Breakfree

To leave Bangalore and its gentle high-altitude love, and to be in a mega city that screamed CAPITAL and many other obscenities at me, was to feel reclusive in a way I never thought possible.

And then, to cut the long story short, I found Holi. On one sunny terrace in 2009, with friends I did not yet love, with strangers that wielded grabby hands, with the bright orange of genda phool and technicolour bhang, with an insatiable hunger for dripping sweet gujias, I hurtled towards ribaldry.

With its uninhibited physicality, loudness, wooziness, showiness, a festival that I once kept at a safe distance (hated), shook me up till I was sitting with flowers around my neck and listening to the crescendo of Piyush Mishra’s Aarambh hai Prachand. The Beginning is Fierce. It is Delhi that I always think Holi introduced me to, but really, it taught me the freedom of being indelicate. 

Dementia

Again, you have woken up to ask where the child is. How must it be when people walk out of your sleep into the space behind your bed's headboard, pull at your bedsheet and say a few words, argue vehemently and disobey you as youngsters do, then disappear into the dark when the exhausted daughter -- you had less grey hair at her age-- standing in front of you says, "There is no one, it is 3am, you are shouting in your sleep." Poof, they are gone. But what about the child, you know you saw the child. He might have walked out of the dream you had, the one in which he would just not eat his idli, and wanted to run out and play. Yes, the child does that often, hides behind the door and dashes out when no one is looking. Catch him! He will hurt himself! Banu! Oh what is this scarf that makes you hot, why do they make you wear it. You cannot stand it, and it stops you from hearing the child gurgle and call your name. You throw it aside. You walk to the metal pot that your daughter has left by your bedside. The steady sound of the jet on alumnium. The toilet is too far, too slippery, everyone else says. You do this because you're scared, perhaps, or because they are less confused than you and if they think this is better, it probably is. Someone has come home, he sits before you. You pull down the cotton nightie that rode up to your hip, you need that towel on your shoulder. This man must think you're an old dishevelled woman. But you bathed this morning, your hair is still slightly damp at the edges. They said you had already had a bath and tried to stop you from entering the bathroom. But you were not fooled. You washed. Then you combed your hair with coconut oil, neatly tying it in a bun. This man sitting in front of you looks familiar, but he is too old to be your son. Your son is in school. Your son is surely a few years older than your greatgrandchild that emerges from your pillow at night. He does not have a French beard as this embarrassed looking man in front of you does. Do you know who I am, he asks. As if it is a quiz, as if you did not feed five children and whack them when they asked stupid questions. Has someone given this man a glass of tea? He looks bored. The granddaughter-in-law tells him no one at home has slept. Why haven't they slept? What is her name? She wears toe rings, the other granddaughter-in-law does not wear toe rings. Did you say that aloud? She is smiling, saying yes. You know her today, but her face tends to suddenly become unrecognisable, and you watch a stranger making your bed, guessing she must be family. She speaks Kannada, not Tulu. You remember that, and when you switch languages deftly, the French bearded man marvels at your memory. You start to cry, to miss your children. You only want 25 rupees, why won't anyone give it to you? You don't have a penny, how will you pay for the bus ticket to meet your son? Shamu used to give you 300 rupees when he visited the village house. The man before you laughs nervously, asks why you need money when everyone is there to help. You wipe your tears, you've had enough. You say you're sleepy now, your eyes are tired. Your daughter is in the other room, why does he not go speak to her? She's out of town? Then who served you your tea in the morning? She was young, yes, and spoke Kannada. The daughter-in-law, that's what you call her, when you cannot remember the name of the grandson she is married to. The grandson, who tells you about big animals that existed centuries ago, and that they did not all eat people like that movie you were staring at on TV. You don't know, the movie was scary, and the people spoke English. The grandson is growing a beard, which you do not like. Yesterday when he came home late from office, he was annoyed at your questions. The men in your family always had a short temper. Does the school principal not ask him to shave? The granddaughter-in-law likes it? Then it is ok. She must invite the older man for lunch. You would have cooked a meal for him if you could stand long enough. He says you are six years short of a century. What does that mean? You were good at mathematics, but maybe you have forgotten. Maybe he is confused. Anyway, he is leaving. You tell him you will visit him soon, when his daughter is ready for marriage. From the balcony, you watch him go. Is that a new car? He had a red one before. He has done well for himself. You turn around, hold the wall, the banister, the sofa, the bed, you sit down. The child is in Punjab, with his mother. You will sleep a while and in some time, he will sit by your headboard.  

