Dobby and a very rumpled A in the background.
They both started getting quite grumpy about being asked to pose.
And finally ignored me altogether.
Archive for May, 2009
Animal love and queerness
2009
05.29
05.29
The next Toto Funds the Arts reading is on Friday, 5 June 2009 at 6.30 pm . The venue is Crossword Bookstore on Residency Road. Sriya Narayanan and Joshua Muyiwa will be reading. From the invitation:
Sriya Narayanan, 26, graduated from the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) and works in the marketing division of The Hindu, Chennai. She also writes for them part-time. She is passionate about animal welfare and volunteers with Blue Cross, while trying to raise awareness through her columns ‘Four Legs Good’ and ‘Pet Pals’. She plays the violin and performed at her first classical music concert last month. Sriya writes slice-of-life fiction and blank verse, and tries to keep at it despite the steady flow of generic rejection letters.
Joshua Muyiwa, 23, started writing because he was told, ‘it is time to stop seeming arty and pretentious and actually earn the tags by doing something’. He is queer: in writing because line breaks, strophes and rhyming are strangers to him, in eating because he likes tomato sauce with coconut chutney, jam with spicy boondi. If he’s not at Koshy’s attempting to read poems over the quavering voice of Whitney Houston or smoking and discussing Alexander McQueen like he was his brother on the steps near Arya Bhavan, he’s at Jal Bhavan, Bannerghatta Road working as a dance writer at TimeOut Bengaluru.
Hmm, promises to be interesting.
Okay, one more word
2009
05.28
05.28
…on this whole Oxford Poetry fiasco, and then I’ll stop (or maybe, not). But apparently our nominee AK Mehrotra had this to say:
“From India where I live, these extra-literary goings-on appear more unfortunate than amusing. I hope that some lessons are learnt from this, not least that the private lives of poets should, occasionally, be allowed to stay private.”
Sexual harassment = a man’s ‘private life’?
Dennis Loy Johnson at Moby Lives has been covering this quite a bit. Katy Evans Bush, who also wrote a piece on this at Guardian’s Cif, left a comment at Moby Lives which nails it:
I quoted Hermione Lee on my blog and I quote her again in my CiF piece, saying: “We are purveyors of poetry, not chastity.” As if it were just a sexual peccadillo.
Funnily enough, to the girl who was told that, unless she slept with him he would prevent her play (written for his course) from being produced, it probably didn’t seem like it was just about sex. It was more like being directly about her academic record. And if I’m not mistaken she only went public with it in the end because she heard about two other girls who had had the same treatment; one of them became depressed and the other had left the course entirely.
I’m sure Professor Lee, the great feminist biographer, would have expected to be taken more seriously than that when she was a student.
A culture that can’t even distinguish “sex” from the adjective “sexual” that modifies, in this case, the noun “harassment” isn’t anywhere near being ready even to debate the vexed question of whether this should debar Walcott from what is essentially a guest lectureship, not a pedagogic role.
The worst part is that Padel’s unfortunate behaviour has made people forget that the charges against Walcott were serious, and whether he should have been debarred or not was a serious question. It’s a question worth engaging with, because it cuts to the heart of what we expect from poets and public figures, and what we think of the relationship between ethics and poetry.
Instead, now Walcott is wronged hero, Padel is humiliated vamp, and all the real issues can go right back where they belong — under those university carpets. Plus you have some poets making vapid, dismissive statements about the whole issue like ‘who cares?’ or ‘what matters is that Poetry has suffered’ as if poetry exists in some sort of vacuum unaffected by (and un-affecting of) the real world. As if what happens in the real world, including sexual harassment, were not important to poetry at all.
Kreativ Bling
2009
05.21
05.21
Just when I was wondering what on earth to blog about, I got this new, shiny thing from Aditi. Tada…!
This means I get to devote one post to entirely pointless, self-indulgent revealings. Because see, according to the rules, I have to list seven things I love and award seven bloggers I love. So here goes…
1. Night-time drives. All sorts of conditions have to be met. Somebody else must drive because I hate driving. That somebody else must be silent so I can just look out of the window and pretend they don’t exist. There must be music of my choice. We must cross at least one flyover or under-bridge so I can think about the Icarus myth or the Persephone myth. Oh, and there must be breeze, lots of it.
2. Bollywood. Including the song and dance (and the ham and cheese).
3. Plans, lists, schedules, time-tables. Pretending to be organised, in other words. I actually get a thrill out of preparing these meticulously. (I have an excel sheet for every occasion). The problem is I get an equal thrill from flouting all these plans and declaring sudden detours.
4. Road trips / trees / birds. I put them together because my love for road trips (or any travel) has a lot to do with my love for trees and creatures. But I also love these (things?) separately.
5. Old houses in Calcutta, the ones with green shuttered windows, creaky fans, dusty corners.
6. Bath products.
7. Okay, I’m going to be boring and say poems. Reading, writing and editing them.
And I give the Kreativ Blogger Award to….
