Thoughts of Things

June 2014: I spent a whole year without shopping. Here’s why, and what I learnt.

Conceptual image courtesy Sahil Mane.

We consume more in every successive generation, more as we get richer, more as quality of life improves, more as the population explodes, more as mass production makes things cheaper, and so I’m compelled to believe that environmental concerns aren’t alarmism but plain common sense. I, you, we’re the target audience for millions of brands owned by thousands of corporations, vying for our attention—that they often get, along with our money, begging the question of indoctrination and the commercialisation of our tastes, needs and wants. And these corporations big and small… who are we making rich and what ethics do we end up supporting, literally buying, with our money? (Slaveryfootprint.org has a simple, if simplistic, survey to tell how many slaves work for you.)

Truth be told, I’ve never been overtly concerned with possessing or attached to things, and it’s not like I shop a lot. I’m no ascetic: I dress up to look good and pander to the pull of fashion, and I’ve spent as much on the experience of a meal, a holiday, an adventure, rescuing an animal, surprising a loved one, a massage, as others do on jewellery, clothes and gadgets. Plus, I bought two houses as soon as I could: homes to fill the emotional void of an unstable childhood. And how can you ignore the better utility of a Mac and iPhone vs the PC and Blackberry, irrespective of the cost and show-off value. Of course, I need to feed my pride and ego with other things, let me not be confused for a saint. But brandishing brands, having things for the sake of having things, keeping keepsakes, ascribing objects with emotional value… never and decreasingly has that been for me.

Things, however, have always found me. Circumstances conspired to make me the proud owner of a houseful of hand-me-down things, courtesy my parents’ migration to Australia and my ex-husband’s transfer to Indonesia. At 23, in a house the size of a matchbox, in a new city where other strugglers like me slept on mattresses and could count on one hand the dishes they owned, I drowned in sofas and Kenwoods, artefacts, a king-sized bed, a sofa set and a rocking chair. Eight years later, my home is almost purged of all these expensive things, once pregnant with memories and too precious to give away (though not necessarily necessary nor my aesthetic).

While I’ve brandished this personality trait about as a matter of pride—a disinterest in the abject materialism that characterises our age, a sort-of bastardisation of the Hindu detachment ideal—there was a flip side. I'm not sure whether this is an Indian or generational trait, a bit of both perhaps, but my grandparents held on to the things they bought, treating them lovingly and maintaining them: they still use a sewing machine that they got as a wedding gift over sixty years ago. Unlike them, I took my lack of attachment to things to mean a use-and-throw attitude, never bothering to maintain them, replacing them easily and cheaply (I’ve always been a street shopper, even when I could afford not to be) when they broke or tore. Then, didn’t this make me consume as much as others who glutted on things?

Plagued with these macro and personal realisations and questions, on the first of May last year, I decided to go on a no-shopping experiment for a year.

There were rules, of course: I could replace something that was irredeemably, unfixably broken in my wardrobe and home; I could buy something if it was truly needed (not only wanted); the rest I would make up as I went along. Obviously, groceries weren’t part of this moratorium. I found that my learnings at the end of this year are closely aligned to my reasons for embarking on this embargo in the first place.

Shopping, Happiness & Addiction

They call it ‘retail therapy’ for a reason. It’s been proven that shopping makes you happier, and even the most disinterested shopper can’t help but feel a frisson of excitement at the buying and savouring of new things. That high can be quite addictive.

May was okay: I was newly motivated, plus I replaced my badminton shoes that were truly broken. In June, I finally picked up some things that had been with my tailor since February. By July I was craving hard, the withdrawal symptoms at their peak, but I didn’t cheat. And, you know what, like any addiction, the craving faded away.

And though I found myself looking forward to my birthday and anniversary presents with an unhealthy, feverish excitement, I learnt a few things along the way.

* While retail is therapy, studies have shown that the happiness from an experience—watching a film, travelling, enjoying a meal—is much longer lasting. This is true, and what I’ve believed all along.

* When you buy what you truly, truly need/want, and not just when you give in to a craving, there’s a special thrill in an occasional indulgence (I bought a pair of shoes for a wedding in January, a bag in March).

* A surprisingly effective way to feel the same joy-of-the-new is to ‘discover’ something you haven’t used in a while—when I finally got to a tailor with my bunch of things to mend, and when they finally came back, voila, I had a whole lot of things I hadn’t worn in a long time, good as new.

*I’ve also started an informal barter system with a couple of friends, trading things I’m bored of in my wardrobe for similar stuff in theirs. Oh joy!

Choose Quality Over Quantity

Or spend more time, effort and energy maintaining stuff that wasn’t built to last.

Maintain & Mend

I now wash clothes by colour groups, follow the ‘stitch in time’ adage, get the oil checked in my car and pack my laptop away at night (on more than one occasion before, I’ve woken to the sound of it crashing to the floor, from beside me on the bed). New India is at the beginning of the consumerist cycle, with newfound spending power and the lure of glittering foreign brands and aspirations. That less is more, and the idea behind the developed-country-cars-public-transport quote are lost on us. In the meanwhile, counterculture movements across the world, including veganism, are going back, growing a certain ‘awareness’ of things and seeking fulfilment beyond them—back, ironically, to the ways of my grandparents.

Borrow

July last year posed a challenge: I had a Big Fat Indian Wedding to attend, and my wardrobe’s sparse Indian selection would just not suffice for the six functions. Even if I considered this a mitigating circumstance, I reasoned that I’d only be buying clothes I’d only rarely wear again. I borrowed almost everything I wore from friends and family, and it worked!

At the end of this year, I am certainly richer (much richer) in wallet, but poorer in wardrobe (which has certainly started to feel the pinch, and I’ve truly be struggling for fresh clothes and shoes). I do need new upholstery, and a fresh bunch of cushion covers will certainly be welcome.

Of course, I’m not recommending that we all become monks or even that you spend a year living without shopping. I am just saying that we each need to think more deeply about the choices we make. A dear friend, who once held down a high-powered job in the fashion industry, is now a raw food eater and avoids multinationals like the plague. While this year has not set me on her extreme path, I’ve come away a little more mature, with a little more Mindfulness and with better priorities.

2014: Less is More.

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This column appeared on 3QD in June 2014.

Interview: Lisa Haydon

April 2014: Riding high on the success of Queen, golden girl of the moment Lisa Haydon talks about her journey from supermodel to actress.

The cover of Harper's Bazaar.

She appears at the table just after the cover shoot, plonks herself in to a chair, and greets me with a warm, “Hi, I’m Lisa. Will you eat?”—No—“Do you mind if I eat while we chat?” She is make-up-free, wearing a white, layered hakoba ruffle top and jeans, and is absolutely breath taking with her flawless raven skin, collarbones to die for and unreal body. We chat as she munches through her lunch, and I appreciate that this “Indian version of Angeline Jolie” (the words of her first booking agent, not mine) isn’t just uniquely beautiful, but fun and free-spirited, mature and oh-so-smart.

The success of Queen “feels really, really good.” In this coming-of-age travel-comedy-drama, she plays Vijay Lakshmi, a liberal hotel maid and single mother, the catalyst for the introspective journey that Rani, played by Kangana Ranaut, undergoes during her single honeymoon. “I didn't think about it too much when I signed this project with Vikas (Bahl, the director). I just loved my character so much that I wanted to play her.”

For the raving urban masses and praising critics, Queen gets it right, placing its women in shades of grey and not slotting them in to binaries of good/evil, and ending on a progressive, feministic note. “There’s this one verse from the Bible—‘Unto the pure all things are pure’—that my mum used to read to me growing up,” she tells me. Considering we’ve heard nary a bad word about the film, we agree that the audience forgets to judge Vijay Lakshmi because she’s authentic and natural, and comes from an honest place. “There are no pretences about the way women are. Rani’s character is just letting loose, discovering life and learning from Vijay Lakshmi—who burps, snorts when she laughs, is a single mom, drinks, smokes, has a lot of sex… And none of these things makes her a bad person.”

I prod Lisa about the similarities she admits to sharing with Vijay Lakshmi. “Our lifestyles are very different, she’s a little more carefree in the way she executes her life, but the heart and soul might be the same. Playing her was a bit of a catharsis—for two-three months shooting in Paris and Amsterdam, I became her, drinking, smoking, sitting with my legs wide open. When I returned, I quit drinking, I’ve stopped going out and I ran the marathon; I felt like I needed to cleanse the wildness out of me.”

She credits Vikas for many things—for a “comfortable and interactive” experience and for recognising her uniqueness. For his part, Vikas pays her a huge personal compliment by saying he auditioned her five times for the character he had originally written, but soon realised she was “ten times wilder and more free-spirited” than the character he was creating. “Inspired by the way she is, her body language, how comfortable she is with her body in any environment, I actually rewrote the character to make her exactly like the spirit of Lisa in real life.”

