Lajpat Nagar Market

I finally spent time in Lajpat Nagar today. Strangely enough, despite having been in Delhi for years now, it's one market I'd never been to, and now, having gone there, I'm not regretting not having been to it before.

It's one of those strange, very Delhi-ish markets markets where you not only need a lot of time, but where you also need an insane amount of patience: there are some interesting things in the market but for every one interesting thing, there are a hundred pieces of unqualified rubbish.

At the moment, it looks like leggings appear to be in fashion, and I lost count of the number of roadside shops which sell them for a hundred rupees each. There are also a lot of places where one can buy kurtas for a hundred rupees each too. I think the possibility of buying things without spending too much money is standard in Delhi, but after one spends a while in the city, and the thrill of being able to buy something for "just Rs. 100" wears off, one starts to look a little more closely at the quality of the wares available for a hundred rupees, and question whether they are actually good buys.

That's the stage I'm now at, so I didn't wind up buying any hundred-rupee clothes, and though the market has "showrooms" of various brands too, there isn't very much in many of the showrooms -- perhaps because most people are out buying cheaper things. Also, almost everything in Lajpat Nagar is very loud and garish.

I went into a watch shop just to have a look around and there was not one piece in the shop which I would even have considered wearing. Holding up a watch -- the least loud one in the shop -- with a red and silver streaked strap, the salesperson informed me that it was "simple and sober". He only smiled when I told him that it didn't look either simple or sober to me.

There are people I know who rave about the market, it's possible that they know of shops in the market which I completely missed. Or that they're actually looking for very cheap clothes which they can wear a few times and then junk. That wasn't quite what I had in mind though so I wound up sticking to convenience and grocery stores.

I left with clothes pins which I'd been planning to buy for months but had never got around to picking up.

Acid Attacks and Real Nightmares

How can one deal with experiences that cross the borders of language?

Yesterday my friend Vijaya, an experienced medical social worker at the J---- Hospital, baldly described the trauma of a patient. The 'sweet-looking young girl' was brought from Pune to the J---- Hospital in Mumbai in a Sumo, crouched on her hands and knees on the floor of the vehicle for four hours. "She couldn't sit," said Vijaya, matter of factly, "because her buttocks were on fire." I felt a band of steel grip my forehead, even before Vijaya started narrating the sequence of events, which brought this girl-wife across the threshold of the hospital. "A few weeks ago, her husband, who periodically tortured her, threw acid on her private parts, then inserted a bottle of Vicks VapoRub into her vagina before having sex with her. You should have seen her condition two weeks ago. It was horrible!" and Vijaya's face puckered in a ghastly grimace. "Her pelvic region and buttocks are covered with huge sores and boils. But today she seems a little better. She will pull through".

"Her pain was so great that she barely remembered crawling out of the house on her hands and knees. Her neighbours refused to come to her aid. How she reached her sister's home is anybody's guess. The police refused to register an FIR and S---- Hospital closed their doors on her.

In desperation she was brought all the way from Pune to J---- Hospital – her private parts, a mass of burnt flesh." "But her face is so pretty and untouched," she concluded. "And nothing has been done to arrest the husband. That psychopath is still at large! Dr. D----, the head of the Gynaecological Dept is reluctant to allow reporters to interview the girl though the ---- correspondent has managed to see her in Ward 32 of the hospital!"

After Vijaya left, my mother and I watched part of Schindler's List. How could one put into words what the victims of brutality on such a vast scale had suffered? Even personal suffering, on a very modest scale, seems to freeze one into silence. Perhaps Vijaya's tale, and Schindler's List together proved too strong a dose for me and the horror brought on the old, familiar, nightmare which used to haunt me a few years ago, when I had come face to face with a woman whose face was a ghastly mesh of scars, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets, a mouth without lips with protruding teeth, cheeks, neck and shoulders a mass of raw, burnt flesh—the victim of an acid attack. She was standing on the overbridge spanning Queen's Road. As I hurried past her, our eyes interlocked. I could not fathom their expression as they bored into mine. Was it pain, despair, detachment or utter numbness? I stumbled down the steps, feeling giddy and nauseous.

