Today I went to Ramlila Grounds in Delhi for a Dalit Sammellan. I had gone last year for Anna Hazare's propagandist protests to the same. My friend and I had then stood on the roads and talked about the dichotomies of revolution. We watched drunk men in the streets scream incoherent slogans ('I quote: Pepsi humaari Ma hai) and tsk-tsked at the poor state of Indian politics. Then we went to lunch.
Today I was meeting an English photographer, extremely gifted and insightful and humbling, at Ramlila to help her with her work and 'collect stories' so I could get out of my mental iceberg. It was dusty and the first thing I did was look down at my feet and silently whine about how my new jootis were getting trampled on by mass protests. I walked around for a while, being followed by many, and spent some time at a bookstall, listening to the (National Coalition for strengthening SCs & STs Prevention of Atrocities Act) NCSPA conveners talk to the Dalit pilgrims about how we lived in a society completely devoid of freedom. I was still smug. This wasn't different from what I had expected. I had read my news, I had known that this was the formula followed at Ramlila every time I was here, and I cynical tsk-tsk-ed some more in a corner. What could you do about a struggle of millions, I thought. Did Sitaram Yechury really mean that he could help or was this another CPI scam? Of course it's a scam, I told myself, the government is on no one's side. We live in a system of evil, of atrocities, of continuous power struggles, of unfair heairarchy and priveleged reason.
Ramlila Grounds was just a big, muddy farce.
A cop, Parmod Kumar saw me wandering around, taking notes pretending to be a reporter, and came up to me. He asked me if I was from the media, I asked him if he would take a photograph for my British friend. He asked me what I did, and I told him. 'Hum chamaar hain', he said, grinning at me. I grimaced a little, and smiled at him weakly, telling him I came from a family of Brahmans. It was the first time caste had been thrown in my face. Here I was, standing in front of a policeman, talking brahman to chamaar. It was the first time that I realized a system to jump out of my bookshelf and take a three dimensional form. I also realized that my cynicism and indifference was because of being outside the system. It was an advantage that could be afforded to none of the others surrounding me. Parmod Singh was not here to un-become chamaar, he was here to sort out a confusion. One that came with wearing a vardi, and being of the lowest class in the ladder.
Then I met Sanoj. He saw me reading a book at the bookstall and came up confidently, sweater slung over shoulders and heels digging into the ground. 'What you do Madam where you come?', he asked me. I told him I was from Delhi but indulged his English. In October, Sanoj's mother, in his village in Bihar, was cleaning the verandah. An upper caste woman was passing with her son, and some dirt from the sweeping entered her nose. The woman's son promptly returned with a bottle of acid and attacked both Sanoj and his mother. He smiled at me stiffly, through the scars on his face. He had the air of a war hero, he showed off his bruises as I held back tears like the upper-middle-class apathetic fool that I was raised to be. Sanoj came from Bihar with more than 50 Dalit brothers and sisters. Amongst them were women who had been raped because of their social standing, boys who had been beaten because they shared the same name as an upper caste boys, men who had limbs cut off because they dared to buy a motorcycle.
By now I was very awkward. I was half in tears, and I stumbled around, trying to find my photographer friend, who though English, was much more hard-core and less feeble than I. She patted me on the back, and made me feel like the foreigner. We drank some water and I strolled off to find her some more subjects to click. 'Find someone with sad eyes', she told me. I walked around, doing the strangest thing I had ever done, looking for sad in a sea of lost, confused, hopeless, optimistic eyes. I found my saddest pair hurriedly walking around with a bunch of papers in his hand. He saw me, and thinking I was a reporter, came up to me and handed me a piece of paper with a letter typed out in Gujrati.
Mahesh's son was gunned down, along with two other boys in a district in Gujarat by three policemen last year. He was simply walking the streets when he was stopped and asked his caste, his jaati. When he replied honestly, he and two friends were shot through the head. Mahesh's son was Mehul, and he was sixteen years old and very much in love. He also spoke very good English and was going to go to college. Mahesh's wife, the most educated in the family, has been writing letters and campaigns in Gujarati, and pasting them all over the city. He handed me photographs of his son, begging me to write in my newspaper about him and his wife. I told him I wasn't a scribe but took his campaign anyway, promising to translate it into English and Hindi, and send it to him by post. I thought about my own father, and how he worried about me driving drunk on the roads. I imagined him awake in his bed, worrying if a car full of men had stopped my car and shot me down.
I don't know how to help Mahesh. I don't know how to be there for any of these people. Men who get run over by tractors when they ask for their wages, men who get their legs cut off for looking at an upper caste woman, women who get drowned in lakes for marrying the men they love.
I have no idea what I am supposed to do.
I remember being told by my grim editor at the Magazine I worked for, was that the most we could do was know the truth and live with it everyday. That we woke up everyday, knew that millions were being slaughtered around the world, that women were being raped and babies were being thrown off buildings. That forests were dying. That God still created wars. That there were still people who wanted to change the world. That it desperately needed changing.
I have no idea what to do yet, except live a complete cliche, of waltzing into political situations once in a while and feel my abilities lacking and my brain ignorant. I have no idea what to do, except wonder if my over sentimentality about today is just an evening of indulgence to interrupt my otherwise meaningless existence.