The Harper's Bazaar cover story.

The real life Lisa was born in Chennai to a Malayali father and Australian mother. She lived in Australia and the US before moving back to India in 2007 to be a model. “It just kind-of happened. I was working as a waitress in Sydney and wanted to make extra cash, and my sister (Mumbai-based model Mallika Haydon) told me to try modelling. I know somewhere deep down I must have always wanted to be a model, not because I wanted to model but because I wanted the lifestyle. Not a wealthy one, but a travelling, bohemian life, full of experiences.” Armed with photos shot by a neighbour against the white wall in her bathroom, she was signed by her first booking agent. In India visiting family during Fashion Week 2007, Mallika, who she calls her “trailblazer”, pushed her to meet Marc Robinson and give it a shot. “It all just started snowballing from there, with magazine covers, endorsements and TV commercials. I was travelling, doing all the things that I wanted to do but wouldn't have been doing in Australia.” She went back, packed up her apartment and has been in Mumbai since. “I didn't look back.” She’s recently single, having called off her engagement to long-term beau DJ Karan Bhojwani.

As a supermodel in the Indian film industry, she has faced her own challenges: “The main one is that I know I’m a deep thinker and not just a pretty person, but because you model you have to put yourself in that box in some ways. It’s hard to deconstruct that opinion, it takes time, and the only way you can is by being given an opportunity.” She’s taken it slow, starting with a small role in Aisha (2010) as Aarti Menon, a New York-returned yuppie, after being spotted in a coffee shop by Anil Kapoor; then dancing to raunchy beats wearing hair-extensions, falsies and skimpy clothes in Rascals (2011) made her feel like a misfit in the industry and almost made her quit. “I recognised that if I do too much of this I’m going to get caught in a rut and not be able to showcase what I want to, or be taken seriously as an actor. So I waited for the right script to come along. Everything happens in its own time.”

In the meantime, she designed clothes for Sher Singh, a licensing association she is no longer pursuing. And has started an organic skincare line called Naked. “You know how they say you are gifted or have certain talents. I think this might be my gift, because, though I haven’t studied too much about it, the recipes come my mind. I get them lab-tested and somehow they always work.” She uses only her own products on her gorgeous skin, and wears no make-up on a regular day. “For a day meeting I’ll put on some under-eye concealer, mascara and a little blush. In the evening I like to go a bit deeper, using brown that has purple tones, something a little more glamorous but still nothing too much. I think less is more in many areas of life.” 

She continues to balance her modelling and acting careers, and is fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani’s campaign girl for the year “because of looks but more so because of the spirit and values she embodies,” he says. He is thrilled she has been acclaimed in Queen. “Lisa is a true ‘it’ girl for me, modern of spirit and effervescence, with an honest spontaneity and a dusky sexiness that is so India Modern.” I ask about her personal style for this summer, and she says she’s going white. “I like the subtlety of an androgynous look, and mix-and-match my clothes.”

Always, and especially now, after Queen, Lisa doesn’t see the things that set her apart from others in the film industry as hindrances but as USPs. She knows that improving her Hindi is going to be an ongoing process, but “at the end of the day, I don't give in to any of the things that people would consider weaknesses—the fact that I'm tall, or that I have raven skin, or that I have this accent. They are my specialness.” As urban Hindi films begin to portray the cross-cultural diaspora of our metro-going-on-cosmopolitan cities, she feels there is space for someone like her right now. “I think that in this day and age there are many people like me who feel they are Indian—I’ve spent most of my life in this country—despite their ethnicity or where they grew up. And I know there will be people like me in our films.” This is not to say that she wants to always play this character or get stereotyped; and she intends to work on things that are not her strong suits in order to play varied roles.

She doesn’t know when her next film with Viacom 18 will be out, and she hasn’t signed anything since Queen. “I’m waiting for something worth my salt.” On going over our conversation, I realise that biding her time is a recurring motif in the journey of this inspiring woman who wants to do good work on her own terms. “This is now the beginning of the Lisa Moment,” says Tahiliani.

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An edited version of this interview was the cover story of Harper's Bazaar in April 2014.

The Body Complex

March 2014: Some thoughts on diet and exercise, food and drink, and health.

Conceptual photograph courtesy Sahil Mane.

I’ve been on one diet or the other since I was in my teens. Most have been the very definition of crash (cigarettes and Diet Coke for a week, anyone?) and, later, I’ve tried more wholesome, longer-term lifestyle ones (that I would soon abandon and revert to my yo-yo crash-trash diet cycle). First, it was only for aesthetic reasons, to lose weight; the lifestyle diets, Eat More Weigh Less and the like, started when I started to encompass health and fitness as a goal for my body (duh)!

Diet vs Exercise: A Gendered Choice?

While all of us recognise that the key to a healthy body is a combination of good-for-you food and exercise (and not smoking, limited drinking, etc, and the absence of genetic and birth defects) most people fall in to one or the other category—some preferring exercise, unable to control their need to eat, drink and be merry; others preferring to diet or at least practice diet control, unable or unwilling to exercise. There are the some that do both, as we all should, and those, of course, that do neither.

I’ve realised that the choice, whether to diet or exercise, both or neither, is quite personality driven. Dieting is passive, to not eat; exercise is active, to get off your butt… And, in light of this fact, I hate to admit that my observation, that more women choose to diet, more men choose to exercise, falls in to gender stereotypes. Though there are exceptions all around; and my casual survey, of friends and boyfriends, and numbers from my local gym, has a small sample size, one could analyse my observation to bits. Is it because women are more driven by aesthetics, we are judged on them from an early age; and power, muscle, sports are traditionally male? Then there are the questions of time, priorities and lifestyle factors, and socioeconomic and cultural positioning. Also, men or women, individuals negotiate a complex social, familial, ethical, religious, consumerist, emotional, psychological and gendered relationship with food and drink.

Our Relationship with Food

I notice these complexities in my own food choices: the memories my mother’s chocolate cake triggers, the struggle to be vegetarian for ethical reasons, the battle to not eat fattening and unhealthy fast food the MNCs tell us we should desire, the sugar addiction of the body and the mind, the lying, the cheating, the denial, the bartering. When I cave, which I often do, I berate myself for letting my tongue win in a battle with my brain, how stupid! An unhealthy and overweight friend, who tells me she doesn’t eat much, not too much junk or sugar at all, and that her weight is only because she doesn’t exercise, does, in fact, take very small portions at meals. But she sneaks soda and cakes, biscuits and the things she gathers on her 2 AM raids of the fridge past her own rules.

Take how social and private-time drinking is more accepted, expected even, in men more than women, of a certain age, stage, religion and cultural environment. My father was in the Indian Navy, to whose officers the government provides subsided alcohol. Aside from rampant alcoholism, this flush affects the levels of ‘normal’ consumption in our households. While my father’s daily drinking and fumblings have left me with an instinctive dislike of alcohol, a friend, a fellow child of a Naval officer, drinks every evening, alone or in company, convinced it is just normal, no more than his father drank. Go figure! As I said before, everyone has an ongoing saga with food and drink.

The Weight & Health Correlation

I'm in the neither category, more often than not, oftentimes in the dieters-only, and, for bursts since 2010, in the ideal category, doing both. This was when I really got thinking about my body, spurred by my close friends, Jordyn, an anthropologist-turned-fitness-trainer; and Sowmya, whose healthy body image rubbed off on me. Though I’ve gone beyond a mere aesthetic view of my body, I continue to measure my health goals on the weighing scale, hoping to achieve my ideal aesthetic and height-weight chart weight. This is too simplistic, and a flawed equation for many reasons—skinny is not always equal to healthy, happy or even pretty; healthy is not always equal to skinny; health is related to diet and exercise, plus a lot more; weight doesn’t tell the muscle-fat ratio; etc. But it’s the simplest parameter to keep track of (not including smoking) in the absence of any glaring medical issues, and not so off the mark in some ways—if you achieve a healthy weight in a healthy manner, not through stress or illness or crash dieting, it indicates you’ve corrected your diet, reducing or removing the sugar, junk, colas, fast foods, alcohol and red meats, and started exercising.

A Well Oiled Machine

I’ve also had this sneaking realisation, for a while, that certain things you do to your body in your youth are irredeemable, never to be recovered again. Scars, of course, they tell stories and bear memories, but more than that. The weight that gets harder to lose every year will leave behind, if and when it goes, cellulite and sags. There are side effects of having once smoked or drunk excessively that stay behind in your body. Now, whenever the now is, is a good time to start taking care of it. What’s done is done, what age will do it will do, but you’ve got to do what you can.

