The Curse of being the youngest

The Curse of being the youngest

          By R. Akhileshwari

            The sum total of a personality is arrived at after a highly complicated process of accretion of experiences, involvement in simple and complex circumstances, the mistakes committed as one lives and lessons learnt from those experiences. I firmly believe we are born with certain inherent advantages or disadvantages by which I don’t mean the socio-economic or the pre-determined genetic inheritances. The most deciding factor of what you become depends on your rank in the family. The woes of being the eldest of are different. Worse, I think, are those of the youngest. The thesis I propose is that the first borns become the autocrats of this world and the youngest the democrats. At least in our society where hierarchy--familial, social and economic---is most pronounced and implemented fanatically.

            Being the youngest in a family of eight children, I should know. The unwritten rules governing behaviour in a family are inherently unjust and followed implicitly. All rebellion is promptly crushed, nipped in whatever stage it is: in the bud, after it has flowered or in full-fledged adulthood. The curse of being the youngest haunts you to your last days.

            The youngest fetches and carries all that can be fetched and carried for the older siblings, from shoes and socks to a glass of water. If salt has to be fetched from the kitchen when the family has begun its dinner at the table who should get up to get it but the youngest? And should the elder forget to take the towel to the bathroom who should rush to the rescue of the dripping older sibling? The youngest, of course. And is there is a word of thanks? A gracious smile for the pains taken? You must be joking.

            The youngest is often an object of experimentation for the older siblings. Your older brother has learnt to ride a bicycle. He sweetly offers you a ride and you fall for the generosity. The next moment you have fallen on the ground and as you yell the loudest yell of your life it is gratifying to see the autocrat begging you to lower your voice so that the Pater or Mater don’t turn up at the scene and give him what he dishes out regularly to the lesser of his siblings. My experiences on the pillion of the cycle are all at once horrifying and painful. At one time, my foot got entangled in the rear wheel of the cycle ridden  by an older sister. At another time,  I narrowly missed being trampled over by a herd of cattle as an older sibling, a learner on the bike, lost his nerve on seeing the herd looming ahead and crashed into it headlong. The bicycle became such an object of terror that I never even tried getting on to it and as a result, have had to suffer the ignominy of admitting that I couldn’t bicycle. I got on to one only when I was nearing 30 years of age, and that too only to learn “balancing” to be able to ride a scooter.

            The youngest or younger ones are always given the tasks nobody else wants to do. These include borrowing sugar or milk or even Rs.100 or whatever amount is needed to tide over the month end, from a neighbour, or getting some urgently needed stuff from your neighbourhood kirana store whose bill has been overdue by several weeks.

            The younger ones are victimized in many ways. I recall I was once walking my older sister to the bus stop. I was in high school and she in the university and since it was a holiday and I wanted to do a good deed, I accompanied her to the bus stop. As we were rushing at great speed to make it to the bus stop before the bus did, I heard a horrified shriek. My sister stopped in her tracks and seemed paralysed. As I followed her stare, I was equally horrified. She had worn a blue slipper in her left leg and a yellow one in the right. Those were the days of matching slippers and we had a collection of slippers of rainbow colours. You can guess how this tragedy ended. She cajoled me, begged and made extravagant promises. I had to give in; there was hardly any choice. As she walked away triumphantly in my pair of slippers, the saree hardly showing her feet, I in my short skirt, walked a marathon race, head bowed, heart-beating with shame of people noticing my feet dressed in two starkly different coloured slippers. You will get my point if you picture the scene with the roles reversed. Would elder sister have suffered humiliation for her younger sister’s sake? Or would she have ordered her to go home change her slippers, take the next bus, and assign the special class to hell? And then top off with a lecture that she needed to learn to manage her time better, that this was an appropriate lesson for her not to repeat such stupidity again?

            The past was recalled with vengeance when Amulya, my younger daughter contradicted her Didi’s contention during a gossip session with a friend  that she did not believe in riding roughshod over the younger sibling as some other elder sisters did. “Oh-ho, don’t tell all lies,” said the 10 year old Amulya who was a quiet audience till then. “I don’t tell lies,” retorted 17 year old Dipa with the superiority of an older sibling. Stung to the quick, Amulya shot back:“You think I have forgotten what you did the other day? I have not.” Amulya has the memory of an elephant (in true tradition of the youngest). “You stood outside and made me go into the meat shop to buy kheema. And I saw a dead goat there. Its eyes were open,” said Amulya, ever perceptive, shuddering at the recollection. Poor Amulya. She has already learnt that the younger ones don’t have choices. At least not when ordered by the older ones.  

Ends

On being a Reporter and a woman

By R Akhileshwari*

A woman professional encounters numerous problems including prejudice and sexual harassment in the course of her duty in a patriarchal society. A woman reporter is no different.  The extent to which her functioning is affected depends how strong she is mentally, where she is located, that is, whether she is in a still-traditional Asia, Africa or fairly advanced (in terms of women’s status in society) Europe or USA and how committed she is to her job. Having been a reporter for a quarter century in India, as Deccan Herald’s foreign correspondent in Washington DC, USA and as one who has travelled across the world on reporting assignments, one has experienced the best and worst of being a journalist.

