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Why are so many Indian women out of the labour force?

Posted on by ashmita

Promises of gender equality and justice have been made, repeatedly. They have failed repeatedly. The roots of misogyny form the foundations of our civil society, and the essays in Her Right to Equality raise crucial questions about the status of gender equality in our country. It scrutinizes institutions that are meant to safeguard the rights of women and minorities, and sheds light on the colossal amount of work that needs to be done. This is an excerpt from the volume:

 

A great deal of focus in this discussion is on the decline. However, an equally (if not more) important issue is the persistently low level of women’s LFPR in India, lower than our other South Asian neighbours, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In joint work with Naila Kabeer, we explore factors that shape the low level. Our results are based on a large primary household survey in seven districts in West Bengal. We collect data on all the indicators included in the official surveys, and on additional variables that are usually not included in surveys. Since we wanted to focus on which specific internal constraints inhibit women from working, we asked specific questions on whether they were primarily responsible for childcare, for elderly care, for standard domestic chores (cooking, washing clothes, etc.), and if they covered their heads/faces always, sometimes, or never. The latter is taken as a proxy for cultural conservatism; indeed, internationally, the fact of women covering their faces in public spaces is often criticized as an oppressive practice. Of course, the context in the West is different in that covering heads/faces is associated with being Muslim. In India, the practice is followed by both Hindus and Muslims, and in recognition of that, we label it more broadly as ‘veiling’, and not as wearing a burqa or hijab. We implemented simple changes to the official survey questionnaires in order to get better estimates of women’s work that lie in the grey zone. Accordingly, our estimates are higher than official estimates, but even with improved measurement, a little over half (52 per cent) get counted as ‘working’. Which means that participation in work is low, even after work in the grey zone is included.

 

The Critical Role of Domestic Chores

front cover Her Right to Equality
Her Right to Equality||Nisha Agrawal

We then investigated the main constraints to women’s ability to work. Our main findings were that women being primarily responsible for routine domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning and household maintenance, over and above the standard explanations in the literature (age, location, education, marriage and so on) as well as elderly care responsibilities, lowers their probability of working. If domestic chores emerge as an important determinant of women’s labour force participation, after controlling for the standard explanatory factors, the question that arises is this: to what extent do the low LFPRs found in India in particular, but in South Asia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries more broadly, reflect international differences in women’s involvement in housework? There is some indicative evidence that indeed, in these regions, women spend more time on unpaid care work, broadly defined (including care of persons, housework or other voluntary care work), relative to a range of other developing and developed countries in the world. According to OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) data, in 2014, the female-to-male ratio of time devoted to unpaid care work was 10.25 and 9.83 in Pakistan and India respectively—the two countries with the lowest female LFPRs within South Asia—compared to 1.85 in the UK and 1.61 in the US. Factors traditionally viewed as cultural norms that constrain women’s participation in paid work, such as the practice of veiling or adherence to Islam, are insignificant in our analysis after the conventional variables have been accounted for. Given that the primary responsibility of domestic chores falls on the woman, we suggest that the conventional definition of cultural norms needs to be revised and shifted to focus on the real culprit, viz., the cultural norm that places the burden of domestic chores almost exclusively on women.

 

Is There an Unmet Demand for Work?

Do women really want to participate in paid work, or have they either internalized the male breadwinner model which relegates them to take care of the home and the family? What about the ‘income effect’, according to which women work only if necessary for economic reasons, and withdraw from work as soon as they don’t need to? What about the marriage penalty, that is, women dropping out of the labour force once they are married? Thus, women’s work might be a sign of economic compulsions of trying make two ends meet rather than an expression of their desire for economic independence. We explore the evidence for this in our survey. Married women are less likely to be working than unmarried women, but marriage in India is near universal (making marriage the most common career choice for women), and asking women to choose either marriage or paid work is not a fair or realistic choice. We asked women who were currently not working if they would accept paid work if it was made available at or near their homes; 73.5 per cent said ‘yes’. When questioned further, 18.7 per cent expressed a preference for regular full-time work, 7.8 per cent for regular part-time work; 67.8 per cent for occasional full-time work and 5.78 per cent for occasional parttime work. It would appear that there was indeed a major unmet demand for paid work, whether regular or occasional, full-time or part-time, as long as the work in question was compatible with their domestic responsibilities. Based on this, we suggest that being out of the labour force is less a matter of choice for large numbers of women, and more a reflection of the demands of unpaid domestic responsibilities.

