He was 99 years oldOBITUARY\\ Writer, journalist, one of India’s best satirists and former editor of Hindustan Times, Khushwant Singh, died on March 20, 2014. He was 99. The man who spared none and spread ribald cheer with his celebrated column— With Malice towards One and All—was Hindustan Times editor between 1980- 1983. He was born in Hadali (now in Pakistan) on February 2, 1915.
His son and journalist Rahul Singh said he passed away very peacefully at his residence in Sujan Singh Park in Delhi. “He led a very full life. He had some breathing problems,” said Rahul Singh. The man who made a place in the heart of millions of Indians with his irreverence and love of poetry will be laid to rest at the Lodhi Road crematorium at 4pm. He shrugged off intellectual trappings and promoted jokes in a way that no other writer had ever done before him, or since.
Khushwant Singh was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the government under late Indira Gandhi. He was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the army. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
He was known for his classics such as ‘Train to Pakistan’ and ‘I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale’ among a host of other works. Speaking at an event in February, Rahul Singh had said his father was politically naive and foolish and someone who spoke from the heart.
US Warns RussiaCONFLICT\\ Russian President Vladimir Putin moved swiftly to annex Crimea on March 18, 2014, in the first land grab in Europe since the Second World War. The move was condemned by the US and EU and worries remain over Moscow’s intentions elsewhere in Ukraine. A deadline Ukraine’s acting President gave Crimea’s separatist leaders to release hostages came and went without apparent incident on March 19, 2014, after pro-Russian activists stormed the former Soviet state’s navy headquarters in the region. Amid signs the uneasy standoff between pro-Russian and Ukrainian forces could ignite into bloody conflict— a day after Moscow claimed Crimea as its own—almost 300 armed pro-Russian supporters took over the naval base in Sevastopol, said Marina Kanalyuk, assistant to the commander of Ukraine’s navy fleet. “They are everywhere here, they surround us, they threaten us,” she said, adding that she was sure that Russian security forces were involved. Kanalyuk said the 70 or so Ukrainian naval officers at the headquarters had tried to stop the armed men from entering and were negotiating with them. She said that the armed men had replaced Ukrainian flags with Russian standards but that no shots had been fired. Ukrainian navy chief Sergey Gaiduk was taken away. Russia’s official ITAR-Tass news agency, citing the local Kryminform news agency, reported Gaiduk had been passed to the Sevastopol prosecutor’s office to be questioned about whether he’d passed on orders from Kiev for Ukrainian soldiers to use their weapons. Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov issued a 9pm deadline for Crimea to release all hostages and stop all provocations, a statement on the presidential website said. That deadline passed with no apparent consequences.
It had warned that if all hostages, including Gaiduk, were not released by then, authorities would take action of technical and technological character, likely meaning turning off utilities. Meanwhile in Kiev, officials unveiled a series of new measures against Russia and the “self-proclaimed” authorities in Crimea. In a televised briefing, Andriy Porubiy, secretary of the national defense and security council, said the measures included a full-scale visa system for Russians and that if the UN designates Crimea a demilitarised zone, Ukraine was prepared to evacuate its military personnel and family members.
Ukraine has facilities ready to accommodate 25,000 evacuees. The country has decided to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, an organisation made up of republics of the former Soviet Union. Kiev also will estimate the damages caused by the annexation. The incident at the navy headquarters comes a day after one member of the Ukrainian military was killed, another wounded and more captured when masked gunmen seized their base near the Crimean regional capital, Simferopol.
MH370 in Indian OceanMISSING\\ China demanded that Malaysia turn over the satellite data used to conclude that the Malaysia Airlines jetliner had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 on board. Chinese officials narrowed the search area as a result of that assessment, but the zone remains as large as Texas and Oklahoma combined. The hunt for the plane is planned to resume on March 26, 2014, after gale-force winds and heavy rain forced a daylong delay. Searchers face a daunting task of combing a vast expanse of choppy seas for suspected remnants of the aircraft sighted earlier. Boeing 777 had gone down in the sea with no survivors. But that is all that investigators and the Malaysian government have been able to say with certainty about Flight 370’s fate since it disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
Left unanswered are many troubling questions about why it was so far offcourse— the plane essentially back-tracked its route over Malaysia and then traveled in the opposite direction in the Indian Ocean. Investigators will be looking at possibilities including possible mechanical or electrical failure, hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board. The incident has unleashed a storm of sorrow and anger among the families of the 239 passengers and crew—two-thirds of them Chinese.
Get the right people together for the social media dream team. Here’s how...An analogy I often give to businesses who’re reluctant to include social into their marketing mix is one of stepping onto a running treadmill – if you’re not up to speed and just want to stand still, you’re likely going to fall further behind. Yet, getting onto the social bus with the bare minimum investment – maybe you have an intern or an already overworked marketing executive monitoring your Facebook and twitter presence – is fraught with danger, and brands often burn their fingers, not to mention their relationships with their digital audiences, simply because they’ve got the wrong folks on the job. If you’re going to be taking social seriously, you’re going to have to be picky about who the digital face of your company is and what the mix of skills you need for your social media dream team. So where does one start?
Social Media Goals and Policies: Before you go looking for the right people, take two steps back and think. Your social media team isn’t a disconnected entity – its goals need to reflect the needs of your business. You need to set down goals for the social media team – do you foresee the team driving sales via offers and promotions on your Facebook page, or will the team be responsible for handling customer service as well? Is feedback to build a better product primary, or do you want the audience to advocate your brand by sharing your content or engaging in Facebook group discussions? In any case, the goals and metrics for what you hope to achieve should be in place even before you make the first hire.
Another aspect that needs to be closely considered is a policy governing social media activities within the organisation, for reasons beyond the worst case scenarios, such as the PR disasters that can happen when rogue employees vent against the company on the social channels. A clear social media policy outlines what is and isn’t appropriate behavior for employees on the official social media channels – such as expressing views on industry trends, competition or the political climate. Sadly, asking employees to use common sense is simply not good enough as a thumb rule to prescribe in all scenarios! The social media policy could also include a style guide – your company’s voice, in some senses - to describe what tone or language the team will adopt on the social channels to ensure consistency. Of course, factor what business you’re in into the equation as well – a B2B company may want a more professional tone, while a business that deals with web developers and programmers (or smaller businesses for that matter) can afford a more casual tone that allows for more personal and individual styles of writing – the point is to know your audience and create content with them in mind. Bear in mind, your social media policy should be a living document, ready to be updated with changing business scenarios and technologies.
also in touch with strong social media strategies. A specialized social media firm may be a good alternative if you have a strong marketing function but need the extra guidance on how to traverse the social landscape, while independent consultants may represent the most affordable choice for external sourcing. also in touch with strong social media strategies. A specialized social media firm may be a good alternative if you have a strong marketing function but need the extra guidance on how to traverse the social landscape, while independent consultants may represent the most affordable choice for external sourcing.