          These recollections were set off by the horrific experience of Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent of the American news network CBS, in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt as she was covering the fall of President Hosni Mubarak following the uprising against his despotic rule. On February 11, 2011, as Lara was filming the unfolding events, she was attacked by a frenzied mob, separated from her team and rescued after 20-30 minutes by Egyptian soldiers and some women. Lara suffered injuries ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/lara-logan-suffered-bruta_n_823677.html ).  Even as this incident (typically) was attempted to be suppressed by CBS, even as male reporters publicly (on Twitter) made insensitive and sexist comments about Lara wanting to beat a male colleague (of CNN) who had been earlier assaulted similarly by a mob (http://www.popeater.com/2011/02/15/cbs-lara-logan-hospitalized-after-brutal-sexual-assault-in-eg/), of having got her deserts for ‘war mongering’, women activists urged women journalists everywhere to share their experiences considering the harassment experienced is pushed under the carpet by the women themselves out of fear of either being called back or kept out from ‘risky’ assignments or of being seen as less capable than men in some situations (http://www.judithmatloff.com/correspondentsandsexualabuse.pdf).

          My experiences have not been any different from those of women reporters elsewhere though fortunately they have not been as brutal as those of Lara Logan. I will share only one experience here that illustrates the problems women reporters face in the course of doing their job. If some men discourage us, there are others who support; if some men run us down, there are others who egg us on; if some men resent our achievements, there are others who recognize our talent and give us our due; if some refuse to co-operate, others go out of their way to help us.

           Back in 1990, when I had returned to Deccan Herald as its Andhra Pradesh correspondent quitting a university teaching job, my editor K N Hari Kumar asked if I was game to cover Namibian independence and later, if visa came through, perhaps even go to South Africa that was in throes of delirious joy on having dismantled apartheid and the release of the iconic Nelson Mandela from two-decade long incarceration. I didn’t think twice before saying yes even though two daughters, two and seven years old had to be taken care of.

          At that point, an average Indian knew just two things about South Africa: apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Only a few were aware of the fact that South Africa has a sizable population of Indian descent. And they knew even less about Namibia.

          Therefore, when I announced my editor’s decision to depute me to Namibia (to cover its independence on March 21, 1990) and South Africa, friends and relatives were horrified. They tried to dissuade me: “Why Africa, for God’s sake? Ask your editor to send you to the US or Europe.” Stereotypes of backward, tribal Africa and the prestige associated with a ‘developed’ USA and Europe were not scarce.

          But any journalist would barter her or his soul to be in Namibia and South Africa and witness history in the making, I argued. Namibia was getting independence from South Africa after 75 years of subjugation by the white ruling elites and South Africa itself was on the threshold of a new era of equity and justice and assertion of Black South African. With the release of Nelson Mandela, it had initiated the process of sharing power with the blacks and dismantling the horrors of apartheid.

          Ironically, even those who were familiar with these two countries gave no encouragement. A senior journalist and an expert on Namibia told a colleague of mine in Delhi that there was utter chaos in Namibia with every nerve being strained to accommodate VIPs and their entourages from about 147 countries and 20 heads of states. Besides hordes of journalists and TV crew from across the world had descended upon the country which was then the last country to throw off the colonial yoke. “And to top it all, you are sending a woman,” he told my colleague.

          My colleague however was confident of my ability to survive. He insisted that we meet this leading journalist-expert on African affairs notwithstanding his misplaced fears, to get a background briefing on Namibian and South African affairs. When we met, the expert was even more blunt. “Don’t go,” he advised me. All accommodation in the capital Windhoek (pronounced ‘windhook’) had been ‘commandeered’ by the fledgling government for the historic occasion and it was not advisable to go without confirmed accommodation. “Don’t be stupidly brave. Go back home,” said my guru-of-the-hour. I protested. I was not expecting five-star hotel luxuries. I will rough it out, share a room with five others (or more) if necessary.

          “You will be lucky if you can get even that,” said the sceptic expert. “Carry a rucksack. You will need it,” he said giving up the battle to din some sense in me. This advice came from a much travelled, much experienced journalist as my colleague and I stopped at his house hours before I left for the airport. Such was his insensitivity that his fears seeped into me, shaking my resolve. In the taxi, I confessed my fears to my senior who was accompanying me to see me off on my first trip abroad. He dismissed his friend’s dire predictions and assured me that I was made of sterner stuff and that his friend did not have the benefit of knowing me as my colleague did. I was assured, but only just. The butterflies in the tummy continued to flutter agitatedly.

          A sample of the problems ahead was given at the Indira Gandhi international airport in Delhi. At the various counters I had to go through, my intended destination, that is Windhoek, had the airlines staff scurrying to their colleagues for help. The girl who took my ticket did not know where Windhoek was. She went to a colleague who in turn went to a computer. He came back and asked, “Where is Windhoek?” In Namibia. “The computer says it is in South Africa. We can’t allow you.”

