Taslima Nasreen - OMG

Like most modern platforms - the blog too is unsafe and insecure. This is what I just discovered after inadvertently leaving a comment on another blog - greatbong. The main comment was appreciating a post on the situation in West Bengal - a small after thought was about Taslima Nasreen's presense in Kolkata. So right now even as the hounds are baying for my blood - I shall make an attempt to state my views on Taslima from an immigration point of view - since I write on immigration matters and have some understanding about it. Firstly, the majority of Taslima's supporters - at least on greatbong's blog - are not liberal Leftists but rather the Hindutva brigade. What I gather is that the latter is a very aggressive group who given a chance would bulldoze anyone that comes in their way and reduce them to pulp. Their political opinion has no place for tolerance.
Moving on to Taslima, she enjoys UN refugee status and hence a country like India is in no position to force her to leave. But given the various law and order issues that West Bengal and other states have, I feel a person like her who is a self proclaimed humanist and human rights activist should leave for another country in the West which is better equipped to give her the high level security that she obviously needs. I don't think the government of West Bengal can afford to notch up a huge bill in providing her security and dealing with riots that may occur because of her presence in Kolkata. I'm sure in certain European countries, there is no likelihood of riots because of Taslima but in India it is very likely. Obviously rioting cannot be condoned and should be dealt with aheavy hand. But as experience has shown us, it is always better to avoid riots than deal with them when they happen. The huge loss of lives and suffering that accompanies rioting is absolutely avoidable at all costs, even if it means politely asking Taslima to leave. Also if there's money to spare - instead of using it for Taslima's security - why not use it for the uplift of the girl child in India's villages? Or even for relief to women who are victims of the cyclone in Bangladesh. My very personal opinion is that Taslima is a publicity hungry intellectual - who is putting her own safety at stake by remaining in India. If she moved to say Norway for instance, she would be safer but obviously less visible. That seems to be her main problem. When we come to the issue of granting permanent resident status to her, like all other countries India has the liberty to choose its immigrants. The US even cancelled the short-term visit visa of Narendra Modi because they perceived him to be a threat to peace - so why cant India ask Taslima to leave because she's a threat to peace?
Finally, I cant bring myself to equate Taslima with Salman Rushdie on the grounds that Rushdie is great writer while Nasreen is at best mediocre. Rushdie is a Booker winner and the creator of a new genre in English literature. Surely we cant put him and Nasreen on the same platform. And in any case, India is not offering permanent residence to Rushdie - so why Taslima? If we were to take on the responsibility of granting political amnesty to everyone who's prosecuted by Muslim fundamentalists, we would increase our population by many millions. Do we really have the resources to do that? Read more!

An island of contrasts and tranquility

I'm just back from Singapore - I like it there because it's such a relaxed city, country & island. The shopping is good, the food and drinks are great, the work was good, networking was not stressful and sightseeing very enjoyble. Despite being a financial hub and tourist hub - one of the biggest in SE Asia, life seems to move along at an easy pace. For one thing whether you are a tourist, a business traveller, a single woman - or whatever - you wont get stressed on any issue other than the non-availability of taxis during rush hour.
Of course, besides taxis, there's Singapore's hi-tech MRT system, which easily puts London Underground to shame. Overall, the public transport system is well-oiled and does not take tourists and foreigners for a ride. Security issues for women in Singapore are almost non-existent and the average person on the street is polite, helpful, non-aggressive and service-oriented. For someone who lives in Delhi - that believe me is a very big change. Again the sheer variety that one finds in the island-nation from beaches, to Buddhist temples, awesome dim-sum cuisine and spectacular Hindu temples, tree lined avenues, fascinating highrises, museums, art galleries and sprawling malls - the place has just everything and that too within an average of 15 minutes cab distance of each other. Singapore's China Town is the usual buzzy district with fascinating shopping options and great dim sum cuisine. A special mention could definitely be made of the local Tiger beer.
Mustafa shopping centre which forms the hub of the Indian district, is also very vibrant and good for quick fix and fast track shopping solutions. The upmarket VivoCity Mall, near Sentosa Island, on the other hand is a place to go hunting for designer and luxury brands - or just hang out and soak in the ambience.
Hotel Pan-Pacific where I had put up had a great gym and a swimming pool surrounded by dizzying skyscrapers. The weather too was not a complete wash-out and it rained a bit and was sunny for a bit.
A walk along the Singapore riverfront with a friend and lunch at one of the riverside thai restaurants was a treat - as was dinner with my cute nephews Ghotu & Kabir! Shopping at the malls was pretty good too and I picked up my long-time object of desire - an iPod Nano - from the well-known IT mall Funan. Also took a look at the current blockbuster the iPhone and the sexy PlayStation 3. From Australians to Indians, everyone wants an iPhone, it seems.
And now the Singapore government is looking for Indian immigrants in a big way for skilled jobs. Work permits are processed on the fast track and are not subject to any number quotas. The authorities are also wooing Indian students to some of the top engineering and management institutions. Hope, Indian IT professionals are listening - it's time to look East perhaps and leave behind the H1B worries folks. Read more!