The flipside is that no one knows your business as intimately as your own employees, and carving out key roles for your social media team from within may be a viable, long-term alternative. But where do you look for this team, you may ask? To begin with, you could look at the marketing team, folks who are knowledgeable about your product and are trained in communicating key brand messages… as long as they have the spare cycles to take on an additional function. As a business owner, you could do it all by yourself, but the social media function requires a time commitment which you may not be able to fulfill if you wear other hats within the company. Hiring from outside for a specialized social media role may just be the best bet if you’re unsure how to proceed.
Building the Dream Team: Irrespective of what approach you decide to follow, here are some of the key roles to staff up the team:
Social Media Manager: The cornerstone for your team, this is a person who knows how the social media function fits within the company’s big picture and can measure the team's overall results against the social media strategy. This is a person who can quickly forward queries, conversations, sales leads and issues to the right departments, hence impeccable organization skills and knowledge are a must. In addition, keen writing skills and a finely developed sense of diplomacy are essential to managing the show.
Community Managers: These are the conversationalists, the folks who’re interacting directly with the customers and the audience and know exactly what the company wants to say, when it should be said and how best to phrase it, whether it is in the form of compelling blog posts or responding to customer questions or comments. Community managers are also looked upon to craft immensely shareable content, so a flair for written communication and a calm temperament are vital.
Content Engineers: These are the folks in the trenches, the creative team that helps make your presence come alive. These are folks who’re always hunting for the perfect photograph or infographic to add to your social posts or digging up those great customer quotes to use in your next campaign. Working closely with the community managers, these are the folks who fashion the cohesive story about the brand.
Digital Natives: You probably already know these folks within the company, possibly in the marketing, PR, tech or online teams. They participate in many different social networks, probably have a blog with a sizeable following and know what it takes to find and gain followers and engage with them… and by extension, what could possibly tick off your audience. Constantly plugged into the latest trends, themes and memes online, they revel in being online and connected, and will see the social media function as a natural extension to what they do on a personal level. These are the folks you tap into as a feeder to the creative team to leverage the latest trends on social media.
Analysts: Folks with a head for numbers, the analysts should be less interested in what is pretty and creative and instead focus on tracking, analytics and statistics – essentially, measureable stuff that points to the social team’s ROI. These are folks who’re clued into social measurement tools that measure the conversations about the brand and can guide the team, based on the metrics, about where to go next.
Notes on India on the moveINDIA LENDS ITSELF to kinetic metaphors. Commentators frequently speak about India being in flux, on the move, rising. Arundhati Roy describes the country as a “heaving ocean”. At the end of the spectrum, many also bemoan India’s chaos, or as V.S. Naipaul put it, India’s “million mutinies”. Gone today are references to the timeless stasis of Indian villages, or the rigidity that supposedly characterised social life in the pre- or early-modern period. At the heart of many of these commentaries on India-in-flux is a core reality: the country is on the move, energised by the movement of a population striving for change. Indians are moving across state borders, and frequently crossing over into other countries in an accelerated manner. Even as many institutions are bursting at the seams, there is no doubt that Indian society is being remade by mobile Indians, and the ideas, capital, skills, cultures, and networks that they are carrying around with them.
Is this sort of migration a new phenomenon? Most historians would agree that long before modern nations with their policed borders came into existence, people traveled distances in search of meaning, livelihoods, and security, often to settle in new places far away from their points of origin. As Jeremy Harding puts it, human movement is an “incorrigible habit”, an existential trait that has found itself staring down the barrel of militarised borders and hi-tech border regimes.
Historically, the tension generated by the migrant’s impulse to move, and the nation-state’s need to regulate migrants at the border became most clearly visible after the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. This tension became further amplified as the pace of decolonisation accelerated in the 1950s, with over 60 new nations emerging within a span of 30 years. Each new nation acquired its own security regime, and a desire to regulate “insiders” and “outsiders”.
The emergence of this reality with all of its ramifications led to the creation of the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe in 1951. This was the entity that later morphed into what we now know as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM)—an important monitor of global trends in human migration. Of course, the world has come a long way in the past 60 years. Since the 1990s, discussions have been framed in terms of a new global interconnectedness, also called “globalisation”. Through all of these changes, the human propensity for movement has remained unchanged, forging the creation of new pathways and channels for people to traverse.
According to the IOM’s World Migration Report 2013 some 250 million people today began their lives in one country, and now live in a different one. This means that roughly one in 30 people has experienced international migration. Contrary to popular perception, this movement is not entirely determined by economic opportunity or political hardship (although these are significant drivers), but a variety of other factors. Only 40 per cent of migrants move from the global South to the global North. At least one third of migrants move from South to South, and just over a fifth of migrants (22%) migrate from North to North. A growing percentage of migrants (5%) migrate from North to South.
But things get interesting when one broadens the discussion to include data on in-country migration, i.e., the movement of people within national borders. This phenomenon has accelerated in the wake of the global ascendency of neo-liberal capitalism. In China alone, by 2011 more than 250 million people had left their place of origin, their home, to go and live in some other part of China, largely for work. The figures for India (based on data from Aajeevika Bureau, an organisation that monitors migratory patterns) are impressive. According to IOM figures, of the world’s total population, the total number of people to have migrated (in-country and across international borders) comes to one billion people, i.e., one out of every seven people in the world. If all this movement is happening, are borders really a hindrance to modern ways of living? Not always. Borders provide stability, identity, and a sense of definition to what resides within them. The French intellectual Régis Debray, scoffing at the idea of borderless-ness, believes that the border is like a necessary outer fabric for any country, like a skin, porus but binding. A border has functional value, allowing us to monitor the to-and-fro of human life as it unfolds over time, thereby providing insights valued by policy makers and politicians. It also delineates cultures, ways of life, and notions of identity.
But in our mobile political economy, migration produces emotive reactions, especially in host populations. A number of European nations are struggling with the issue, as are the US, South Africa, and parts of India. Many of these responses are reactionary, incapable of comprehending how people, capital, and ideas are crossing intraand international boundaries through new channels. As these flows feel hemmed-in by the nation-state system, they have the potential to dismantle 20th century orthodoxies.