          A short lesson on the recent political developments, of South Africa relinquishing its rule over Namibia, of its forthcoming independence and the fact that I was a reporter assigned to cover the event convinced him of Namibia’s status. But, he insisted, I needed a visa even to pass through Johannesburg in South Africa enroute to Windhoek. I repeated what my travel agent told me, namely, a visa was not needed for a transit halt of one hour in Jo’burg. He was not convinced. I kept a tight leash on my temper. “Please clarify from your boss,” I suggested sweetly. “The computer is my boss,” he responded without blinking.

          The human boss whom I insisted on seeing was no less rigid. Either I sign an indemnity bond saying that I would bear all expenses in case I was sent back from Johannesburg for not possessing a visa or I won’t be allowed onto the plane, he informed. I signed pronto. I was not going to miss out, despite ill-informed computers and airline staff, the biggest event of the decade, the dawn of independence on Namibia.

          Yet my 10-day stay in Namibia proved anything but inconvenient. True, there was no accommodation to be got for love or money but there were plenty of people who were helpful, especially Indian government officials, a large contingent of whom had descended upon Namibia to ensure that the then Prime Minister V.P. Singh’s first tour abroad went off without a hitch. For two days, I had to make do with “borrowed accommodation”.

          On landing in Windhoek, I went to the only quality hotel in the town in search of Indian embassy officials, the first stop of help to travelling journos, to help me out. At the hotel I did not find any Embassy officials (considering India did not have diplomatic relations with South Africa in pursuance of its policy of boycotting racist regimes) However, when I ran into fellow Indians and discovered that they belonged to the Indian Overseas Communications who had arrived ahead of the PM’s contingent to take care of communications of the entourage, I poured out my woes of having no accommodation. Two officials offered their room (and eats) to me for a few hours to freshen up as they would not be using their room for they were busy setting up the communications logistics for the Prime Minister’s party and Indian journalists contingent accompanying the PM. That helped me to relax up enough to scout around for accommodation. It was available—a white Namibian agreed to accommodate me as his paying guest after great hesitation and opposition from his wife and son. I was a ‘black,’ but for the money he was getting from me, he was willing to suffer my ‘blackness’.

          When I announced my triumph to the newly made friends of IOCs (who had earlier pleaded inability to help) they were scandalized at my naivety and even willingness to be exploited. They offered to put me up in their room provided I did not mind having to share a room with two men. I was game. Something is better than nothing. But there was a hitch. The room would be available only with the arrival of the Prime Minister and his party which was two nights away. That did not resolve my problem of having no place to spend two nights (even if the days were spent in filing news stories)

          Another helpful official offered to shift into his friend’s room in the majestic Kalahari Sands Hotel and offered his room for the two nights. But there were two conditionalities: the fact that I would sleep in the room gave me no claim over it beyond one night, and that I would raise no protests on being asked to vacate the next morning. I instantly agreed to write off all my non-existent rights to his accommodation for one night. Two, I will not order any room service. He did not want to be left to deal with unpaid bills for services he did not use. My friend-in-need was apologetic that he could offer me only one night’s accommodation and that he himself, along with other officials, would be shelterless from the next day since the Namibian Government had commandeered all hotel rooms for its guests and the Indian mission officials had been given marching orders.

          The next day was hectic—I tried to get familiar with Windhoek, the media centres (Namibian and Indian). I got lost in the process. But managed to file a curtain-raiser and amazingly, ran into a Telugu-speaking journalist. Telugu never sounded sweeter and Telugu men were never so good to be with! He shared the info that the South African media was throwing a party for the foreign media persons at the prestigious Namibian press centre and the Namibian President-designate Sam Nujoma (pronounced nuyoma) was expected to drop in later in the evening. The reporter who was with a news agency had just committed a cardinal journalistic sin, of sharing and cooperating with a competitor. But the joy of finding one’s own on foreign shores has the strength of melting away petty professional rules.

          Windhoek proved a shock, defying all my pre-conceived notions of an African city. I had expected it to be crowded, dirty, chaotic. But Windhoek, which had barely 1.2. million people, was totally modern with high-rise buildings, plush insides, auto banks, carry-outs, wide, immaculate roads, and highly disciplined traffic which comprised cars to the exclusion of every other kind of vehicle. Windhoek was a city of cars. Car is a status symbol with every white family owning one, some two. However, there are a few blacks who owned cars but lived invariably in slums. The wide roads and thin traffic is a joy to the Windhoek motorists. They think nothing of zooming at 100 kmph in the city. A culture shock was the fact that motorists stopped dutifully at red light on chowrastas even at midnight when there would be not a single vehicle in sight!

          Another culture shock was the fact that there was no public transport system in Windhoek. The poor who lived in areas designated for blacks under the apartheid system, about 15-20 km away from Windhoek (a “whites only”), travelled to their workplace in the city in taxis which are run by blacks. These taxis are nearest to a public transport system. They were cheap and frequent.

          Apparently, the poor and the underprivileged, almost all being blacks, never figured in the scheme of things of the racist colonial government. Facilities were created to serve the specific purpose of the rulers and not for the benefit of the local people. For instance, the highways in Namibia were very wide and in perfect condition, not merely to facilitate traffic but also to double up as landing places for helicopters and smaller planes in the rocky land of Namibia in the eventuality of a rebellion by the blacks or an attack from a hostile neighbour.