And age will come, to us more than to the generations before us. Things that would have surely killed people before this explosion in medical science—cholesterol or heart diseases, typhoid or snake bites, well—the don't always anymore, or as quickly. We will live longer in our bodies now, and that’s scary if you don’t anticipate the yawning years ahead, beyond the wonders of youth, in bodies propped alive by medicine. Like a car you drive recklessly and don’t maintain early on…

Starting Now

Through December and January, months I can only describe as a long string of raucous parties, family time and travel, I was firmly in the neither category, and the scales told me so loud and clear (as did the groaning elastic in my stretch jeans, my belt and Facebook photographs, as though I needed more to underscore a point I was feeling already). I find myself plus-minus two kilograms of a certain weight (let’s just call it X, okay?), and when I finally wrestled myself onto the weighing scale in early February, I was two kg over the plus limit. Though I’m tall and carry it off, even X, to be fair, is seven kg above my ideal on the height-weight chart, ten kg above what I’d like to be, and twelve kg above what I was in college. And I can’t hide under the muscle-is-heavier-than-fat excuse, because, well, it’s fat.

My NOW to lose weight and get healthy was a month ago. I'm 30, 31 in a few weeks. It’s time to go analyse my relationship with food, break habits and patterns a la Pavlov’s dog. It’s time to go beyond crash dieting, dieting in fact, and adopt a lifestyle of wholesome eating and diet control. It’s time to be a better cook, with the ability to satisfy many of my cravings in-house. It’s time to remove, yes, remove, sugar from my diet—a food diary really helps me be honest to myself, and, with a little help from a homeopath and the trick of eating a lot more protein, I find my portions coming down every day. Having a glass of water before reaching for a sugary drink works like magic, poof, the desire’s gone.

And exercise. I’m just making more time, for badminton and swimming, spinning poi, dancing and walking and improvising; things I enjoy and make up for my gym-aversion. Not related to the scales, smoking’s on the way out, finally, and I should be weaned by my birthday.

The Raging Sugar War

My sugar addiction is the most problematic thing about my diet. Problematic, for several reasons. Consuming refined sugar is one of the worst things you can do to your body, empty calories is the least of them. It makes you fat, brings on other weight-related diseases, diabetes and cancer.

I consume a lot more than I should, aware and unawares. Most people do, even those that don’t have a sweet tooth. Sweet things have added sugar, of course, but so do a surprising and surprisingly long list of many savouries—bread, tomato ketchup, tins of tuna. Its percolation in to cuisines worldwide has been a dramatic one, a ‘success’ of the industrial age. My grandfather, born on the border of Pakistan and Russia, remembers there being only one dessert in his childhood, a staple at all weddings, a simple rice-milk preparation sweetened with jaggery. He came from a landed family, with access to the best food; refined sugar didn’t exist for them then. Now, it's everywhere, embedded deep in all cuisines, and fast and processed foods.

To beat my body’s craving, I must abandon the long list of savoury things that have sugar. To beat the addiction of my taste buds, I must of course abandon things that taste sweet, because, apart from the unwanted sugar, their other ingredients are invariably also highly processed and unhealthy, like flour, butter, and artificial flavours and colours. Even if they promise a zero-calorie or zero-sugar fix through aspartame or other artificial sweeteners that are so bad for you. Unlike fruits, where the nutritive value compensates for the high natural sugar, there’s little worth consuming in most desserts.

What makes giving up sugar hardest, that Jordyn’s succeeded to do for years, is the fact that we live in a culture of sugar, from sugary breakfast cereals to biscuits at tea time. It’s more addictive than cocaine, apparently, yet those battling it live in the thick of it. It hit me hardest at a recent party. As a non-drinker asking for something ‘soft’, what are my options that don’t have sugar, no ‘diet’ varieties either. Yup, Virgin Mary and salted lemonade, I got those two too. And?

Folie à Deux

On this new diet and exercise routine on my way to health as a long-term lifestyle choice, I’ve dragged my husband along. I’ve wanted him to lose weight with me before, because it’s nice to have a partner and it’s good for him too. It’s good for us, especially because we don’t intend to have children to burden with our bodies as we grow older. Over the years, I’ve been quite successful in taking him to the badminton court, pulling the card of companionship for the walking and the dancing. I have never been able to get him to diet.

The last time I got him to join me on a diet, it was six months ago. It was day one—the only-one-fruit day—of the GM Diet. The next day was the only-one-vegetable day.

We had survived on strawberries all day, until late in the night when neither of us could think of anything but food. But, unlike me, Sahil couldn't keep his distracting cravings to himself, for the ‘greater good’. Apart from tossing and turning like a fish out of water, he kept groaning loudly: “Sushi! Sushi!” he called out repeatedly, hoping it would drop like manna from the heavens. It didn’t. “Ummm, a burger with bacon.” (We’re pescetatian.) “French fries and cheesecake.”

“Shut up, Sahil!” I said, the images now in my head, making a saliva factory in my mouth. Eventually, we had to *ahem* do other things to take our minds off food.

“I’m not made for diets,” he declared during post-coital bliss.

“Well, you’re not made for exercise, apparently, and now you’re saying no diet. How exactly are you going to get slimmer and healthier?”

After a silent moment, he piped up: “I’m changing the diet. Let’s go on an only-sushi diet for a week.” Exasperated and sleepy, I reminded him how expensive it was, breaking a diet with sushi.

“Yeah, but I’m going to go, buy all the ingredients, and make it at home in the morning.”

He did, and at least I now have someone who can make me beautiful rolls of restaurant-quality sushi at home. This time though, convinced by the more wholesome, food-conscious diet I’ve proposed (not starvation, not crash, just controlled), convinced by the arguments beyond the aesthetic, he’s been more excited, inspired (and obedient). Fingers crossed!

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This column appeared on 3QD in March 2014.

In Defence of Valentine’s Day

February 2014: Despite the criticisms in the Indian context, I explain why I’m a huge fan of the day of love.

Conceptual photograph courtesy Sahil Mane.

Call me a romantic fool, but I love Valentine’s Day. In college in New Delhi, I’d laugh and say, “Why not? It’s just another excuse to celebrate and get presents!” Now, 10 years, awareness and much consumer fatigue since, it isn’t about the gift economy at all. For days before, love is literally in the air (and on the airwaves, TV and everywhere). Consciously ignoring advertising suggestions of what we should be giving-receiving, where we should be going, what we should be doing, Sahil and I celebrate without spending. Last year, we just cooked for each other over music and laughter; this year, we’re planning a party. I also wish my mother, family and friends.

When I speak of my love for Valentine’s, it tends to spark debate with a whole range of people. I’ve had the religious and cultural traditionalists play the ‘Against Hinduism/Islam’ (India’s two major religions) and/or ‘Against Indian Culture’ Card, say it is a cultural contamination from the West. Friends who are nonconformists and anti-consumerism are, well, anti its consumerism, the nauseating marketing blitz and the pigeonholing.

And the many arguments of those coming from a postcolonial perspective are best summed up on Wiki:

“The holiday is regarded as a front for ‘Western imperialism’, 'neocolonialism' and ‘the exploitation of working classes through commercialism by multinational corporations’ (Satya Sharma in ‘The Cultural Costs of a Globalized Economy for India’, Dialectical Anthropology). Studies have shown that Valentine's Day promotes and exacerbates income inequality in India, and aids in the creation of a pseudo-Westernised middle class. As a result, the working classes and rural poor become more disconnected socially, politically and geographically from the hegemonic capitalist power structure. They also criticise mainstream media attacks on Indians opposed to Valentine's Day as a form of demonisation that is designed and derived to further the Valentine's Day agenda.”

And, surprisingly, I agree with most of these criticisms.

The Religion & Culture Card

I agree that this day, the Feast of St Valentine, which originates in ancient Roman and Christian theology, does not come from Hinduism or Islam. Though it is stripped of religious significance in its current avatar, one can understand why purists would see it as celebrating another religions’ festival. However, I see this broadening of horizons, loosening of religious strangleholds and cultural cross-pollination as a positive way forward towards a liberal, melting-pot world.

What’s worse, this is a festival celebrating love—the dizzying, crazy-making romantic and/or sexual variety that is condemned by Islam and Hinduism, in its current Victorian-prudery-infused avatar far removed from Kamadeva, Khajuraho and the Kama Sutra.

Now, most traditional societies and religions don’t like love. Love is blind, and deaf to reason, ‘honour’, society, status, money, norms. It beckons their young (daughters, in particular) away from their fold, un-enslaves them from ‘mummy-daddy’, and makes them—gasp—free-willed. It breeds in young, reckless minds and hearts, and feeds on Bollywood happily-ever-afters, romantic notions and lust. It grows in the generation gap like an insidious sapling in a wall crack. It is a subversive, idealistic idea that disregards social, political, economic, religious, caste barriers like no preaching, media or education can achieve. Age-old systems—arranged marriages, joint families, stay-at-home wives and mothers, divorce-free not-so-happily-ever-afters with (legally sanctioned) marital rape, dowry and other patriarchal traditions—fall in its wake. This too is a good thing, methinks, particularly from a feminist perspective.

