Aspiring global citizen & enthusiastic language learner. Food lover, but newbie cook. Struggling fitness enthusiast, but working on getting back on the track to strength and health.
Wanderlust-ridden skill-seeker. Fun-loving woman with a lot of heart, and hoping to make a mark on the world and got some things to say while I am at it.
Just hoping to stay awesome and keep it all together, in spite of the ever-prevailing sense of impending doom. I mean, have you seen the world lately?
And obviously, a Carlin fan. Also, I love Eddie Izzard, Nathan Fillion, Castle, The Mindy Project, feminism, humanism, human rights for all and a bunch of other stuff.
As the season finale of The Mindy Project airs tonight, it’s also been announced that show has been renewed for a second season, which is great: While sometimes uneven and unsure of its purpose â Is it a workplace comedy? A medical sitcom? A show about a single woman? An ensemble show? â the jokes are quick, sharp and funny; and Mindy Kaling’s alter ego, pop-culture obsessed gynecologist Dr. Mindy Lahiri, has a way of being simultaneously wise and naive, deep and shallow, confident and awkward. That said, when it comes to Mindy Lahiri’s love life, there’s _zero_ variety. The doctor has a Type.
Y’all have heard me go on about this before (and before). But of course, what we also forget is that this show is only one season long, so perhaps we can expect more variety next season (No.5)? Also, this didn’t occur to me because my own dating life has included white, black and Indian men [although my main celebrity crushes are white, hmm]:
It would be a lot more problematic if the show was “othering” Lahiri in some kind of effort to have her stick with her own kind. Gross.
Of course, one (Indian) dude who I once had a thing for, did once ask me if I preferred white or Indian? Seriously. Luckily that kinda died later on but that I overlooked that comment in the beginning reminds me I need to update my red-flag list.
And yes, I am a little obsessed with this show.
Also, yes. I do have an exam tomorrow.
So…. you know when you have had a day where things went unexpectedly better (an exam that totally didn’t destroy you, a concept note for research submitted on time even if it was still kinda half-baked), you kinda want to continue that good streak. Like coming home in time to get in a workout before a hot lunch, and getting in a nap while you can.
Of course, when said nap is cut short by charming but nosy guests who generally overstay their visit by haranguing you about getting married, you still want to make sure that you be nice and not be “surly”. These are, after all, friends of the family, and you don’t mind them so much (except when they start with the recriminations, emotional blackmail and guilt-tripping - in which case, here’s my handy guide).
So it’s kinda hard to figure out why you couldn’t have just stuck to the usual when you find the conversation rapidly going from:
Uncle, I didn’t say I never wanted to get married! [oh, you’re such a scamp! Haha! I like marriage as much as the next person - I just prefer not to go the arranged route!]
….to:
I just haven’t found a guy I like that much, thus far, is all. [Weeell, OK. I did, once. And there are some potentialpossibles - it’s just that we are all rational people who prefer to be in the same place at least. Long-distance relationships have left a bad taste in our mouths, it seems.]
….to:
Perhaps, I will think about it more seriously after grad school. [Because, for real, I am barely managing right now as it is!]
….to:
I should send you my “details”…???? [WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!?! Shoulda stayed surly.]
By this time, it was too late for damage control (oh, but how I tried!)
And he has already texted and called me today (!!) - “I have a case in hand! How old are you again??” My mom, sensing a rare lowering-of-defenses moment, badgered me - mostly because I didn’t respond sarcastically with “I’d rather you had two in the bush!” (I did consider it, tbh.)
I sent him the details.
I know. I know that in the greater scheme of things, this is mostly a blip on the radar. I know that this does not have to be a Big Deal that I freak out in this manner.
It’s just that… I would like these things to happen within my own terms. I would like to really deal with some issues first. I would really like to know what it’s like to be engaged in work that is meaningful (and yes, “successful”).
"Good sense is the most evenly shared thing in the world, for each of us thinks he is so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in all other respects are not in the habit of wanting more than they have."
Personally speaking, I cannot begin to enumerate how often I got, “but you don’t look like one!” when I used to do Uni 101 classes for American freshmen back in college and just walking around campus looking “exotic” (but un-labellable as Muslim or Indian, apparently). I’d wear things like cowboy boots, tight-ass jeans (I have a nice ass, what can I say?), fire-engine red turtleneck sweaters, and usually had curly-wavy (UNDECIDED) hair flowing down my back and over my shoulders. Oh, and don’t forget the dangly earrings.