The limitations of such orthodoxies are already apparent, best illustrated recently by powerhouse publisher Penguin’s decision to “pulp” Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus. Even if Penguin felt victimised by the Indian Penal Code’s Section 295 and went on to destroy all copies of Doniger’s book, in today’s interconnected world in which PDFs fly fast, her book is easily downloadable from countless websites. Like capital, ideas and texts now float across borders with completeabandon. The world we live in today requires an understanding of the human propensity for migration, and the problems inherent in borders that pin people down in ways that kill the human spirit. It would be wise to acknowledge the “place-centric” prejudices that plague many of our existing systems, notions of sovereignty, citizenship, and to think beyond them in creative ways. As we hurtle into an uncertain future, the questions confronting India are the following: How should we make sense of trans-regional, trans-national, multicultural movements, and the conflicts over identity, belonging, and citizenship that they trigger? Aren’t identities mobile, geographies shifting, and capital fluid? What happens when we make human movement a central component of our institutional arrangements? What happens when—to invoke the anthropologist James Clifford—we treat “routes” and “roots” as equal determinants of the human experience?
The artless archer is simply focussed on her game“I want to be Sachin of my field”, says Deepika Kumari. Her deep steady eyes dare you to refute her confident words. After all she is just 19 and well Sachin Tendulkar is leagues apart. But former World No.1 and current World No.2 archer Deepaka Kumari, is anything but preposterous. Her confidence—a quality that Meera Munda, wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda, was among the first to realise would take her a long way up.
“Though she was a lean and thin girl who could barely hold a bow and an arrow, she was very keen to take admission in the archery institute. I decided to help her even though at the time the coach and teachers were not willing to take her on.” Munda saw in the self-effacing little Deepika the understated can-do in plenty that she would display later.
“No one can rise globally in the field without some special quality. I see in her the single-minded devotion and will power to reach the sky,” says Deepika’s first patron, as she blesses her with “grand success and worldwide achievements”.
When we caught up with Kumari in candid interview between rigorous practice sessions, the intrepid Ranchi girl, who will turn 20 in June, spoke of her transformation from being a bookworm slogging for grades to becoming an ace archer stringing bows and shooting targets, among other things.
“I was among the many girls in India, sincere in studies and wanting to be an ideal daughter,” says the young archer. The humility in her is touching, this, despite the fact that at such a young age awards and accolades have been showered on her, the latest being the tag of the Sportsperson of the Year, awarded by FICCI at India Sports Awards held in February 2014.
Deepika had a normal middle class upbringing with her two siblings, brought up by a father who drove autorickshaw and a homemaker mother. But all this was to change one day in 2007, and since then there has been no looking back.
“It was a chilly winter day in February 2007 when I had my first exposure to archery due to my cousin Deepti, who was an archery student at Tata Archery Academy, Jamshedpur,” Kumari reminisces. That one brush made her realise that archery is what she was meant for. But Deepika had bigger dreams than Deepti’s.
She started her initial training under the mentorship of coach Himanshu in the rural location of Saraikhela Kharsawa in Jharkhand. It was not a smooth sailing though for the little girl. “It was difficult to strike a balance between studies and training. I was in class VII when I began training under Himanshu sir,” recalls the young woman. Her poise today belies the turmoil that she must have undergone as a frail 13-yearold struggling between her school work and practice sessions. “I had to sacrifice my studies to make it big in the sports field,” she reveals. The wunderkind had made a tough choice at a young age. But the gamble paid off when in 2008 she was selected to Tata Archery Academy under the mentorship of Dharmnendra Tiwari.
It was at the academy that she met her other coach Purnima. “We as a team are working day in and out to promote archery in the state, and Deepika is now a role model, not only for the people of the state but India at large,” says Purnima, adding, “My association with Deepika began in 2009 after she joined the academy.”
Looking back at the selection of Deepika in 2008, Purnima says, “Archery is an art and a science, where one needs to have concentration, dedication, a sharp mind and quick decision-making capability. Apart from this, physical fitness requires an appropriate body structure, long hands, fingers of average size a jaw line that should not extend. These are a few minute details which we, as a team of coaches, look for while selecting the players. When we met Deepika in 2008 in a state tournament, we found her fit according to the checklist.”
And the protégé has not disappointed the mentor. “At present 24 players are being trained, but nobody has turned out as competent as Deepika,” says the coach. Though she partly blames the government’s apathy for the lackadaisical state of affairs, it is to Deepika’s credit that she has not followed some other good players who left the state for monetary rewards and jobs.
However, amid all the practice and plays, Deepika’s love for books remained inviolable and she continued her studies. The Arjuna Awardee who was born with a responsible streak and was a dutiful child, completed her elementary education from APEG Residential School in Ranchi. Recently, after establishing a smooth track record in the field of archery, she is back in school to complete her education, enrolling in the Bachelors Degree of Commerce programme at Ranchi University in Jharkhand.
For Deepika life is a balancing act and positioning and concentration are an inevitable part of it, not only as an internationally recognised player but also as an individual. During her initial days at the Tata Archery Academy, the training session stretched to more than seven–eight hours and she was left with no option but to create a balance between her education and passion. She used to practice in the day time and in the evening she would study.
As a player, fitness and health are high priorities in Deepika’s life and mental fitness tops the list as it helps to increase her concentration while playing. Her fitness routine includes stretching and yoga which helps her enhance stamina and provides her with mental peace to perform better on ground.
At present she is preparing for the Olympics and other tournaments like the Asian Games where she might have to face formidable South Koreans and she also has to defend her Commonwealth gold. At the same time, she is working at Tata Steel, Jamshedpur. When asked whether she misses the fun that girls of her age enjoy, she shoots straight, “I don’t think I miss anything, rather, I can say, I enjoy more. Even if I have a scheduled life, it has its own fun and this is what I expected from it.”
It is this sagacity that has shown through her performance on the field. She has shaped her life on and off the field with an iron hand and is now preparing to write history in all earnest. No wonder, it all started rather young for determined Deepika. At age 15 she won gold medal in the 11th Youth World Archery Championship held in Ogden, USA in 2009, and the success run continued—in seven successive tournaments she was among the top 10. In 2010, she raked in two gold medals at Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010, her first senior international title among it that she won after defeating five-time Olympian Alison Williamson of Great Britain. Deepika was the first archer in India to capture the sub-junior, junior and senior national titles in a single year.
In 2011, she finished second in the World Cup final and clinched the gold at the World Archery Youth Championships again. The failure at London Olympics in 2012 thus came hard but the champion is now stronger from that blow and she is readying to take on 2016 Rio Olympics and rightfully earn her medals.
“A career in the field of archery requires concentration, hard work and dedication,” says Deepika, who has displayed plenty of these. It requires some mettle to be able to shoot more than 300 arrows in a day—physical strength and mental toughness. It was a gust of wind (windy weather conditions) that had done her in the 2012 Olympics, and a wiser Deepika is now working up her strengths to combat it.