          Windhoek went dead by 6 p.m when business came to a halt. With shops closing down, the black workers stream out of the city and head for Katatura and Khomasdal, the black townships. The whites retire to their well-fenced and protected homes. The few restaurants are crowded, exclusively by whites. The only places that are open after 6 pm are the bars and take-away joints, which are frequented by blacks.

          Alcoholism, gambling and other vices were rampant among black men—because there is no entertainment worth the name and because, of the widespread unemployment of 35-40 per cent. Then, there were very few movie houses and TV undeveloped in content. In any case, it was too costly a luxury which very few blacks could afford. The “people entertainment” comprised soccer and music.

          The evening in Namibian Press Centre was a boon. A team of Indian officials had arrived to oversee the facilities for the Indian media (which then comprised the newspapers, All India Radio and Doordarshan). On hearing of my homelessness, the top official decided that I too was eligible for the government-provided accommodation and other facilities. But the only hitch was the building that had been prepared for the Indian media contingent would be unoccupied since the party was arriving only the next day. Would I be brave enough to spend a night in a room all by myself in a building that would have no women and very few men? Beggars have no choice, so I agreed. At the end of the evening, I vacated from the hotel room and with great relief and not a small amount of trepidation checked into the media building. The room would have to be shared with another journalist, the official incharge informed me sheepishly. No issues, I assured him. It is a male, and he is with AIR, he said. No worries, I said. They would be checking sometime in the middle of the night, he said. As I went to bed looking forward to March 21 evening when the newest independent country would join the galaxy of free nations, I noticed two beautifully wrapped packages placed next to each bed. I ignored them as the day’s events had been too much and the comfort of an assured accommodation had chased out all other thoughts. I was woken up sometime in the night with the arrival of my fellow journalist. He asked if I would move out into another room considering that I might get disturbed by his work. He was from AIR and he would be filing his stories and updating them through the next two nights. I assured him that I had the ability to sleep through an earthquake too. The next morning he informed me that he was moving out to be closer to a fellow AIR colleague. Hooray! I had the room to myself and happily he hadn’t used the bathroom, bless him. Only later I realized that my gifts, left carelessly on the floor where they had been placed by the Indian official, had disappeared. The male journo had decided that a female journo had no use for a bottle of Scotch and a carton of Marlboro cigarettes!

          The day was spent filing another story on Namibia and in evening, the authorities shepherded us into a bus to take us to the stadium where a free Namibia would be ushered into existence. The seniors were happy to sit in their rooms and watch the event on live TV but I wanted to live the event. The atmosphere was electrifying. I experienced what I had missed by accident of birth: August 15, 1947.

* Former Special Correspondent of Deccan Herald,  presently, Head, Dept of Mass Communication, Loyola Academy, Secunderabad.

All world loves lovers? Naah!

            Good old Shakespeare once said all world loves lovers. Do they? May be in England of Shakespeare. Not so in India if we are to go by the evidence we have.
            A youngster in the throes of his/her first love (or even second or third) has no freedom either in the house or outside to speak of the thrill or pain of the experience. They can share with nobody without being put down. Nor can the couple even meet to stare into each other’s eyes without drawing stares of disapproval from others around them.
            Never make the mistake of having a rendezvous in the neighbourhood where you live. Not only the neighbours will look at you suspiciously and convey the information to your parents but even the locality’s Big Man’s (industrialist/contractor) watchman will give you a tongue lashing if he finds you talking with your favourite. He is also the keeper of the area’s morals, you see. If you have to talk go somewhere else, the watchman once advised a young couple in my neighbourhood, rather roughly. When the young man resented this unsought for advice the watchman bristled and raised his voice and advanced threateningly, forcing the youngsters to retreat in the interest of peace. Lovers, you see, are quite vulnerable to the self-appointed moral policemen.
            An incident in Osmania University in Hyderabad showed the moral police at work. A boy who was speaking to a girl around 9 pm outside her hostel on the OU campus was beaten up by a group of boys as a punishment. However the girl was outraged. She roped in fellow ideologists of the Red variety and lodged a complaint against the moral policemen which were of the saffron variety. It is another story that the cops did not follow up but a point had been scored in favour of youngsters. How dare anyone impose their morals on others!
            Only in India and I suppose in most Asian societies others’ affairs of the heart is the business of the neighbours and even the entire community. The idea of privacy and the right of the individual to go where the heart leads, with the person of one’s choice apparently is foreign to our people. The woes of the people in love apparently moved the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah. He must be the only politician to instruct the police not to harass lovers who frequent parks and gardens to seek solitude in each other’s company away from prying and frequently disapproving eyes. In a garden on a university campus, every now and then the watchman goes about poking the bushes with his lathi and when young girl and boy emerge from them, he shoos them away, I suspect, with spiteful glee. Not everybody is Farooq Abdullah, you see.
            Some even find the young lovers easy prey. A group of teenagers comprising two girls and two boys were stopped by the police in the night as they were driving back after a party in a resort on the city outskirts of Hyderabad. All papers were in order but the police threatened to take them all to the police station and call their parents. The boys pleaded; the cops relented but only after emptying about Rs 1000 from their two purses. In another instance, desiring to escape from prying eyes a college-going couple decided to take refuge in the abundant rocks outlying the city. Parking his brand new motorbike the young man guided the girl up the highest rock and sat down for some heart-to-heart talk. Their joy was shortlived. From literally nowhere villagers emerged and threatened the couple with dire consequences if they did not stop 'polluting' the pristine environment. Rocks as the last resort? No way!
            There is hope though. The other day I took an NRI friend to see the latest showpiece of the city, on Hyderabad’s outskirts, the Hidden Lake or Durgam Cheruvu. The park has plenty of original shrubbery, natural rocks and trees around with themes worked around them. And for a change, it was not crowded with one billion people. The only crowd was under trees, behind the rocks and hidden behind the shrubs, two-somes who were lost to the world. Durgam Cheruvu is a paying park. The entry fee is a deterrent for the undesirable elements such as noisy kids, voluble parents and screaming vendors. There seems to be at least one positive aspect of liberalization, thank God!
ends