But I do know now, that I don't want to hide behind lazy curtains and wear an invisibility cloak to the real world. Because there's no spell to ward off these demons.
I still have no idea what to do, but maybe I'll figure it out.
Today I was meeting an English photographer, extremely gifted and insightful and humbling, at Ramlila to help her with her work and 'collect stories' so I could get out of my mental iceberg. It was dusty and the first thing I did was look down at my feet and silently whine about how my new jootis were getting trampled on by mass protests. I walked around for a while, being followed by many, and spent some time at a bookstall, listening to the (National Coalition for strengthening SCs & STs Prevention of Atrocities Act) NCSPA conveners talk to the Dalit pilgrims about how we lived in a society completely devoid of freedom. I was still smug. This wasn't different from what I had expected. I had read my news, I had known that this was the formula followed at Ramlila every time I was here, and I cynical tsk-tsk-ed some more in a corner. What could you do about a struggle of millions, I thought. Did Sitaram Yechury really mean that he could help or was this another CPI scam? Of course it's a scam, I told myself, the government is on no one's side. We live in a system of evil, of atrocities, of continuous power struggles, of unfair heairarchy and priveleged reason.
Ramlila Grounds was just a big, muddy farce.
A cop, Parmod Kumar saw me wandering around, taking notes pretending to be a reporter, and came up to me. He asked me if I was from the media, I asked him if he would take a photograph for my British friend. He asked me what I did, and I told him. 'Hum chamaar hain', he said, grinning at me. I grimaced a little, and smiled at him weakly, telling him I came from a family of Brahmans. It was the first time caste had been thrown in my face. Here I was, standing in front of a policeman, talking brahman to chamaar. It was the first time that I realized a system to jump out of my bookshelf and take a three dimensional form. I also realized that my cynicism and indifference was because of being outside the system. It was an advantage that could be afforded to none of the others surrounding me. Parmod Singh was not here to un-become chamaar, he was here to sort out a confusion. One that came with wearing a vardi, and being of the lowest class in the ladder.
Then I met Sanoj. He saw me reading a book at the bookstall and came up confidently, sweater slung over shoulders and heels digging into the ground. 'What you do Madam where you come?', he asked me. I told him I was from Delhi but indulged his English. In October, Sanoj's mother, in his village in Bihar, was cleaning the verandah. An upper caste woman was passing with her son, and some dirt from the sweeping entered her nose. The woman's son promptly returned with a bottle of acid and attacked both Sanoj and his mother. He smiled at me stiffly, through the scars on his face. He had the air of a war hero, he showed off his bruises as I held back tears like the upper-middle-class apathetic fool that I was raised to be. Sanoj came from Bihar with more than 50 Dalit brothers and sisters. Amongst them were women who had been raped because of their social standing, boys who had been beaten because they shared the same name as an upper caste boys, men who had limbs cut off because they dared to buy a motorcycle.
By now I was very awkward. I was half in tears, and I stumbled around, trying to find my photographer friend, who though English, was much more hard-core and less feeble than I. She patted me on the back, and made me feel like the foreigner. We drank some water and I strolled off to find her some more subjects to click. 'Find someone with sad eyes', she told me. I walked around, doing the strangest thing I had ever done, looking for sad in a sea of lost, confused, hopeless, optimistic eyes. I found my saddest pair hurriedly walking around with a bunch of papers in his hand. He saw me, and thinking I was a reporter, came up to me and handed me a piece of paper with a letter typed out in Gujrati.
Mahesh's son was gunned down, along with two other boys in a district in Gujarat by three policemen last year. He was simply walking the streets when he was stopped and asked his caste, his jaati. When he replied honestly, he and two friends were shot through the head. Mahesh's son was Mehul, and he was sixteen years old and very much in love. He also spoke very good English and was going to go to college. Mahesh's wife, the most educated in the family, has been writing letters and campaigns in Gujarati, and pasting them all over the city. He handed me photographs of his son, begging me to write in my newspaper about him and his wife. I told him I wasn't a scribe but took his campaign anyway, promising to translate it into English and Hindi, and send it to him by post. I thought about my own father, and how he worried about me driving drunk on the roads. I imagined him awake in his bed, worrying if a car full of men had stopped my car and shot me down.
I don't know how to help Mahesh. I don't know how to be there for any of these people. Men who get run over by tractors when they ask for their wages, men who get their legs cut off for looking at an upper caste woman, women who get drowned in lakes for marrying the men they love.
I have no idea what I am supposed to do.
I remember being told by my grim editor at the Magazine I worked for, was that the most we could do was know the truth and live with it everyday. That we woke up everyday, knew that millions were being slaughtered around the world, that women were being raped and babies were being thrown off buildings. That forests were dying. That God still created wars. That there were still people who wanted to change the world. That it desperately needed changing.
I have no idea what to do yet, except live a complete cliche, of waltzing into political situations once in a while and feel my abilities lacking and my brain ignorant. I have no idea what to do, except wonder if my over sentimentality about today is just an evening of indulgence to interrupt my otherwise meaningless existence.
But I do know now, that I don't want to hide behind lazy curtains and wear an invisibility cloak to the real world. Because there's no spell to ward off these demons.
I still have no idea what to do, but maybe I'll figure it out.
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