Some like Jack and Some like Jill

On Monday, December 11th, 2013, the Supreme Court of India overturned an earlier judgement of the Delhi High Court dating July 2nd, 2009 that had declared Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code unconstitutional with respect to sex between consenting adults. In short, the High Court of Delhi had in 2009, given a verdict against the archaic Chapter XV1, Section 377 of the Indian Penal code that criminalizes sexual activities seen as "against the order of nature", including acts of homosexuality. This is a section of law dating back to 1861 that the High Court in its wisdom had understood to be intrusive and impinging on individual freedom, especially in our times. The Supreme Court held that amending or repealing Section 377 should be a matter left to Parliament, not the judiciary. The reaction to the Supreme Court's order was along expected lines. The gay and transgendered community was shocked, appalled, angry and pained. The keepers of India's morality were happy, joyous, vindicated and triumphant. I am shocked, appalled, angry and pained. I am not gay.

I have known many gay people in my life. They are all decent, law abiding and tax paying people of their respective societies.The apparel and fashion business gets more than its fair share of gays as do other creatively centered businesses, so, being a part of this world threw me in the company of many such people. At first, I was awkward, even wary. It wasn't so much about their sexual orientation as it was about my inability to arrive upon my own reactions to them. Soon, my awkwardness gave way to disinterest partly because I am fiercely private and I value other people's privacy as much as mine and partly because I found no difference between gay people and straight people. I mean, I had no interest in the sexual orientation of my straight co workers unless it fell in the realm of occasional teasing about a potential love or lust interest. Soon I was able to make the same banter with my gay co workers too. In short, the oh-my-god-they're-gay moment came and went with the blink of an eye. Along the way, I've met many men with husbands and women with wives, partied with them, partaken in their family gatherings and enjoyed being a part of their lives. Never once did it occur to me or them that we were in a social relationship "against the order of nature". But it seems that Supreme Court could neither come to terms with this alternative sexuality nor could it completely kill the issue of acceptance of homosexuality for all times to come. While it overturned the earlier order of the High Court, it still left an opening that rests the fate of homosexuals regarding their very entity with the Parliament of India. Till then, indulging in homosexual acts is a culpable offense. So, we have almost 50 million new criminals in our country overnight! The thought of two men or women having sex just shakes the very foundations of our society it seems!

Debate upon debate on news channels has gays saying that it is humiliating that they are now going to legally be criminals. I believe that the Supreme Court order had more to do with coercing gays to disown their sexual preference and be counted amongst straight people rather than criminalizing them. The latter is the intended and arrived consequence of lack of capitulation by the gays. It is almost as if someone thought that by making homosexuality culpable, homosexuals would submit silently into a false identity of heterosexuality. Post 2009, many people got the courage to confirm their homosexuality. There was now a law that legally and constitutionally gave them the freedom and the protection to acknowledge and confirm that. I wonder what will happen to all those openly gay people now. Will their employers fire them for being criminals or will they have to give affidavits that they do not indulge in anal or oral sex since both are now illegal. How then are homosexuals supposed to have sex? Or does the Supreme Court want them not to ever have sex for all times to come because they are gay? Is this a punishment on top of a threat? What happens to heterosexual people who indulge in anal or oral sex? Can husbands and wives now take each other to the local police station because one of them wanted oral sex and the other refused? The stupidity of it all baffles me. The Supreme Court wants red beacons off from cars. The reasoning is infallible. It is a symbol of power mongering by people who ride rough shod over others and their use disrupts and threatens the common man's life. How does my neighbor having anal sex in his or her bedroom disrupt my life? Does it cause traffic jams? Does it give rise to inflation? Does it abet infiltration from an enemy country? Does it prevent Lok Pals or Vishaka Committees from being incorporated? 

You really cannot and should not attempt to calibrate love. There is no meter to judge its longevity, purity, intensity or power. There are homosexual couples who have been in loving relationships for decades. There are homosexual couples who have been and are raising children. They cry when either falls ill. It hurts when one dies on the other. They buy groceries, decorate their homes, help their kids with homework, attend PTA's    They have fights. They sulk. They kiss and then they make up, or not. What part of any of this looks like it is"against the order of nature" ? These are real people and like real people, some are nice and some are not. Some contribute immensely to their social surroundings, others do not. Some make great friends and lovers and others do not. Some make great parents and others do not. Some are responsible for creating the gay stereotype that has further fueled the prejudice against them. Effeminate men and masculine women are not mascots of the homosexual community. But nothing warrants them being criminalized. The heterosexual world does not realize what gut wrenching pain and sadness the homosexual community in India must be feeling at this time. The time for sympathy is over, This is now the time to empathise.