The archer is also keen to promote the sport. She also speaks of the necessity of infrastructure for archery to flourish as a sport. “I am hopeful that the state government will try to understand the scope of the sport and the initiative the field provides to the youths and will start supporting and promoting archery. Funds are needed to hire the best coaches for training aspirants in this field.” Her younger sister too is keenly pursuing training at Tata Archery Academy and Deepika believes she too will create a new history in field.
The top-ranked woman recurve archer has big ambitions and dreams of a huge gold catch in the upcoming Olympic Games. To achieve her dreams and walk that extra mile in career, Kumari feels one needs to rise above societal pressures and expectations. “It is essential to keep the public pressure to perform at bay and for this psychological training is needed.” Experts say there are barely 20 seconds between each shot in games and an archer needs to forget all distractions, even her opponent and concentrate only on target. That’s what Deepika is doing—aiming for the big haul.
It is Deepika’s mental training till date that has helped her give her best shot. Recalling her first success she says “It is difficult to put in words the proud moment of singing the National Anthem, holding the gold medal and saluting the national flag on an international land.”
A true-born Jharkhandi, she is proud of her tribal identity and is happy to be associated with her homeland. She plans to pay back to the state by establishing a fullfledged archery academy in the state of Jharkhand where all aspiring youths can learn the art of archery and take it higher at the global level.
Looking ahead, the gentle and soft-spoken archer is focussed: “For me archery is my life and I never look beyond that, because it comprises all shades of happiness. The sport is my strength. My goal is to be Sachin of my field, and it will be done only when I let my weaknesses turn into my strengths, and I think somewhere down the line I have succeeded and have realised the importance of positivity and sportsmanship.”
Ramu Ramnathan and Vijay Pratap represent democracy in all its diversity. While one penned an extempore satire in his response, the other presented a well thought out argument to the debate. With elections around the corner, we leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.RAMU RAMANATHAN// One night in the middle of nowhere. On the 32nd day of the month. At a time when we the people are asleep, 101 lal batti wallah cars circle round and round, in the middle of a dry lake. In the midst of the circle of cars is a teak table from the Maurya period. A white khadi sheet. Two jhoolas. With Two High and Mighty Leaders seated on it. Black commandos are present. But no clerks to minute the discussion. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to the two unmarried, bachelored, bearded High and Mighty Leaders as First Front and Second Front.
Silence.
Second Front: Tiring na, Baba?
First Front: Yes, Bhai.
Second Front: By the way, I’ve a gift for you. Home-made oondhiyo. It’s the best food item in the whole world. At least 6.5 crore people have voted on Facebook.
First Front: Right. I have pizza for you.
Second Front: You do? It’s the second most popular item in my state. Beats dhokla any day.
First Front: Mama Mia. Mummy will be delighted to hear this.
Second Front: How is Behen? Tabiyat paani fine?
First Front: Mummy is fine. But Behen is having trouble with her husband.
Second Front: That’s why shaadi nahi karvanoo. Aapde jevaah. De taali! Silence.
Second Front: Biju shu?
First Front: All good. Thank you for your elocution tips. Especially the dialogue baazi.
Second Front: Arre Baba, what thanks and all. We must help each other na? I am also trying to be less uncouth.
First Front: Yes Bhai, you need to work harder. You can’t shout at Angela Merkel and Obama. You’re not Putin. At least, not as yet.
Silence.
Second Front: Seven rallies for me today. You?
First Front: Five and a half, Bhai. Second Front: Five and a half? How so?
First Front: The rally in Bulandshahar was not a good one. Too bloody hot. We cancelled it. So I sat by the Ganges and read Discovery of India.
Second Front: Don’t know why EC always conducts general elections in April–May. Tadka maa bahu tadpo chhe, baapla.
First Front: They should make all polling booths air-conditioned. Provide air coolers to voters.
Second Front: Good point. I can get one of the Ambani bandhus or Adanis to provide it. “Free a/c if you use our electricity”. This can be in our money-festo.
First Front: Money-festo?
Second Front: We have abandoned manifesto, Baba. From now on, only money-festo.
First Front: Are you not afraid of that fellow who speaks about the truth. And how we have not been able to abandon our masters since 60 years?
Second Front: Afraid of who? Bapu?
First Front: No no. The muffler chap who swept away Sheila-ji recently. That diabetic fellow.
Second Front: Oh. Him? Ignore him. Like I ignored Keshubhai and Shankerbhai.
First Front: How, Bhai?
Second Front: Listen. You can’t have leader and praja eating from the same plate na? Aap log ne gadbad kar diya Dilli main. If the aam aadmi and the non-aam aadmi enjoy the same comforts and expect the same treatment, then what will happen? Tell, tell?
First Front: French Revolution? October Revolution? Kranti?
Second Front: Chhe chhe. In our country, it means, the aam admi will remain poor. But the point is, the non-aam aadmi will also remain poor. We cannot let that happen. We have to preserve the Establishment. Status quo zindabad. Hain na, Baba? Silence.
First Front: I have an important question to ask you Bhai.
Second Front: Poocho poocho. I am sure it is about my good governance and hat-trick of victories.
Second Front: This is much more important. How often do you trim your beard?
Second Front: Once a week on mangalvar. Aap?
First Front: When it starts to scratch and irritate.
Second Front: Do you realise, on 17 May, you or I will make history? We will be India’s first bearded PM.
First Front: Really? But what about Chandarsekharji? Manmohanji?
Second Front: True, true. But if I say it a hundred times, and Arunji and Ravi Shankerji and Nirmalaji and Arnabji repeat it, people will believe me.
First Front: That is true. Your lawyers and barristers are better than ours.
Second Front: I have personally trained them. I told them there are two things our people love: a good set of lies and some circus. You want some chai? Arre Amitbhai, ek cutting chai mokllo ne.
Silence.
First Front: Oh no. Second Front: Shu thayu?
First Front: That muffler man has sent me a WhatsApp again. He says: It is easier to open a Swiss Bank account than a SBI account. Ufff.
Second Front: He sends messages to you too, Baba?
First Front: Aapko bhi?
Second Front: Hahn hahn. First through Kiranji, then Ramdevji, then through pigeons. I told him not every problem in this country is because of a Swiss Bank. He started talking about 20,000 malnourished children in Maninagar. Plus 1,000 farmer deaths in Panchmahal. I mean, what nonsense!
First Front: He did that!
Second Front: Imagine. Have you and your party ever said so for 20 years? Never. Now that’s true democracy na, Baba? Then how dare he? Anarkali! First Front: Anarkali nahin, Bhai. Anarchist. Like Proudhon.