That night I dreamt that acid had been thrown on my face. I could not recognize myself. I knew I was me, but who was I? " I know who I am." I went on proclaiming to myself, hysterically. But I could not identify myself with that ghastly image and if I could not accept that image as myself, then, I was not 'I'. In my dream, I distinctly remember covering myself with a sheet from head to foot. If I could not see myself and no one could see me, then, perhaps, I could be me. I awoke feeling hot and feverish, grateful to see my face unscarred.

Last night, I again dreamt of an acid attack. This time I was given a choice—your face or your vagina. I shielded my face with both arms, screaming, begging, pleading to spare my face. If my face went "I" would be snuffed out. I woke up with the shrill ring of the alarm before I could clearly articulate my choice. I lay quietly in the dark, knowing I would protect my face at all cost because I would not be able to bear the rejection reflected in the eyes of others. What could be covered and hidden could be denied but the denial of oneself by others would be unbearable.

This post was written by Aban Mukherji in 2006. It speaks of a domestic violence incident which involved an acid attack and describes the author's reaction to it.

Published with the author's permission.

Black and Blue

In every book you read, there's almost always that one line buried somewhere deep in the text of the book which will strike you.

Reading Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen, for me, that line was: "Nobody can tell me different," in a conversation between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law who had been subjected to domestic violence by her son:

"I want to ask you something," I had said that day to Ann Benedetto. "What was your husband like?"
"What kind of question is that?"
I didn't know what kind of question it was. It was maybe the first direct one I'd asked Bobby's mother, but I was emboldened by the tenderness in my elbow where I'd hit one of the dining room chairs after he shoved me, after I said I wanted to stay home Sundays, not go to Ocean Avenue.
"Was he good to you?"
"He was my husband."
"Did he ever hit you?"
She narrowed her eyes to look at me, and her dislike was an atmosphere, too, as thick as the isolation the two of in that clean, clean room, our distance from each other and from the man outside, calling to his son.
"My son is a good man," she said. "Nobody can tell me different."
Her face was hard then, and it was hard when opened the door to find me standing on her concrete steps, clean the way steps are when someone sweeps them everyday.

The book not only describes the violence in detail but also the woman's falling in love at the age of 19, the way her husband acclimatised her to his violence and tested how far her could go, the emotional upheaval, the effect of the violence at home on their son, her fleeing from her husband with their son, her new life without her husband in which she always had to keep looking over her shoulder, her falling in love again with a non-abusive man, her husband's eventually finding her and their son, his leaving her for dead (after assaulting her) and taking the child away, her inability to use the law to claim custody of her child, her husband's cutting her off from their son by remaining constantly on the move and not staying near anyone including his own mother, her son's trying to get back in touch with her without any success.

All of that, and the one line which I distinctly remember is: "Nobody can tell me different." A mother refusing to acknowledge that her son could be abusive. A mother-in-law effectively blaming her daughter-in-law for what had happened. A woman refusing to support another woman in crisis. Two mothers both cut off from their their sons because one of them was abusive.

The Tomb at Tughlaqabad

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
— James Shirley

I had visited Tughlaqabad fort which was built by Ghiyas-ud-din Tuglaq in the 14th century. An elevated causeway on the southern side of the fort connects the fort to the mausoleum of Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq which was built by the ruler himself.

The fort itself comprises what were undoubtedly once imposing stone fortifications, now in ruins. The causeway has been cut across to make space for a highway. And the lake over which it apparently once ran has long since dried out, giving way to a rather dusty ground which children play on.The mausoleum is relatively simple; it’s architecture Indo-Islamic. Inside, there are two graves which unnerved me a little bit: one is in the centre and the other to its side. While I know little about mausoleums, stepping in, considering the symmetry which Islamic art and architecture are virtually defined by, it somehow seemed to me that another grave had been planned to have been place in it. Whose, I don’t know.

A private courtyard with fortified walls encloses the mausoleum. Some of its corridors are filled with rubbish.Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq was one of the most powerful men of his time. His son and successor, Muhammad bin Tughlaq is also believed to have been laid to rest in the mausoleum. They were in all probability virtually unapproachable in life. In death, it costs five rupees to do so.