Accentuating Commonalities

The wise people have said that all of us are same at the deeper, spiritual level while seeming to be starkly different outwardly. May be there is something to this argument although one finds it difficult to imagine it. How are we one? How can we be one? I am quite convinced that it is possible to be one if we forget our differences, or if we don’t allow the differences to prevail. Contradictory, right? But we do live our contradictions daily. For instance, we don’t agree with every opinion, behaviour or action of our loved ones like husband, children, parents and siblings. But we do live together as we don’t allow the differences to prevail.

Even when they do, the disagreements are temporary. Ultimately, we allow our love and our commonalities to prevail. This state of affairs is a daily experience. Acceptance-rejection, love-dislike, agreement-disagreement are inevitable with not just our loved ones, relatives, colleagues and neighbours but even with ourselves. The pulls and pressures of anger, greed and grievances are constant but mostly they are overcome by love, need for peace and the instinct for survival. The exceptions are precisely that, simply exceptions. The general rule is that we carry on merrily. Just as we have done for hundreds of years as Hindus and Muslims and Christians, as upper castes and lower castes, as vegetarians and non-vegetarians, as Dravidians and Aryans, as blacks and not-so-blacks.

          This should be the context in which Shabana Azmi’s statement on being a Muslim and not finding a house in Mumbai should be looked at. Her confession of her travails prompted other films stars like Saif Ali Khan, Arshad Warsi to voice similar experiences. Actors like Farhan Akhtar however have disagreed.

          Shabana has received much criticism both from moderates and extremists, for her statement. From the former because they don’t want to disturb the sleeping dogs and from the latter because they think minorities in their part of the world should be grateful for being allowed to exist. In subsequent interviews, Shabana explained that such issues were marginal but they came in handy for the extremists to rake up issues.

          Often, we stereotype people and allow our prejudices to define them. One meets with prejudice all the time. Ask a woman, ask a Dalit, ask a minority, ask a single mother, ask a transgender. Often, we assert our power, as a senior, superior, elder, belonging to the majority religion, speaking the majority language, as a male, employer, and as house-owner. We find a security in commonalities because it is an emotional need and these commonalities differ in different contexts. For instance, I am an Indian first and foremost when I live abroad. Similarly, I am a South Indian in Delhi, an Andhra in Bangalore, a Telanganite in Andhra region, a Hyderabadi in Secunderabad, a Hindu among Muslims and a Muslim-supporting Hindu among Hindus.

          On my own house-hunting sprees some years ago in Hyderabad, I was blatantly asked by prospective sellers about my religion as then I did not wear any overt religious symbols on my self; a Muslim builder helpfully suggested I look at another apartment since the one he was building was meant only for Muslims; a Muslim doctor-couple from Mysore, comforted by my connections to Karnataka, confessed in indignation that not just Hindu buyers but even Hindu tenants are not allowed in their apartment building. Once, an autorickshaw driver was hesitant to take me to a specific locality in the Old City. “But only Muslims live there,” he informed me wondering why an obvious Hindu-looking woman wanted to go there. “My Amma lives there,” I told him confusing him further. She does. Bibamma as we call her is a Muslim woman who gave me unbounded love in my childhood and whom I visit now and then to renew my belief in fellow human beings.  

          During my stay in Washington DC some years ago, I was invited by a Muslim single woman to spend an evening with her friends, all of them being Muslim (interestingly, there used to be minimum, if at all any, socialization between Indian Muslims and Hindus in the USA.) Some of the invitees were Pakistanis. Later I found out that my friend had to take the permission of the local Mulla to invite a Hindu to her home since Hindus are rarely allowed into their social get-togethers!  

