Richard Gere in Fifth Gear

Delhi usually is hot this time of the year and in the occasional presence of stars like Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty tends to get even hotter. The temperature broke all records when the venerable Richard Gere hugged and cheek kissed the lissome Shilpa Shetty on stage at a public function. The protectors of our culture were on the streets demanding the arrest of Mr Gere [Mr Gerehas been a major supporter of Dalai Lama and that was the reason why he started coming to India but I have never heard the Chinese government demanding his arrest in the US or his externment from India, a point to be noted]

But the more interesting point to be noted was in fact, was that gesture a just social cheek pecking or was there more to it? That really depends on the cultural shades you are wearing. While Mr Gere did not even figure out that he had kicked shit. Ms Shetty initially held forth like an educated and westernised Indian woman, but actually got nervous when Mr Gere executed the dance pose and the cheek pecking became somewhat passionate. To be fair to Ms Shetty, she held her fort in front of the mediapersons and steadfastly denied any wrong intention on part of Mr Gere.

Why did people get so excited? Of course, the protectors of our culture tend to get excited at short notice. I have never seen them so excited when students from north east get raped in the streets of Delhi, nor have I seen them so excited when underage girls get pinched in DTC buses. They do not hesitate to make catcalls or unwanted passes at women. Why were they so upset then? Was there racism involved? Perhaps yes. But I think not. What was involved is more subtle and more deep rooted in our systems than perhaps we realise.

It was the deep rooted Indian pysche of reserving the right to exploit our own women and giving others the right to exploit their women. But you dare not exploit our women. The definition of our and their can be as broad as anglo saxon versus Indians, Hindus versus Muslims and as narrow as Jats and Jatavs, Rajputs and Kurmis and so on. We just love our women and reserve the right to exploit them, we do not want others to do it. Please respect that right or you will hear from us.

Just to be a devil's advocate, let me ask you this: I have seen hundreds of clips of Mr Gere but never seen him that expressive with any western woman out of screen, was he then really getting into fifth gear? What about Ms Shetty? if this is her definition of air kissing at social events in Mumbai, she surely is going to be a huge crowd puller....

Sex in the City

Maharashtra and Karnataka governments have decided that they would opt out of sex education in schools. Education being a state subject in India, the centre can not override the legislature of these states. The impact would be on the state run schools primarily, because my guess and experience from many years back is that most missionary schools and private schools provide some semblance of sex education in schools.

For us many years back, it was easy, missionary school, all boys schools and our biology teacher, Mr Mian became by default our sex education teacher. Mr Mian of course could draw extremely well with a chalk on the board and had access all sorts of colourful chlaks. So unbeknown to him the biology classes from standard 8 onwards became really colourful. Initially we giggled, then we asked clever questions and finally when all that excitement settled down we learned something.

What we learned was not much in the sense it was a functional education, we learned about various parts and their functions... It was to scientific and clinical... It certainly never helped us take critical moral and social decisions such as why a woman should not conveive before 18, why it was morally incorrect to sex before marraige, why one should be aware of diseases and hygiene etc etc. Of course, those were pre-aids days so how and why one could contract that deadly disease was till then unknown. The clinical education although interesting enough to tease a conservative teacher was useless. Do you teach a fish to swim? Do you monkey to climb trees, do you teach tiger to hunt? to you teach any animal how to procreate? No you do not... All of them learn it by instinct.

So if the schools going to provide what I called technical education on "sex" it is better not done. If on th eother hand the curriculum is going to include more broad based issues related to sex it may make sense.... Questions such when to have a baby, what health measures to take, what precautions to take, what kind of effect an unwanted child can have... etc etc may be useful...

But getting into the morality of it all can be tricky. Like all moral issues, we can only be judgemental and being judgemental with a child is either likking his/her initiatives or to take him off any learning at all this applies to sex education at all.

I therefore think that it is too tricky to get into at least in schools in our country. If for nothing else, schools which for the last 50 years have not been able to teach maths, physics and history properly should not be dumpled with soemthing as sensitive as sex education.

The second reason for schools to keep away from it is, parents have now almost outsourced every part of child rearing, ayahs, governesses, day care centres, creches, teachers, drivers, private tutors, music teachers, dance teachers, in fact an army of specilists have take over the taks of training the child. Most of these functions till 10 years back would be performed by parents. I think sex education is one which should still be with parents. This will at least ensure that every child suffers from the prejudices or openess of her own parents and do not have to suffer from the prejudices or openess of the teacher[some one else's parents]

By the way, by the time Mr Mian introduced to technical side of sex, most us seem to know much more than him.... so there goes all the education and training.

Cheers.