Love, Withered Love

Love


Withered Love


Photos: fromoldbooks.org by Liam Quin

Copyright Notices on Blogs

CC Licence but Do Not Copy

Licensed under a Creative Commons License.

I just saw a blog called Balancing Life which has this rather curious copyright notice. It isn't the first time I've seen such a notice, and it's baffling to me: it seems to be saying, "Don't copy content which the author's allowed you to copy under a CC licence."

I'm not sure how the two notices of CC and Copyscape are consistent. This one on Blogpourri, however, struck me as being even odder.

The text, photographs, audio and video on Blogpourri are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. If you intend to use any of the content, please ask first.

I realise that it would be polite to intimate the author, but I don't really believe that an author can simultaneously licence work under a CC licence and require others to take permission to use the licenced work provided the use is in the manner specified in the licence.

I enjoy the blogs on which I saw these notices but I don't know what the bloggers intend their copyright policies to be.

Placebo Buttons

So that's what they're called. Giving the example of a thermostat which is connected to nothing, Wikipedia has this to say about them:

A placebo button is a push-button that appears to do something, but actually has no effect, like a placebo. Although non functional they can give the user an illusion of control. In some cases the button may have been functional, but may have failed or been disabled during installation or maintenance. Only in relatively rare cases will the button have been deliberately designed to do nothing. In many cases, a button may not appear to do something, but in fact cause behavior that is not immediately apparent; this can give the appearance of it being a placebo button.

Although I didn't realise that it had a name at the time, several months ago, I saw one such button in Delhi which left me mystified -- it was a button to stop traffic at India Gate so that pedestrians could cross the road. It had elaborate instructions in Hindi on a piece of cardboard about how it should be used. (Basically, "Press the button to stop traffic. Once you've pressed the button, wait for traffic to stop, and then, cross the road.)

As far as I could make out, the button wasn't connected to the traffic light. There was, however, someone directing traffic, and once a crowd (whether or not its members had pressed the button or not) had built up, the person directing traffic would walk into the middle of the road, hold his arm out, and direct traffic to stop.

I wonder whether it wasn't actually a placebo button because although it did not appear to do anything, it in fact caused behavior that was not immediately apparent ...

Americans and Servants in India

I'm reading a book called "Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity" by an English journalist, Sam Miller who's written about walking in Delhi. I love the book for several reasons the primary of which is that he walked and didn't go from one touristy place to the other. The downside, if it is that, is that he's seen (and described) Delhi, warts included.

At one point in the book, he's described the American embassy. He starts off by talking about the American School which does not explicitly exclude Indian students but which, according to its website, "is neither designed nor empowered to serve the needs of Indian students." After stating the eligibility criteria for Americans, the website says: " Eligibility for all other nationalities (not Indian passport holders) is limited to children whose parents or legal guardians are temporarily relocated to India for employment purposes and are resident in Delhi." Can't imagine why it makes me think of all the "English-only" places during the Raj.

The author goes on to describe an encounter at the Domestic Staff Registry in a small enclave within the US Registry. Once in the registry where he had to show his passport before entering -- Indians are apparently excluded -- he was given the CVs of prospective domestic helpers, letters of recommendation, medical test results, and comments from members of the American Women's Association who had checked up with previous employers. He says, "There were many sorry stories, full of gossip and sadness, and I read and read, entering a world of pain and pathos," wherein "many job-seekers were described in terms more appropriate to a household pet."

He read of a woman who was described as a good worker who was clean, trustworthy and who bathed regularly but whose husband was a violent alcoholic, and who had caused her to miss work because he beat her. And the husband asked the employer for money.

He read of a woman who was described as not being literate, and whose 'memory it was best not to crowd with complex instructions'.

He read of a woman who 'came with good references' but whose employer found her to be difficult and argumentative, and who thought she had a 'massive chip on her shoulder'.

