Apu’s World

Turning thirty is believed to be a significant moment in an individual’s life. It is not as though the first thirty years don’t have their own milestones. At nine or ten, we enter middle school; I remember how thrilled I was - finally, finally, I was allowed to discard the pencil and take up a pen. For a child, the first pen is a milestone. There are others - leaving school, graduating, turning eighteen, getting married - all these are major occasions. But, somehow, in the twenties, time runs along in such a manner as to suggest that each person gets an infinite amount of it. This night of drunken revelry, those friends made and discarded after a summer internship, the endless experimenting with one’s hair under the assurance that it will grow out alright - all of this seems like it can go on forever.

Turning thirty is not the same. Or atleast, we are primed to expect that it cannot be the same. Those who’ve been there before, warn us that thirty is a big, bad word. Thirty is the end of seeing oneself as young, thirty is when you start being aunty to all the world, thirty is the loss of casual flirting, thirty is the beginning of the end of all things.

Having heard all this, when I turned thirty a few months earlier, I was somewhat surprised when the birthday went by with not even a whimper. I searched myself for feelings of depression, sadness or even just a bit of anxiety. Drew a blank. A day went past, a week, and then another. I felt the same as ever - just as young or as old as I always did. When I look in the mirror, I see of course, evidence of time passing by. I no longer have the stick thinness of my youth as I settle into the hip-heavy figure of the average Indian woman. My face looks fuller, and older in some undefinable way. But, inside, I feel the same as I always did.

It is not that I close my eyes to the movement of time. When I see my parents ageing, when back pain and dizziness and afternoon naps become a routine rather than an event, I am forced to acknowledge that time is passing. Perhaps, even at a pace faster than I would prefer. When faint acquaintances tell me that my biological clock is ticking, there is no denying the pressure to hurry along a child into this world. Still, is it a feeling of immortality or just laziness that I rarely succumb to the insistence of time? Sometimes, it does seem as though time is moving along faster than I can complete everything I’d like to do. But, for the most part, I am happy to be doing whatever it is I’m doing at the moment, and let each day takes it’s course.

(This post was sparked by Shefaly’s post on the passage of time, which in turn was inspired by Usha’s post on the newness of things)

apu In General

In a heartening development, the Supreme Court has made it clear that nobody has the license to rape a woman and claim that it’s ok because she has already been sleeping with others. The disheartening thing of course is that the Supreme Court is needed to point this out, when it should be perfectly obvious. A woman’s body is her personal property to do with as she chooses; she could sleep with ten people if she likes and refuse the eleventh. She could be a prostitute but still refuse to sleep with someone, because, it is her body and she owns it. Sigh. Why is this so hard to get?

apu Women & Feminism

Lately, I’ve been reading a collection of Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I’m reading Maugham after a very, very long time, and I don’t remember enjoying his work, especially the short stories, this much when I was younger. For one thing, I was struck by the clarity which his descriptions produce. Reading them, it is possible to immediately see the South-east Asian countryside setting he describes or an elderly connoisseur of art fallen on hard times or a colonial service official lording it over his minions. Perhaps I am much more impressed by them now that I am trying my hand at short stories more often, and description and setting are things I seem to struggle with. But that’s not really what I want to talk about here.

What really startled me was the casualness with which racial differences and assumptions of superiority and inferiority are presented. Many of the stories are set in Britain’s then existing empire - parts of the Polynesian Islands, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. Often, the main character is a colonial service man, or a planter or businessman looking to make a fortune in the colonies. In story after story after story, the natives are weak, ineffectual, timid, yet vengeful, cunning and capable of using devious means to achieve their ends. It is not just that the natives are this way, the (white) narrator or protagonists take great pains to remind us that they cannot help being this way. That is the way of their race, after all. Where the natives are presented in a more kindly light, it is as simple children who need the strong hand of the white administrator to guide them. They know little what is good for them, and would be better off trusting the white man’s knowledge.

While admiring the language and craft of the stories, the modern reader finds it very difficult to glide over these generalisations, so easily presented. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to make of them. I could think of three different scenarios.

The first is that these are stories set in the colonial era, where this was likely to be the mindset of most people. As such, Maugham may not have subscribed to them himself, but was faithful to the dominant views of the time. His characters simply think and speak the way most people of the time would have. In this view, there is a clear-cut line between the author and his narratives. In a sense, it becomes easier to enjoy the stories as just stories.