The gorgeous Vikram Seth wrote a poem called 'Dubious". It goes like this..

Some men like Jack
And some like Jill
I'm glad that I like
Them both, but still

I wonder if
This freewheeling
Really is an
Enlightened thing

Or is its greater
Scope a sign
Of deviance from
Some party line?

In the strict ranks of
Gay and Straight
What is my status:
Stray? or Great?

Can you feel the protagonist's pain? Can you understand what he is saying? What sort of existence does he have that he is forced to question whether he is even enlightened? Will he reach his intended greatness only if he is straight? If he is not straight will he be a stray, a castaway from his own potential god given greatness in life?.

The worthlessness of women's woes!

While discussing the latest sexual impropriety bomb that has been thrown at us by Tarun Tejpal's antics, I wrote in an FB thread that independent of the Indian Penal Code or the revered and feared IPC, there should additionally be an "Indian Penis Code". This organ is the source of so much trouble that it deserves its very own code! Bemused, my dear cousin Nidhi, a former journalist herself, said, "Didi, men think they are born with an additional fundamental right". I agree. This is the right that they think they are exercising when they are raping 2 year olds or throwing acid on the faces of girls who do not want them in their lives or claiming, as Ram Jethmalani did, that Asaram's victim had questionable integrity because she wanted a good life! This is the right that they exercise when they physically and emotionally abuse women who they know, sometimes women who are in their lives, contributing immensely to their success. And why do they do it, because they are men, and they can.

November 25th, is the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women. Ironically, this was the day that the doctor duo of the Talwars was found guilty of killing their daughter Arushi. It was also the day that Tarun Tejpal sought anticipatory bail for a depraved sexual assault he mounted on a female employee. It was also a day when a the debate about a woman being stalked by one of India's Prime Ministerial candidates gained momentum, On a personal level, it was also a day when someone very close to me was being counseled by a legal entity to return to her matrimonial home. This, despite the fact that she had been evicted from it and was forced to fight a trumped up case in court only because her matrimonial relatives wanted to teach her a lesson for not capitulating to their vulgar expectations.

We are in a state of social frenzy.  Despite the fact that all kinds of egregious things are happening to women, our society is, in fact, increasingly vocal of its refusal to accept things lying down. This is not a good time for you if you are a sexual offender or an alleged sexual offender or a misogynist or stupid enough to be found out as one. No one is willing to take this rubbish lying down anymore. Then, there is our refusal to accept the sheer arrogance of men when dealing with women. Tarun Tejpal believed that in recusing himself from office for a period of 6 months of repentance, self flagellation or whatever he would have us believe he was going to do in that time period, would somehow absolve him of a crime and protect him from its punishment. For the life of me, I cannot understand how an intelligent man like Tarun Tejpal could tender an apology with a timeline of 6 months! If you have assaulted a woman, no matter how convinced you are that she wanted the assault, your apology should read that you are quitting till the matter is resolved by due process of redressal. If he was thinking that people in general and his eager-to-make-a-kill journalist fraternity in particular would ignore this and not come down on him like a ton of bricks, he is either a naive man or one convinced of being carried through purely by the dint of his fame. If there ever was "an awful misreading of the situation', it would have had to be this. And then, there is the sheer and well established audacity of the Narendra Modi - Amit Shah duo in pretending that they did nothing extra constitutional in extra constitutionally spying on a woman with whom it seems "saheb" was enjoying exchanges of warm and fuzzy messages and with whom it seems "saheb" had fears of being caught in a compromising position on a CD!