A separate issue is the sex (or any physical contact), pre-marital to boot, that is a consequence of the love and its expression that Valentine’s Day propagates. Some activists claim they are not against love, just against its ‘vulgar’ exhibition in public—a definition that could include merely holding hands in the more conservative parts of the country. This cultural obsession with and repression of sex (controlling who can do what with whom, when, where, why and how much), and hypocrisy about sex (we’re clearly having a lot of it, just not talking healthily about it) is hugely problematic.

So, for the past few years, in various parts of the country, moral police from religio-political groups like the Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti have been burning cards, red-coloured gifts and roses, and beating up, or threatening to beat up and forcibly marry, couples who are found on dates on Valentine’s. (Through the year, they also target bars, music concerts and women’s sartorial choices, other Western corruptions.) Yet, we don’t lament the irony of being more comfortable with Public Displays of Anger than with Public Displays of Affection. “We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight,” said Lennon all those years ago.   

(More by me on culture and love in India in Governance Now.)

Just like the stand against consensual homosexuality, the stand against Valentine’s Day unites traditionalists across religions, cultural positioning and political affiliations across the country. However, in that case, as this, the governance and legal systems should prioritise individual choice over this tyranny, a their-size-fits-all. After all, if right-wingers are allowed to live a patriarchal lifestyle that is offensive to certain demographic groups in a democracy, others should be afforded the same respect.

Consumerism Overload!

Love sells, I agree. It sells roses, cards and lingerie, dinners, diamonds and holiday packages.

Valentine’s entered the Indian mainstream with the advent of satellite TV in ’92. The first music channels, MTV and Channel V, carrying strong influences of American pop culture, hyped it as a peg for contests, dedications, love-song countdowns, on-the-ground events and early-day reality TV, to enthuse their teen audiences, and generate marketing and advertising revenue. For Indians, this alien festival was manufactured in the media, through content as well as advertising campaigns for mushy cards, chocolates, teddy bears, etc. It has since established the rituals—not only have we been told that we must celebrate this day of love, but how and how much we should spend on it. The more you love, the more you should be willing to spend, it says, inextricably linking the two in the manner of American capitalists.

I’ve been on the other side of the fence, and I’d know. Come January and the PR agents are at it, sending out press releases about Valentine’s Day offers from the companies they represent. They hope you will feature these in the next issue of your monthly magazine (on homes, with a female target audience), which they assume has a love theme. And you do, because it does.

Though it is advertising bucks and brouhaha that sustains this festival of love, although it is with an intention to get people to buy, buy, buy and not altruistic, the optimist in me rejoices the very fact that there is a day for romantic love. Men and women alike are being conditioned to expect, express and prioritise this happy, powerful emotion.

My octogenarian grandparents from small-town India, married since 1951, tell me that, though “Valentine’s Day didn’t exist” in their youth, they now celebrate it by going out for coffee. Through all the marketing din, I’m sure the nonconformists can separate the message from the madness.

Postcolonial Perspective

I agree with the argument that Valentine’s Day is a part of Western cultural imperialism. Notwithstanding the Chicken Tikka Masala-Britain example, the extent of the influx and acceptance of the Anglosphere’s culture in India and Asia is far greater than the reverse. The growing urban Indian middle class, exposed to what passes as ‘global’ culture through TV and/or the internet, knows America’s movie and pop stars, celebrates Halloween, and loved 'Friends' and 'Breaking Bad' and 'Dexter'. We are adopting, and being conditioned to adopt, its mores. The hegemony of American culture (and English, food, design, fashion, etc) continues to be cemented around the world, aiding and being aided by its economic might and business globalisation… the very definition of neocolonialism.

But, culture has never been linear or fixed, and has always evolved and adjusted—a British ball game remained here after the Raj, to become the Subcontinent’s religion. In the age of communication, knowledge and travel, cultures are evolving more rapidly than ever before anyway, with or without Valentine’s! I believe people have a right to tap in to ‘global’ culture, assess their cultural influences, and pick and choose their individual beliefs.

Some of us have become what Wiki refers to as the “pseudo-Westernised middle class”, whose acceptance of a few aspects of new culture does not mean a complete break from the old. At the numerous weddings I’ve attended in the past year (yup, it’s that life-stage), all couples, without fail, personalised their ceremonies, appropriating and incorporating things they like from other cultures and abandoning some aspects from their own. From tattooed rings to bachelorettes and buddymoons… at our own wedding two years ago, Sahil and I skipped the most important Hindu wedding ritual, taking seven circles around the sacred fire to the droning of an unintelligible priest, in favour of exchanging vows. Individuals should be allowed to negotiate their own cultural positioning, whatever it may be.

It is also true that Valentine’s Day and its commercialism widen the pre-existing cultural and economic gap between this class, and the working classes and rural poor. Economic inequality, the gap between the landed and nouveau riche, and the poor in India, is growing and becoming increasingly apparent every day. In his latest book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Michael Sandel, professor of philosophy at Harvard, discusses the dangers of what he calls “the sky boxification of life”—the growing separation between rich and poor in the ordinary activities and common spaces of daily life owing to rampant marketization. In an interview to Mumbai Mirror, he asserts this is damaging to democracy, because “it erodes the sense of belonging, the shared identity that democracy requires.” Neither do the ‘masses’ understand or subscribe to a culture that understands and permits a day of love, nor can they afford to join the celebration.

An unfortunate fallout of these disparate cultural influences regarding Valentine’s Day on the masses is that it leads to the sexual harassment of women by Roadside Romeos across India. Valentine’s Day propaganda and Bollywood expose these men to the idea of and desire for romantic love, at odds with their conservative cultural environments. Love, according to older Bollywood plot lines, happens at first sight, and comes to fruition and marriage once the hero has followed and convinced the girl. Starry-eyed boys ‘eve teasing’ and harassing the girls they ‘love’ becomes a pandemic during February. Growing up in North India, I’ve had letters flung at me and a stalker from a different city end up at my doorstep to hand me a teddy bear!

The depression, loneliness and suicide around the Christmas holiday in America among those who cannot partake in the celebration and spending is well documented, and may indicate an upcoming trend vis-à-vis the Indian population and Valentine’s Day. Though statistics are not yet available, incidents of jilted lovers seeking revenge are thought to be higher during the month of love.

Valentine’s Day is clearly not the only place where this cultural and economic chasm is obvious—it’s in housing, Bollywood, clothing, lifestyle, food, etc, and even in the consumerist gluttony encouraged at Indian weddings and festivals. A daylong love festival, one that has many positive sociocultural consequences, is, in my opinion, less deadly that the sustained disparateness on display throughout the year.

The intellectuals’ contention, however, that mainstream media attacks on Indians opposed to Valentine's Day is a form of demonisation that is designed and derived to further the Valentine's Day agenda is a tad simplistic. For one, the English media is not, in the strictest sense of the word, the mainstream media of India: vernacular and Hindi media have a much more pervasive reach, and they continue to be religious and cultural mouthpieces. For the most part, the English media, run by people from the “pseudo-Westernised middle class”, is liberal leaning and pro-West. Its ability to provide sustained cultural critique from a liberal point of view is important to counter the rampant patriarchy, religious intolerance and complexity of Indian culture, and it is often seen taking politicians to task for the misogynistic statements that invariably follow every sensational rape. 

The pro-Valentine’s agenda of the English media derives not only from commercial interests, but also from the intrinsic cultural positioning of those in it. The English versus Hindi and vernacular languages divide is not merely linguistic, but also promotes and exacerbates a deep cultural chasm with thin middle ground.

Love, Life & Laughter

India is in a hyperactive state of sociocultural flux, between the old and the new cultures and religions, between the have and the have nots, between rural and urban realities, those educated and those not, those who speak English and those who don’t, men and women. It is and will continue to be interesting to watch how we negotiate these dynamics as a nation, particularly in respect to love, sexuality and Valentine’s Day.  

I’m clearly on the side of love, and choose to see Valentine’s as much-needed reminder and celebration of the emotion that makes—or should make—the world go round.

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This column appeared on 3QD in February 2014.

The Wrongs of Racists

February 2014: An exploration of Indian and global racism.

Racism is caused by the misplaced belief that members of a certain race share certain common characteristics that result in that group being superior or inferior to others. For the past couple of weeks, our news sources have been screaming about it and hate crimes every day. In India, we participated in the global social media backlash at the social media outrage against the multilingual Coke ad celebrating America’s diversity that aired during Super Bowl. We also reacted to the killing of Arunachali student Nido Taniam in a racist attack at home, in New Delhi.