Second Front: Same, same. Thinks he is damn smart because he quotes Ambedkar, Bapu and the Constitution.
First Front: What do we do now, Bhai? I am scared. I wish Naani was here.
Second Front: Arre, ignore him. He will simply fade away like Kumar Gaurav. One good film and then oblivion.
First Front: I wish Chacha was here.
Second Front: Arre arre; don’t cry Baba. Between you and me, we have so many shakhas and cadres and offices. It is a whole social system. Like your Naani and your Chacha, we can indoctrinate and manipulate anything; and promote a false consciousness that is immune to the truth.
First Front: You have an action plan?
Second Front: First I win the election ...
First Front: That is a given, Bhai. I am working very hard to guarantee you a majority. You saw that interview na...
Second Front: That was brilliant. I would have kissed you now. But kissing is banned in our country. But you’re my Brahmastra. I wish I could appoint you as Deputy PM, instead of Lalji or Paswanji.
First Front: Bhai. Focus. That muffler man is planning direct action. He is planning an FIR against India in the name of the Aam Aadmi.
Second Front: Don’t worry. I have a plan to prevent it.
First Front: Che cosa?
Second Front: Banish the chap to Karachi like that other anti-national fellow.
First Front: Bhai. He is not like that Karachi don. He was a democratically elected head of state.
Second Front: In which case, I can resort to Plan B.
First Front: Quale e?
Second Front: I can ship all the aam aadmis out of India. … To Mars. I am working with ISRO to organise low-cost ST buses to Mars. If my state can export Shahs and Patels and Kutchis to the USA and UK, then exporting the aam aadmi to Mars is pretty easy.
First Front: Arre waah. Aap mahaan hain Second Front: I have learnt how to be brutish and riotous from your family. Your father, mother, uncle, grandmother ...
First Front: (coughs) Vande Matram, Bhai.
Second Front: Fratelli d’Italia. Ciao. The short scene ends as it begins. And no one knows if it transpired or will transpire. But we got this transcript from an unmanned drone in the sky that reports to masters in distant lands. Jai Hind. Ramu Ramanathan, the acclaimed playwright -director is based in Mumbai.
VIJAY PRATAP// In less than a year-anda- half, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has made such an impact that it occupies a prime position in the political discourse of the country today. It is being observed not only in India, but the world-over. On February 22, 2014 in Brussels, the European Greens were voting on their common manifesto for the European parliament election, which are being held on May 22–26, 2014. On the sidelines of this gathering some important functionaries held a small meeting to understand AAP and its policy perspective and future possibilities. This was not a formal secretariat meeting, nevertheless there was a consensus that European Greens must increase its contact with AAP. The majority in this small but significant group felt that this party seemed to be a good possible ally for responding to global economic, ecological and other crises. The next day—i.e., February 23, 2014—there was another small meeting of civil society activists, where Indian analysts from the European Commission also joined. I was present in these meetings and was amazed to see how keenly and systematically Europeans were watching AAP and other political developments in India.
On 25 February 2014, in the Finnish parliament’s annexe, a senior Indian political worker, who is also an engaged observer of AAP, spoke to a group of activists and intellectuals on AAP. In this meeting, the Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomoija and a Gandhian socialist philosopher–activist Dr Thomas Wallgren were formal discussants. The wellinformed discussion which followed the presentations was a pleasant surprise. These three meetings highlight not just the interest of the European Union countries in India and its polity but also the crisis in their party systems. They seem to be in search of models to renew their polity, and, therefore, AAP is also being keenly watched. The crisis in our party systems is about their ability to articulate and assert the aspirations of people they claim to represent. If the party system is in crisis, then the ability of governance institutions to govern also declines.
The crisis in the party system in India got accentuated with the spilt in the Congress in 1969. The eminent political scientist Rajni Kothari has pointed out in his book Politics in India that the Congress is a party of dominance and other parties are linked to it through factional chains. To state it differently, we can say that the Congress represented a microcosm of society and other parties linked with the Congress represented sub–sets or smaller segments of the larger whole of society. The way regional parties are constructed, they represent one or the other sub-set of society. Contemporary regional parties in India have a definite set of caste/ethnic/ regional following. They neither bother nor have the ability to develop a coherent and holistic view of the nation’s governance, development and growth agenda.
In practice, the regional parties do not have inner-party democracy. Sometimes even the notion of justice does not seem to be fully insulated from a sense of sectarian identities that these parties embody. In a society where the notion of justice is no longer universal, a universal tyranny of the system becomes the rule. Ordinary citizens feel helpless. The story does not end at a point where they cannot get justice, but they cannot even get satisfaction of fighting this system, as there is no listening space for the universal notions of justice. It is in this context that people invented an instrument called the Aam Aadmi Party. The national convenor of this party, Arvind Kejriwal, describes the emergence of AAP as kudrat ka karishma (nature’s miracle). He seems to think that human beings could not have accomplished this task.
One significant fact about AAP is that it touched the moral/spiritual chord with ordinary people across class, caste, region and religion. The party, born out of this moral and emotional crisis, has also a potential to develop as an antidote to various kinds of helplessness among the aam aadmi. ‘Ordinary’, according to Kejriwal, is not a reflection of class, but it signifies ordinariness in the sense when you are trying to lead your life by following rules of the game and not of privilege. On 18 March 2014, I attended a meeting organised by AAP called ‘A Roadmap for Indian Muslims’. In this meeting none of the AAP leaders indulged in any conventional public relations exercise. They did not make populist promises and called a spade a spade. It is worth noting that popular support to AAP is based on a broader and deeper notion of corruption. There is no denying the fact that in everyday life of ‘ordinary’ people of any class, corruption in its ordinary sense is the most hard-hitting instrument of this system’s tyranny. But, starting since the early 1980s and getting a fillip in the early nineties, identity politics has acted as a double-edged weapon. For the hitherto oppressed SC and OBC communities in the electoral domain, it has proved to be a positive resource of support base. This has changed the complexion of our parliament and state legislatures. At the same time, this very resource has been used by a majority of the Dalit and OBC leaders to corner power for their families. Those of them who do not have families have concentrated power in their coteries. Thus, the inner party democracy and representation has been greatly undermined, and consequently inevitable mis-governance and corruption is becoming increasingly institutionalised. So, non-alienated ‘ordinary’ people clearly experience and see a link between corruption and identity fundamentalism. Broad popular support from the elite to the socially and economically most underprivileged have supported AAP, because Kejriwal articulates reaction and response to this impasse.