The funnier part? When I get the same reaction here in India (without the cowboy boots and turtlenecks, of course). And people will ask me my last name to make sure.
Anyhow that aside being set aside, Battameez’s points on how we choose our battles (because we need to, and seriously we are fucked over enough with daily living as it is) make me think of this line from a FirstPost piece by Lakshmi Chaudhry and Sandip Roy about the 5-year-old girl raped in Delhi:
Outrage requires energy which we’ve long exhausted. The relentless, monotonous viciousness of crime in our nation requires the kind of emotional stamina we no longer possess. The active rage evoked by the Delhi rape1 has dissipated into an enduring tiredness. The sense of futility transmuting into the need not to feel.
or any other crime against humanity, really. How many of us have heard/been told in discussions about Gujarat 2002, “still talking about it??” GAH. ↩
(via betterby30me)
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[Sorry, tumblr won’t let me reblog any which way] [Warning for fairly strong communalist diatribe ahead]
So, most of my life I’ve been confused for a Muslim person—by the nuns in schools who were *convinced* I wasn’t Hindu, I’m talking about multiple meetings with my parents when they subtly inquired about the language we spoke, what we ate etc, to people in my extended family who joke that there is some “Persian blood” in our genetic pool and I’ve seemingly cashed in on that chromosomal heritage, to people at airports in North America who get suspicious about my name—which again, inside family joke, is a modern version of a Persian name—and I’ve been asked if I was a Muslim, and in a minute when that is cleared up, no more lounging at the customs/immigration desk. All I can say is, this is something airport authorities do to people they THINK is Muslim, I’m going to keep from commenting on the treatment people who are actually confirmed as Muslim get. The question isn’t whether I *really* do look “like a Muslim” or not, rather how we seem to have a fixed idea of essentially what a Muslim is, behaves and so on.
I’ve grown up around IAS officers, people holding public office who *LEGITIMATELY* believe they can identify a Muslim man by the way he walks, “we don’t need to even look at their surnames, or whether their ears look like they usually do, you know, sort of like pigs, to say that suchandsuch person is a Muslim”. This is a huge crux of Modi’s Gujarat, no? The “enemy” is made identifiable, in certain set ways—and neoliberalism offers a solution*, if you play your cards right and get anywhere on the meritocracy ladder—which means we’re already talking about a very specific group of people, who even have the option of entering the meritocracy game—you’ll be allowed to be a Muslim person, in public even!
This is a *BRILLIANT* ethnographic study how Muslim youth navigate their identity, even in “segregated” housing communities and localities in Delhi (cc: Kaash, this is the study I was praising the other day, figured you may find it useful). Won’t lie, this is on my to-read again list, I taught the second section on navigating modernity and globalisation for one of my social history classes. We were discussing the film Chak! De India (like Tabassum Khan also does), and how for most of us, Chak! De was about overt nationalism, yes. But also a moment where—a first in the history of Bollywood—we see the Muslim protagonist lashing out at communalism, and is *given a shot at redemption*. Sure, we can talk about that this redemption will always come from the frame of the nation, and how the Muslim subject in India *always* has to prove fealty to India, especially *against Pakistan*, or that he (the protagonist) gets this space only when he *learns* to efface his communal identity from public assertions of his identity**. What is striking is, for Muslim youth living around the Jamia Enclave, the protagonist of Chak! De offers a moment to say “see we’re regular humans, like you! We consume US media like you, wear the clothes you do, we’re not “orthodox” and we don’t even think asserting our religious identity in public is a big deal”. Not faulting or dichotomising replies around horrid expectations of “What A Minority Should Be Like”, rather, Khan offers us an insight into how neoliberalism and globalisation make these choices available. Which by itself may not mean much, but the fact that these youngsters, are not from say Azamgarh (dubbed as Atankgarh after 2011), means *something*. That they have the choice to make these choices.
I’m reminded of a similar strand of logic many Dalit scholars and activists use (can’t find the Kaancha Illaya quote, will link soon), that with the advent of neoliberalism in that palpable moment in the 90’s right after the Mandal Commission Report, Dalit and Bahujan youth now have the option to be a part of the public higher education stream, and that most anti-Mandal campaigns and immolations were precisely around that fear that “now we won’t be able to tell who they are by their speech alone”, given that regional languages *especially* has very specific caste markers. Like Ambedkar argued a century ago, English has the potential to be a “neutraliser”, new technologies of language have the potential to blur caste and communal markers. Again, not to say under neoliberalism we don’t have any caste assertions, but, in certain places, secular upsurge of caste is now *imaginable*. And that *means something*.