We are complicit in his death, of course, and it's amusing that global racism against Indians, lumped with other non-white, non-Christian ethnicities, surprises and offends us, when we’re happy doling it out ourselves. We stereotype and are wary of anyone in a different group than us, and show deference to anyone we believe is better: guards in Chennai would always salute my Punjabi father who they believed was a white foreigner. Those we perceive as lesser than us in any way—people who are of a genetically different human phenotype, but especially those darker than us, of a different religion or ‘lower’ class and caste and ethnicity than us, who speak an ‘inferior’ language and have a dissimilar culture and history, non-heteronormal, poorer than us, with eyes squinted more than ours—are discriminated against, shown their inferiority in no uncertain terms. We are supremely conscious of our ranking on the sociocultural hierarchy, and while we appreciate being allowed to climb it, succeeding on this comparative scale means being, and staying, higher up than scores of others.

At the beginning of our feminism classes in college, a recurring question was about why mothers-in-law would perpetrate dowry and hate crimes against their sons’ brides; having been victims of patriarchal mores themselves, shouldn’t they be more empathetic, we wondered. The answer is apparent—when allowed to participate in patriarchy on the stronger team, why would these women refuse the power? Same-same with racism in India.

So a bunch of shopkeepers in Lajpat Nagar beat a ‘ch***i’ to death for reacting to racist taunts, generously aided by police stupidity. Stereotyping those from the North East for their mongoloid features and Western fashions is deeply engrained in our culture. Only recently, my grandmother recounted how she and a group of friends were chased by a Chinese vendor for taunting him with “Cheeni-Meeni Chuha Kha” as five/six-year-olds in Undivided India. Today, my Assamese friend Prerna is propositioned and taken to be a prostitute more than most other girls.

Within the country, we discriminate against small subsets on micro levels—people from the North East, the tribals, Sikhs, Muslims; the Marathi manoos against others in the state. This divisiveness and internal strife begs the question: what unites a nation’s nationals, and on what basis are its borders and boundaries drawn? Marina Nido, the mother of Taniam, is quoted in India Today as saying: “I'm proud to be Indian. But where should we go? Should we be sent to China?” Since we don’t seem to acknowledge its natives as fellow Indians, would we honestly like to see Arunachal Pradesh gifted to China, which already claims it on some maps.

We exult in the achievements of NRIs, unashamedly and proudly claiming the successful ones as our own (even when the person doesn’t particularly agree—remember the excitement when Norah Jones, the daughter of apna Pundit Ravi Shankar, became famous; and our collective disappointment when she didn’t acknowledge him in her Grammy acceptance speech). Growing up, I wonder how often Satya Nadella was reminded that he fit the IT geek stereotype of an average kaala Madrasi.  

We have laws against religious and cultural intolerance and hurting others’ sentiments, are taught ‘Unity is Diversity’ in school, but those who divide and rule, who incite and propagate divisiveness for political, religious and social gain, are allowed to do so. And then, how far should these factions be indulged, each with demands for newer states, special rights and statuses, like Telangana?

Globally, on a macro level, the flip side of national and patriotic pride is a belief in superiority and a race towards supremacy. While it is riddled with internal racism, USA’s quest to protect the interests of its nationals has resulted in the deaths and human rights’ violations of scores of civilians in other nations. The belief that we are dramatically different from and superior to Pakistanis, and vice versa, has led to 65 years of bloodshed.

But we’re not; human beings are the same everywhere. In this past year, this is at least the third time I’ve written about racial discrimination and stereotyping. My agenda is not born from feeling disempowered: I have never really been discriminated against in India, socioculturally positioned as I am; abroad, questions about my English are, I believe, not simply racism and arrogant Euro-/white-centricity but also curiosity and ignorance. It is because anyone who believes in equal rights can see the dangers of labels and the consequent discrimination.

As always, the solution is an open mind willing to acknowledge and shed conditioning in the face of knowledge, understanding, empathy and rights. The Prejudice Tracker, a soon-to-be-launched app that offers real time crowd sourced reports on worldwide incidents of discrimination, is an interesting development for countries with high internet penetration.

We align ourselves, or are genetically aligned, with a subgroup, then measure ourselves and are measured against others. We aim higher, and disdain and protect our own against the feared other… At final count though, who exactly is the ‘us’ and who is the ‘them’?

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in February 2014.

Private, Public, Political

January 2014: Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor’s death brings up questions about the private lives of Indian politicians.

The masala Twitter war between Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor and the Pakistani journalist she accused of having an affair with her husband erupted around the same time French President Francois Hollande’s affair with actress Julie Gayet was revealed by Closer magazine. It got me thinking about certain civilisations’ preoccupations with the sexuality and sex lives of their politicians—and India’s lack of it.

Think about it: in the late '90s, the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair was making global news, enticing passionate headlines and arguments, and almost had him impeached. The Indian prime minister around the time was an old single man with an ‘adopted’ daughter, known by all to be the biological child from the first marriage of his long-term live-in partner—but the media didn’t particularly care, neither did the people.

Let alone sex life, implying activity. We don’t even like to acknowledge that our politicians, like us, are sexual beings. Perhaps it is because, at the media explosion in the dotcom age, Rajiv Gandhi was long gone and most of our political leaders since have been octogenarian men, and that aspect of their lives is best left unimagined—no dishy Kennedys or Obama for us. Sure, there is the odd paternity suit and sting op CD, but surprisingly, even now, references to Rahul Gandhi’s (alleged) Colombian girlfriend are few and far between. What proportion of this silence from the media is fear of or complicity with our politicians?

Or it’s because we tend to deify the people we look up to, and would rather revere unidimensional gods than multidimensional men. A friend tells me that evidence of Jinnah’s non-Muslim wife, and his smoking and drinking have been removed in the official telling of Pakistan’s history; like the Father of Our Nation, he was retrospectively idealised. (This also explains why, in the South, the transition from movie star to politician appears effortless, a seemingly illogical transference of heroic attributes and popularity.) Note the way our female politicians drape their sarees, with not a sliver of sexy stomach on show—this when quite a few are former actresses. What the so deified and their audiences don’t acknowledge is that these constructs breed hypocrisy, because they are people: flaws, sex lives et al.

Leaders of liberal democracies sans dynastic politics—America, Australia, Britain, France—are not valued in isolation, but alongside their partners and families, and for conduct in their personal lives. Despite our family-centric society, whereas Michelle, together with her husband and as an individual, is in the public eye, Mrs Manmohan Singh shuffles quietly behind, nary a Femina article about her. It’s also noteworthy that, despite their far-right politics, many of our politicians have unconventional (if not downright sleazy though perhaps not Gaddafi-extreme) love-sex lives, much like men and women in power the world over, and details long suppressed about Gandhi’s strange sexual habits are now being outed in books.

Whatever its cause, into this agendered pseudo-genteel environment entered Sunanda Pushkar, as the third wife of one of our most suave new-breed politicians, who was also her third husband. With her looks and flashy dressing; public persona, PDA and personality; and businesses and dodgy mysterious past, she straddled many worlds. In Delhi circles, I am told, but I speak as a media consumer—loved her, hated her, you couldn’t ignore her. Together, Sunanda and Shashi made an ‘It’ couple, a veritable first in this generation’s political class.

And then came reports of her failing marriage, and the Twitter war with Mehr Tarar—juvenile? Dirty linen in public? Unnecessary? Her death soon after, fodder for a generation of conspiracy theorists. Natural? Unnatural? Murder? Suicide? Mistake! What about those bruises? Is this the birth of our very own Marilyn Monroe death conspiracy?

Despite Sunanda’s turbulent stardom and sad end, I think there was more about her and Shashi to admire than we give them credit for. Culturally, we need strong spunky female role models, women who will forge their own in environments where they have been silent before. “She behaved more like a flashy Bollywood trophy wife than an ambitious politician’s well behaved, soberly dressed spouse,” writes Shobha De. In many ways, by refusing to be, or let his wife be, typecast by her past, Sunanda was an interesting multidimensional female protagonist, and Shashi an inspiring, liberal man.

I’ve written repeatedly about the importance of love and its displays, most recently in ‘The Power—& Fear—of Love’. Notwithstanding the end, the couple showed an equal partnership, freely displayed their love and stood by each other in tough times. They were also handling a low point in their marriage with relative dignity (until the Twitter war)—I think this is important too, given that we suffer from unrealistic ideas of marriage, with our Cinderella Complexes and other unreal influences on mass culture, ranging from mythology, Bollywood and daytime TV. Marriages, even the happiest ones, have tough times, and sink or swim, it’s important to know how to deal with them.

When liberal lifestyles are on display by famous people, it is inspiring and culturally game-changing; this is how I feel about the Suzanne-Hrithik divorce as well. And when these famous people are policy-makers, who can be held accountable on a practice-what-you-preach front, this bodes well for cultural governance in the long term.

The public spat and Sunanda’s subsequent death, and reactions to both, could, hopefully, serve as a cautionary tale, if we choose to see it that way. Where does one draw the public-private divide? What about balancing impulsiveness and consequences? And what, if anything, is worth taking ones own life for? Suicide, if indeed hers was one, leaves nothing but pain, heartache and questions, as the media coverage has shown, and everyone should live to face another day no matter how bleak it may seem. For themselves, and the people left behind.

