In the Eyes of the Beholder

I realise that digital cameras have created photographers out of us all. Have camera, will click. No one needs to worry about wasting a shot or film-development costs. Capturing beauty for eternity was never so easy. I have been a shutterbug since I got here and managed to get some memorable pictures. Have put up some pictures of this beautiful country minus us beautiful people.

Road Sign

Caudan Waterfront, Port Louis, Mauritius
26.07.2007




A picture is worth a thousand words...

Mauritius

Is this a Babel-ish dream? All around me, people who look Indian are chattering away in French. The sky is so blue and the clouds so white it looks like I'm in a Disney animation. The trash cans are bright blue and look more like letterboxes! And I'm sitting in the middle of it all and blogging.




Seen from the plane, Mauritius is a green island in the middle of green ocean. But what shades of green those are! There's vegetation green, then turquoise, then sea-green. Waves break in white on the rocks 25-50 metres off the shores, resulting in a white, foamy necklace encircling the island and separating the two separate shades of green. The drive from the airport was down smooth black roads stretching through sugarcane fields and eventually we saw Port Louis spread out before us as we descended from a slight elevation, driving to this capital town with the ocean glittering beyond it.




I've tagged along with Anando on a subsidised holiday and the discovery that there was a wi-fi hotspot in the middle of it all meant of course I had to sit in it and blog! Our hotel is on one side of the water and the Caudan Waterfront on another. So every morning, Anando puts on a suit and tie, takes his papers and his laptop and gets on a boat to go to work! (Of course, that might even happen in Bombay someday if it rains hard enough!) Today, I took the boat as well and came here to access the world wide web as I sit in the southern hemisphere of our planet for the first time in my life.

The Caudan (pronounced as co-dawn) Waterfront is a popular commercial area of Port Louis, set by the business district of Mauritius. While the words 'Business District' may conjure up images of skyscrapers and fast cars and men in suits I must specify that the Port Louis business disrict is an exception. The tallest building here is 16 storeys high and its neighbours mostly 6 to 8 floors tall. The busy street has 2 lanes and most people are dressed in casuals. There are more restaurants than offices and more people seem to be outdoors than in.

As everyone probably knows, Mauritius is inhabited by a large community of people of East Indian ethnicity. They look like us, but they've been here for generations and no longer know exactly where they came from. So the driver who met us at the airport is called Das, but has no way of knowing whether he is Bengali or not. Most people speak either Bhojpuri or French. I went through an elaborate act of charades to ask the Housekeeping lady when the laundry would be back. Her name was Poonam, she looked like a neighbour of mine back in Bombay and had a parting full of sindoor, wore a bindi but did not understand a word of what I said in English or Hindi. It was strange to think that I would only have been able to communicate with her in French!

The names of local 'Indians' (though they do not consider themselves at all Indian) are generally strange, oddly-spelt variations of common Indian names. So you have their venerated former President, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (Shivasagar Ramgulam?), who smiles benignly from all government surfaces---coins, statues, stamps etc. I wonder if these people have ever considered that they have distant relatives who are possibly eking out a living pulling rickshaws in small-town India. Most of them, I think, really don't care.


Even as I type this, a group of 3 Indians is sharing the bench with me and chatting in French. In what I can only call an RSS nightmare, Hindu youngsters who have known no other country cuddle up in public displays of affection and in completely 'inappropriate' attire. This all looks so strange. The faces are familiar but the setting and the sounds are not!


The little kiosk called Mystic Masala sells Indian fast food, suitably (if inaccurately) explained for the foreign sensibilities. So one could eat Uttapam if one was interested in 'thin Indian pizza'. Or pharatas (sic). Or Fish Goa curry.


All of the Caudan Waterfront is designed as a popular area for tourists to come, shop and eat. Lots of souvenir shops that sell a curious mix of souvenirs with Indian and African influences on the design. Other than dodo miniatures made of every material possible, there's nothing that I wouldn't find in Dilli Haat, though it's 3 times more expensive and being hawked, again, by women with whom I share an appearance but not a language.


The foodcourt has options to eat Indian, French, Lebanese, Chinese, Mexican. The halls have a running exhibition on what I guess are popular print ads, almost all in French. The exception is in English: a picture of a little boy and girl ('Indians', both) and it asks, on behalf of an insurance company, 'have you thought about his future?'