          Then, there are travails of the non-vegetarians in cities like Ahmedabad. A friend recalled how he had to lie to rent a house from a vegetarian. Since cooking meat at home was out of question, the family would go to extraordinary lengths to hide the fact whenever they bought cooked meat dishes from a hotel. They would eat in secrecy, not daring to even heat up the dish for fear of the smell giving them away, then light plenty of agarbathis to ‘cleanse’ the home, collect the bones in a plastic bag and dispose it off in a dustbin far away from their neighbourhood to avoid being detected!

The travails of the upwardly mobile Dalits are no less. They do not get homes on rent, they even face two-glass system in their workplace, they are transferred to posts nobody wants, and are overlooked in promotions. A Dalit minister in AP publicly rued the fact that she had a servant problem since nobody wanted to clean the dishes and wash the clothes of a Dalit however important a public figure she was!

          While all these instances are real, faced daily and most of us are traumatized for being who we are, this is not the entire picture. The other side is we gloat over our secular and inclusive traditions, revel in the poetry of Kabir and qawwalis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, admire B R Ambedkar for his amazing intellect and his gift of freedom through the Constitution to all of us, get inspired by Abdul Kalam and thrown into depths of despair by Shah Rukh Khan’s Devdas, stirred by Amir Khan’s Lagaan, rocked by the romantic Saif Ali. And where does A R Rehman fit in all this? In the depths of our soul, of course, where else? This is India meri jaan. Thoda khatta, thoda meetha, thoda namkin. An unbeatable mix. That is why we have survived for ages.

The story of a victim, abused over and over again

(as told to R Akhileshwari)

Ours was a big joint family in a big house that had several men and women servants. Relatives seemed to be coming and going all the time. Visitors would drop in.

          Cousins would come for holidays and their friends would be welcome even when not accompanied by cousins. The elders were not bothered about the children. My mother was busy in the kitchen, father was busy with his business and we children were basically free to do what we wanted after returning from school and during holidays.

          I was introduced to sex quite early, may be when I was six or seven years. I don’t remember the first time though and who did it to me. I do remember the many places in the house that were not frequented and this is where a servant would take me and he would play a game during which I would be on top…one day I got angry because he did urine on me…it was all sticky and I was so angry I did not play with him again.

          Then there was a cousin who used to live in our house. One day he took me to the garden and asked me to sit on him and said let’s see who has more strength, you push and I will push. I told him no, silly, this game is not played like this. You should sit on me. From then onwards, we would regularly go to garden, and play the game.

          Then there was this relative who was a regular in our house. Why he would come I don’t know. He would give me gifts and take me out for walks. I would get tired and sleep off in his room. Once or twice I woke up to find him sucking my lips. I think he was trying out kissing.

          A friend of my father would always make a point of bringing me a chocolate. I was about 9 to 10 around that time. He would give me the chocolate take me close to him and put a hand round my shoulders and then…feel and pinch my breast. I did not know how to refuse the chocolate but I never ate it. I threw it away because I knew he was not good. Why didn’t I tell my parents? Or anybody? I knew all these things were bad but I did not know I should tell anyone. I was also scared. My mother had no time for us. She would only beat us…

          She was always criticizing me so I was afraid to tell her such bad things. My father was okay but we, especially girls had very little interaction with him and the question of confiding in him never even came to my mind. Maybe my sisters too were similarly abused. I wonder if we have the courage to speak about them even now, when we all are grandparents.

(Published in Sunday Herald, the weekly magazine section of Deccan Herald)

Balamma, my love

Balamma was an integral part of our life as far as I remember. She had been employed in our house seven years before I was born to take care of a newborn as my mother had contracted small pox and it was believed she might not survive.

Balamma stayed on to see the birth of five more of us.

When our father decided to move us to Hyderabad from our home town for a “convent education,” Balamma was put in charge of four of us. She was our cook-cum-caretaker and her word was law. As children she terrified us with her imperious and uncompromising authority. When we turned teenagers she was indulgent, and as we stood on threshold of adulthood she resented our new-found independence.

       Balamma must have been as old as our mother, but as far as I can remember she was always toothless. She did not have a single tooth and till this day I don’t know how she lost them!

       We called her “old woman” whenever we were angry with her and she resented it no end. She took care of us for so long that we never knew what it was to be without her. Balamma, I realize now, was one of the greatest influences on me.

       She got us addicted to tea and made us hate cabbage and French beans because she cooked no other vegetable as they were her favourites. She had a huge repertoire of rustic, wise, witty, pithy sayings for every situation in a day. I now use them unashamedly to impress people. Interestingly, enough, she never used an abuse word.

       Balamma’s poverty, the tales of deprivation of her family, her saving and scrounging of every paisa that she would faithfully send to her daughter and her seven children, all left a deep impact on my tender mind. She became my friend during my late teens when she accepted me as an equal. Later on, it was cemented when I was the only one left behind as other siblings either found their calling, or had married and left home. She was protective like a mother hen of her brood. She would hover around whenever guys dropped in for a chat, giving enough evidence of her presence just in case they harboured unholy thoughts!

       If girls came over she would spoil them no end, feeding them, chatting them up despite being a woman of few words. If I was late in returning from college she would keep a vigil at the gate and tell anyone who cared to ask why, that I was late. She would remain at her post till I appeared in the lane, and would go in once assured that I was safe and sound. She rarely went to any neighbour’s house. She never gossiped though she was alone for most of the day. I suspect she avoided the other maids’ company as she felt superior.