My condolences to Shashi and Sunanda’s son Shiv. And to Mehr, who won’t live this one down.

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An edited version of this column appeared in Governance Now in January 2014.

The Question of Stereotypes

January 2014: Probing pigeonholing from my experience as an educated urban Indian.

Conceptual image courtesy Sahil Mane.

I'm brown skinned, and that, along with my features and fusion dressing style clearly mark me as being from the Indian subcontinent. I travel to the ‘First World' a fair bit, and spend a lot of time in Australia, where most of my family live. More often than not, when I have conversations with locals there—on the street, at the post office, paying for groceries—a standard, unanimous response when I tell them that I'm only visiting, that I live in India is: "But your English is so good!"

I realise that this is not simply racism and arrogant Euro-/white-centricity—it is also curiosity and ignorance. Whatever it is, for the longest time, I didn't know whether to be all WTFed about it, or simply amused at their ignorance. And I certainly didn't know how to react—was I to justify this with: "I studied literature/Worked with the BBC/Was a magazine editor" and/or "Where I come from, English speakers are the norm, honey"? How about: "Your English is not bad either." Or should I have mentioned Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth…? And then storm off (not!) or smile or be condescending? How does one react to racial stereotyping?

Holes for Pigeons & People

They say that every stereotype exists for a reason. Within India too, there are ‘typical' traits we attribute to people belonging to different communities—Gujaratis are wily and money-minded, as are the Baniyas; Punjabis are both passionate and obnoxious; Bengalis are intellectual but slothful; Goans are drunken, fun-loving buggers who don't do much work; the Christian community is often represented by a ‘Sandra from Bandra' (a suburb in Mumbai with a large Christian population) wearing a long, flowing skirt and speaking terrible Hindi. These typecasts exist in the mainstream and are readily caricatured in Bollywood films.

From the outside, for the most part, Indians—with our vast population, lack of homogenous culture and religion, and many realities—are hard to pigeonhole: we have and are everything and nothing. The macro India, and view of it, is a complicated hotchpotch of Slumdogs and Millionaires; Maharajas and sadhus and snake charmers; uneducated masses, cab drivers and revered IITians; The Party's Hrundi Bakshi and Shah Rukh Khan; dancing beauties and Bollywood; colour and kitsch. That we speak good-ish English (with Indianisms, of course) is just one of the things that surprises people abroad about many of us urban Indians. There are many others: we live in houses, not huts; don't go to school on elephants or horses; Chicken Tikka Masala is not our national dish (but is Britain's—it doesn't even exist here!); etc.

Perhaps some of the cultural stereotypes about us are justified. For instance, we are known for our lack of personal space, quick intimacy and intrusiveness, born of years of sardine-canning in local trains and living in overcrowded cities. Many years ago, as an 18-year-old, I befriended an older man on a long-distance train out of Washington. We spoke for hours, and I thought it time to ask him about the small pits on his face. "You know what," he said kindly, "I've had these on my skin since I was born. Only two strangers have ever asked me about them—and both of them have been Indian!" We also seem to have a complicated relationship with simple rules, like traffic and housing societies, given our colonial hangover, and jugaad (loosely translated as ‘find a fix') and chalta hai ('anything goes') way of life.

Then there's the label of being dirty. My beautiful aunt Alice, who has lived all over the world and is one of Asia's premier experts on cross-cultural communication, tells me of this incident with a real estate agent in Dubai when looking for a house to rent (on a generous budget, might I add). Discussing desirable neighbourhoods over the phone, the agent dissuaded ‘Alice from Australia' from living in an Indian locality. "You don't want to live with the dirty Indians," she said, not realising that Alice is brown and of Indian origin. Needless to say the face-to-face encounter didn't go very well!

And sloppy dressers, who wear Western clothes badly and don white sneakers with everything. Partly in response to this prejudice (and also because she likes looking her best) Alice is always impeccably turned out. When I first went abroad as a youngster, she told me how important it was to dress carefully, more so than I do (or did then) at home, lest I get typecast.

Limiting Labels

Anyway, somewhere, in all of these impressions, hides the individual.

On the surface, stereotypes are innocuous, busted or validated upon closer one-on-one interactions. A bit like star signs and horoscopes, we go ‘Aha' when the shoe fits, and put differences down to individual atypicality. In actual fact, though, stereotypes are insidious and very dangerous.

Stereotypes dehumanise people, making us make assumptions about them based on their colour, race, religion, gender, sexual preferences, whatever—lumping them together based on factors often not of their choosing. When you ascribe certain characteristics to whole groups of people, all is well as long as those characteristics are positive. The problem arises when you find faults with this group… Not all Muslims (and residents of Muslim nations) are radical terror-mongers, those from the Heart of Darkness are not all savages and dimwits, and women are not all less capable than men. In the dehumanisation through stereotypes, one can see roots of great injustices, of Orientalism and anti-Semitism, of the philosophies that have justified the perpetration of social inequality, persecution and oppression, wars and genocide. Shakespeare's Shylock's famous 'If you prick us' speech is an eloquent appeal against being stereotyped as a Jew... It also raises the point that one who is so labelled reacts to the labelling—in internalising and adopting the characteristics a member of his/her set is meant to have, or in going against the grain.

Breaking Borders

Every one of us is indoctrinated with stereotypes of some sort or the other from childhood, whether positive or negative, and it is important to revaluate these prisms as one grows. If one can see people as people sans prejudice, as individuals beyond their macro- and even microcosms, one will find these casts either reinforced or broken—but never a one-size-fits-all.

In believing that one's history determines who we are as individuals, stereotypes completely discount individual agency. Naval Officers' children do not end up being Naval Officers, (a Muslim) Salman Rushdie wrote Satanic Verses... Names, cultures, histories, families' religions come with prejudice that may just not apply to who we are! Like Zappa said: "You are what you is"—and people, everywhere, are all similar in that we are all different.

Bottom-line: the world is not a small-enough place yet. We are still so ignorant about other peoples and cultures—in India, all whites are assumed to be rich (which is why our building's security guard would hassle my American friend Jordyn for money, and none of our other friends). The solution is an open mind, knowledge, travel and an expanded worldview.

Me? I'm still looking for that sucker-punch answer to use the next time sometime tells me my "English is so good"!

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This column appeared on 3QD in January 2014.

For a Rainbow-Coloured World

January 2014: The recent recriminalising of anal and oral sex has huge repercussions on LGBTIQ rights in India. Us optimists believe knowledge is the counter to bigotry, and I seek to evoke the empathy of the religious, political and cultural right wing by narrating, commenting and contrasting the life stories of a few gay men.

First, let me say this: Section 377 criminalises not only gay sex, but also all intercourse against the “order of nature”—a culturally and religiously coloured perception of ‘nature’ that believes sex is for procreation only, in humans like in other animals, not one that considers the complex scientific, emotional, psychological, sociocultural, etc. roots of human sexuality. Anal sex and oral sex are criminalised, even if you’re a couple (or threesome or whatever) of hetero consenting adults. Nonetheless, given that Section 377 criminalises ALL of the sexual intercourse of gay and lesbian people, and only some of the heterosexual sexual experience, the drama around the Supreme Court’s reinstating it by overturning the Naz Foundation’s win at the Delhi High Court is being seen as a gay rights issue. (Fair enough, but I’m outraged for myself too… I didn’t know I’d been breaking the law since I was 16!)

In my late teens, my closest friend was a reed thin man-woman with a big smile and a raspy voice who I met at a cyber café. The depth of experience in this person’s life made her fascinating and fun, an empathetic listener and mature advisor, and we became friends immediately despite our age gap. I took the fact that we could become friends for granted, in retrospect I realise I took the liberalness of my parents for granted.

Because, from her, and others since, I’ve heard just how hard societal and familial acceptance can be, how much internal and external strife comes from having an alternate gender and/or sexuality. While gender colours all our lives, having an alternate gender and/or sexuality means being an alternate gender or sexuality—it doesn’t just involve who you love and fuck and live with, as it should; it consumes your life and life choices, makes your experiences and interactions more complex and nuanced, and automatically sets you aside as different.

Unlike those that choose to join the Hijra community that congeals in to a family, most LGBTIQs live in the mainstream, as about 10% of the population. Within this environment, each LGBTIQ has to carve out his/her/hir/their own identity, often a lonely journey full of strife; negotiate puberty, adulthood and sexual shame; and, hopefully, find love.