Let's face facts!

I’m now on Facebook! Well if you ask me what I’m doing on a virtual forum that’s largely the domain of 20 somethings, I don’t really have a quick enough answer. For one thing the technology fascinates me. There are all kinds of applications that allow you to do all kinds of interesting stuff related to music, travel, books, entertainment, food, games and tons more. When I need ‘timepass’ stuff, Facebook is turning into my most favourite haunt. Then again there’s a lot that can be done with photographs, which is great too. But it’s not just the technological wonder that has drawn me to Facebook – there’s the social networking thing too.

I had heard a very senior official in the global marketing team of one of the cola majors say in an interview that she along with all her team-mates hung out on areas like Facebook & Orkut to track the trends among the youth globally. Thus, more than social networking, it has turned into a professional necessity too. In a way, for me too there’s a professional compulsion – increasingly, I feel that many organizations in India are turning pro-young in a very active way. And often that leads to isolation of and even discrimination against older people in the organization. And in staying in touch with younger folks – what could be a better place than Facebook?
Of course, the same logic was thrown to me by my friend – the father of a teenager – that he was trying to persuade his daughter not to waste time on things like Facebook and instead spend more time with her studies - so how could he be seen there – sorry he was refusing my invite to join up. Again some friends who are academics don’t exactly want to be seen hanging out on Facebook with their students, that could lead to professional issues. And some others – who work for global listed companies – couldn’t get on Facebook because their employers may object. A few others felt that social networking online has a very serious fallout on their privacy and sometimes security. I can understand that all these issues are serious enough and often I wonder what I’m doing here myself. But then when I look at the diverse group of friends I have on Facebook, I don’t really regret getting on to this platform. From my colleagues – an obvious group – I’m now connected to a friend who’s a top fitness trainer and another one whose Salsa dance video is a big hit in the US. There is a restaurateur in NYC and a top VC in Silicon Valley, and many others from different places and diverse walks of life. There are former colleagues who I haven't met in many years and even friends from school who I thought I'd never meet again. And of course – the most inspiring group – my nephews and nieces – who keep me up-to-date about what’s hip and happening around the world today. So even as I poke people or send them a tequila – I don’t think it’s really a total waste of time! And for Keshu, Megha, Ashwin, Rahul, Iraj, Anand, Arvind, Schaunga & Ishani (Dasgupta) - thanks for hanging out with me. When I meet you on Facebook, I feel young and rejuvenated.
Read more!

A Candle for Heena

I’ve been following the twists and turns of the Rizwanur Rehman & Priyanka Todi case in Kolkata on other people’s blogs. Some of the comments have really set me thinking about the rise of fundamentalist thoughts among the youth today, even in a state like West Bengal where we liked to believe that the religious divide was not so sharp and people were by and large more tolerant.
And even as I follow this case, which has today become very high-profile, I can’t help but think of Heena, an young Muslim girl who was a domestic worker in the apartment block where I live. She's dead and she too died like Rizwanur because she had dared to enter into an inter-communal marriage. The only difference was that there was no-one to fight for justice for her and I don't think anyone even remembers her today after a couple of years.