He read of a woman named Sonu who was exposed as a liar and a thief. She had apparently used an imported nappy as a sanitary napkin. The employer had underlined the word imported twice. As the author points out, "this was clearly an incomplete story. We do not learn how exactly this Sherlock Holmes of an employer found poor Sonu out, or what was her version of these events. And yet just outside, sitting on her haunches like the other women, was Sonu, hoping that I or some other foreigner might give her work, presumably unaware of what her previous employer had written about her."

I can't describe the revulsion I felt for the employers when I read about the "Domestic Workers Registry", and a part of me was glad that a white person, specifically, the universally accepted standard of rationalism and reasonableness, a white man, should have written that he learnt more about the former employers through what he described as "their often deeply prejudiced accounts". And I thought of Harlan Lane who wrote of deafness from the point of view of deaf people and whose "position, as Anna of FWD/Forward pointed out, as a hearing psychologist and linguist allow[ed] him to look “unbiased”, the way men are seen as unbiased about women’s rights, and white folks are supposedly dispassionate arbitrators of what is “really” racist."

I am, nonetheless, amazed that persons would be chosen for jobs on the basis of one-sided gossip from persons whose only qualification for the purpose of providing such gossip appears to be being white. I realise that letting a rank stranger into one's home isn't a bright idea. But Indian registries that I'm aware of collect police reports, and get police verifications. Gossip is not one of the main criteria used to judge a person's employability.

And just as an extra rant:

As for the employer who was so attached to imported nappies, I don't want to know how he/she found out that Sonu had used one but I am wondering (a) how he/she managed to miss one nappy unless he/she was obsessively counting -- babies require a lot, after all, and I'm assuming that the employer had one or more babies and (b) why he/she was living with a baby in India at all, and why he/she was in India if he/she thought that India doesn't even have usable nappies. Yes, I know that jobs can demand relocation, but I also know that I would rather give up a job than take a baby to a place which I think isn't capable of manufacturing usable nappies.

Also, I'm wondering just how many of the Americans and other foreigners who use this Registry would have been able to afford the kind of domestic help they get in India if they were living at home. And whether they would have considered behaving like this if they were living at home and employing persons who were not subjected to domestic abuse, who were not illiterate and who would have been in a far better position to tell them to take a hike.

Foetus at par with a Minor Child

In an insurance case which involved the death of a seven-month-old foetus, Justice Midha of the High Court of Delhi has held:

"This court holds that an unborn child — aged five months onwards in mother’s womb till its birth — is treated as equal to a child... the foetus is another life in a woman and loss of foetus is actually loss of child in the offing."

The Kerala High Court had also awarded compensation for the death of a foetus in 2009 in AIR2009Ker36. The difference in the latter case was that the woman was four months pregnant. The rationale of the Kerala High Court was:

"In the first place, foetus is another life in the woman and it comes as a baby in the course of time. Though foetus grows in the body of the woman, it cannot be equated to or considered to be a part of the body of the woman. In effect, loss of the foetus consequent upon the death of the pregnant woman is actually loss of a child in the offing for the husband of the woman. Secondly, there is no scope for considering compensation for the bodily injury of the victim who died in the road accident. Therefore, it would be illogical to grant compensation treating death of the foetus along with the woman dying in the accident treating death of the foetus along with the Woman dying in the accident treating it as another bodily injury. In our view, compensation to be granted for the death of a pregnant woman in motor accident is for loss of two lives. Therefore, appellant in this case is certainly entitled to claim compensation separately for the loss of his child in the womb of his wife who perished in the accident."

The Court, however, recognised that the law on the subject lay in a grey area, stating:

"Decisions of this Court on entitlement of compensation for the death of the foetus are not consistent. Even though the matter is not discussed in detail, this Court in the decision in Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Rasheed reported in 2004(3) I.L.R. 145 referred to a decision of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh in Rakesh Kumar and Anr. v. Prem Lal and Ors. reported in MANU/HP/0043/1995 wherein that Court held that no separate compensation is payable for loss of foetus.

However, we notice that a Division Bench of this Court in the judgment dated 3.10.1994 in M.F.A. Mp/326 of 1993 granted specific compensation of Rs. 30,000/- on account of medical termination of pregnancy of a woman consequent upon a moor accident. In Minati Das v. Laxmidhar Mohanty reported in 1976 A.C.J. 512, the High Court of Orissa held that loss of foetus in a road accident entitled the claimant for compensation.