~

Her Right to Equality is an urgent and meticulous study of how far we have come in terms of gender justice, and how far we need to go.

 

‘Writing is almost biological’: Ashok Ferrey on writing fiction

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Having lost his mother at a young age, Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England, thanks to his half-English mother, he moves to London.

This is the story of an Asian builder in south London. But at its heart, The Unmarriageable Man is about grief; how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition – liquid, undistilled – the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water.

Today, we have with us the author of the book, Ashok Ferrey talking about how the book was born from his own personal experience of dealing with his father’s death.

By Ashok Ferrey 

 

Recently, I said somewhere that the most difficult part of writing a book is to reach inside your soul,  extract the truth, squeeze it out, then hang it on the line to dry – for all the world to see. By this measure, my latest book, The Unmarriageable Man, was the most difficult one I ever wrote. Twenty years ago my father died – of various complications following cancer – and it was a hugely traumatic time for me. It was precisely this trauma that made me a writer: I remember taking him to the cancer hospital in a tuk-tuk, forcing a banana down his throat on the way there (bitter experience had taught me that after the chemo, he wasn’t going to be able to eat anything for the next 24 hours), and bringing him back home where he collapsed on the bed. I went into the next room, and in an exercise book lying around I wrote (with a pencil) my very first story. It took me half an hour. When I finished I remember looking around the room thinking What have I done? Oh, what have I done? It was almost as if I’d committed a murder, it was so unexpected!

front cover of The Unmarriageable Man
The Unmarriageable Man || Ashok Ferrey

 

That story, The Perfect House (in Colpetty People) remains today one of the funniest things I ever wrote. It taught me that this process of writing is almost biological – there are unseen forces inside you that begin to operate when you let yourself go. In my case, weirdly, the more stressed I am, the funnier the writing. (This is what I tell young writers who attend my workshops. Stress is Good. Generally, they look at me in dumb incomprehension. Sometimes fear. As if at this point I’ll bring out a large stick.)

Fast forward twenty years. It has taken this long for me to feel confident enough to deal with what happened back then, with my father. Fictionalising it has helped – it allows you to put a certain distance between you and your subject. So this story has been cooking in my brain all this while, which only goes to show that you can’t force your writing: it will come out when it has to; and only when it has to.

So I hope you enjoy this book. I hope it has been worth the twenty year wait.

**

 

The dirty trail of money

Posted on by ashmita

While much has been read and said about Vijay Mallya and his constant hide-and-seek with government authorities, details remain either inaccessible or too obfuscated. Escaped is a deep dive into the deeds and misdemeanours of the magnate, and what lies beneath the scaffolding of a billionaire-gone-wrong. Here is an excerpt:

 

The more famous pad of the Mallyas is the palatial country house in Tewin village, Hertfordshire, 20 miles north of London. The quintessential English village dates back to the Anglo-Saxon times, boasts of a picturesque countryside rich in flora and fauna and has a population of barely 2000.

Mallya’s property Ladywalk was previously owned and occupied by Anthony Hamilton, father of F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, and hence has always been the cynosure of all eyes in the sleepy village.

Though not much is visible from the main entrance, a public footpath runs around the property, providing an unrestricted view of the enormous spread that includes the main house Ladywalk and a lodge called Bramble Lodge with plenty of land for Mallya’s five dogs — Bichon lapdogs Elsa and Daisy, golden retrievers Luna and Bella and a St Bernard called Spirit — to play chase.