       Our special relationship was cemented by several things. I would readily go to buy vegetables or milk in the morning to save her the effort. I would write letters for her to her family in the village. I knew the names of all her grandchildren and even motivated her to send the younger ones to school. She loved Telugu film songs and the Sunday afternoon’s Telugu film that was played on the radio, then our only source of entertainment at home. I would invariably tune in to her favourite programmes and we even saw several films together. Balamma spent part of her earnings on only two things: Telugu films and her day’s quota of paan and betel nut. Her affair with movies began when first the silent cinema and later the talkies were brought to Nizamabad, my home town, by my entrepreneur-father. Balamma would go for the night show stealthily so that my grandfather, who ruled the household with a stick, would not get to know of it. But, he had several spies in his employ and he knew exactly how many films Balamma saw, which was every single one that was released in the single tent-cinema in the town. He was so disapproving of her ‘profligacy’ that he berated her, saying she would even sell her clothes to indulge herself, a prediction that, fortunately, did not come true.

       Balamma’s favourite film was “Keelu Gurram” a fantasy film in Telugu about a magical horse. Balamma saw this movie a dozen times and could reproduce the story, frame by frame! Whenever Noor Jehan’s songs from ‘Badi Bahen’ were played on Radio Ceylon’s old Hindi favourites programme, she would stop her work and listen for a while and invariably, return to her task at hand, scolding the Singing Queen of yore. Balamma never forgave Noor Jehan for migrating to Pakistan!

       Not always was our relationship so special. As a child I remember her bullying and terrorizing us. Even her visiting grandson also, older to me by a few years, having quickly gauged the situation, would bully us. We later discovered that Balamma terrorized her grandchildren too. And she also ensured they did not misbehave in our house. Balamma was a widow and had a daughter who lived in Aakaram village in the backward, dry, poverty-stricken district of Medak with a huge brood of children. They were desperately poor and Balamma would send her entire salary –a princely sum of Rs 20—to her daughter by money order once in a couple of months. Or, she would keep the money aside in a battered tin truck, which she would take with her during the annual visit she paid her daughter. She would also hoard the discarded clothes that my mother might decide to give. She had a fancy for wall calendars and would keep them safely after we were done with them with the ending of the year. She said she put them up in her daughter’s thatched hut.

       Balamma was my mother’s confidante too. Not only would my mother share her woes with Balamma, but also leave her jewellery with her for safekeeping. She was given the monthly expenses to run the house. As far as I remember she did not misuse money or waste food. She would eat only twice a day, as was her habit for long, and she would never discard the leftovers. She would eat even spoilt food and no protests of ours would dissuade her. Her conditioning to scarce food was so deeply ingrained that even when food was available in plenty she refused to waste it. The poverty of Balamma’s family deeply affected me.

       Whenever one of Balamma’s grandsons would visit her and as they were our age, we children would play together. I still remember the stories they told of their life. Their main food was gruel, or rotis made from maize or jowar flour. These rotis were eaten with thin tamarind extract mixed with salt and chilli powder. This was when their dry land would yield maize or jowar. In bad times, when even tamarind was unaffordable, they would soak the rotis in salt water and eat them. As each of her grandsons grew he would be sent off to do “jeetam” or bonded labour with landlords. Beginning with the four-year-old Venkat to 12-year-old Bhoomiah all were “jeetam.” (Interestingly, the urbanization of Balamma was evident in the names she gave her grandsons: while the older ones were Bhoomaiah and Dubbaiah, the younger ones were Venkat, Vijay and Anand).

       The kids would graze the cows of the landlord, and when hungry would pick raw “sitaphal” (during winter), roast them in fires and eat their fill. Balamma once returned from her annual visit to her village with a back full of boils. She said she had done “coolie” during the planting season and not being used to the job, the exposure to the sun had burnt her skin. In really bad times when there was a severe drought, the family would migrate to Bombay to work as labourers. For long months, there would be no news of the family, but Balamma would keep sending letters to the village. Most of them were written by me in broken, half-learnt Telugu, and all of them would urge the son-in-law to respond with information that all was well. Rarely would she get replies, but when a post card did arrive, Balamma would have to walk 10 kms to get it read as it was written in old-style, “chain” Telugu, a script that only old-timers could read.

       Balamma would keep the letter safely and wait for a lean afternoon to walk 10 kms to an acquaintance to get it read. Once she got post card with a black border and when she saw it she was very upset…she told me the black border meant a death. After several hours of desperate hunting for someone who could read those few tragic lines, Balamma came to know that her son-in-law had passed away…

       The neighbourhood was highly impressed by Balamma’s loyalty. This led to unforeseen consequences. At the point, we three sisters were having problems with Balamma: as adult or pre-adult individuals we resented Balamma’s domination. She too couldn’t reconcile with our growing independence. Often there would be fireworks in the house and the extent of Balamma’s hurt came to the fore when she announced that she would be leaving us for employment with a family not too far away, and it would be at a higher salary. We were dumb-founded, but Balamma did leave and that too without informing my mother (my father had passed away by then).