It makes me sick that a young 13 year old Arushi Talwar's character has been and is still being shred to bits but some people. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that a victims sexual history is of no significance to justice being served to him or her. Say, for a moment we believe that she was in fact caught in a compromising position with a much older household help. That would, in fact, tantamount to rape and for that she certainly did not deserve to be killed. Her parents have been found guilty when, in fact, there is a very good chance that they could get relief upon appeal on the basis of benefit of doubt. There are two people dead here, one a girl and another we still call a "servant" in 2013. I’ve heard people say she’s better dead than alive or else her parents would have lived in shame! Bottom line, the poor girl is dead with her character bludgeoned as her body was. Who cares whether she gets justice or not as long as salacious reporting and gossip mongering keep the wires hot! It’s just a 13 year old girl,

Tarun Tejpal decided to be sanctimonious. Then he took the time tested route of blaming the victim. He somehow 'misread' the situation not one but twice! You pull down a girl's underwear and she says no. How depraved or drunk on your own fame do you have to be to assume that it is some girlie style yes instead! If you do the same thing again, you are not misreading signals, you are simply signalling that you are a sexual fiend! I have always liked Shoma Chaudhury. She conducts herself with so much gravitas, honesty and conviction that she sets herself aside from most shrill imbeciles parading as journalists.  For her to do this young victim of Tarun Tejpal such disservice can only mean two things, either that she hoped like hell to save Tehelka from this implosion and took a series of calculated missteps or she really is as much a victim of an ideology that "women are simultaneously victims of themselves as well as victims of men.." I don't know why women keep saying with pride that they are feminists! What a stupid adjective! All women are feminists. We all want to be equal to men. In fact, if men were not the "other" half and it were orangutans or beavers, we would want to be treated equally to them as well. Dignity is a universal thing. It is not vis a vis something or somebody. Where is the feminism in not having an in house committee for dealing with sexual harassment as per the Vishaka Guidelines? Where is the feminism in saying there are two sides to a sexual assault? And exactly where is the feminism in endorsing that Tarun Tejpal has somehow taken the higher ground in resigning for 6 months? Feminism is a state of mind that should manifest itself in commensurate action.

And now, to the great "Loh Purush" of India, Narendra Modi and his blue eyed thug, Amit Shah. Narendra Modi is supposed to be a celibate man only because he has not been known to have been in a relationship with a woman. Of course, if you dig deeper, chances are you will find that the public domain contains information about him having been married at some point. This self imposed celibacy has somehow added to  his perceived machismo. But along comes a story that is as horrendous as it is horrifying. Stalking an object of your desire through state sponsored tools, without necessary authorizations or approvals, especially when the person being stalked presents no danger to the safety of the state, is shocking. The impunity with which it was done and is now being dismissed, is even more shocking! What is shameful is how the girl's father was interjected into the story. While "saheb" wants his voyeuristic eye on the girl, the father, most likely at the arm twisting of "saheb', now says that he had asked for surveillance on his daughter to protect her. What a joke! What is she, an object to be alternately coveted and controlled? Whatever the pathetic explanations, it is a damn shame to see the nostril flaring Nirmala Sitharaman and dead pan Meenakshi Lekhi pretending that nothing illegal was done here! Lekhi, especially, should know better. She is a lawyer. But the suspension of common sense and common decency even from women, is all too forthcoming when it comes to crimes and transgressions against women!

And then my personal grief gets added to all this. The tragedy with women like me is that we remain agnostic to the gender debate because we have been raised gender agnostic. We remain unfazed by the fact that we are far more successful than our husbands at the time of our marriages. We marry men less successful than ourselves in the belief that this disparity means nothing. But we soon find out that our “lakhon ki salary” is being discussed in hushed tones in our matrimonial households. Our husbands are being asked where our money goes. They are too emasculated by their mothers, to ask directly at first but when they do, it turns into allegations of whether we are giving money to our parents and siblings! All this while ignoring the fact that it is OUR money and we are free to give it to a monkey with scurvy if we like! The question is, why are we not directly asked for our money by our husbands and their parents? Why do a song and dance about not being concerned but then getting ulcers thinking day and night about where our money goes? The narrative soon heads into the gutter with our fathers, brothers, unmarried sisters etc being victimized, all because our matrimonial family cannot digest the fact that we do not hand over our cheques to our mothers-in-law on the 1^st of every month! But the audacity of it all is that our matrimonial families claim they want nothing from us! And yet, we have to pay for our own keep. Our in-laws never return a single gift given to them at the time of the marriage or thereafter but yet, they claim not to “want” anything! Our mothers-in-law never ask their sons to contribute to the running of the house, but as soon as a daughter-in-law is added to the family, these mothers-in-law cannot digest how their “ghar ki laxmi” can eat, sleep and be comfortable in the house without making some sort of payment for enjoying the same comforts that all the other people are enjoying! If you want our money, just ask for it! It is that simple. But don’t pretend to be holier than thou. Don’t use our money to increase your loan taking abilities and create assets unless you have the decency to put down our names as part owners of the assets. Even if you are paying the EMI’s yourself, realize that without our added income, you would not be able to take a loan and build your assets. Don’t ask us to pay half or “commensurate” contribution to the running of the house and then pretend that it does not amount to a monetary contribution towards the household only because you’re paying mortgages on the assets that you have accumulated ONLY BECAUSE, our joint salaries could facilitate so.