In the agenda-setting meeting of Muslims in Delhi in March 2014, there were clearly two strands. One, which reinforces a feeling of victimhood, fears of security and facts of exclusion and discrimination all stated in a fashion that will contribute to identity fundamentalism. The other strand was linking exclusion, discrimination, security anxieties and powerlessness to larger forces, processes and institutions. This kind of effort to speak the truth is not common in our political class. They cannot speak the same language to all sections of population. This new phenomenon called AAP has a fresh air of commitment to truth and learning the ways of nation building.
Vijay Pratap is a founder member of Lokayan, a think tank on democracy. He received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize, in 1980. He can be reached at vijaypratap@ vsnl.net.
Will this General Elections curve a different path?HOW TIME FLIES. On May 27, 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru passed away. It is difficult for today’s Indians, used to fast-paced events and frenetic news cycles, running from one blockbuster happening to another, to imagine what the death of the great man meant for Indians of the time. For all his faults and despite the then-recent humiliation at the hands of China, Nehru was much cherished and seen as a pan-Indian patriarch. His death ended an era, and triggered a genuine national mourning.
Why is this relevant today, in a hard and bitter election season as India prepares to vote for the 16th Lok Sabha? It is being mentioned for a strange, piquant coincidence that will mark not just a conjunction of dates but a larger closure. In May this year, a few days before Nehru’s 50th death anniversary perhaps, India will see a new prime minister come into office. Opinion polls suggest this new prime minister will not be from the Congress, or at least that incarnation of the Congress run by Nehru’s family after his departure. Fifty years after Nehru, the political dynasty that still rules the Congress in his name faces its most compelling existential crisis. India has seen two dramatic rejections of the dynasty, in 1977 and 1989. The Congress defeats of the 1990s don’t quite count because the party wasn’t led by a Nehru-Gandhi at that point (except in 1999) and there had not been a Nehru-Gandhi in power or wielding executive authority since Rajiv Gandhi demitted office in 1989. If the opinion polls are right, then 2014 will turn out to be as much of a watershed as 1977 or 1989, maybe greater.
Why? The UPA government has been around for a decade. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have been the faces of the establishment—though they have not formally served in government— and are indelibly associated with the UPA. As such, an anti-incumbency vote against the UPA and a harsh sentiment against a system of privilege and Nehru-Gandhi authority cannot be divorced. It is no longer easy to pretend people are angry with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but are neutral or even sympathetic towards the Congress president and vice-president.
The impending defeat will call into question the viability of the Nehru- Gandhi dynasty as a political and electoral brand. Dissidents did leave the Congress in both 1977 and 1989. Indira Gandhi in fact had to split the party after that post-Emergency defeat. However, a vast number of loyalists and an all-India political network stayed true to her. Her son, Sanjay Gandhi, built on this with a new street-fighter energy from the admittedly thuggish Youth Congress of the 1970s. In 1989, the coalition era hadn’t quite dawned and many in the Congress thought Rajiv Gandhi would be back in office sooner or later. In any case, the Congress remained the largest party by a mile.
In all this, 2014 threatens to be different. There is little faith in Rahul Gandhi emerging as a decisive, clearheaded political show-stopper who will electrify the public. His political acumen and electoral strategies are politely described as “idealistic” and “long-term”. Privately they have Congress functionaries tearing their hair. If the Congress indeed drops down to below 100 seats (as recent polls says), then recovery in the next election would mean a target of 125- 135 seats, far from the 206 the party won in 2009 and even further from the single-party majority its oldtimers still dream of. Quick fixes, like replacing Rahul with his sister on the basis of the specious belief that she is “more of a people’s person”, will hardly solve the larger problem. What is more likely is a fundamental restructuring of power equations within the Congress. Any state-level stalwart who emerges in a post-2014 situation will either do so outside the Congress umbrella or will demand a heavy price for identifying with the Congress. He or she will dictate terms to Delhi. To give a real-life example, if Y.S. Rajashekhara Reddy were to have died after the coming 2014 election—rather than after the 2009 election—the Nehru-Gandhis would have found it much more difficult to deny his son, Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, an immediate shot at the chief ministry of Andhra Pradesh.
Apart from internal collapse, the Congress is also encountering a singularly determined opponent. The party has faced challenges before – from the Swatantra Party to the old Jan Sangh, from the socialists to the Janata Party to, of course, regional parties. These parties have had a limited geographical or demographic footprint. Alternatively, they have just been short-lived. Also many (but not all) of them were led by those who had been influenced by the political culture of Delhi, constructed substantially by the Congress and its family leadership.
The BJP under Narendra Modi differs from this old model on two counts. One, having run Gujarat for 12 years, Modi represents not just an alternative tradition in politics but also an alternative tradition in governance. He would be keener than previous non-Congress politicians to distinguish and product-differentiate himself from the prevailing Delhi framework. Two, Modi and his contemporaries in the BJP—including strong chief ministers who have made the Congress less competitive in several big states—are part of a second generation in the BJP. This is the first all-India, non-Congress party that has effected a renewal and built on—rather than frittered away—the achievements of its foundational leadership. Unlike many other Congress adversaries, it has not disappeared after the retirement or passing of one or two charismatic leaders. All of these are harsh realities for the Congress to deal with. On May 27, 1964, millions of Indians wept for Nehru. In May 2014, children and grandchildren of many of those very Indians will be glad to be rid of the Congress and its dynasts. History would have turned a page; India would have moved on.
Yuwa has an interesting agenda—girl child empowerment in the tribal belt of Jharkhand through football.What brings Franz Gastler to India or rather what keeps him in the rural interiors of Jharkhand? Consulting with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), working on corporate social strategies...but even before that let’s go back to his youth... a BA and an MA in International Political Economy from the University Professors Programme at Boston University and certificates in negotiation and mediation from the Programme on Negotiation at Harvard Law School...interning at the Ministry of Finance in Bogota, Colombia... India is so far and such a far cry from his part of the world. So what brought him here; how did it all begin?
We shoot a series of questions at the Executive Director and Founder of Yuwa, a not-for-profit programme that is working on empowerment of the girl child in the tribal belt of Jharkhand, through the unique medium of football!
Meeting Gastler itself was an eye-opener of sorts. We had gone to Hutup, this remote village in the interiors of the extremist infested jungles, expecting a bearded old American gent, probably some missionary on a philanthropic agenda. The 30 something handsome young football coach with his easy laughter and friendly banter came as a pleasant surprise. It is easy to understand the tremendous fan following that he has cultivated amid his little protégés and the village folk in the last five years or so of his stay in Jharkhand.