I looked around at the 3 variations of the ad and none of them asked about her future. I wonder if this has stayed with the Indians even as time stripped them of their original language.



The lamp-posts around me are bright blue, there is a casino with a giant stone lion guarding the entrance. The cobblestone streets are for pedestrians only. A loudspeaker blares an unmistakably black voice saying things in French. A carousel plays temporary home to a bunch of happy kids and momentarily-reprieved parents. Its music is typical and annoyingly repetitive. I feel like I am in a Disneylandish world. Away from reality.


And in a way, I am. For next week I will leave this to walk the streets of Bombay, dodging puddles and people, listening to Hindi and Marathi, eating roti-sabzi instead of French-style seafood cooked by once-Indian chefs and served by black women. And it will all seem like a dream. I'm glad I set this down before I woke up.

"I Believe", in Keeping it Personal

A friend from a mixed marriage talked of the religious identity (or lack thereof) for her children in a recent post, and while reading it, I found links to a couple of other similar posts. As a fairly passive atheist, I have always observed these debates from the sidelines. But increasingly in today's world it is a serious responsibility for parents what religion their children grow up to follow. For the world seeks to categorise, to classify. You can bring up children to believe in an abstract notion of God, or to believe in nothing and therefore everything, or to skirt the topic of religious identity entirely. But your task doesn't end there. As they grow up, the world will ask them what their identity is, and you should ensure that you have given them the confidence to cope with the looks the answer "nothing in particular" will bring them. For this will happen at an age when they will want, desperately, to belong, to fit in, not to stand out for any reason.

At the same time, I hope that, with the world opening up and people's minds keeping pace, there will be plenty of little mixed-creeds, children with mixed identities who choose to remain ambiguous on their religion of choice. Who are therefore sensitive to all faiths but fundamentalist about none. Who can accept that others may believe in different or more or fewer or no gods. As battle-lines are drawn and people are urged to fall in line behind one particular flag, such an army of mixed-creeds will be helpful in retaining sanity and balance in a world that can start leaning, dangerously, perilously, to one side or the other.

For the problem with religion is when people take it outside their hearts and use it as a lens to see the world around them. Sheltered Sanity, another blogger I read, starts her post by saying that organised religion can do more harm than good. That is something I have believed for a very long time. The problem lies not with religion itself, but with interpretations of it. For no one seems to be content with believing that there was a wise man/woman/group of people out there who are our shelter and guide and saviour. They must construct stories around them and when those stories are at odds with other realities there is, literally, hell to pay. So you have Darwin getting flak from Christians for dethroning Adam and Eve as our parents and putting apes in their place. So you have Hindus telling Muslims that we had a temple here first, and then you people built a mosque over it. So you have Israelis telling Muslims, hello, this land is ours, move it! So you have ... a right royal (un)holy mess.

Why is it that something which is just supposed to bring us inner peace becomes a turf for war? How can someone rest his/her conscience if they have used their faith---an intensely personal thing---to commit violence? Religion is a private matter. It is supposed to bring us peace, not snatch the peace of others. We need to keep it individual and personal. After all, at the core of each religion is morality, forgiveness, piety, faith, humility, and spiritual calmness. It is crucial to recognise that every person, from every faith, is just another human being trying for inner peace. Only then will we learn to coexist.

Why Me?

I have no dignity left. The craziest things happen to me and to make light of them I tell my friends all about my stupidities and embarrassing moments, making them laugh with me so it doesn't hurt to laugh alone!

This is an account of one such incident.

Flash back to the year 2000. A trio of giggling girls enters an elevator in an Andheri building in Bombay. The elevator (going down) has 2 serious-looking boys, perhaps 2 years our senior, who look down their noses at us, because we are friends of the summer intern, Alka, also staying in their building. Alka does not exist for them. She is therefore meant to be looked through, and, if looked at, to be looked down on. Alka nudges us silently to behave in the presence of the morons.

We continue to laugh about some random joke. Inviting more frowns in the process.

The elevator empties out at the ground floor and we all go our separate ways.