It is tough enough being a woman. It is a miracle that so many of us survive, what with people wanting a perfect son in the womb instead of a daughter. We have periods that drain our energy every 28 days and in some cases, make us murderous or suicidal. Our egg reserves deplete all through our adult life till, in some cases, we’re left with too few to make babies with. Then there are menopause issues, osteoporosis issues and I haven’t even started talking about the rapes, dowry deaths, insinuations and professional ceilings to success! Give us a break, will ya!!

The Great Indian Marriage!

There is something inherently wrong with the idea of uprooting a young woman and relocating her to another household after marriage. It makes no sense at any level except that it panders to our so called Indian family values. Let us say you are getting married. As a bride, what is the most important thing on your mind?  Most people would say, to look ravishing and appealing. I will submit that you should only be thinking of how you will be able to adjust in a new household full of members you know next to nothing about. The honeymoon period with your husband may last forever but with your in-laws, it almost ends as soon as it starts! There is way too much collective intelligence to corroborate this.

First, I say to the daughters-in-law, how do you expect that your mother –in- law who has been running the household thus far, to relinquish her domain to an outsider? Even in the animal kingdom capitulation happens after bloodshed! She has her own unique way of running her household, of ordering her groceries or of cooking dal in a particular way. Now, you enter with your own particular way of doing things, a way that has been developed in your parents’ house with elements of their cultural upbringing and your own individualism. I cannot even start counting the number of times I’ve heard friends say how their mothers-in-law scoff at their tadka’s or size of chappatis or bed making style! It is so foolish that it is ridiculous! From my own experience I can share that I know of occasions where a mother-in-law kept redoing dining table arrangement for a whole week (because god forbid, heavens would have fallen if the newly entered daughter-in-law’s table arrangements would have been allowed to contaminate the house) till her daughter-in-law got the hint. So first things first, it is not your house ladies, it is your mother-in-law’s. No matter how many times she tells you it is yours and now you are the new queen in the making, do not believe it. It’s a lie because psychologically, it cannot ever happen.  It is like winning the jackpot on KBC, it happens, but rarely and that too after tears of blood have been shed. So , ladies, please understand that yours is a position that is lower on the pecking order and if you live with your in-laws, it will remain so till one of you departs (not from the world necessarily)! So if you’ve chosen to be a part of the great modern Indian joint family of the 21^st century, please understand that you will need to accept that you cannot function in the same way and be the same person as you were in your mother’s house. Learn to adjust, be large hearted and take the higher road – always.  Learn the art of compromise. Please also learn that your dream of having a cozy little heaven on earth with your husband will not exist till you run your own household. Frankly, it is also a bit absurd to try and take over from your mother-in-law. Why should you? It’s her life and it is her house. You should learn to coexist. It is a delicate dance. As long as you understand that ownership of your husband and the household is shared, you will definitely be able to devise a formula for happiness.

Now, to mothers –in-law, I want to say, that don’t be scared of telling your son to move out of the house when he gets married. His blood will not turn to water and he will still carry your DNA when he lives in another house with another woman!  Please don’t care about what the world says. If they want to crap all over your face because of this and gossip about you, it’s ok. They will not have to live through hell when you and your daughter-in-law stake your respective claims on the household and your son! Besides, for how long do you propose to pander to his every whim and fancy? Walk the talk. If you say ‘ab tumhari wife aa kar tumhara khyal rakhegi”, please mean it. Let them run their lives, in another house, as they want.  Don’t be bothered about whether he’s getting chappatis fresh off the tawa. If he eats re-heated chappatis made by his wife earlier, it should be none of your bloody business! Let them be. Don’t be saying “tu toh patla ho gaya hai” or “shaadi ke bad to tuney fruit khana hi band kar diya” or “tu shaadi key baad bahut peeney laga hai”!   You need to give your son and his new wife a fighting chance to succeed in their marriage. You don’t want to jeopardize it for them by bitching to your son every evening when he returns from home that you’ve been insulted by his wife. Most of these so called insults are usually a feature of a loss in translation. The others are pure imagination! If you must stay in the same house and pretend to be from a Rajshri productions family, then please try and make your daughter-in-law feel at home. After all, she left a safe and known environment to come to your house, you did not! You will get her undying and everlasting appreciation and loyalty if you let her do some things the way she wants and zip your mouth in the process even if you are itching to tell her she sucks!  Try and see reason in her argument when your son is wrong. Do try and tell your son off in front of her so that she knows that you are wise and a go-to person and won’t be territorial and churlish. But if you have any common sense at all, you will circumvent this minefield by asking your son and daughter-in-law to start an independent home right after they get married. Visit often if you wish and stay peaceful because you’re not in each other’s face.