They would like to be accepted in the discourse of ‘normal’, under the cover of cultural and legal sanction, towards a world where they are not first defined by their gender and sexual identity. In that you can replace the words ‘gender and sexual identity’ with ‘race’, ‘class’, ‘femaleness’, ‘disability’, etc the rights of the LGBTIQ community are clearly a human, equal rights issue. The world over, we’re being all politically correct and apologetic for racism, classism, misogyny, disabled-bashing—all persecution for things people didn’t choose but were born with—so one must be mindful that that new research claims homosexuality is biologically determined. And even if isn’t (such a view is too simplistic methinks), there are loud calls from the growing liberal brigade for being tolerant of individual choice—to practice a religion of ones choice, to be cultural or not, for women to wear the clothes we want to, or to be gay. Gay rights are human rights.

And you don’t need to be gay to empathise. You just need to not be a bigot.

Same-same but Different

In the little bubble Sahil and I inhabit, comprising, for the most part, anglicised liberals in the media and arts, we have a lot of friends proud of their LGBTIQ identity. Two Australian gay couples who’ve had a child each through Indian surrogates are dear friends.  

In the midst of all this sermonising for and against gay rights recently, I reached out to several of them. A common belief is that the only barrier to accepting homosexuality is education and understanding. "There are so many misconceptions about gay sex and life,” one friend told me. “We are not a stereotype or crazy, an infectious disease or predatory. We are just people.”

The Difficult Journey

Even for us heterosexuals, sexual awakening in the teen years is a complex time. It hits us in a blaze of hormonal changes, stimulates our bodies, colours our minds, all the while leaving us to negotiate our cultural mores and environment. This is when, emotionally and socially, the heterosexual journey is not fraught with nearly as much loneliness and strife as ‘coming out’ is for those of alternate sexualities. 

On a long Skype call as he got ready for work, Ashok Bania, 32, tells me that he realised he was attracted to men at adolescence. “I used to get tingly when I saw guys,” he says matter-of-factly, and enjoyed what he calls a “single isolated event” of sexual experimentation with an older teenager boy.

Ashok Bania.

Ashok, an IIT Madras-IIM Lucknow alumnus based in San Francisco since June, is the son of an Assamese IPS officer and comes from humble beginnings. He grew up in and around Guwahati, before finishing his bachelors and masters in Chennai. “No one spoke about gays in Guwahati. A little information in a book in my convent school library and an article in the Reader’s Digest were what made me realise I was not alone.”

In college, Ashok was popular, and fit in by overtly talking about girls and watching straight porn with the boys in an environment where gay stereotypes (from The Wedding Planner and Father of the Bride) were ridiculed, all the while indulging himself in his “accurate sexuality” in private. It was 1999, when chat rooms were all the rage, and in these he learnt more about being gay, hoping nonetheless that “this is a temporary phase that will go away: it’s a fad, a hormonal imbalance.”

It was at IIM, at age 23, in love, for the first time, with a (straight) close friend, that his long-standing deception first started gnawing away at Ashok. Depressed, he ended up in media houses, first in Delhi for six months, and then in Mumbai for two years—“I heard things about gay life there. But being gay meant you had to be underground, and that scared me.”

And despite a few people asking about it, Ashok could never admit he was gay. He would be guarded when he drank, lest he spill his terrible secret. He had resolved to carry his burden alone, and never practice homosexuality. “In college, I had a friend who introduced his parents to his girlfriend. That made me cry… I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do that.” Ashok didn't even start reading about living a gay life until he came out, as he “didn’t know that was even an option.”

He laughs as he tells me his story now, but can you imagine the pathos of this isolation and sexual repression?

In fact, he didn’t tell a soul until he was 28, when, after a couple of years of resisting pressure from friends to get married and rejecting prospective brides this parents sent his way, “this amazing girl appeared”. She came down from the US to meet him in Bengaluru, where he was then working with AOL. “I felt trapped. A line from Dexter (the anti-hero from the eponymous TV series), ‘You cannot be honest to someone if you’re not honest to yourself’ played on my mind. I couldn’t eat or sleep for five-six days; I lost weight. I’d have palpitations when I’d meet her. I was playing out scenarios about getting married and having kids, and panicking at the thought of having sex!”

At this nail-biting now-or-never juncture, Ashok finally called his sister at 3 AM to tell her the truth: he was gay. And then he told the girl.

Onwards to Happiness

When he awoke the next morning, though, Ashok’s thoughts weren’t with the girl whose heart he had just broken. Instead, he felt elated, like a demon had left him, and says he felt so free he “could have walked naked to the office!”

Anyone who has kept a secret a long time, let alone for years together, will appreciate the happiness and liberation that comes from truth. As a culture, we have a complicated relationship with truth. On the one hand, our culture studies classes in school teach us not to lie, we are taught to look up to Mahatma Gandhi the apparent paragon of virtue and various swamis; on the other, we propagate a culture of silence and hypocrisy to conform to society and tradition.

“You have to be true to yourself or you will always be a liar. It is not what you should have to chose for your life.” Slowly, Ashok started telling the people closest to him—his friends, roommates and sisters—in what he calls the “coming-out disease”. His father, who he told on an evening walk, said nothing more than “Oh” at first, but later told him to be safe and careful. Telling his mother, the closest person in Ashok’s life, to whom he had lied for many years, was a different matter. She went through stages of grief and denial, proffering jadi-bootis to cure the disease. It was only in six months that she broke her silence on the topic, and began to follow stories about LGBTIQs in the Assamese-language press.

There is no new argument to offer to upholders of culture and religion than ones heard before—the choices of consenting adults, the fact that homosexuality is natural or that it has been accepted in our culture from times immemorial. (I don't believe current laws and social conventions should derive from ancient culture, mythology and history, but these people certainly do, hence this point.) A few mornings ago, I had a conversation with one such person from my dreaded and amusing ‘other’ messages folder on Facebook—because I have a 'one idiot at a time' philosophy; besides, I was writing this column, right, so wanted to explore the other side's POV.

Quotable quotes, almost verbatim saving for correcting his English:
“Sex is only for giving birth to a new life not for enjoyment.”
“Always private things must be kept in a private place… So making it an issue is making no sense, no one is going to check in everyone’s private life who is having homo sex.”
“If we start these sex issues in public then god knows what will happen in the next ten years… Making these issues public can badly affect kids and teenagers. Just tell me whenever someone thinks about sexual matters, what does s/he feel?”
(Me: “When you think about sex, you feel aroused. When you think about sexual rights, you don't feel aroused. Is that your concern, that the law will turn people on?!”)

The culture they seek to preserve is not one of greatness or happiness, but of falseness and hate. To make something natural against social mores can only mean more people living unhappy lives in enforced hypocrisy. Case in point: as a parting shot, the culture protector who had declared: “For me sex is not so important, love emotion is much more important than sex,” said, “I am looking through your pictures. They turn me on."

The paranoia about the spread of a gay pandemic is not actually about more people becoming gay; it is about more people admitting to being gay. Says Ashok, “I never had any role models. If I had known just one person—someone’s uncle or brother—retrospectively, I might have had enough courage to say ‘Hey, I’m different.’” While laws and cultural pressure are essential to prevent things that are truly horrific from happening in society (rape, sex crimes, murder, communal violence), let it not stand against the happiness of two consenting adults.

In contrast to Ashok, Rohan Rita Agnani, 23, a Mumbai-based fashion designer from Vadodara, Gujarat, who comes from an “open-minded network”, never tried to mask his sexuality through his growing years. While he faced problems, including severe bullying at school, for not moderating his behaviour, it made coming out to his parents “the easiest thing”. They had “social concerns”, about how people would behave and react towards him, but said, “As long as you are happy.” When I opine that his coming-out story is the simplest and least angst-ridden one of all those I have spoken to, he says it is confidence from family and friends that has made it so.

Rohan’s partner of a year and a half, 31-year-old Avil D’souza is a senior manager at a media company. The couple met online in 2012, in the second month of Rohan’s two-month internship in Mumbai. When he returned to college in Gandhinagar, Avil visited him almost every week until graduation. A bisexual who had never had a long-term relationship before, Avil only came out to his mother eight months ago, a month before he entered into a stable domestic partnership with Rohan. “Not all of the family knows. With many, it didn’t need to be said out loud: now, they just invite me over saying, ‘Come with Rohan.’ It’s accepted in so many words.”

Avil D'souza & Rohan Rita Agnani.

It is no surprise that Rohan and Avil have had less tumultuous journeys into sexual adulthood than Ashok, owing to their more exposed and liberal backgrounds. About a decade ago, I met two guys from Meerut, roughly my age, while rescuing a calf on a Delhi road. They were in Delhi to give entrance tests for medical colleges, and one ended up in Russia instead. A few months later, he sent me a pained email—about how he was attracted to boys and sexually active there; how he could only confide in me, an empathetic stranger, and no one else; how he was terrified of coming home to social expectations he would be unable to escape. I replied but we lost touch, much before Facebook existed to tether us together, and I often wonder what became of the boy whose name I cannot remember… Did he stay on in Russia to face persecution under its anti-gay laws? Did he return and tell the truth or run away, or is he married with children somewhere in UP, living an unhappy lie? Who knows.