Walcott
2009
05.13
05.13
The poetosphere has been abuzz with news about Derek Walcott’s dropping out of the Oxford Poetry Professor race because according to The Guardian, a “100 academics mailed organizers missives an 1982 allegation of sexual harassment leveled against the poet.” Some poets posted notes about this on Facebook as well and some of the comments were along the lines of ‘this is a small matter which should not come in the way of his being elected.’ Notice also that the Guardian article diminishes the allegations by alluding to them as part of a ’smear campaign’. I’m not advocating quick blame but easy vindication is also disturbing. Why are people so eager to believe that Walcott is blameless in this matter? Or to forgive him for any ’small mistakes’ he ‘may’ have committed?
Being a good (even great) poet doesn’t exempt you from human responsibility, does it? Or are poets such a back-patting, incestuous community that we are willing to overlook anything when the person at the other end is ‘one of us’?
The question here isn’t about the quality of Walcott’s poetry, which I will continue to read and appreciate. The question is about a hugely prestigious position of responsibility where he would have had power over students and been viewed as a role model. Sexual harassment is a pretty serious thing in this context.
Seth Abramson weighs in on this at his blog:
…my concern is less about Oxford University particularly, and more for (as I mentioned in my last post on Walcott, see link in next paragraph) the message it sends to young female writers, and for the possibility that Walcott, howsoever ceremonial his prospective professorship, might again be positioned to cruelly exploit vulnerable young students for his own sexual gratification.
An extract from a letter that I got from the WOMPO poetry listserve:
We are a group of women students at Oxford University and find this shocking and insulting. We would welcome your help, in demonstrating to the University and the British public, that Walcott’s sexual harassment and blackmail of women students are not mere “allegations,” as the British press assert, but a matter of record, with deeply offensive transcripts available in books and online.
Quite the opposite of Professor Lee’s assertion, we feel that electing a proven campus sexual predator, who is on record as admitting harassment in at least two cases, would shame not honour Oxford. The post is voted for by teachers at Oxford University. We feel the English Faculty is suppressing Walcott’s record. No one in Oxford or Britain knows or believes it. We find it scandalous, almost unbelievable, that it is a woman educator who is Walcott’s chief supporter in Oxford and in public.
Many of the other members of the listserv commented on how common it is for young female poets to have to deal with sexual harassment in class. I personally know two people who have suffered sexual harassment at renowned British universities and I’ve heard of many others. There’s no reason to believe that poetry courses are any different. Turning a blind eye to allegations or dismissing them as rumour probably stems partly from our eagerness to believe that poets are somehow nobler human beings above such mortal evil. But such ridiculous myths should not come in the way of justice and fair play. In most other situations, allegations of this sort would have affected the person’s chances, I imagine, and rightly so. Walcott’s withdrawal from the race is hardly a mark of sacrifice or deserving of pity. It’s probably a sign of common sense on his part because he realised that the protests would gain momentum.
More on the women’s vote
2009
05.13
05.13
An article in The Hindu about the women’s vote:
The importance of the women’s vote is not confined to the three States with prominent women leaders. The evidence gathered by National Election Study series at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies shows that this vote makes a difference all over the country. An overwhelming majority of women say that they take their own decisions when they vote. The evidence also shows that their voting pattern is different from men.
The women’s vote famously worked for NTR in Andhra Pradesh and Bansi Lal in Haryana, when prohibition was an issue. A reckless excise policy in Rajasthan may have led women to vote in a big way against Vasundhara Raje. If the Congress is the overall national beneficiary of this ‘gender gap,’ the picture is variegated at the State level: women voters favour the Left in West Bengal, the TDP in Andhra and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. More than the presence of a woman politician, what attracts women voters is the ability of a political party to address some of the issues that affect them. In an election where a small one per cent vote shift can lead to 15-20 Lok Sabha seats changing hands and upset all equations for government formation, small changes in the women’s vote can be decisive. If this vote does not feature much in discussion on counting day, it is not because it did not matter — it’s only because it remained invisible.
And related thoughts
2009
05.07
05.07
One of the challenges of writing for a foreign media product is that context-setting eats up a lot of words and one has less space for actual opinion. So here are some related thoughts. Before writing this, I asked a whole bunch of urban, educated women whether they had taken gender issues into consideration while voting. Most said they hadn’t–either because they did not feel that any party really addressed gender issues or because they didn’t think the government could do anything / was responsible for gender issues. The latter surprised me because I tend to look at safety, for example, as a governmental responsibility. Ensuring that streets and other public spaces are safer for women is certainly something the government can do. BUT some said that they had not voted for the BJP because of the party’s regressive gender stances. So there was gender motivation at play even if in a roundabout way.