Coming to your last bit, I agree we have to pick our battles. But I disagree that the Delhi rape has dissipated into a sense of “enduring tiredness”. I’d like to ask, for whom? Like I’ve said before too, I used to be *that* person who would shut herself off at the mention of gangrape, especially if it was to become a national debate etc because of various things and my inability to *physically* deal with the facts sometimes. It’s always at moments like this where it helps to remember you’re not the only one whose throat constricted as newspaper after newspaper divulges sensationalised details of gangrape, but there is a whole movement, one that is far from giving up or burning out, one which will continue to soldier on and address sexual violence the best to its capabilities. That said, please take care of yourself—remember you’re not alone. *hugs if you want them*
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*Very queasy about calling it a solution, but can’t think of a better term at this hour.
**If anyone even so much as HINTS at “but look dude protagonist finding redemption at the cost of his all-female sports team” and how that is misogynist, I will take out my feminist badge and slap you with it, we’re clear, yes?
I always want hugs! Hugs are tres awesome, and I am a bit of a cuddle-monster with my besties, who will testify to the bone-crushing, rib-collapsing love inherent in my bear hugs!
Oh I should totally tell y’all about the time I spent waiting to be interrogated in customs when I went to visit my now-ex (Caucasian, American) bf back in 2010. The 90-year-old wheelchair-bound, nearly-bent-over-in-half Somalian grandma was a surprise really, as was the young East Asian woman brought in handcuffs and restraints after getting chased down (literally!) over visa violations.
I always like to counter the “you don’t look like one” response with “what did you think I would look like?” or “how exactly should I have been?”
This generally cues embarrassed squirming and/or tasteless stereotypical humor. And then the topic dies an unnatural death, never to be brought up in my midst again. Well, till the next idiot comes along, at least.
I am totally with you, WB, on soldiering on. A friend recently asked me, “why does this keep happening??” and I found myself trying to send her hope as it flew out through my fingertips and linking to a little courage through the collective trying to bring change (will recommend your Amazon recommendation).
When I read that FirstPost piece, I truly understood why some people tend to tune out. I tend to bang on about these sort of issues every chance I get, so it helps to figure out how to work around these very understandable human tendencies. Probably running the risk of getting tuned out myself soon. Hmmm.
In the meantime, HUGS FOR EVERYONE! And remember, you are never alone.
Anonymous asked: Call me dumb but the Modi post you recently posted, i desperately attempted to understand what was being stated and i couldn't wrap my head around it. So here is my request, i ask if you have the time may you possibly simplify the post? I'm so intrigued by it and would genuinely like to understand it. You will be doing me a great favour if you can write a simple few lines about the post; although regardless of your decision i would like to say, you're truly an inspiration. God Bless.
Oh hey Anon! Aww, now I am just all-out flattered, you sweet-talker you! And you are not dumb. This is a lot to take in at one go, really. I am new to a lot of this too, but nothing like some extensive reading and note-taking to expand the mind :)
But I went back to check the post’s layout because all the smart stuff said in that totally belongs to Woh Battameez’s brilliant mind, and I have since re-edited the post to ensure that that comes out clearly. HTML for the win! (Shout-out to Tumblr: what is up with the wonky formatting now? Temporary bug?)
So there’s actually three parts to that post:
1. Aditya Nigam’s piece from Kafila - where he responds to Madhu Kishwar’s diatribe (?too strong a word?) about how Modi is all kinds of awesome since he has established an “inclusive development model” (coz all those awards and felicitations, y’all! From corporates and business magnates, no less!), and anyone who disagrees is just a dirty, dirty secularist and/or Congress-supporter, and so on. Nigam’s essentially saying that just because some people have stated they are happy with Modi doesn’t negate that there are some people who are unhappy with him and can base this on evidence & facts.
You should totes go read the whole exchange, i.e. here you go.
2. Woh Battameez’s thoughts on the topic - where she talks about how important debate and discussion is, even when you don’t agree with the person on the other end, but most importantly, she’s pointing out the incessant need for minorities to negotiate their spaces, thoughts and ideas, i.e. make themselves less “threatening/other”.