Coming back to Gastler’s history, a lot had to do with his choice of subjects in academia. “I wrote my master’s thesis on how companies and NGOs can partner to combat poverty and my most interesting professor was from Pakistan, and some of my most interesting classmates were from India. A lot of the most intriguing NGOs were also in India. So after university I was searching for opportunities in South Asia.” A chance meeting with Sam Pitroda in Chicago paved the way. “He connected me with the CII.” Here he had the opportunity to work with leaders in the private sector who were just starting to get involved in social initiatives through the CSR agenda. But that was just the beginning.
As says Gastler, “After a year-and-a-half of wearing a suit and tie in the forty-degree Delhi heat, I was ready to leave office life behind and do something more meaningful and get my boots muddy.” That brought him to a tribal nook in Jharkhand when he took up a job with an NGO. But instead of opting to stay in one of the towns, he moved into a mud house in a village and started teaching English at a local government school. “That gave me a chance to connect with kids.”
Gastler returned to New York after working five months in Jharkhand to work with his favourite professor from university. But he had left his heart in Jharkhand, India. “I soon decided I wanted to go back to India—to Jharkhand—and work again with the kids I’d met before.” It was upon his second coming to the village that an off the cuff remark by one of his little students started the process for the Yuwa programme to take shape. “When I returned to Jharkhand, a girl who’d been in my English class and who I’d given a scholarship to study at a better school said she wanted to play football. I told her if she started a team, I’d coach it. I didn’t think that it would be such a powerful platform for empowerment.”
So what is this Yuwa programme? Gastler has mapped out its benefits clearly. “Society teaches girls to fit in. We coach girls to stand out,” he says. Gastler had his reasons for selecting girls’ empowerment as also sports as a medium to empower them. He quotes Kofi Annan, former secretary general of United Nations to highlight the importance of educating girls: it is ‘the single highest returning social investment in the world today’.
Spelling out the need for educating the girl Yuwa website quotes some hard facts:
• A girl with seven years of education marries 4 years later, and has 2.2 fewer children
• When an educated girl earns income, she reinvests 90% of it in her family, compared to 35% for a boy
• The population’s HIV rate goes down and malnutrition decreases 43%
• If 10 % more girls go to secondary school, the country’s economy grows 3 per cent
• Yet 99.4% of international aid money is not directed to her
The choice of Jharkhand was also dictated by the abysmal female development indices of the state. More than six in 10 women in the state can’t read. Jharkhand leads Indian states in child marriages and an estimated 30,000 girls from here are trafficked every year. The other factor that compounds the woes of the tribal belt girls is the topographical isolation of the interior belt that denies her exposure.
Yuwa brings a large number of at-risk girls girls out of isolation and into a positive team environment. Daily practice and a team platform gives them confidence to rewrite the script of illiteracy, early marriage, pregnancy and poverty by breaking the vicious cycle.
Football as a team sport acts as an effective model of grassroots organisation in Yuwa. It is a model of local talent where coaches to the executive director, are all sourced from the same local pool. But what’s even more unique is the ownership structure of the team. The players, specifically girls between 5-17 years old with an average and median age of 12 years, are in charge of their own programme. They buy their own football, find their fields and set their own practice schedules. Apart from the sweat equity, a player is required to contribute financially as well, for instance, a third of the price of the football boots that she becomes eligible to after completing four months’ compulsory attendance. This calls for ingenuity and diligence in poor girls who must find their own means of funding. With the team and the coaches cheering on, she always does. That’s the USP of Yuwa.
In a direct contrast to how the game is commonly played amongst the rich kids, Yuwa has more players and less footballs and a community coach instead of a professional one. Thus, it teaches the players the values of peer-to-peer coaching, frugality and collective effort.
Gastler rightly declares, “When a girl joins a Yuwa team, a new world opens up to her. She gets connected with quality education, learns about her body and her rights, and becomes a role model for hundreds of girls in her community. Her journey begins with football.” The quality education that the girls receive at Yuwa, unlocks a world of possibility. “Yuwa girls use technology to discover English, math, and science and defy the odds—and define their own future,” adds the coach. The results of the programme are visible. Yuwa sent the first team ever from India to play in Spain in the Donosti Cup and Gasteiz Cup, 2013. Its team of 18 players won bronze at Gasteiz Cup (Spain) 2013. Three of its players have been selected for the India National U-13 team and 19 have made it into Jharkhand state teams. It is team Yuwa’s girls who have lifted Jharkhand state’s national ranking to 4th, up from 20th. Twenty girls from Yuwa’s first team are now leading practices for its six new teams. Two girls are even coaching a young boys’ team.
Little wonder then that from 15 girls in a single hamlet organised by one girl, Yuwa has grown past 200 girls in 10 villages practicing daily, with more girls coming and new team lists being published regularly. On the education front too, the changes are all positive. Yuwa girls attend school five days per week on an average after one year of joining the outfit, compared to three days per week on average earlier. These girls are also often the first in their families to attend college. The social welfare and awareness network of Yuwa has ensured increased identification and treatment of girls whose illnesses are often ignored. The mentorship and family counseling programme is successfully identifying and combating cases of child marriage and addressing issues of domestic abuse and abuse outside of the home. Through weekly workshops, Yuwa girls learn about female health, hygiene and nutrition.
Yuwa has also been actively working on livelihood aspects of the players through both micro lending and micro enterprise. In its first micro lending initiative, it gave out loans for electric irrigation pumps to players’ mothers. Though the social impact was impressive as the farmers could carry back the pumps home in the evening saving them the trouble of sleeping in open fields and malaria bites apart from the monetary saving of US$ 200 in diesel fuel in a single season, the loan recovery proved to be an arduous task. Built on the lessons of the micro-lending model, Yuwa came up with a new microenterprise initiative that would be directly beneficial to the players. This small scale, high return venture is generating operating income for Yuwa clubs and providing players with opportunities to start their own enterprises and invest in their education, health and future livelihood. The first venture under this initiative is producing, marketing and selling mushrooms which requires little time, training and investment but has high RoI. Meena Kumari, 14, is one of the first players to have become a mushroom entrepreneur. Her father, a cook, was shot dead by robbers. There are other success stories like that of Sita Kumari , 14, of village Hutup, who works in her father’s vegetable patch in mornings, attends school in the day and then is at Yuwa in the evening to perfect her shots. She has made it to the final selection team of the Sports Authority of India and is aiming for a place in the state team, for that would mean an escape from an early marriage. Suman Toppo, 11, also from Hutup, has worked as a catalyst in changing the mindset of her parents—a daily wager mother and a farmer father. She won a 75 per cent scholarship to school and paved the way for her sisters’ education as her parents decided to fund it from their meager income. It is curtsey to Yuwa that Suman and her sisters have a new life today. The girls too have a hard life helping their parents and balancing school and Yuwa training, but have no complaints.