The Freedom to Be

Once Ashok came out, tingeing the liberation and happiness was an increased expectation from life. Where once he was resigned to lonely celibacy, he was now wondering where love was.

While engineer-MBA Ashok works in the IT sector, Avil works in a media company and Rohan as a fashion designer in a big corporation (“a cliché,” he laughs). Ashok has been openly gay in his last two workplaces in India, AOL and Yahoo! in Bengaluru, and says he faced a little gossip but no discrimination—a factor of the American culture of these companies and the education levels of his colleagues. While Avil has told his boss, other colleagues are on need-to-know basis. I start to say that the media is a more liberal industry, but he cuts me off… “Even here, there is discrimination against feminine men; those who fit the gay stereotype of the limp wrist and girly voice are subject to childish high-school jokes.” (He doesn’t.) Rohan admits that a corporate environment is never easy. “Of course, prejudices and preconceived notions are not as bad as they have been in the past. Communication breaks barriers.”

Ashok had considered moving to the US straight after his stint at IIT-IIM, something I imagine would have been easy for the genius-type that he is. In retrospect, he says, life would have been much better had he done so. Cities like Berlin in Germany and San Francisco in the US are mecca for gay people, with liberal political and cultural environments, and frequent work visits to SF since 2007 when he joined Yahoo! in Bengaluru exposed Ashok to gay partners, husbands and a couple married for 25 years, though when he first saw men holding hands and kissing on the streets, his heart would skip a beat out of fear. He finally moved within Yahoo! six months ago.

One of Ashok’s mother’s primary contentions was that he would die alone, with no partner or children, and had even suggested that he have a ‘lavender wedding’ with a friend—a sex-free marriage for children. For four months now, he has been with Christopher Contos, a 40-year-old Greek from Milwaukee living in SF for 15 years, who he met on a dating site. “There’s no rulebook about falling in love,” blushes Ashok. “I’ve met his parents, he’s spoken to my dad. We talk about our future.” Ashok, who has a strong maternal instinct, also wants children.

On his way to a happy ending, I ask Ashok whether he saw this happening in India. No, he says, “The pool of gay guys who are out in India is so small that everyone practically knows each other. In Bengaluru, those who are out are either very young, 17-18 years old; older ones are closeted, complex and weird.”

I see his point. While in a manhunt stage of life, I would often lament that, despite having access to a majority, the straight male demographic, I was still hunting for the right guy, seeking minute specifics. While I understand that living an alternative gender/sexuality is a uniting ‘otherness’ experience often stronger than other sociocultural, economic, class, etc dissimilarities, being alternately inclined seemed to be the only criteria uniting the limited pool on the Delhi gay party circuit—I met a flamboyant cross-dressing tailor from a village near Jabalpur (married, with three kids) at the same party as I saw one of the country’s most famous designers. “Like straight people, gays too have ‘types’!” Ashok stresses, giggling.

The love of Rohan and Avil, on the other hand, continues to be limited by the laws and culture of the country they have not escaped. Rohan describes an odd sense of insecurity, even on a normal day: “Avil and I were celebrating our one-year anniversary at a club in Andheri, and kissed at 12. We were pushed out of the place and had to defend ourselves, and were followed by eight bouncers.”

While Ashok acknowledges the hate crimes against LGBTIQs in the US, he says, “In India, I could not have had a legitimate life. Here I can introduce my boyfriend, have a structure. And being able to have children is something I don’t see happening there.” Avil would love to marry Rohan, and lists the advantages—to celebrate, validate and publicise a partnership; for the ease of looking after each other; and for the practical things like life insurance, home loans and joint accounts. “But marriage means migrating,” he says, laughingly dismissing the possibility of legal marriage for gay people—something that is a taken-for-granted reality for us heterosexuals—in India in our lifetime.

Section 377: Bigoted Wrongs & Human Rights

Avil says the recent Supreme Court verdict “technically, doesn’t change anything” in his life—“we’re not really having sex in the open!” But the recriminalising of gay sex impacts the right to love and live legally, and the law as well as the dialogue it has sparked has huge sociocultural ramifications.

More than we acknowledge, laws have the power to guide social mores. For instance, when Sahil and I started living together, my family did not say much, though I know they were uncomfortable. Then the courts started issuing verdicts in favour of live-in relationships. In this subtle statement, my grandfather expressed everything—his previous discomfort, the fact that he must have grappled with it in light of my rational arguments pro the arrangement, as well as how the legalisation made him feel better and comforted: "Theek hai," he said at the end of a 'shaadi kab kar rahe ho' conversation, "Aab toh Supreme Court ne bhi live-in relationships ko legalise kar diya hai."

“The people who do get affected are those who are not out at their age and stage in life. A confused 14-year-old will feel socially and legally outcast, and the government endorses and condones their isolation and persecution!” continues Avil. Ashok too emphasises that it is important to reach out to the individual in the closet, as well as families and societies. In an interview to Gay Star News, Aditya Bondyopadhyay, a lawyer and director of Adhikaar, a LGBTIQ human rights organisation based in Delhi, says that there has been a recent spike in violence against members of the community, both by the police as well as by plebeian folk, “a direct outcome of the wide debate and news that followed the Supreme Court judgement.”

An environment that forces people to remain closeted affects the individuals, their families and spouses, of course, but the inability to reach MSM (short for ‘men who have sex with men’) also cripples work towards AIDS prevention, a key point in Naz Foundation’s petition.  

Most important in this culture versus laws debate is the acknowledgement that the legal system of the country should pick the side of justice and reform, as it has done before. Once upon a time, it chose to outlaw integral practices of our culture and religion, sati and dowry. As it should, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, triumphs in conflict with Muslim personal law, that allows the age of puberty to be considered marriageable age. The system should also prioritise individual choice: if Baba Ramdev and his ilk are allowed to practice a patriarchal lifestyle that is offensive to certain demographic groups in a democracy, others should be afforded the same respect.

The Way Ahead

After the Supreme Court’s verdict, the English media has been pointing out how the stand against consensual homosexuality has united the right-wing bigots across religions, cultural positioning and political affiliations. What it has also done is unite the rational liberals with the LGBTIQ community across the country, lead by pretty much all the English media...

This is a powerful positive collection. Despite the liberals’ deriding, I realise that the anti-homosexuality stand of those like the BJP won’t hurt them much at the vote bank at the moment. But it’s interesting to note that our numbers are not insignificant and are growing, and we’re certainly not a quiet bunch, as noted at the anti-377 marches and social media uproar. I don’t know about you, but I died of shame last month, when a US court granted a gay couple from Haryana asylum for fear of persecution and imprisonment in India. Is this really where we want to position ourselves on the culture and human rights’ map? India has a dynamic young population, coming to metros, seeking education, questioning things of the past, and changing themselves in a changing world. An open world is the way of the future; it is time our leaders embraced it.

To my mind, the most important change brought about, first by the Delhi Gang Rape and now by this regressive ruling, is conversation. If Anna Hazare and then the AAP have mainstreamised the battle against corruption, these events are reversing the apathy we’ve had towards sexual oppression in our country. As noted before, every single person I spoke to from the LGBTIQ community believes the only reason for homophobia a lack of awareness, and, individually and collectively, each of these openly gay men has decided to increase communication, if not overt activism.

Equal rights activist Harish Iyer, considered one of the most influential gay people worldwide, has “stirred quite a few conversations and created quite a few ripples” with the recent Placards for Change campaign, carrying and encouraging others to carry short pro-LGBTIQ messages around Mumbai. When I spoke to Rohan, a day after the heart-breaking verdict, he was trying to stay positive. “No battle fought is easy. Even if we were victorious today, people are not going to change—the majority of India wouldn’t still support us. It’s better to convert people than the government.”

In some senses, there is activism inherent in simply living an openly gay life. By setting an example, these courageous men and women are changing the way an entire population thinks and acts, and partaking in its emotional evolution. Rohan says, “I make people understand that I’m not different. My school bully recently called to apologise to me. People change.”

Ashok, who describes himself as a “bubble-gum pink, happy person” (a far cry from the angst-ridden and depressed man guarding a big secret methinks!), says his version of activism is to go around telling people: “I’m gay. You love me. So why should it change right now?” He believes not everyone supports 377, only a few powerful people do—when he recently talked about his sexuality on Facebook, he was surprised at the support and congratulatory messages. Most people are uninformed, not bad.

“I have been lucky,” says Ashok. “My coterie is from IIT-IIM, and has been open to talk about homosexuality. I got a chance to move out of India because of my career. Not everyone can.” He believes people in India must be exposed and sensitised. “Make yourself heard. Tell ten people. Spread the message.”

The preservers of our culture of silence better watch out.

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An edited version of this article appeared in Governance Now in January 2014. 

Ashok and Christopher got married in 2016. Avil and Rohan are still living together.