Security at Ladywalk is a priority and several CCTV cameras are in operation 24×7 at various entry and exit points along the periphery of the extensive property. Guards, dressed in black and armed with iPads and binoculars, are ever vigilant, and more so for snoopy scribes.

The large modern house sits on 30 acres of land and boasts of swimming pools, tennis courts and several outhouses. The two-year renovation of the property saw a continuous flow of architects, landscape artists, builders and gardeners. But what the locals most look forward to is the plethora of supercars that take to the narrow roads leading to Queen Hoo Lane. A sure sign that the party king is at home!

Front cover Escaped
Escaped||Danish Khan, Ruhi Khan

The story begins on 11 June 2014. This property was already on the market through estate agents Savills and Knight Frank with at least one prospective buyer lined up. Mallya paid Hamilton a visit, instantly fell in love with the property and immediately made an offer. An offer that Anthony Hamilton could not refuse. So desperate was Mallya to make this his new home that a written agreement between the two was signed that day, thus sealing the fate of this property.

Interestingly, this agreement specified the ‘Buyer’ as: ‘Dr Vijay Mallya and/or, Miss Leena Vijay Mallya, Miss Tanya Vijay Mallya, Mr Siddhartha Vijay Mallya OR to his/their order’. Mallya’s Cornwall Terrace address in London was listed as the residential address. The deal was signed for a whopping £13 million and strangely no deposit was taken by Hamilton on that day.

On 11 June 2014, Anthony Hamilton signed as the ‘seller’, witnessed by Force India’s Deputy Head Robert Fernley, and Mallya signed the agreement under his own name as a ‘buyer’, witnessed by his chartered accountant Dr Lakshmi Kanthan.

The only signature on the preliminary agreement under the ‘buyer’ was that of Mallya.

None of his children had accompanied him to view the property and there is no evidence to suggest that they were aware that they were put as buyers then or had authorized Mallya to purchase the property on their behalf.

This property has all the hallmarks of being owned and occupied by Mallya. A fleet of supercars making their way down the drive, hordes of people descending to party all night long and a constant delivery of goods and services.

Yet when we dig deeper into the ownership, Vijay Mallya is a phantom lurking everywhere yet really nowhere.

Ladywalk is propped up on a complex structure of ownership that defines the existence of many such marquee properties in the UK.

Mallya has never disputed claims that he bought his new family home with the intention of securing it for his son and two daughters.

Though he has often nonchalantly challenged reporters to prove that the Ladywalk property was bought by him through ill-gotten money.

If one can lawfully hide the real ownership and flow of funds, why wouldn’t billionaires exercise the option and bask in the security this provides them?

~

Danish Khan and Ruhi Khan’s book is going to keep you at the very edge of your seats.

Poetry for a broken world

Posted on by ashmita

In times of darkness, there has and will always be poetry. Ranjit Hoskote’s Hunchprose is an intimate crafting of vulnerability, beauty, and the feeling of estrangement that accompanies long durations of social anxiety. Here is an excerpt from the eponymous poem, and a few others:

 

Hunchprose

He calls me Hunchprose but what’s a word

between murderous rivals?
Across from me he strops his fine blade

smooth talker barefaced liar pissfart

teller of tall tales who wraps you up
in his flying carpet serves you snake oil
carries off the princess every time.
And I what can I offer you except
fraying knots coiled riddles scrolled bones
keys to doors that were carted away by raiders

betrayed by splayed light and early snow.
Lost doors I could have opened with my breath.
Call me Hunchpraise. I bend over my inkdrift words.

And when I spring back up I sting.

 

Sidi Mubarak Bombay
(1820–1885)

I should go home now, but I forget where that is.

 

A child, I was sold for a length of cotton and hammered into a link in a

chain of caravans. Taken across the sea in a dhow. The Arab slavers had

been generous with the whip. The Gujarati merchant who bought me

had a sense of humour. He called me Mubarak, Blessed.

 

Many years I worked for him in Bombay. City of opium warehouses.