They are different enough already - the last thing they need is to not toe the line and face the music for that as well. Doesn’t this imply a lack of freedom? The freedom to be who you are, worship who you want, eat the things you like/grew up with, and still be considered a citizen who is valuable?
Also, WB also points out that Kishwar’s response to Janmohamed is predicated on the whole West vs East dichotomy, which in turn signals that phenomenon Jacob A. Geller talked about: “us” versus “them” ALWAYS. The world doesn’t (shouldn’t?) work that way.
That’s what I got out of this, really. But I would love WB to also chime in and make sure I am not just putting words in her mouth!! What say?
3. And then, finally - just me adding personal stuff to these ideas about identity, negotiation of public spaces with regards to this identity, justice denied and undelivered, and what it means to some of us who talk about these crimes against humanity and how we are perceived by those feeling we need to get a new soapbox or whatever.
In light of recent events, what does it mean when we need to choose our battles wisely? Just because we know that there are many more coming and we can’t burn ourselves out?
Yes, we choose to be part of the revolution for human rights, but none of us can do this alone. Sometimes you have gotta hope for a break and ask/pray that others will join in. Sometimes, hope is all we got.
Did any of that make any sense??? If not, I promise you - the links are well worth the time!
“Yet psychologically, we all — all of us – have this dramatically different response to a senseless death when it is an 8-year-old in Boston, vs. when it’s an 8-year-old in Fallujah. That flies in the face of almost all of our ethical worldviews, yet it is an inescapable psychological phenomenon. It’s like, we all know that this thing is wrong — this vacillation between caring and uncaring on the basis of arbitrary things like distance and nationality — yet we all do it anyway.”
…I’m making just one, simple point: that there is this phenomenon, moral and psychological, that really does deserve a lot more attention than it gets. This phenomenon, of caring more that something happened, when it happened to people who are similar to you, than when it happens to “the other.”
I think there are many many other possible ways in which the ‘fact’ of Muslims’ new found ‘love towards Modi’ can be read. We know for example that a majority of the poor have always voted for the Congress. Does that mean that Congress was any less pro-corporate and actually pro-poor? Does it mean that the poor are happy under the Congress regime? That they are feel enfranchised and empowered? Till the other day, we could say the same of the dalits as well, for it is well known that for decades they voted for the Congress, along with the brahmans. These are puzzles with which any serious political science teachers confronts her first year BA students in order to explain the complex mechanisms through which consent is produced/ manufactured – which is one of the ways in which this phenomenon is understood. There are some who might want to see this as an attempt to hammer out a new ‘social contract’ of some kind. If you are a marxist, you will often explain it through notions like ‘ideology’, ‘hegemony’ or ‘false consciousness’. In more recent times, we have had recourse to more sophisticated ways of understanding processes like these, say the idea of ‘subjectivation’ – that is to say, the idea that the ‘subject’ is a product of power relations, relations that are not ever only about domination but which always involve the production of pleasure. In such a notion, with which I am more comfortable, subjectivity is a matter of self-fashioning within a complex web of relationships. An understanding such as this could argue for example that many Muslims are now reassessing and rethinking their place in the new Gujarat and given the fact that in the foreseeable future, they must deal with this government and the larger common sense that sustains it in society at large. This reappraisal entails a different comportment, a rearranging of different elements of one’s affects,emotions and beliefs in a way that is conducive to living in this present rather than perennially deferring gratification to some unforeseen future. This kind of refashioning of the self is not always opportunistic but it does stack away certain concerns for future reference. Stockholm syndrome is another form in which the aggressor in a relationship of power, domination, even abuse and violence comes to be endowed with positive affects. Often, in extreme cases, the perpetrator also becomes an object of desire. What is a matter of serious theoretical reflection and endless examination/ re-examination among social scientists, philosophers and psychologists, becomes a mere ideological reflex in the hands of propagandists, as if the figures and ‘data’ simply speak, on and of their own.
As for the point that Modi has not ‘allowed’ any riot to take place since 2002, we might want to ask two different questions. If it is the case that his mere decision to not allow riots in the state will ensure peace, then does this not establish his culpability with regard to 2002 even more clearly? It wasn’t a riot that took place and was over in a couple of days. The killings actually continued for days on end and it was as if there was no government in the state. Secondly, does it occur to Madhu that this may not be such an innocent matter, given that there was international condemnation and people were already contemplating hauling Modi in the International Criminal Court for his crimes against humanity? It would have been foolish for Modi to continue openly on the path he had embarked upon in 2002. He had to demonstrate to the world that 2002 was an aberration.