To all daughters-in-law I say, your husbands should not become a bone of contention. After all, he was her son before he became your husband and unless he is a completely empty and vacuous vessel, he will definitely have emotions for his mother. Maybe he will even be dysfunctional as many Indian men are because something in their upbringing forces them to suffer from tremendous guilt when it comes to their mothers.  Many older couples of my parent’s generation lived hellish lives. They were married off to people they didn’t know and in some cases, hadn’t even met. Because those times were different, gentler and less competitive, these marriages survived.  However, children of those marriages unwittingly became pawns in this roll of dice. Since mother and father did not have a relationship and mother was an all giving woman who had devoted every living moment of her life to her son, it became his life’s obsession to do good by his mother. Along comes a wife and that attention now needs to be divided and so starts the drama. So, please understand that when your mother-in-law is waiting to exhale, it is not because of what you’ve done necessarily, but, because you are now a competitor. It is never about you but always about your husband. So tell him that when he gets a saree for you, he should first get one for her. When he comes home (and for some reason you’re still living with his mother), he should first go and meet her and then come to you.

And, finally, to mothers-in-law. Your son is not your husband. If you have a lousy relationship with your husband and you’ve been pinning the burden of all your hopes on your son, you’ve done yourself, him and his partner a big disservice. Your son cannot and should not be expected to fill the gap for your husband. When you open the door of his car and sit in the front seat while his wife is forced to sit at the back, you’re not showing any wisdom. When you spar with his wife to clean his cupboard and arrange his clothes, you have no idea how silly and tactless you seem. When you call him up 10 times in an hour during his date with his wife, you’re behaving like a spurned lover. It’s not you against her. It can never be. He sleeps with her every night. He will have children with her. And so, it only behoves you to rise above this challenge and realize that your son cannot fill the place of your husband.

All these battles happen on the psychological level. These are all mind games that sometimes we do not even know we are competing in. But one thing is for sure. There is no reason for two adults to live with one set of parents. Everyone needs space and privacy. In fact, it is my opinion that older people need more space and privacy in their homes as compared to young couples. This is because they have lived all their lives in a house. It is no wonder that they become territorial.  It’s best to respect their privacy and let them live happily while you start your own little home like they must have several decades earlier. Live next door to them but live separately. Meet for dinner every night or breakfast before going to work but live separately. Do not destroy your happiness, peace of mind, hopes and ultimately your marriage by pretending to be in a rose colored family bubble- It does not exist. If it does, God’s obviously living in your house and is personally watching your back!!

WHY IS BIG BAD?

Reading Indian newspapers can be quite stressful for me.  It’s not just because of the general ongoing gloom regarding corruption and the economy that’s tearing this country apart but If you live in India and read your preferred newspaper every morning, the pathetically shocking quality of writing and reporting will kill whatever hope you’re holding out for the next page and the next. It has always amazed me how reports on accidents involving two vehicles are so one sided in India. The job of journalists or reporters is to report an incident and not have an opinion. But I am shocked at the level of unprofessional reporting in this country. In no other country that I have visited or lived in have I ever read a piece of news about vehicular accidents where the larger vehicle is pronounced culprit even without factual determination of how the accident occurred or who could have been responsible. I have almost never read the use of the word “allegedly” while referring to the larger vehicle involved in an accident.  Journalists are influencers, opinion makers who can direct public curiosity towards any direction they want, whether it is anger or disdain or unrest. Incendiary reporting in our times has led to communal flare ups, riots and even fatwas. How is it, that while reporting an accident, anyone can decide who the culprit is? If you see a motorcycle or a two wheeler under the wheels of a car, should you deduce automatically or be led to deduce that the car driver is at fault? If you find the same car and driver under the wheels of a truck, would you then automatically deduce that the truck driver is at fault? The answer should be No. Ascertaining the cause of a road accident is a mature science of deduction that is put into practice by many traffic authorities and insurers across the world.  You will never find a news piece about an accident in the US that will read ‘Truck driver mows down 5” (unless the powers that be have determined beyond a doubt that the driver was drunk or purposely wanted to cause harm). You are more likely to read, “Fatal accident – 5 dead”. The article will then tell you where the accident took place, what the bystanders saw and what seems to be the likely cause of the accident. The journalist will not attempt to be judge and jury on such a news item because there is a critical mass of understanding that pronouncing someone guilty before they have been investigated by experts could destroy the livelihood, the credibility and the family of a wrongfully accused person.

