t follow Hindi, the translation is here. I liked the poem though for the way it compiles the simple and the profound. Who hasn’t heard those damn loudspeakers blaring away? Who hasn’t wished for a little peace? At that moment, and at every other moment. Saaf hawa aur saaf pani se bhi jyada shanti ki killat rahegi. In that one line, he captures everything!

After all that time

Its been some time now since I've been away, and I missed this blog more than I thought I would! When I say I missed this blog, I mean the writing, a certain focus that came in because of it, not quite pressure but close to it, the interaction with people I would never have "met" otherwise....I missed all of it. I hope to resume posting regularly now, although the frequency may be a little lower until I get my own computer at home...Office machines don't really make for great posts methinks.

I wanted to share a little bit though about some of the things I've been upto. For starters, I made my first visit to the 'North-East' of India. I say north-east in quotes, because the visit really threw in my face what I had till then only been reading about : There is no single homogenous entity called the North East that we can plug together for the sake of our convenience. I went to Manipur, and within that one state itself, I realised that there are different kinds of people, sometimes divided on ethnic lines, with conflicts among themselves...It seems too convenient then to club all seven states into one catch-all phrase.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that for the first time probably in my life, I really understood what it was to be the 'Other'. Visiting my husband's family there, everywhere I met with kindness, courtesy and thoughtfulness - yet, my own knowledge about the place, people and customs were so low that often I felt like I was in a foreign land, a foreign land where I was a foreigner. It is interesting to note how within the boundaries of this place called India, there can be such diversity.

Ofcourse this cultural diversity, combined with a whole lot of political and economic issues which I am not getting into, has set the stage for this state practically moving even further away from the rest of India than its geographical distance would suggest! I was intrigued to read newspaper headlines such as 'India negotiates with Nagas' as though talking about a third country. It is amazing how little we get to hear in mainstream media about anything that happens in these parts. And believe me, there is plenty happening, some of which, if not addressed, could lead to a chaotic war-like situation that will affect a lot of us, regardless of where we happen to be.

Before I end this comeback post, I want to just lead you to this story although it is unrelated to the rest of my post. But then, without a little Murakami, where would the Wind-up Bird Chronicle be?

Goodbye then!

I am going to be away for a little while, with personal reasons making it unlikely that I will be writing for sometime, maybe a couple of months. My small bunch of readers, thank you for all the kind words, and just the time spent here. I will probably start blogging again, either here, or some place else. Those of you, who feel that you would like to read me again, please drop a note here or at my mail, and I will let you know when I am back. Once again, than you, everybody!

An annual meeting

“So, you really don’t believe in absolute anything? I mean, everything in this world is relative and all that”?, I asked him a little disbelievingly.
“Well, Absolut Cranbrerry is ok with me, and maybe a few other flavours, but yeah, most other things, no, nothing absolute for me, thank you”, he replied, making light of my question.
I threw him my best withering look, which was wasted, because he just wouldn’t catch it. Still, I didn’t give up. “So everything in this world is relative, and I can just get up here and take this sharp knife and slit your throat, and that’s ok?”
“Well, not really, because that would be inconvenient for me, and quite messy. A lot of blood and all that. You don’t want to see that, believe me. Besides, I have a world to think of. So yeah, not convenient at all, but beyond that, it all depends.”

“Depends on what?”I was irritated now by all this relativity talk. In my opinion, things are always a lot simpler than what most people would like them to be. But ask most people, and no, they won’t admit it. They will rub their noses and scratch their ears and give themselves the most thoughtful airs before saying, it’s a most complicated affair. Complicated, my foot. It just makes them feel more important. I mean, who ever got the nobel for writing a book that could be understood easily?
He got up now with some effort, his thick corduroy trousers and tweed coat giving him the appearance of a man who is dressed for winter. It was most incongruous in the mild Madras winter with its twenty-eight degree chill. Going to the small study opening on to the right, he came back with an old-fashioned globe on a wooden stand. I was obviously going to be treated to a demonstration of some sort.

“You see this side of the globe”, he pointed to the part facing me, and explained slowly as though to a first-standard child. “Here is India, and to the east you can see all those small countries, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, so many of them I forget their names. Then China, and then further, Japan. And to the west of India lies Europe and then Africa and last the Americas. Always, Asia is the east, and Europe West. But just imagine, if the ones to make the first globes and the first to conquer the others had been the Asians, then I wouldn’t call Asia the east. I would look to see what is east of me, and that is what I would tag East. I wouldn’t call myself east. Just tilt the globe around, and everything changes. Everything is east of something, something is west of everything.”

It was confusing and took time to understand, but the man made some sense, I had to admit that. Still, it just didn’t tie in that he would be so funnily dressed. And his shoes! What was he thinking of! He wore knee-high boots in a shiny kind of leather, his trousers tucked into them. It didn’t even look genuine.
“Where did you get those from”, I asked him, looking at the shoes. “Is it very cold where you come from?”
“You could say that, I suppose”, he answered with a sly grin, “though I like to think that its more to do with fashion”. If this is what his fashion sense amounted to, I wasn’t too sure about his judgement on other things. Also, what if it was all just a ploy to excuse himself from any kind of responsibility. This way, he could just blame everything on relativity and scoot. Ofcourse there was a bright side to it.

“If everything is relative, then it doesn’t matter at all, that I am still not sure whether I am an atheist or an agnostic? And again, though it possibly doesn’t matter to me whether you exist or not, that too doesn’t matter, since your existence is relative?”That stumped him for a moment. In the end though, he had to agree to that and give me a truthful answer, although he gave it reluctantly, scratching the hairs on his beard sorrowfully. I consented not to stab him with my knife, and he consented to go away. I wished him a good new year and he wished me the same cordially. We agreed to meet again next year, when we would argue about something else.