Later that night, Alka, Gauri and I return from a visit to the grocer, with essentials such as bread and chips in our bag. Being unstable, slightly crazed 21-year olds, who, to make things worse, are on vacation and away from parental supervision and discipline, we are laughing a lot at rather nonfunny (to the mature world) things. We enter the building and Gauri heads for the lift. Alka and I, in a Chariots-of-Fire moment, decide that we will race her, taking the stairs as befits young hotbloods like us. The lift is for losers. Gauri doesn't mind. She trudges her loserly way into the lift and Alka and I dash up the stairs.

We race up as the lift creaks its way up. Gauri can hear our taunts each time we meet the lift. The stairwell resounds with our comments. The flat is on the 4th floor. It's a long, steep, high-paced climb, up a spiral stairway, straight out of a Bond flick. Except, instead of a bag of chips, Bond would be carrying a gun. And instead of rain-resistant chappals, he'd be wearing gleaming leather shoes. And instead of tattered Sarojini Nagar pajamas, he'd be wearing a tux. Which would make the upcoming events look much cooler than they did when they happened starring us.

We reach our door a crucial 30 seconds before Gauri's lift clicks into place. We ring the doorbell like maniacs, trying to break down the door so that Alka's flatmate lets us in before Gauri gets here. The door starts to open and we push it aside, dashing in and shouting "We're here, we're here, we're here."

Of course we are. And guess who's here too? The boys from the lift. The TV is on. There's food on the dining table. This is Alka's senior in his boxer shorts. This, too, is Alka's senior, in his pajamas. This is an unfamiliar environment. On cue, we hear Gauri yell (from one floor above), "Where are you?" This is the boys' apartment, not Alka's.

I whirl around to see an Alka-blur dashing out of the apartment. I slowly turn my head, start to say "Sorry, we..." and decide that no explanation can make me look good right now. I can't even say "The name's Bond, James Bond." I whiz out too. As I leave the flat, I hear loud laughter behind me.

The Eternal Darkness (even) of the Spotless Mind

I just read a post by someone who has a fair complexion, fuming at colour-discrimination in our own country. It is a topic close to my heart which is neither dark . I have heard so many people rant about it that I always stayed away from adding to the debate. What could I say that lots of women have already not said before me?

Today, the anger stems from seeing Dilnavaz talk of a six-year old who has been taught, by her mother, that she is black and must rub besan to improve her complexion. This girl wil soon be a shy, insecure teenager, convinced that her complexion is the reason she can never be attractive. She will one day be a mother who will try to ensure a fair daughter, via genes or via besan, so that her child need not have the same handicap that she grew up with. And so the vicious circle will continue, a loop, a ring, a noose around all our necks.

At the age of 8, I came home from school one summer afternoon, my uniform and smiling teeth dazzlingly white in contrast to my genetically dark plus sun-baked, spent-the-day-in-the-field face. A relative was visiting and he was rather taken aback when he opened the door. When he saw me as a teenager, he admitted that I was quite attractive despite my dark skin, reminiscing how when he saw me that day long back, he'd wondered how on earth I would ever get married! It's a funny story, amusingly told by him, but deeper issues lie beneath.

I was always a dark child. Joining a new school mid-term in class 2, I was taunted by the boys: kaali-kaluti. Friendless and shy, it did not help me to be judged on the basis of my complexion. Luckily no one whose opinion I valued as I grew up cared about my colour, and I exulted in outdoor sports, not caring one bit about the sun beating down on me and destroying my prospects of a good marriage!

A recent ad on TV shows how women are now the ones who visit the boy's home to see him, to watch him exhibit his talent at singing/dancing, etc., and make the decision whether or not to marry him. Why the empowerment? Because these girls have become beautiful thanks to XYZ fairness cream, of course! So at the same time that it tries to subvert stereotypes, it also reinforces other harmful ones.

I condemn all women who endorse fairness creams. Stop capitalising on a national weakness. Women of African origin can choose a line of beauty products called Dark and Lovely. When can we in India do the same?

There are much bigger problems on the insides of human beings in today's world to continue to worry about what's going on outside. Children need to be taught to look deeper than skin for beauty or the lack of it. That is when we will learn to find true role models who will inspire us to be good, to be compassionate, to be fair, darkness and fairness be damned.

Grief

My maternal grandfather's death was the first time sorrow and grief touched my life. Fourteen years later, I am stronger, having seen more, having lost more loved ones. But on 27 June each year I am reminded of the first person I ever had to say goodbye to.