And I understand why it’s important to talk about her, talk to her *especially* when she purports herself as a “representation of the women’s movement” and goes on to rally her support for Modi, while defaming and insulting “secularists”—apparently, thinking everybody has a fundamental human right to live despite their caste, community or race is a new-wave “western” thing we imported along with Starbucks and iTunes, not like belief in this very fundamental right is the centerpiece of our constitution. I get that she is someone whose public presence cannot go unchallenged.
But. Engaging with her always produces a double bind—we’re talking about Modi as someone whose fascism is accounted for by “numbers”. Numbers that were spared, numbers of Muslims who voted for him, numbers again, as if they said anything. And him not engaging in riots since 2002 is somehow a commendable event? An event we’re anticipating and ready for, with placards that will say “Once a terrorist, Always a terrorist”. But I digress.
What really gets to me about this discussion is the different modes of negotiations—from never celebrating Eid or having public demonstrations for Muhharam in public spaces, or even in gated communites etc, to making peace with the idea that their peace is meaningless without justice, a ritual calm before something worse will happen—why are we surprised that such negotiations happen? Why just Palestine, don’t we pick our battles too every day? Since when did the presence of agency exhibited under repressive regimes equal the absolute absence of oppression and fascism? *Why* does it matter that Muslim people in Gujarat make [x. y, z] choices and compromises? Especially, since many Muslim people across India are faced with the same array of non-choices—where you’re allowed to be Muslim as long as you don’t walk/talk/look/smell/be like one, especially in our supposedly secular public places?
This is the catch of engaging with Kishwar. Gujarat *does* become an anomaly. Whether you want it to or not.
How can we see Gujarat as an anomaly, since India 2014 is steadily looking like a BJP-run Modi India? How specific will Gujarat’s communal politics be, bursting out of the borders of the state then?
Personally speaking, I cannot begin to enumerate how often I got, “but you don’t look like one!” when I used to do Uni 101 classes for American freshmen back in college and just walking around campus looking “exotic” (but un-labellable as Muslim or Indian, apparently). I’d wear things like cowboy boots, tight-ass jeans (I have a nice ass, what can I say?), fire-engine red turtleneck sweaters, and usually had curly-wavy (UNDECIDED) hair flowing down my back and over my shoulders. Oh, and don’t forget the dangly earrings.
The funnier part? When I get the same reaction here in India (without the cowboy boots and turtlenecks, of course). And people will ask me my last name to make sure.
>Outrage requires energy which we’ve long exhausted. The relentless, monotonous viciousness of crime in our nation requires the kind of emotional stamina we no longer possess. The active rage evoked by the Delhi rape1 has dissipated into an enduring tiredness. The sense of futility transmuting into the need not to feel.
or any other crime against humanity, really. How many of us have heard/been told in discussions about Gujarat 2002, “still talking about it??” GAH. ↩
So this video started going around my facebook today, with about a dozen of my female friends sharing the link with comments like, and “Everyone needs to see this”, and “All girls should watch this,” and “This made me cry.” And I’m not trying to shame those girls! I definitely understand why they would do so. And I don’t want to be a killjoy. But as I clicked the link and started watching the video, I started to feel a slight sense of discomfort. I couldn’t put my finger on why that was, exactly, but it continued throughout the whole thing. After watching the video several more times, I have some thoughts…
Seriously, it bothered me that this ad essentially says that being beautiful (and in very proscribed ways only) is considered “critical to [a woman’s] happiness”. And that people only want to talk to beautiful people? Gah.
Just as annoying as that new Baby Santoor soap ad with Jyothika which basically insinuates that all little girls should aim to grow up to be beautiful rather than smart professionals like doctors or engineers (limited expectations again, but lets stick to one grouse for now). See that particular ad here - it’s in Telugu but I am sure that it will be really obvious, since they use the English word “beautiful” when talking about the mother’s AND the toddler’s aspirations.
Thank you, Advertising for yet again trying to teach half the world population that as a woman, being beautiful in certain ways is the only thing that matters.
“I’m not ‘pro-abortion,’ that’s the very one clear thing I want you to understand. Abortion is not the right answer for every pregnancy. And it’s not...”