This hardship is what has led seven girls from the programme to become coaches, earning on an average 50 per cent of their parents’ income, working for two hours per day, 4–5 days per week. Yuwa coaches gain confidence, leadership and professional skills that make them employable. Players also learn budgeting and savings skills through system of purchasing subsidised football equipment. The team behind Yuwa India’s success comprises three board members, Gastler as director and co-founder, a programme coordinator from the US, a female mentor from Jharkhand, nine coaches who are girls and boys who've come up through Yuwa, and volunteers from Spain and the US. The funding though has been much of a promise in the pipeline and Yuwa has managed most of it on its own. Yuwa has also raised US$ 92,000 from investors. Gastler says, “For the first two years we founders funded Yuwa almost entirely from our own pockets. Then in 2011 we were the first in India to win Nike Gamechangers.” The US$ 25,000 NKE grant was used to build a classroom and is being used for building a sports facility. The award proved to be a real gamechanger for Yuwa bringing it visibility. “It also gave us some exposure internationally and in India. Unlike most NGOs, we don’t have an office in a city and we don’t have any paid staff fundraising, so most of our funds have come from volunteers who have worked with us and then made donations and become advocates for Yuwa,” adds Gastler.
With fame came the promises. “We were offered ten acres of land by the Jharkhand government during presidential rule last year, but that stalled as soon as a government was elected,” the coach says with a smile. The promises were renewed following the media blitzkrieg upon Yuwa girls’ return from Spain with a bronze medal. “They received loads of support from the media, with hour-long specials on Bharka Dutt (NDTV) and Arnab Goswami (Times Now) shows and full-page and front page articles in national newspapers and magazines. At that point, the Jharkhand government offered five acres—half the original offer—to build a small residential centre.” The offer has again been stalled, he says. With the vision to put every girl’s future in her own hands, the founder says “I think our team has done an exceptional job of building a programme that has done just that. We've allowed the girls to decide what they want from Yuwa, and one thing they wanted was to come, play and study every day. So while most NGOs that work with kids once a week or once a month, we see ours three hundred plus days per year. Each girl in Yuwa gets over a thousand hours of programme each year.” In 2014, Yuwa plans to use technology to give girls access to quality education, and to bring more and more passionate staff and volunteers onto its team. The organisation hopes to build a centre of excellence that will give girls from poor families the chance to get world-class education and coaching. A centre which can accommodate upto 1,000 children is under construction. Gastler is confident, “If a lot of these girls had the opportunities I’ve had, they’d be applying to Ivy League colleges instead of trying to avoid getting married off at age 16. I know we can make those opportunities available to them at a low-cost by being a little innovative. Any doubt you have will disappear if you watch 13-year-old Kusum's TEDx talk on Youtube.”
Yuwa is also expanding with others wanting to replicate its success. A group of IIM Udaipur students have started their own programme based on the model. “Each of our young female coaches from villages in Jharkhand stayed in Mumbai's Dharavi slum for months at a time to start a programme for girls there, that's now being continued by our friends at Reality Gives, a Mumbai-based NGO,” Gastler informs. Though Gastler admits, “I miss a lot of things from home,” he is “in this for the longhaul.” He is enjoying being here, building the programme, and “bringing together a good team of people to take Yuwa another step forward.” We wish many such yuwas would come forward to take that step further.
A sketchy effort that leaves you wishing for moreSOMETIMES THE simplest questions are the hardest to answer. Say I ask you, why do you feel at home in your home? There could be a multitude of answers you could offer. Comfort, familiarity, security, history, etc. However, I could as easily toss them aside; not a single factor in those answers is unique to your home—my house is just as comforting, familiar, and secured—to me. Because some things are hard to define, we lazily label them as ‘X factor’. Your home has the X factor—it offers your brand of comfort, familiarity, security, and it is your inheritance not mine.
For Beloved Strangers I should ideally take refuge in the X factor explanation to understand why it did not quite leave that profound effect despite the familiarity of circumstances reflected in the writing. The act of reading may be an equal process but comprehension is personal. What may cause one person to tear up, may lead to heartburn in others— I mean the kind which appears after consuming soggy bread pakoras.
Beloved Strangers managed to give me unequal measures of both—a lot of post-pakora-type heartburn and some poignant moments. Beloved Strangers is Maria Chaudhuri’s attempt at writing a memoir. The first-half is a look at a world of frustrated, restless adults trapped in a fractured domestic space of expectation versus reality. Those who have grown up reading modern Bengali literature would be all too familiar with this brand of sometimes meaningless grown-up angst, one that leaves an imprint or leaves one frightfully bored.
We meet Chaudhuri’s mother; a woman who wishes to be a celebrated singer and manages only to be the latter. A “distant” father. Parents who might have loved each other (and themselves) once. We skim over the first erotic experience, pornography, and fleetingly read of people coming in and leaving; all through the eyes of the child protagonist. A child who allegedly bears the heavy weight of expectations, protocol, discipline and shame—a lot of shame if we are to believe her. Shame in school, shame while caught masturbating, shame when not fed the right kind of food and after a tantrum thrown; shameshame. I do believe her deep shame; the circumstances are all too familiar to be dismissed. However, what leaves one baffled, and a tad bit alienated, is the voice. It is one which lacks inherent, dismissive humour which humans—especially children—use to negotiate human shame and guilt which society, religion, protocol or life tries to pile on most of us.
In the first half, it is apparent that Chaudhuri is laying the blueprint of her adulthood. Then there is that niggling feeling that the child is already too disillusioned, angst ridden and complicated to grow more so. If the child can not wait to grow up, neither can we so that the narrative would change.
Certainly in the second half of the memoir, Chaudhuri does begin to tighten what has been so far a rather insipid narrative. The idea of the author’s sense of lack of emotional allegiance to any one place does strike a sympathetic chord. The most brilliant moment happens right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, when a lady approaches the protagonist on the street and yells at her to go back to where she came from—to where she belonged.
“By pointing her finger at me to banish me from her world, she shows me how I have been executing my own exile.” This happens to be one of the most honest glimpses into her heart.
The memoir ideally navigates two continents and had the potential for an emotional exploration of families and friends who become families. But Beloved Strangers lacks two elements needed to hook: unbridled intensity and/or humour. On one hand Chaudhuri seems a little scared to delve too deep into her characters—or her own thought (there are so many sentences that literally end with a question mark)—and neither does she treat it with humour to say “look, it meant nothing so think less”. Chaudhuri’s debut is not the most impressive one, but there is a hope that the day when she truly opens up her heart, there will be enough from her pen to leave us pondering.