Why do we grieve? We do not grieve for the person who is gone. He or she is already free and, I believe, in a place where yearnings are unknown. We grieve for ourselves. For that smile we will never see again. For that support we will never find again. For that conversation we will never have again. For that companion we will never meet again on earth. The person who is no more is at peace. It is we who are left to wander, to drift, to seek endlessly for that peace in this life, which is waiting for us, if we would only let it be.



More than God, I believe it is the loved ones who walk this earth no more who look out for me. I imagine each of my well-wishers as a guardian angel, fervently wishing me happiness. I do not need to worship them like I would a God. A loving memory is all I need. And from that I can draw strength in all my hopes and dreams. There are good spirits out there who sincerely want what is best for me.


Each precious soul who no longer lives is a star in my sky, looking out for me, shining down and brightening up my way, occasionally playing hide-and-seek, but always, always, emerging to guide my steps in infinite wisdom. And to know that is to walk in peace.

Eyes

He sat back in the chair, head lolling against the headrest as Surjo shaved him, carefully, his own face contorting as he ran the razor across his grandfather’s face. Work done, a clean shave. Surjo sat back and admired his handiwork and smiled.

‘Okay, Dadu. Which one today?’ and he held out the bottles, one by one, for the 82-year old to sniff at. He picked Old Spice, as Surjo had known he would. A splash here and a splash there, and they were done. Dadu must have been a good-looker, Surjo thought, noting that sharp nose and the high forehead, not realizing how closely he mirrored the man sitting in front of him.

He glanced at the shaving mirror that lay uselessly in the patched shaving kit for decades now. Once upon a time, these eyes could see, could take in beauty, could read and teach shorthand and typing. Today, they stared unseeingly, the failing ears and nose trying in vain to make up for the oblivion that blindness and old age had brought the old man.

Surjo went off to replace the bag and the old man raised his gnarled hands, feeling the freshly-shaved face. He patted his baby-soft skin and chuckled to himself in satisfaction. Footsteps came closer and stopped. He knew Surjo would be rummaging through the bookshelf. It was that time of day.

‘So, what do you want to hear today, Dadu?’

The hazy eyes that remembered sunsets seen 22 years ago remained blank as he smiled eagerly and said, ‘Milton, of course! Paradise Lost.’

I, Robot

Robotisation amazes me. All our call centres are evidence of that. I truly sympathise with the youngsters sitting in back-offices answering questions by rote and putting up with the collective angst of the world of bad-tempered people who think it's all right to yell at that anonymous voice because a credit card didn't function, because a bill arrived late, etc. But the way they turn into robots when you speak to them makes it hard to tell when the IVR ends and the human voice begins.

Of course, you have to get to it first, while an annoyingly happy-sounding woman whose head you'd like to bang on the wall tells you in this accent from somewhere off the coast of the USA that 'Sorry, all our customer care representatives are busy attending to other customers. Your call is important to us. One of our customer care representatives will attend to you shortly.' At that point, you'd give anything to be one of those 'other customers'.

Then, hallelujah, the interminable wait ends and a voice picks up and says "Good afternoon, you have reached blah blah blah....how may I help you? At this point of time you suddenly have a panic attack because you have forgotten why you called them at all. Only to be expected, because in the last 5-8 minutes of monotonous 'you-are-on-hold' music, you've got absorbed in picking at the dead skin around your right big toe, or in examining that pimple, or in today's headlines. Then, just as the magical voice at the other end says 'hello' for a second time it all comes rushing back and you embark on your question, at the end of which, you are asked to provide information about your credit card or phone number or whatever-it-is that they really should have taken in the first place!

A carefully memorised answer is presented to you, like the noncustomisable 'today's specials' at a seedy cafetaria. Most times, if you have trouble understanding, these winkies of the call-centre world cannot even explain it to you in fresh words, repeating instead the same sentence, occasionally with a slight change in modulation to provide the illusion that they are saying something new.

Finally, when you hang up (hopefully feeling liberated, empowered and without a squished ear), you get an INSTANT sms (if only they were as prompt at picking up the phones in the first instance) asking you if you are satisfied with the interaction!!! Now we know why our call is important to them!