Mind your language

As bilinguals and trilinguals Indians have a distinct advantage overseas as well as within India about the language the choose to express themselves. The choice is of course largely determined by who you are talking to, what you want to disucss and whom you want to exclude out ofthe coversation. Say you want to badmouth Mumbai in a crowded bus and you are travelling with you can easily break into Bengali with your bengali speaking friend and rest assured that no one else will understand and respond adversely. In London, you can easily break into Hindi with most Indians leaving the sahibs to look perplexed. In Delhi you can start talking in Tamil and in Chennai in Punjabi. In Bihar you can safely break into English!
This was my wisdom for many years, having grown up among Begalis, Punjabis, Sindhis and Hindi speaking friends. But that gradually began to change as a result of some rude and some pleasant surprises as I became older.
The first experience was a shock... Standing in the admmission queue at New Delhi's JNU, I freshly from Calcutta broke into Bengali with my mates from Calcutta and started criticising not in very charitable language. Until I was told by the student standing behind told me in crisp Bengali that he was a Tamil but could speak Bengali like a native....I as chastised.
The second incident actually did not happen because I was forewarned. This was in a place called School of Oriental and African Studies in London University where I studied for 4 years. I was forewarned by seniors not to use any Indian languages especially to criticise teachers. Apparently between them, the SOAS teachers, most of them British, knew all the Indian and African languages.... I soon go the proof when I met Rachel Dwyer, a teacher, who knew more about hindi movies that half the mumbaikars put together.
But once on a vacation with friends in a really really remote village of Scotand near the Edzell castle on a hiking expedition all by ourselves, we broke into chaste hindi and was being very uncharitable to the "stupidity" and miserliness of the Scots. On the jungle track very far and out of ear shot we say two very old ladies approaching us. We had not expected to see any human being in those parts let alone two old ladies who could speak chaste Hindi since they had spent much of their childhood in what was then the Central Provinces of India. The older of the two hugged us and said Indians were like her "jigar a tukda". A very embarrassing moment avoided since being advanced in years and quite far away she had not heard our views about Scots.
The last incident happened two months back at a large business conference that we had organsed. Three speakers dropped out at the last moment, and I was left with the worst speaker of the session and the much respected and very senior session moderator and was desperately looking at picking up some good speakers from the delegates as the ultimate effort to save the day. The session moderator was the head of a very large company and a Tamil. He could see the tension on my face and gently tapped my shoulder and said in chaste bengali"Chinta Koro Na Sob Thik Hoye Jaabe" [don't worry everything will be alright]. Those were the most comforting words I have heard recently. Thanks to his confidence booster we did manage to have a very good session and end the conference very successfully.
I now have stopped doing bilaterals in a crowd and stopped taking advantage of language and do really mind my laguage.

Sleepless for Mumbai

Last week I was in Delhi, but spent a couple of sleepless nights thinking about the future of Mumbai, a city I seem to be slowly and quite unintentionally adopting to be my home town. My views on Mumbai are not private and secret and I do not hesitate to reiterate it once again: I like it in small measure, but in large measure I do not like the city... For two reasons mainly:
1. It does not teach you to struggle [weather is mild, people are mild, everything is too mild; water, sunlight, electricity are enough and easily avaialble, transport is easy, jobs are easy etc etc]. In India if your city does not teach you to struggle, if are deadmeat.
2. In spite of 1 above, it sucks quite a bit out of you slowly but surely, reminds you that your dreams are just dreams, takes a lot and gives you very little in return. It keeps you alive by giving you a subsistence that's it.
However, last few nights I have really been scared to return to Mumbai.
One reason was of course, the constant media coverage of so call lack of power supply in Mumbai and its suburbs and the impending doom thereof.... I for one am not scared of power cuts... But in Mumbai you are so helpless if that happens. because as i said earlier, the city has for generations not prepared you for a power cut. There are no invertors, generators etc etc here in Mumbai. In other parts of the country no one really cares the power supply is there or not, every one has their private arrangements.
The second reason was that there were talks of water shortage as well. Again for the same reasons Mumbaikar is not prepared to face it. She is so dependent on BMC suply that she has forgotten to make her own arrangements
The third reason was the news that BPO and ITjobs are going to be cut and Mumbai is one of the cities which is going to be majorly affected. That is going to pinch hard all those merry makers in the hypermalls
The fourth reason was that with the government tightening the money supply very seriously, there will be less of loans. I was wondering how will the Mumbaikar survive
The fifth reason was that with RBI cracking down on various bank rates, the stock market looks like a conoe in an open sea. bad luck to all those who make a killing and then buy fancy flats for cash in the posh suburbs
Finally, the biggest cause of my nightmare was the impending natural disaster. Along with bangladesh, Mumbai is going to be worst effected by rising sea level and large parts of Mumbai will be under the sea. Here again, Mubaikars have no experience of fighting natural calamities. except the July deluge a couple of years back.

I am really worried about Mumbai and Just want to tell Mumbaikars "Welcome to India my dears"