The second is that Maugham himself is likely to have subscribed to the general view of the white people of the time, which is that they were fundamentally different from and superior to other races. The stories lend some support to this - story after story repeats the racial distinction theory in such detail that it is difficult to imagine the author having a very different view. Few characters question this distinction or act in a manner to discredit it even a little. In general though, I’m not a big fan of mixing up an author with what his characters say and do. Further, in some stories, Maugham takes a good poke at other distinctions, such as differences of class. In one story, first class passengers on a cruise liner face the weighty question of whether they should allow second class passengers to participate at a dance. Clearly Maugham makes the episode, and by inference, the distinctions behind it, seem absurd. Why he doesn’t ever do this in the case of race - I don’t know. Does it imply that he identified with the views of his characters?

The third way of looking at it is that the question is not whether Maugham himself was a racist or not. The age in which he lived subscribed to these views to such an extent that it allowed him to portray one character after another in a manner which we find shocking today, but would not then have been anything out of the ordinary. But - Maugham did not live in the early 1800s, he lived from 1874 to 1965. Which means that most of his writing would have been done in the period between 1900 and 1940. Was the early 20th century that primitive in its thought? The question I would then be interested in is, were other contemporary novelists adopting the same tone ? If yes, at what point of time really did it become incorrect to talk of racial distinctions in this manner? Note, I’m not talking about the point when people have stopped generalising about race and behaviour, just the point when people were no longer comfortable doing it in such a blatant manner!

 Perhaps other readers interested in literature and its relationship with caste/race/class can thow some light on this.

apu The Literary life

A couple of days ago, I was thinking - that I have no clue how to write in brief. I can’t remember too many short blog posts I’ve written. Well, that changes with this one. I’m not a big one for trivia, but I had to share this. The weirdest search term that has led any one to my blog (this happened yesterday):

“and now, for no reason, here is apu.”

I am suffering from severe low self-esteem now!

apu In General

It is now almost 20 years since the Visakha guidelines were first put in place, to protect working women from sexual harassment at their place of work. Still, it is clear that in many cases, the implementation is not clear at all. Two days ago, Nisha Bhatia, a Director at the RAW Training Wing in Gurgaon, swallowed poison in front of the PMO, alleging that her complaints regarding sexual harassment by top RAW officials were not being taken seriously.

RAW claims that Nisha Bhatia’s allegations have been looked into by a committee headed by deputy national security adviser, Leela K. Ponappa and including two women officials from the National Security Council secretariat and RAW. Nisha Bhatia claims that the committee didn’t really investigate the case objectively, and put the onus of proof solely on her. RAW claims Nisha Bhatia is unstable, or seeking publicity because of a foriegn posting that she was denied. He said, she said, he said, she said.

Shouldn’t there be a better way to do this? For starters, the Visakha guidelines recommend that any enquiry commission should have an outside participant, such as someone from an NGO working with gender issues. Clearly, it was felt that people from within the same organization, or system, would face pressures from higher authorities accused of harassment. In India, where everything is politicized, this is not hard to imagine at all. In Nisha Bhatia’s case, this doesn’t seem to have been done. Even if the committee consists of women, women are not immune to pressure from within the system.

The guidelines also state that the concerned department needs to submit reports to the relevant ministry, on the cases filed in this area, and the actions taken. The Ministry for Women & Child Welfare has stated that this is not being followed by most government departments. If RAW has really probed the case in detail, it is not clear why the organization is giving fairly vague responses. Yes, I know it is an intelligence agency and all that, but giving a clear response on a sexual harassment case is not going to jeopardize national security. Instead, the only responses are that the allegations are false, that Nisha Bhatia is unstable, and that the committee has finished the probe. Whether or not Nisha Bhatia is right to handle the issue in this manner, government departments, working on taxpayer money should be answerable to people and furnish information on how they handle such issues. Surely it will encourage women working elsewhere that their rights can be safeguarded.

Now, the Union Minister for Women and Children, Renuka Choudhary claims that she is going to take it up with RAW. Again, that sounds like a terribly ad hoc measure. How many cases is the Minister going to get personally involved in? And this is a high profile case, with a senior official filing the complaint, and the suicide bid attracting attention. How many such cases are there which never come to light?

apu Women & Feminism