The recountable gems of such interactions occur when the computer tells them one thing and you tell them another. Such as, 'I live in Mumbai now, why do my bills still go to my Delhi address?' But Ma'am, you are living in Delhi, our system is showing.

Recently, we needed to pay off a loan that's in my husband's name and I called the bank call centre to figure out what the procedure would be. I had all the papers with me so that there would be no problems. The customer care representative told me everything that I needed to know, and I gave him all the information he asked for, including our account number, husband's date of birth, etc. Eventually, it boiled down to the fact that we were required to register for a foreclosure statement. So I said, okay, please send us one. And he said "Who's speaking?" So I identified myself as the wife of the poor loan-burdened creature. And he said, "I'm sorry, the request must be made the person concerned."

Puzzled, I said, "But I'm his wife, and I have just given you all the relevant information." Now read the following exchange:

Bank: Ma'am, I'm sorry but the request must come from the concerned person.

Me: But why is that?

Bank: Ma'am, that is the policy.

Me: But obviously I gave you all the correct loan account information so I have all the papers. Why don't you record my request?

Bank: Ma'am, you are not the concerned person. As per bank policy we must receive the request from the person in whose name the loan is taken.

Me: So if any man calls you and says his name is ___, you will accept his request, but not mine. That man could be pretending to be my husband.

Bank: No Ma'am, we have to ask some certain verification questions.

Me: Okay, what sort of questions will you ask, then I will ask him to call you prepared with that information or the relevant papers.

Bank: Sorry Ma'am, but I cannot disclose that.

Me: But are those questions regarding personal information or banking information?

(Brief pause)

Bank: Ma'am, there will be both kinds of questions.

So anyway, I hung up fuming. If I'd had a baritone I could have pretended to be my husband and got this done at one go. I fumed some more and explained it all to my husband who calmly said 'Okay, I'll call the bank.

He called, armed with just the loan account number as opposed to the file I'd sat down with, and the request was registered. I was extremely curious as to the questions that were asked in this mysterious verification process with the 'concerned person'.

Turns out, they asked him his date of birth (personal question) and EMI amount (banking question) and recorded his request on the basis of these two.

I'm hanging up my boots. Actually, I'm just hanging up.

Car Shringar

I am not sure if that's an actual shop name or if I really did think it up! It just sounds lyrical and so perfect for a big neon signboard in Milan Subway, Santa Cruz.

Because that's where we were last Saturday---getting 'artificial leather' seatcovers fixed on our beige car seats before they turned a muddy brown in the rains. So anyway, we tried hard to find a shop closer to home, but all roads (and inquiries) pointed us towards Milan Subway (what a shady name!) and so we headed off.

Milan Subway is a lane leading off S.V. Road (Swami Vivekanand Road) and is a complete mayhem of cars (new, old, and skeletal/rusty remains), illegal parking, swift mechanics, muddy puddles, grease, tiny slivers of shops and excellent salesmen. We tried bargaining with the young man with the skull cap but he patiently refused. I felt a little ashamed when I later caught sight of a not-so-prominently placed sign that said 'Time is money. Don't waste it bargaining'.

So while 3 pairs of deft hands fixed our seat covers, we waited in a tiny shop and looked around, wide-eyed, at every possible thing one might want to add to one's car as part of the beautification process. As we inspected the shelves, a middle-aged man came and asked about car-reverse tunes and was treated to two (really loud) options: the standard tuk tuk tuk tuk and, what realy surprises me, A.R. Rahman's tune for Airtel. The poor composer could never have dreamt that instead of alerting you to calls, his tune would soon be telling people to jump out of the way!

Side door protectors, car perfumes, swivelling/revolving/rotating/alternating/musical lights for the car roof, brake lights, golden and red designer slip-ons to cover your brake/clutch/accelerator pads, little fans, video screens, car alarms, car covers...stickers, tiny glittering models of Mecca complete with green glowing lights---the glass shelves were quite a treasure and I would have enjoyed getting a closer look at it all. Two tiny, amputated-by-half fans spun away crazily to beat the heat. All around us cars tooted, braked, screeched, parked, banged, got repaired...it was like a beauty-parlour and hospital rolled into one, for four-wheelers!

As we drove away, I caught sight of another shop called 'Car Jewels' the complete jewellery store for your car'! Beauty really is an indsutry! And so very subjective!