She worked at my house too and every morning greeted me with the energy and high spirits that only a young girl of that age can have – she was in her late teens, at the most. Heena came from a impoverished family where her father was ill and unable to work. Her step mother and she along with her sisters worked at domestic jobs to earn the living for the family. She had a couple of brothers too, who didn’t seem to have any great jobs. Heena, like many others who worked at people’s homes, often pilfered money from my purse – that was almost an open secret and I had told her off often. However, she didn’t grumble about any extra chores that I asked her to do occasionally and was always in good spirits. During Id she even brought across delicacies that had been cooked at her home for me. And then one morning she didn’t turn up anymore. A few days later her mother came and picked up the work at my place, telling me that Heena had been sent to her grandmother’s place and was to be married soon to a boy that the family had selected for her. A few months elapsed with almost no news of her. Finally, one day she returned looking frail and worn out and very unhappy. She told me that she had rebelled against her family and married a Hindu boy. She was now living with him and his mother at a colony nearby. She needed to have her job back since it was very important for her to earn a living to add to the meager income that her husband earned by doing odd jobs. She told me that her family was very unhappy over her marriage and had cut her off completely. Her father and brothers refused to even meet her, while her step-mother still spoke to her sometimes. She was not allowed back into her home. She had been meeting the Hindu boy before and both of them were keen on marrying each other – but what forced them to go against her family and marry in a hurry was the fact her family was forcing her to marry her first cousin who was many years younger than her. So for a few months she worked again with me though she had lost her verve and her youthful vigour. Money seemed to be a problem and she was taking on many jobs – she had lost a lot of weight and looked stressed most of the times.
And then again she stopped coming – after a few weeks her mother rang the bell and when I opened the door she burst into loud tears and told me that Heena was dead – set on fire by her mother-in-law and husband in their house and the door bolted behind her. She was hospitalized with severe burns and when her parents and brothers called in the police she made a statement on her deathbed saying that she had tried to kill herself and no one was to blame. After her death there was little her parents could do beyond burying her. Apparently there had been a reconciliation between her and her family and she had spent her last evening with them before she returned to her husband’s house and terrible end. What added to the tragedy was the fact that she was pregnant too.
When I got to know of this, more than two weeks had passed by since her death. When I talked to some of my neighbours and friends about it – wondering what we could do to seek redressal – most felt that there was nothing that we could really do. A Muslim friend of mine – who is herself married to a Hindu – told me that this was the price that the poor girl had paid for transgressing. She felt that her own family too would probably have felt a certain degree of relief at her death even though they were perhaps unhappy at her loss. For a girl who was weak economically and uneducated – marrying a Hindu boy was an act that she had to pay for with her life. And there was no justice afterwards. She passed into oblivion along with her unborn child - without anyone raising any voice for her. And today she’s largely forgotten, perhaps by her own family too. Even I wouldn’t really have thought about her had it not been for Rizwanur Rehman’s death. So I think I’ll light a candle for Heena even as I remember her lively laughter that helped me into wakefulness every morning for many months…I hope she has found her peace and justice somewhere beyond. Read more!

What’s in your collection?

Are you a collector? I don’t really mean the uber rich, connoisseur kind of collectors who accumulate vintage wines or cut glass or diamonds etc. What I mean is simple things – that people collect either when they travel themselves or their friends get for them as gifts. From tiny miniature cars – which were called dinky toys when we were kids – to little plastic animals that came inside toothpaste boxes, which we referred to as Binaca toys – we were collectors even as kids. Many of my friends complain that their kids – despite belonging to the hi-tech, computer savvy generation – drag them to McDonald’s for Happy Meals just to collect the toys which come with them.