City of cotton godowns. City of spice stores. City of jahazis, munshis,

khalasis, sarafs, bhishtis, sepoys that was the only family I knew. So I

called myself Bombay.

 

My seth died, leaving instructions that I was to be freed. I went back

to Zanzibar and built a house. In Bombay I was a Sidi, a man from

the Zanj, a man the colour of night. In Zanzibar I spoke Gujarati,

Hindustani, two words of English. Stuttered in Kiswahili. But this

new–old country spoke to me in rhymes of soil, sand, river, jungle. It

brought me gold. Coral. Also pearls.

 

Speke Sahib, Bwana Speke, wanted me to be his guide. Then Burton

Front cover Hunchprose
Hunchprose||Ranjit Hoskote

Sahib came. Bwana Burton. Then Bwana Stanley. Bwana Speke was

looking for the source of the Nile. So were they all. I was their compass

and their sextant. With them, I looked for the source of the Nile.

 

Once, we nearly died. As if the journey was cursed. Burton Sahib

vomiting all the time. Bwana Speke going blind, his eyes gummy and

swollen with too much dreaming. At last, Ujiji. The lake rippled from

one end of the world to the other. Wide as a sea cradled in a giant’s

palm. God forgive us, we tried to cross it. Bwana Speke lost his hearing.

A beetle had crawled into his ear. What afrit possessed him I don’t

know, but he tried to get it out with a knife. No boats large enough to

cross that lake. Later, I crossed Africa from coast to coast. Walked more

than any other man alive. Logged six thousand miles, most of it on foot,

match that if you can. Sometimes donkeys.

 

Long after I left Bombay and went back to Zanzibar, its smells followed

me. Freshly chopped garlic, fenugreek, heeng, pepper, cinnamon,

bombil drying in a sharp wind. ‘Bombil,’ I would say to myself, sitting

on my stoop, looking across the sea, rolling the syllables in my mouth.

‘Bombil, surmai, bangda, rawas.’ The masala-thick pungency of one fish

after another after another would settle on my tongue. My neighbours

must have thought I was chanting spells.

 

Voice

I’d snatched at every straw
and thought you’d got it right at last:

                swallowing swords
when you could so easily have been

                    sewing buttons

I should have told myself:

                  Be careful what you wish for

before you stropped yourself

into a voice

            that could call down rain
rap out commandments

            needle the air with prophecies

            or draw it into a bowstring

            snatch breath away

 

Why did you call down
this darkness on yourself?

Where
in this garden of unsealed tombs

                                         did we lose our serenades?

 

Jallianwala Bagh and the 102 years of its history

Posted on by ashmita

V.N. Datta’s book remains relevant and immediate to this day. While his research documents the events of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, its history, context and aftermath, it also reveals the failure of larger institutions of power and control. Here is an excerpt from the introduction to the 2021 edition:

 

In April 2019, 100 years after the massacre, the nation remembered Jallianwala Bagh as a major historical event in the long tale of Indian nationalism and independence. Jallianwala Bagh has become an integral part of the grand saga of the nation’s history. Yet, not all local memories match the prevailing narrative; and here Datta’s book reminds us not to be swayed by the nationalist frenzy.

As preparations were underway for the centenary commemoration, I walked into Jallianwala Bagh intending to unearth its hidden histories. I met a Sikh policeman at the gate who led me to the narrow ‘Historical Lane’ to the Bagh. He told me that Dyer had brought guns and troops through this constricted passage to shoot at the innocent crowd that had assembled in the Bagh on 13 April, the day of the Baisakhi mela, which is celebrated with much fanfare in Punjab. ‘There were no exit points,’ he says. ‘People in panic ran to the walls to escape. They jumped into the khoo [well].’