We are unable to uphold the view taken by the High Court of Himachal Pradesh and this Court in the decisions above referred that loss of foetus should be taken as an injury sustained by the pregnant woman in the accident."

Finding that the appellant was guilty of contributory negligence "for having taken his pregnant wife as a pillion rider on a motorbike has intrinsic risk in itself" (particularly on Kerala roads the condition of most of which are deplorable), and in view of the compensation awarded for the death of his wife, the Kerala High Court awarded the appellant nominal compensation of Rs. 10,000/- for loss of the foetus. The Court also awarded Rs. 5,000/- to the mother of the deceased since, but for the death of her pregnant daughter, she would have had a grand child.

While I'm all in favour of anything which gets insurance companies to adequately compensate persons in need of such compensation following accidents, I can't help but wonder whether treating a foetus as a minor child is something which will eventually spill into other areas of the law and which will, in the long run, interfere with the rights of persons who have been born, and in particular, with the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion.

Mansplaining

Mansplaining is usually annoying while it's taking place and often funny in retrospect. How could it not be funny 'to be told what to do next by a man while playing a game with a man, and being well-ahead of him'? Or to be given a 101 lecture in a subject which is the subject of your professional expertise by a man who knows next to nothing about the subject at hand?

"Every woman knows what it's like to be patronized by a guy who won't let facts get in the way," as Rebecca Solnit pointed out in her essay, while explicitly clarifying that not all men mansplain. And indeed, they don't. And there are women who can be extremely annoying know-it-alls. The difference between men and women who are know-it-alls though is that it's only men who have societal backing when they decide to mansplain, or, as they would probably put it, explain, things to women.

If you don't think that men have societal backing to explain things to women, consider this: as part of the 2010 New York State Bar Association meeting, as Jill reported in Feministe, 'The Committee on Women in the Law decided to sponsor a day-long program for female lawyers, beginning with a panel titled "What's Our Problem: Current Issues Facing Women," in which a group of female attorneys were to discuss practicing law in a changing legal market. Immediately afterward, female lawyers were to be treated to "Their Point of View: Tips From the Other Side," in which a "distinguished panel of gentlemen" opine on the strengths and weaknesses of women's legal work.'

Unsurprisingly, women lawyers were furious, and the programme was tweaked. The "distinguished gentlemen" don't seem to have known that they were to be part of an all-male panel, advising women lawyers, who, incidentally, have comprised half of all law school graduates in the US since 1992. So while one can't hold the individual gentlemen accountable for consenting to be on such a panel, that anyone would even think of constituting such a panel is symptomatic of a larger problem.

On one hand, it is unacceptable to have women first be told that they have a problem as lawyers, and then to be told that a panel of men can give them pointers on how to do better as lawyers, especially when women are just as qualified (at least when they graduate). On the other hand, what makes even the idea of such a panel even more repugnant is that it is very hard to conceive of a programme directed at men beginning with a session called "What's Our Problem: Current Issues Facing Men," followed by "Their Point of View: Tips From the Other Side," in which a "distinguished panel of women" opined on the strengths and weaknesses of men's legal work. It just wouldn't happen. Not in the legal arena, nor would a corresponding panel be constituted in any other "traditionally male" arena.

And while it's a little unnerving that women lawyers were almost treated to ""Their Point of View: Tips From the Other Side," in 2010, the fact of the matter is that the women who were almost treated to this were women who were well-educated, credible, and able to get the programme tweaked. That is much more than many women are capable of; consider women who cannot, for a variety of reasons, fight for themselves or fight against a structure in which men are treated as being inherently superior to women.

The problem with mansplaining, as Ms. Solnit points out, is that it is just one of the manifestations of the way in which women are denied their voice, their opinions, their understanding of their own experience. How many times has one heard a man explain to a woman how she "really" feels? Or explain to her that what she actually thinks is not what she thinks that she thinks? (And how many times has one felt tempted to say something like "It's not PMS, it's your mother?")