The force of sensitivity

In the Indian Express, Pratiksha Baxi writes about the depressing disconnect between justice to rape survivors and the history of anti-rape laws. While making a case for court proceedings, she also writes about the trauma of publicity, and media representations of sexual violence:

"The trauma is aggravated by publicity, peer pressure and the fear of loss of employment. Hence, counselling must accompany legal assistance. Publicity often produces stigma and the loss of narrative control. Publicity and its pornography, far from doing justice to survivors, re-enacts the trauma literally by reproducing the contents of the complaint or visualising the crime. The logic of publicity is to convert testimony into spectacle, where the ways of looking itself produce pleasure, excitement or entertainment. 

Media representations of sexual violence make sexual violence sexy. Alternatively, tabloid shock and horror fills print and visual columns. Voyeuristic representations of violence act as the pedagogy of rape. Gender, ironically, becomes an instrument for the politics of patriarchy. 

In the aftermath of the Delhi protests, the nature of journalistic practices in relation to representing sexual violence did not really find serious discussion or action (other than the need to blank out the name of the survivor). Nor did the discursive shift in the streets, which resounded with the slogan of "azadi", mean greater dignity for women journalists in their workplaces. Many women journalists who covered the Delhi protests experienced sexism in their workplaces — male dominated studios or offices — as rape stories went to press. Women journalists spoke of sexualised banter about rape in their workplaces as they worked on their stories about resisting sexual violence. It is lacerating that the debates on rape law reform did not infuse new life into the ethics of the profession, its code of conduct or its policies.

After the Delhi Nirbhaya case, many journalists accept that redacting the victim's name is a must. This requirement also has legal force, since revealing the identity of a victim is punishable with up to 2 years jail time. 

But if we took a step further, and asked if details of the sexual assault-- the act itself, the clothes the victim wore, what the scene was-- should at all be revealed in excruciating detail, it stirs a hornet's nest.

Some argue that the Tehelka journalist's email should be publicised for the public to know the gravity of the crime, which the accused Tarun Tejpal tried to underplay by calling it "drunken banter". But as Baxi argues, shouldn't the victim have some say over what she wants revealed to the public? After all, she did courageously report the crime. Also, this is a high profile case, and one that occured in the media's own backyard, so the pitch is shrill, and the analysis scathing. In such a case, anonymity is far from guaranteed. There are blogs with the victim's pictures. Some voyeurs disguised as do-gooders are mass-circulating the journalist's initial complaint to Shoma Chaudhury, without even removing her name. In fact, they have highlighted it in red. Regional newspapers carry her father's name, her friends' names, and guessing from her surname, where she is from. These are not aberrations - a shameful majority of social and mainstream is doing this.

In this environment where privacy is not yet assured, should we not be more careful with the details of the sexual assault? In a media industry this competitive, I can imagine this question creating a huge argument in the newsroom. Cynically, or perhaps realistically, I am aware that few editors will be ready to hold back information for the sake of sensitivity. No journalist loses his/her job for being insensitive. You don't go to jail for being insensitive. It is the journalistic quality that most easily dispensable. 

In the past week, a quote has been haunting me. A few days ago, a friend, a TV reporter, narrated an incident. She covered the Pascal Mazurier case, where a Bangalore-based French diplomat was charged with raping his child. When she asked Ms Mazurier, the mother who filed a complaint against her husband, whether she believed justice would be done, this is what the woman said:

"This man might go to jail, but thanks to Google, my child will never ever forget what happened to her."