There's something very personal and warm about collecting little things which I dont think is matched by collections of Mercs or jets. As a girl, I collected postal stamps – as did many of my friends. But then those were the days when we wrote letters to friends and relatives, sometimes across thousands of miles. And when the envelopes or aerogrammes arrived from uncles and aunts or pen-friends living overseas – carefully detaching the beautiful multi-coloured stamps and putting them up in albums was something that many of us enjoyed doing. My grandfather – a very creative person – collected feathers that birds had shed and then made beautiful cards for us with them. In a similar manner, my aunt collects leaves and flowers and preserves them between pages of notebooks to make cards for her friends and family members.
My sister is a big collector of headgear – caps and hats – from all over the world. I remember my first trip overseas to Phuket when she had specially asked me to get a straw hat for her. I had risked the x-ray machine and other hazards of international travel to bring back the biggest one I could find for her. She has herself added many chic felt hats to her collection when she traveled to Tibet during an arduous pilgrimage to Mansarovar Lake and Mt Kailash. Her friends have got her berets from France and baseball caps from the US. My uncle Subir Sen, too, had a big collection of traditional Indian caps from various Himalayan states such as Himachal, Nepal, Uttarakhand etc. And he loved sporting them in Kolkata, thus creating an unique style of his own.
Maitreyee Chatterjee – an activist for women’s rights in Kolkata – collects statues of owls and like her I know someone who collects frog statues. My mother, Haimanty, has a collection of miniature animals in metal, stone and terracotta as well as a lovely collection of small bells. My friend Nilanjan in America tells me that he is collecting Minolta cameras from yester-years. Don’t ask me why I do it, he had said. Perhaps, because they’re a throwback to our past when photography was all manual and involved positives and negatives and elaborate printing processes. Maybe collecting things that bring back the past is about nostalgia.
My father Rabindra – who for me symbolized simple living and high thinking – didn’t throw anything away unless it was absolutely of no use. In fact, he believed in recycling stuff all his life – even before it became fashionable to do so. From hairclips to old pens and glass bottles, my father put small things – which we would have thrown into the garbage can – to some use in household repairs or in his unique creations. I remember collecting wine glasses from all the wineries that we visited during a trip to Napa & Sonoma two years ago. But that's a touristy thing to do and a part of the wine-tasting ritual. Squirreling is perhaps an inherent quality in many of us – and that’s probably why we keep adding to the collection!

Read more!

CHAK DE INDIA!!!

It's Diwali come early in Delhi - in Kolkata despite three days of heavy rains and water logged streets people are out with victory processions on the streets late at night! Sachin Tendulkar is at home with friends opening bottles of champagne. Shah Rukh Khan who watched the match in Johannesburg - is celebrating with the heros themselves!! Tell us how you are celebrating the BIG 20/20 Indian Cricket win!!!! Read more!

The Last Lear: Some thoughts

It was a rather intriguing experience I must say ... watching Kolkata and what I had always known to be a very typical representation of quality Bangla theatre at its peak - at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Rituparno Ghosh's Last Lear, inspired by Utpal Datta's Ajker Shahjahan had its world premier at the Toronto International Flim Fest last week. Naturally, the media has already discussed this ad nauseum, focusing on the "red carpet history", the presence of the crew, including Ghosh and Bachchan, but surprisingly little about the substance. About the latter, two things struck me in particular. For one, Ghosh provides an excellent critique of contemporary cinema and film-making and how it does not hesitate to demean other art forms as it considers necessary for asserting its own superiority. In the film, this ruthless self-referential, smug and insensitive character of contemporary 'young' cinema is represented through the director Siddharth (Arjun Rampal). But Siddharth does not only represent this ethos of contemporary cinema, but also, in my opinion, a certain faction of youth who possess the very same qualities.

I do not with to generalize, but the reckless, patronizing self-assuredness with which some of our younger generation treat the older generation (such as us) is something that may well resonate with many of us. Sometimes I envy them for their confidence. But more often, I am angered by their lack of interest in the past. The young, debonair, confident and yet somewhere violently confused director Siddharth wishes to use a veteran stage actor to essay his script; and yet has little patience, knowledge or sensitivity about the art form in which the actor excelled, much less about Shakespeare who the actor is obsessed with. This relationship between the young director and the veteran actor (Rampal and Bachchan) conveyed to me simultaneously the nature of the generational conflicts we see today as well as the superiority with which one artistic community views another.

The second feat that Ghosh has achieved is in presenting Kolkata - with all its specificities that one would not know if one has not lived there - in a truly global sense. How did he achieve that? As a hopelessly nostalgic Bengali, I think he focused on the attributes that manifests Kolkata's truly universal and cosmopolitan character: its love for the arts, for good theatre, off-beat relationships, conversations, the disconnect with materiality, the effortless evolution of friendships.. Perhaps we can now abandon the need to exoticize ourselves and celebrate the specificity of Kolkata, Bengal, or whoever, whatever we are without being ghettoized, or being limited to just that.

Finally, it brought back, inevitably perhaps, the memories of watching the great maestros such as Shombhu Mitra and Utpal Datta on stage. Read more!