       The neighbours had found her a job for a higher salary after convincing her that she was being underpaid and exploited by us. She left with her battered tin trunk and bedroll comprising a thin carpet and a pillow.

       For the next few months we would run into Balamma on the road, or at the vegetable vendor. She was always on the run. She had to look after two kids and run errands also. She seemed distinctly thinner and when we asked about it, she simply said the food at her new employer’s house was loaded with asafoetida which she found unpalatable. One day we ran into Balamma’s employer who casually informed us that Balamma was seriously ill and was admitted to the nearby government hospital. We rushed to the hospital and found her lying on the floor in a corridor. We three sisters, all under 18, decided that the dirty hospital was not the place for Balamma. We paid the bills, got her discharged and took her to a private doctor, and then home. She came only too willingly; it was her home too. We then sent a telegram to our mother informing her of Balamma’s illness. She took the first train to Hyderabad. All of us took turns to care of her, feeding her, giving her medicines apart from cooking for ourselves and attending to our studies. None of us ever spoke of this episode, but it did teach us to appreciate each other.

       Balamma literally became homeless when it was decided I should move into a hostel to complete my post-graduation and our city establishment was closed down after 20-odd years. She was rendered jobless in her old age and as I finished studies and moved out of town for job I lost touch with her. She had returned to her daughter, but occasionally came to visit my mother at her own expense, travelling 150 kms up and down.

       She came on one such visit soon after my marriage and demanded to see my ‘thali.’ When I showed it, she turned her nose up…the ‘thali’ revealed the Vaishnavite roots of my in-laws and she, I discovered, was a Shaivaite! She demanded to see my in-laws’ house to gauge for herself their status. She, I am afraid, had her nose in the air and my in-laws did not know what quite hit them: here was a servant who was being treated royally by the daughter-in-law and worse, the old woman was acting high and mighty. But that was Balamma…she was proud, dignified and she cared too much for us to think that anybody else was better than us. But she never voiced her feelings.

       Soon, she returned to her village and I did not see her again…a few years later we got the information that she had passed away. I did not shed tears then, but now there is no stopping them for the woman who gave so much. We grabbed it without ever thanking her, or even admitting it to ourselves. 

Shit! What to do about it

It is an unmentionable. But unavoidable. The problem of open defecation is not just an affront to human dignity but is a serious problem that has ominous implications for the nation’s health and yes, its economy.

          India stinks, from one corner to the other, without exception. As a country we seem to have achieved equality in this aspect. We cover our nose, avert eyes from heaps of excreta wherever we look, bemoan the lack of sanitary habits in our society and blame the government for not doing anything about it. But we refuse to even discuss it much less associate ourselves with finding solutions and implementing them.

          It is no wonder that editors shy away from stories on open defecation and recycling of human waste? Celebrities don’t want to associate their name with it. Politicians avoid talking about it. NGOs prefer issues that can attract international funding and dealing with human shit is not one of them. So it is no surprise that a programme to encourage people to build and use latrines has been a non-starter. And India lags far behind achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.

          As for Andhra Pradesh, it can pride itself for constructing as many as 38 lakh individual sanitary latrines (ISL) in rural areas in the last ten years to wean away the people from the habit of defecating near water bodies, in wooded patches and in bushes. The cost of building the toilets was a mind-boggling Rs 540 crores. Today a mere 20 per cent of the ISL are being used while 80 per cent of them are being used as a storage room. While water supply to the latrines is an issue, a larger issue was overlooked. “We admit this was a hardware-oriented approach,” said Ajay Mishra, Principal Secretary for Rural Water Supply of the AP government. “We realize a behavioural change is needed for people to use the latrines,” he said. Therefore, as an experiment, AP has roped in self help groups in 20 villages to spread awareness on the dangers of defecating in the open and the need for personal hygiene to protect their community especially its children from disease and death.

          Unicef, which has been pulling its hair in desperation at the lack of political will in dealing with this unmentionable issue, points out that five out of 10 killer diseases that target children are caused by poor sanitation, inadequate water supply and poor personal hygiene. Diarrhoea, jaundice, malaria and hookworm claim thousands of lives every day. Diarrhhoea alone kills 1000 children a day. While sanitation coverage in urban areas is 83 per cent, in rural areas it is a mere 26 per cent. It is no wonder therefore that the country loses as many as 180 million mandays and Rs 1200 crores loss annually due to sanitation-related diseases.

          The total sanitation campaign of the Indian government has set a goal of making the country free of open defecation by 2012. As part of this programme, it has instituted Nirmal Gram Puraskar awards for villages where every household and school have ISL. So far, 4,959 villages have won the prize. India has about six lakh villages. If we could make 5000 villages open defecation-free in say five years, it will take us at least 45 years to cover the rest of the 5.5 lakh villages.

          Either we live with stench of death and disease from a stinking India or as concerned citizens we make sanitation our priority and not leave it entirely to the government. We need to break the taboo and openly discuss shit and its disposal.