This article reminded me of the defensiveness attached to writing from my location as a middle class, educated, privileged woman. Some usual reactions: ‘how dare you talk about Mangalore when there are so many worse things happening’ or ‘look at women in Saudi Arabia’. I often write about the urban, educated women because a) I know the most about it and b) I believe we need to be more involved in thinking, engaging and demanding more in terms of gender rights. To put it simply, we have more time and energy to do so. Nor are we unaffected by gender issues. After all, domestic violence, sexual assault or female foeticide are not restricted to the poor and rural. It’s amazing to me how many women are a bit blinkered when it comes to this, or don’t see the patterns of gender violence in their own lives because they are privileged in other ways. At the very basic level, female foeticide causes there to be many more men than women just about everywhere. This cannot be safe or healthy for anyone, at any level. Not all of us can work in the villages or at the grassroots level. Nor am I advocating that women in corporate jobs give up their perks or salaries and become activists. But all of us can think, write and vote. And we should.
In related news, something rather scary happened recently. I was returning from a friend’s place late at night when a man on a motorbike started driving alongside me, leering through my window and trying to get to me to stop. I was scared because I realised that if he stopped his bike in front of my car, I would be forced to stop as well. So we participated in some kind of bizarre road race with him trying to overtake me and me trying to stay ahead. When he turned into my lane after me, I was shaken. I stopped outside my gate and honked madly. The security guard came running out and the man whirled about and rode off. I wonder what he had in mind and why he bothered to follow me up to there at all. Perhaps, if I lived in an independent house or in a darker lane, he would have waylaid me once I got out of the car. I am grateful to Ganesh, who has a thick moustache and quick feet, for saving my day. The next day, I bought a pepper spray can. Now, I’m primed for the people who will say ‘but, think about how much worse it could be’ or ‘be thankful you have the money to buy pepper spray’ or ‘you have a car? you have forfeited your right to complain about anything ever again’ — because that’s exactly the sort of argument some do offer. Which is bs of the highest order. I have every right to go out and not get followed. And no I don’t have to be okay with it because women in Saudi Arabia are so much worse off. And no, I don’t have to wait until after I get raped to protest.
Ripples of Change
2009
05.07
05.07
A version of this is up at Guardian Cif. (The headline and tagline there are not mine.)
As India went to elections over the last few weeks, a small section of Indian women exercised their vote to protest against regressive gender stances. A recent spate of attacks on women by Hindu fundamentalist groups in Karnataka probably brought home the need to do so. The vigilante groups are widely believed to enjoy the support of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which explains why some women among India’s educated middle classes adopted an anti-BJP ballot philosophy. A first-time voter said, “Certain parties have more absurd ideas about what women should or shouldn’t be doing than others. The sort of thing that happened in Mangalore worries me and I kept it in mind while voting.”
Another expressed similar antipathy on her blog: “The one party I would absolutely not vote for is the BJP because I believe their Hindutva ideology is regressive to the point of slotting women in historically repressive domestic roles and they’ve taken the country back to the dark ages, with their heinous crimes and divisive rhetoric.”
Noted feminist author Ammu Joseph said: “I did choose to vote for a candidate I perceived as on the whole progressive and possibly ‘winnable’. I have long ruled out ever voting for a certain party (the BJP) because of the whole package that they represent in terms of ideology and attitudes towards women as well as other sections of society.
Meanwhile, some candidates of other parties addressed issues such as women’s freedom, mobility and safety this time. Even if this was just a way to strike at the opposition’s knees, it is a welcome sign that such issues found space in political discourse at all. In India, there is usually little on women’s issues in party campaigns and manifestoes. Most women vote without taking gender-related needs into consideration.
Among the poor and rural, other factors—caste and religious affiliations or more basic needs—trump gender. The urban and educated seem sceptical about the government’s ability to ensure safety or freedom, or resigned to the fact that they are a minority demographic. In a country where many lack basics like food, water and electricity, there is also a certain guilt associated with asking for anything more. But given our dismal tract record in terms of gender development, women’s problems need to be given more attention. And it’s time the country’s elite realised that they should take the lead in demanding this for all women.
At the other apex of the gender-and-politics conundrum, gender skew remained a cause for worry but there was some hope in the form of a candidate like dancer and activist Mallika Sarabhai. Sarabhai, who faced BJP head honcho LK Advani in Ahmedabad, was eagerly cheered by liberal intellectuals across the country. In the past, Sarabhai has used art to focus attention on gender bias and communal hatred. Her choice of logo—the harmonium in red and purple—is careful of what it reflects. Purple is the international colour of women’s rights and red, she explains, is the colour of human blood, regardless of faith, caste or wealth. Cast and communal politics typically play a huge role in determining who India’s largely poor, rural and immensely caste-conscious vote bank will choose. By putting women at the centre of her campaign, Sarabhai departed from the general trend.
There are other signs that women in India are preparing to play a larger role in politics, either as voters or as candidates. In some places like south Karnataka, there were more women voters than men. Then, politics has long been viewed as too dirty or corrupt for women to enter but now in small towns, many women are wetting their feet in local political bodies. In the coming years, they are likely to become a stronger force and enter national politics. All these are small arrows hurled in the right direction. It’s too early for unbridled optimism especially in the context of low voter turnouts but perhaps these ripples of change will become a whirlpool at some point. One lives in hope.