In India, we have no such problem. If you’ve ever been in an accident with a vehicle smaller than yours, you would have had to face immediate hostility from onlookers. People will pour in from all corners leaving their work to see a fight or a bloodied scene. Motorists will stop to observe and opine, thereby blocking traffic and creating a traffic jam. Police will be the last to arrive on the scene.  If you are the smaller vehicle owner, you will almost immediately sense that the mood is in your favor and against the owner of the larger vehicle and, may I add, also against the police. This is likely to give you a sense of confidence and a fighting ability to claim damages, accuse your co-sufferer and vehemently deny any wrong doing, even if you clearly know that you were at fault. If you happen to be the owner of the larger vehicle, you will immediately sense preferential treatment by the police as they try and bargain with you for letting you off quietly. You could spend the rest of your life shouting yourself hoarse that in-fact, it was clearly the fault of the smaller vehicle driver as he swerved at 90 kmph from a feeder lane onto the ring road when what he should have done is to slow down in the face of merging traffic! No one will give a damn about your logic. In-fact, logic will be damned and so will you!  

Driving irresponsibly is not confined to the rich or to those who appear richer on that particular day of the accident.  In a country of 1.2 billion people, would it be possible to conclude that everyone who has a two wheeler or a bicycle or even pedestrians  are highly responsible drivers and people in general,  who follow traffic rules completely? Then why is it that only the owners of the bigger vehicle on the day get pilloried? Do bigger vehicles have the potential of causing bigger damage? The answer is Yes.  Is every driver of the bigger vehicle on that day a culprit? The answer is No. What prevents pedestrians from taking foot over bridges and instead crossing a busy road by jumping over medians and doing a death of dance?  I have seen people, families with little children, trying to cross MG Road around the MG Road station when the foot over bridge of the Metro station is staring them in the face. Most urban Indians are unhealthy and a good climb up a flight of stairs could constitute wonderful cardiovascular exercise.  It is shocking that they are unwilling to take the flight of stairs or in this case an automatically operating escalator to go up the bridge! All they have to do is climb down manually from the other side and the road is crossed. Instead, they do a dance in the face of oncoming and aggressive traffic with husbands, wives and infants in tow!  On days when I observe this behavior, I think we are truly a nation of the lazy! So if I try to cross the road in the face of speeding cars by waving my hand and urging motorists to stop suddenly and should I get hurt in the process, should I really be blaming the motorist?

I have read news reports of children being mowed down by speeding cars.  Having a child suffer any bodily harm, to me, is the most base and gut wrenching thing in the world. Children expect us to protect them from harm. But how many times have you seen a parent or a guardian walk their ward on the traffic side of the road while themselves walking on the kerbside? I have never understood this phenomenon.  If there is a road where traffic is moving along and there is a kerbside where people are expected to walk, would you put a vulnerable child on the traffic side or the kerbside? This is not a trick question and neither is it rocket science!  The answer is that if possible, both the parent and child should walk on a footpath and when that is not possible, the child should be placed kerbside while the parent takes the traffic side. A normal adult has a better chance at surviving a collision with a vehicle while walking traffic side than a child. What part of this requires special processing by an adult brain? Children are unpredictable. They could be walking quietly one minute and the next they could want to run and hop or chase. Imagine if you are driving along, going on your way, minding your own business and suddenly a child decides to break free from the hands of their parents to make a run for the road, what chance do you have of saving the child from a collision with your car? And if you do somehow manage, imagine what else you could be hitting against or what other vehicle could hit into you due to a sudden swerving action that you’ve been forced to take in order to protect the child. Under these circumstances, if you happen to be in the biggest vehicle in that scenario, you would get beaten up, threatened or heckled or all three. You could cry till the end of your days that the culprit, in fact was the child or more importantly the parent of the child but you would never get a fair hearing from anyone. If you somehow manage to prove in a court of law that you are in fact the aggrieved party and not the aggressor, it would be assumed instantly that you being rich (or richer by comparison) is the real cause of your being let off. Not only are we a nation of the lazy, we are also a nation of the biased and presumptuous!

