"In search of memory this Memorial Day."

In search of memory this Memorial Day

Is a line I heard on NPR

While I struggle to experiment with appam batter

-- A culinary art I never had a chance to learn

Nor miss

While still a child at home,
Co-existing with the Lost Generation.

This Memorial Day
I don't need to search my memory
To remember my grandmother
Who neither fought in a man's war
Nor has passed away,
But merely, enormously
Hovers
Between life and blessed death.

But this battle

For breath,

Neither old nor new for her,

Is a struggle she'd consider

Much less tortuous

And more welcome

Than the fight for dignity

That she has been losing

For more than half of her life.

Malathi, 5/30/2016

The Ethics of Aesthetics

The caption says, "30 unique photographs from 1959. Christian Dior in Moscow."
 
And somehow these photographs make me sad, sad, sad. Audrey Hepburns strategically inserted into the pages of 'Soviet Woman' for the sole reason of breathing life into the Hepburns alone.  No give; just take.  

Perhaps not as obviously stark and troubling as malnourished, bow-legged, rheumy-eyed children in remote villages serving as backdrop extras, but the ultimate effect belongs in the category of deprived people serving as props to sell a lifestyle that they could not attain at that time and in that space.  

The cringe-worthiness is made worse when I wonder, 'Did they know exactly what they were doing? Or did they not?'  

Which is more troubling? 
  

Speaking in silences

Ketaki Chowkhani reflects on her experiences teaching caste in an upper caste school on Round Table India.   An 18-year old, 12th grade student approached her to help him out with a project on caste.  According to Chowkhani, the student, who was from an upper caste community, went to a school with only upper caste, and mostly middle class, students and teachers. Chowkhani was familiar with the school and its politics since she had studied there herself. "No one ever talked to us about caste there," she says.  "There was a resounding silence around it."  Chowkhani explained to the student that no one talked about caste in the school spaces because everyone was upper caste.

"This was of course, because caste was believed to be ascribed to only lower castes and Dalits and not upper castes, and that they seemed strangely absolved of any caste identity. The middle class, upper caste idea of castelessness was the prevalent norm there."

While I like how she explains the upper castes' version of castelessness, I disagree that no one talks about caste in places where upper caste privilege dominates. I have a slightly different take, hearing as I do, unintended, ubiquitous caste talk on all sides. Such conversations, seemingly innocent, involve foods, culture, festivals, bhajans, favorite singers, beloved music genres, party invitations, temple matters, gods and goddesses, thread ceremonies, mantras, planet positions, auspicious days, saints, holy books, scriptures, modern pilgrimages, who's who, favorite colleges, cool schools, professorial uncles' experiences, mannerisms, dialects, writings, readings, love stories, marriage ceremonies, naming ceremonies, thread ceremonies, death ceremonies, ideas of humor, preferences in silk, taste in jewellery, concept of beauty, cousins with US visas, nieces with IIM degrees, aunts bringing marriage proposals, grandfathers earning PHDs -- all topics that simultaneously exclude me, my kind and many more.

So I assert that people engage in caste talk all the time without being aware that they engage in caste talk all the time.  "How?," you may ask.

I can explain but you have to promise to experience my world, to carry my baggage, whole-heartedly, in order to understand.

Let me put it this way:

Have you ever fasted?  When you are fasting, especially in the beginning when you are learning how to fast effectively, have you ever thought to yourself that there are too many references to foods, beverages, aromas, food rituals, eating practices and routines in a normal day? Have you ever wondered how it is that you did not pay attention earlier to how often food innocently confronts you in your everyday life?

Likewise,
If you are a vegan who obsessively tries to avoid animal products, do you not find animal-based ingredients in every food label, restaurant offering, and meat-eating culture's norms?

Caste is like that. 

Just as,

Atheists can tell that our societies rely on too many God-based cultural references;
People struggling economically can understand that middle-class lives are full of activities that are money-based and consumption-based; that middle-class worries revolve around issues that matter only for those with some money;
Orphans can see that too many stories are rooted in mother's love and father's care;
Rationalists notice the extent to which superstitions rule all our lives;
Girls recognize exactly when boys have it easy;
The homeless in the city see buildings galore and yet know which doorways are off-limits to them and which benches in which parks are safe to sleep in;
Street children of the perpetually hungry can find perfectly edible foods thrown into garbage bins, 

Only a person born not into upper caste can tell you how many cultural norms and expectations are unavailable to him or her.  