The interviewee

When he told me of stories of how he 'fooled' this guy, and 'won over' that man, I often wonder if I am one of those stories to someone else. After some years in reporting, it becomes second nature to tell when a person is lying, or when he/she is pulling at heart strings, or playing to the media pitch. Lying is a part of the game. Almost everyone exaggerates. Justifies. Withholds. Decorates. You learn to glean motives for these actions. Someone more vulnerable, or desperate for help, or in danger, gets a lot of room. A man or woman in a position of authority gets less leeway.

When I can't know for sure, I tell myself this: Stories are stories, aren't they? Listen.

But sometimes, the idea of being subtly manipulated by an interviewee is so strong that I find myself impossibly torn from the actual words, drawing more meaning and motive than is immediately apparent. Like today, when a long anecdote about A Great Escape from Great Danger involved the projection of innocent eyes. The same kind of innocent eyes I've often seen.
I listen with a filter, but do I still understand? I care still, but do I trust?
I doubt, but do I still believe?
Ah, the interviewee must laugh at how the tables have turned.

Separate lives

Tossing and turning in bed, hearing time move on, second by long second, I often try to make lists, hoping that the effort of organising will exhaust me, bore me to a slow slumber. But sometimes, I pick the wrong topics: the places where I have had the best coffees, the movies that defined my idea of love, the clothes I used to have forever but one day disappeared, the number of times they relaid the road to the house I grew up in. These lists kick off an enjoyable reminiscing that drives sleep further away. The most stunningly failed list, however, has been one I've never completed: the list of lost books.

It frustrates me, the (lack of) memory of a book I was stupid, careless, or angry enough to lose. Where must my first, maroon hardbound copy of Heart of Darkness be? Swimming underneath the used book towers at Darya Ganj when I absently put it down to free a hand and fish out the G book in the Sue Grafton series?
(Oooh, what was a 'Gumshoe'!) Untraceable: the Margaret Atwood collection from Eloor library I read way past the due date, and then kept, justifying that they who charged obscenely from even students did not deserve it to be returned, given away by my spring cleaning father along with his Robin Cook paperbacks to his "friend's son". That might be where it went, unless it walked back to the Commercial Street library when my back was turned, infuriated at my disrespect and betrayal.

There is guilt too, guilt and reruns of scenes that are vivid and cruel like nightmares. Of my Alice Munro flying away, from Copenhagen to Dubai, sharing the seat pocket with the safety instructions, as I run like a fugitive on the slippery floors of the airport and beg the amused flight attendant to stop the flight. "I have to get my book back!" I screech. For most of that defeated walk back, I hate Copenhagen and transit stops with a certainty I rarely feel for anything.

Another time, a passenger may have found a more willing book in the seat pocket. A previously half-finished book, misplaced in a house move, searched for and purchased at the airport, read rapidly in the 2.5 hrs from Delhi to Bangalore and left behind accidentally on purpose. With a desired ridding starkly opposite to the seawind-coaxed calm and oneness with the world I experienced leaving the Yeats poetry collection in a Gokarna hotel room, the page folded at The Second Coming, a pencil arrow still drawn at the line "Things fall apart".

The greatest insomnia comes from the frustration of books unreturned. The $1 review copy of Curfewed Night that my husband bought at The Strand in New York, its fourth page saying 'A map of Kashmir will be added here' (or words to that effect) and its author picture a white frame with no portrait: the borrower of this, I cannot recall despite several baseless accusations flung around. The Disgrace that crushed hope and joy from my being for months on end, the fat brick of Suitable Boy that restored it. Snitched physically from my life, they resurface in nightly lists, conjured up with ghostly lives-- some with coffee stains and yellowing and lustful reading, some with dust and cold possession. Their lives remain attached to mine in my most sleepless moments. Perhaps they will leave me alone if I introduced them to my lost umbrellas.