The one piece of reporting that really makes me want to claw my eyes out is that of railway accidents. While large scale rail accidents are common in India and we have somehow started living with them without holding anyone accountable, it is the smaller accidents that get reported which make me wonder about the intelligence of our reporters. When you read things like speeding train crushes car on unmanned railway crossing, you have got to ask yourself what that car was doing on that crossing. It is not as if trains, which we all know run on predetermined tracks, are able to speed willfully along the country side mowing down people. Why do people risk crossing railway tracks not knowing when trains will cross or worse seeing an approaching train and still making a dash for it? Why is there no fear or caution? Why is life so cheap and chances so many?  When such accidents happen, why then do newspapers carry reports suggesting that the train was somehow responsible for such accidents?  The train has got to be the biggest vehicle of that accident scene and so, is automatically held responsible for causing the accident and any ensuing death and destruction.  I have myself seen two wheeler drivers duck under railway crossing barricades, with families in tow, making a dash across the railway tracks just to save a few minutes. The big question is, how will this sense of urgency help them if they are dead? More importantly, if they survive, which they usually do and hence get used to taking such chances, what will their children learn? They will learn that it is OK to stick a finger in the eye of common sense and the bigger guy is always responsible for their accidents even if they themselves were the cause of it. 

Most importantly, reporting that is potentially malevolent, egregious and imbalanced should come under the purview of a culpable punishment. It is not right to cast aspersions but it is even worse to declare someone an offender when clearly, there is no way to ascertain that fact.  Justice Markandeya Katju, the chairperson of the Press Club of India was on to something when he lashed out against Indian journalists. In his words -”The way much of the media has been behaving is often irresponsible, reckless and callous. Yellow journalism, cheap sensationalism, highlighting frivolous issues (like lives of film stars and cricketers) and superstitions and damaging people and reputations, while neglecting or underplaying serious socio-economic issues like massive poverty, unemployment, malnourishment, farmers' suicides, health care, education, dowry deaths, female foeticide, etc., are hallmarks of much of the media today”. We need to educate people that irresponsible behavior is not prevalent only in the rich. It is a nation- wide malaise that can be uprooted by continuous practice of responsible behavior that can surely be augmented by responsible reporting and factual representation of incidents and issues.

Commodity Trading

So, here is the sordid tale that’s being played out in the national media over the last month or so. There was a woman called Fijan Khatoon who we now know as Munni. She was married to a guy called Shah Hussain. They had three children, a boy and two girls. Shah Hussain decided to abandon Munni . If Munni’s parents are to be believed, Shah Hussain sold Munni and their three children to flesh traders. Munni, not very old and with no real skills or education, was left to fend for herself. It is unclear whether she fell prey to flesh traders by chance while trying to fend for herself or this path was thrust upon her by the pimps her husband sold her to. Enter a few other devious characters. They want to sell Munni off as a “bride”. However, in order to marry her off and pocket a few lakh rupees, Munni would have to be pitched as a childless virgin. So, what then would they do with her three children? Munni is promised that her children would be taken care of. What really happened was that her hapless children were scattered all over India. The son found his way to Delhi. The second child, a daughter found her way to Muzaffarpur and the youngest, a two year old girl that we now have come to know as Falak, found her way to the ICU at AIIMS. She came in with both her arms broken, her little skull bashed in, her plump cheeks bitten and branded. She is put on life support apparatus immediately. Soon a band of over 20 doctors and over 50 support staff and nurses swings in to save this child.