When you are lower caste but move in upper caste circles, caste tends to be talked about under the umbrella of culture.  Rarely do we seem to notice or pay attention to it, at least not until major life events such as college admissions, marriage, babies, in-law visits take over lives.  In fact, people seem to not even be aware of this social capital that they have been given, without asking. Yet caste culture is omnipresent to those on the outside, living in the margins, looking in from the fringes through walls that let you see, watch, observe. But not touch, mingle, blend.

Walls. Glass walls. Fragile glass walls.  Yet, walls.

The world would be a lesser place without these books and movies.

Iranian movie: Border Cafe
If you want to understand how 'benign' masculine protection turns into insidious control of the feminine, how social structures ultimately protect the economic interests of the patriarchy, why women's issues have no boundaries, how dry, difficult and dense political science can be conveyed effectively through cinematic art, why Iranian movies occupy a special place in my heart, then you have to see this (not-so-recent) movie, 'Border Cafe'. Story-telling at its best.


'The Wandering Falcon' by Jamil Ahmad.
This book is a precious gift to this world!  I wasn't aware that I could find common grounds and identify with some of the simple yet richly complex characters from the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran border region, but I do.  I don't think anyone could have resisted being in the shoes of any of Ahmad's characters.  Such is the power of his stories and story-telling ability. 

The language--lyrical; the writing style--beautifully brief; the writer's heart--always tangible.

Please pick it up if you haven't read it, but don't look for reviews online.  All the ones I found give away too much of the book' structure and details of the story.  Reviewers who cannot write reviews without spoilers in every sentence need to be left wandering in the desolate lands of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  You need to enter the world depicted in this book without knowing anything about it.    

The story of Ahmad's book seeing the light of day is a story in its own right.
  

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
What a stark and audaciously biting novel about human strengths vs. vulnerabilities. This book is testament to Hanif's ability to turn tragedy into comedy for just as long as it takes you to swallow the bitter truth about nations and humanity. The deeper message about the limitations of all semblance of order in this universe (especially the hospital universe), however, lingers on long past you put down the book. I respect that he bravely took digs at stingy Caucasian nuns willing to let brown people starve. I love that his absentee fathers can write soulful petitions when necessary. I agree that tender love lasts only as long as viciousness, with or without reason, stays away. I am not quite sure why we rushed through the last scene abruptly or the timeline of what exactly happened above the hospital roof, but, perhaps, short, swift novel ending is metaphor for how quickly everything comes to a close if you are an Alice Bhatti in this world.

There are numerous themes in this book -- class, caste, religion, misogyny, poverty, marginalization, sickness, hospital management, physicians, professionalism or lack thereof among physicians, police power -- but the ones I picked out in the previous paragraph are not necessarily in order of importance or coverage in the book. Above all, the book is about how unconnected women learn to survive, live, thrive in a patriarchal society. If they make it past survival, that is.

The book is not all raw and stark; there are layers of nuance. And you will come to know a bit more about a little known demographic -- Pakistani Christians from the sweeper class/caste.


'In This World' directed by Michael Winterbottom
Last but not the least, watch this docudrama that will leave you with an idea of the tenacity and maturity that some children have as a result of being born on the other side of the fence.  

Looking at the NCERT cartoon controversy through the prism of class

So much has been said – in English – about the lack of a sense of humour in Dravidian Tamils by reader-commenters in the English newspaper, 'The Hindu,' and commentators elsewhere.  However, few have understood how the anti-Hindi protests of 1965 aimed to bridge the gap between the socioeconomic classes by opening up access to the English language in Tamil Nadu and beyond. Fewer have connected how, by not illustrating this nuanced principle and urgent strategy for better economic prospects, the cartoon does a disservice to the protesters and to the history of Tamil Nadu . Instead, those who opened the doors are discussed, by some Tamils and non-Tamils alike, as uncouth trouble-makers with nothing more than political self-interests.  So much have we advanced since those days when English was available mostly to the elites; so much have we taken for granted the middle- and working-classes' economic potential in the English-speaking world! 

I say, let NCERT keep that cartoon in that textbook. Let us give history a chance to laugh at two Tamil leaders, Rajaji and Bhaktavatchalam, who were embarrassingly out of touch with the educational needs of the masses. I am assuming, of course, that history will give R.K. Laxman--the cartoonist who grew up in a family that mostly conversed in English--the benefit of doubt regarding awareness of class issues. I regrettably do not.