Denying a woman a monopoly on her truth is to destroy her credibility. In some countries, this takes the form of disallowing women to be witnesses to the events which occur in their own lives: women are not allowed to testify about having been raped in some Islamic countries. And in the West, the situation is not very much better. Women are, generally, not believed. And credibility which is required to survive whether it be to get health care as desired, whether it be to get police assistance, whether it be to get protection orders or any number or other necessities.

Denying women their credibility and refusing to believe women can quite literally be a death sentence in some cases, and it's a sentence the execution of which is entirely preventable.

A "Must Read": The Archipelago of Arrogance by Rebecca Solnit

The Sexual Contract

Reading about marriage and contracts, whether they be marriage as contracts or otherwise, I came across an interesting analysis of the social contract: that it was preceded by rape, and that it finds its genesis in the Sexual Contract which Carole Pateman expounded.

The Social Contract, which Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau dealt with, speaks of political obligation, obedience and legitimacy, and is, remarkably, by and large, silent about women. True, Locke talked about the "person" but a close reading of his work reveals that his individual person was in fact, the individual man. He spoke of wives being subject to their husbands although he had nothing but the Bible and contemporary social norms to support his assertion. In marriage, women were assumed to exchange obedience for protection, they therefore could not have truly entered into a contact with free will and autonomy given that they effectively lost that autonomy when they married. His Social Contract also contained a separate sphere in which women effectively remained --- the private sphere.

Women are not, however, simply missing from the Social Contract though -- they are co-opted into it by being included in the regime established by the Social Contract although they are not parties to the contract itself. It might be possible to think of them as beneficiaries to the contract although just how much women benefited is debatable. The political rights granted in the Social Contract find their roots in the Sexual Right granted by the Sexual Contract which must have been contemporaneous to, if not antecedent to, the Social Contract. And it is only through and after the exercise of the Sexual Right, specifically, men's rights to women's bodies, that the social and civil rights established by the Social Contract can be exercised.

And it is also through the performance of the Sexual Contract that the Natural Right which men enjoyed over women in the State of Nature is transformed into a legitimate, patriarchal, civil right. While the exact story of the Social Contract differs depending on who narrates it, what is common to all 17th and 18th century versions of the contract is that it is a contact entered into by men of their own free will to establish a legitimate structure, and to negate the chaos and anarchy prevalent in the State of Nature. The story of the contract is invariably presented as a story in which free will, rational thought, and individualism prevail, a story in which men give up some of the rights they "enjoyed" in the State of Nature in exchange for social structure and, so to speak, the greater good.

The patriarchy established by the Social Contract comprises a number of different facets including the paternal right and the political right. (Some theorists claimed that the paternal and political right were the same, others claimed that they were different.) In any case, women's rights are not mentioned in the Social Contract, although women must participate in the social regime for the patriarchal right to arise at all. The paternal right cannot arise without a woman becoming a mother, and for this to happen, there must be an incidental and accessory unmentioned right which men enjoy: the Sex Right --- a right incorporated in the Sexual Contract which grants men dominion over women and their bodies.

17th and 18th-century theorists, having no desire to question the paternal right, simply incorporated the Sex Right into the political right. The Sex Right was a right which presumably existed in the state of nature. All that the Social Contract did was to assume the existence of a Sexual Contract, and incorporate it into its own body, thereby providing a legal and orderly manner in which men could exercise a right which they enjoyed in the State of Nature.

As far as the political right is concerned, it is a right which, under the Social Contract, men enjoyed and women did not although women's exclusion from the enjoyment of this right was not explicitly stated -- the philosophers spoke of the "nature of women", their "role in the family" and confined women to the "private sphere", a sphere in which they had already exchanged obedience for protection, and thus a sphere in which they had no autonomy in any case. The political right was a right which manifest itself in the public sphere, a sphere to which women did not, until recently, have any access at all.

The existence of a society based on the performance of the Social Contract must necessarily also be based on the performance of the Sexual Contract. The latter is a contract which is rarely highlighted although its terms and conditions are implicit in the Social Contract as Carole Patemen has argued.