At some point, someone realizes that all this trauma could not have been caused by the child simply slipping in the bathroom. A search is mounted for the person who brought her to the hospital and leads to a 14 year old girl. Everyone concludes that the girl must either have been raped or must have delivered an unwanted child that she was now disposing off. The tale gets more sordid. The 14 year old turns out not to be the mother after all. She was handed the baby by one Rajkumar who by now is being called the 14 year old’s ‘live in boyfriend”. Rajkumar in turn, is known to have got the baby from one Laxmi who is in fact the woman who is supposed to have helped the child’s mother get married in the first place! It seems Rajkumar wanted to keep the baby but his wife wouldn’t let him. So he decided to hand her over to the 14 year old minor who he was sexually exploiting! The 14 year old girl turns out to be an abandoned child herself who was physically abused by her father and step mother after her own mother passed. She spent some time in an orphanage where it turns out sexual aggravation was rampant. It seems that on one fine day, for a period of about five hours, she tortured the little baby girl as she just could not deal with being a care giver anymore. In the meantime, Munni is traced to Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan where she is living the life of a married woman with her new husband Harpal who has no inkling that his paid for bride is from another community, previously married and a mother to three children! He bought himself a wife because most likely, in his village, girls are killed in the womb or right after being born and they are also killed if they dare to marry outside their community. As a result, villages and districts and entire states like Rajasthan and Haryana have a gender ratio so skewed that there are no longer women left for men to marry!. Brides are being bought from all parts of the country because, mother of all surprises - you can kill an unborn girl child but you still need a woman to produce sons!

In the meantime, little Falak, the helpless two year old has been on a ventilator for several weeks. The doctors keep draining out the fluid from her brain and lungs to ensure that she lives. They’ve spoken of how she may never be able to lead a normal life due to her injuries, provided, she survives in the first place. The entire nation is glued to her news. People are praying for her to get better. Prospective adopters keep growing in number by the day. Donations are being made regularly for the child’s treatment. People who would normally ask for perpetrators of such crimes to be hanged or killed or stoned, are unable to say so unequivocally in this case as everyone seems to be a victim. So what really happened here? This is a case of systemic rot and apathy that has gripped our society. There is no doubt that poverty lies at the heart of this cruel and sad turn of events. A family probably so poor that it couldn’t hold itself together. A mother made so helpless by her circumstances that she is forced to give up her children and start a new and ostensibly happy married life with a new husband, albeit built on a lie. A young girl so out of touch with hope and possibilities at such a young age that she pulverizes a two year old child but still brings her into the hospital perhaps because she knows she has done wrong or perhaps because she identifies with the victim as only a victim could. Maybe she was battered, raped and thrown away to fend for herself and no one came out to help her. Maybe she didn’t want the little girl to not have anyone to come out to help. In some twisted way, this was the 14 year olds subconscious way of redeeming herself.

So here is what happens. You kill girls in the womb because you consider them a disposable commodity on which you exercise entitlement. You let them be born and give them less to eat than your boys, send them to till your fields and never give them an education because they are a disposable commodity. When you get them married you are doing kanya dan or giving them as alms to a husband, because they are a commodity. When their in-laws burn them for not bringing enough dowry or being unable to bear a male child, they can do so because they are a disposable commodity. When you rape them you can do so because just like a commodity, it is your belief they can be used for your consumption. Being that rape is not so much about the sex but more about proving your hold via sex with a person who is vulnerable and cannot oppose you, you are in one shot making them marginal and using them as you would a consumable. When you run an orphanage and sexually exploit children as young as four and five, you are confirming that you are superior in the pecking order and that children carry no real value. When you pluck little babies from their mothers and scatter them along the way to whoever will take them, you are saying that their lives and emotional needs carry no real significance and their mother is so stupid that you can trick her into abandoning her children without ever holding anyone accountable. What is it that makes men and society in general so insensitive towards females and children? Should we all start subscribing to the theory that we are after all an animal species and when left untutored and free are capable of inflicting the worse kind of cruelty upon others? If we don’t subscribe to that view then what sort of society is this where there are no laws to safeguard our children who are the most vulnerable amongst us? We hit them and punish them and make them feel small in schools. When they go missing, our records show how abysmal the rate of recovery is. When women go missing, the first snide comment to you will likely hear from the police is that she must have run away with a man. Why such scant respect for women and children? All I can think of is that somewhere along the way men have become a species unto themselves. Women and children, it seems are relegated to being subsumed within this species. Society has also become male centric but if families and an integrated system of social cohabitation is to work effectively, our children and women must be protected at all costs.

Village upon village in Rajasthan and Haryana can be found with men in their forties who have not married because there are no women left to marry! Casting away women and children like commodities is an act of entitlement. Crimes against men are often violent, devious and testosterone driven. Crime against women and children is all of these and is also wanton. This rampant and sick idea that you can get away with doing almost anything when it comes to women and children can only be defeated if punishment for such excesses is in excess of any punishment meted out thus far. Someone needs to be made an example out of and very soon.