While in the Bagh, I was taken over by mixed feelings. It looked like an insignificant garden with some old trees abutting the residential buildings at the back. However, there was something eerie about the place. The very ordinariness of the site was almost shocking in view of the violence that occurred there. Of course, there are commemorative structures that are not ordinary. To the right is the amar jyoti, the eternal flame. The pedestal is inscribed with the words Vande Mataram, praise to the motherland. There is also an old samadhi with a dome. At the centre of the Bagh stands an impressive oblong-shaped cenotaph. And to its right is the deadly khoo. Further down is the passage to the Martyrs’ Gallery and a museum. The bullet-ridden wall represents the horror that occurred here. The gaping marks are a tragic testimony to Dyer’s savagery in the Bagh. They are all too visible. The plaque says,

The wall has its own historic significance as it has thirty-six bullet marks which can be easily seen at present and these were fired into the crowd by the order of General Dyer. Moreover, no warning was given to disperse before Dyer opened fire which [sic] was gathered here against the Rowlatt Act. One Thousand Six Hundred and Fifty Rounds were fired.

…The Bagh shapes a national memory and constructs a national past through a patchwork of myth and history, fact and fiction. As Madan Lal Vij, the city’s historian, told me, ‘After the kand [scandalous episode], Jallianwala Bagh became a historic garden and a national memorial.’ The city’s local tragedy is fashioned as a national crisis through the idea of shahadat, martyrdom. A white flame-like sculpture stands with faces of martyrs and all their names engraved below. The compound surrounding Jallianwala Bagh is today part of a larger heritage area that includes the Golden Temple and the old Town Hall. The Congress narrative, as shown on the plaque, forges a direct connection between the massacre and the Rowlatt Act.

Front cover Jallianwala Bagh
Jallianwala Bagh||V.N. Datta

The construction of a definitive history in Jallianwala Bagh obfuscates the complex truths of the massacre, which contain unresolved contradictions and ambiguities. One such ambiguity is the nationalist attempt to establish an unmediated relationship between the crowd in the Bagh and the anti-Rowlatt Act protests. However, the irony is that to present the crowd as agitators alone would authenticate the claims of Dyer and official histories and do an injustice to the plural memories and differentiated experiences of the victims. I asked the locals to share their memories. ‘It was a random crowd, some were playing cards, others had come to celebrate the Baisakhi mela,’ says the octogenarian Om Prakash Seth from Katra Ahluwalia. ‘It was not a political meeting,’ adds Trilok Chand, one of the oldest booksellers at Hall Bazaar. Udham Singh’s history in the Bagh presents yet another dilemma. It is doubtful whether he was ever present in the Bagh at the time of the massacre. Doubtless, Jallianwala Bagh is primarily dominated by the story of Gandhi’s satyagraha and Udham Singh’s martyrdom.

The tailored history of the Bagh tends to ignore the diverse echoes and voices. We know little about the people who were in the Bagh and what they were up to. Popular memories too are shifting. Dyer’s shooting is no longer central to their recollections. People feel excluded from the mainstream history of Jallianwala Bagh. The locals see themselves as victims of a state that has let them down consistently since 1919.

…My journey to Amritsar tracing the memories of Jallianwala Bagh was greatly enriched by Datta’s insights and revelations. Even after the 100th year of commemoration, his work becomes all the more immediate. As a historian writing in the 1960s, his crafting of an intricate narrative and analysis of 1919, uncomfortably entangled with local and national histories, is no mean feat. Recognized as a classic across the global community of scholars, V.N. Datta’s Jallianwala Bagh deserves a wider readership for generations to come.

Some books never cease to remain relevant. Jallianwala Bagh is one such.

 

 

 

 

Reflections of loss and grief

Posted on by swara

Pinky is a recluse who rarely leaves the suburbs. When her husband, Pasha, goes missing and everyone assumes the worst, she sets off to find him. In her search, she encounters a dream-like landscape: the ancient interior of the city she was born in, the bright farms and fields of Pasha’s childhood and the dark wilderness of the mountains, where she must finally confront her fears.

Here we highlight 7 quotes from the book where she experiences emotions such as loss and grief.

**

‘I told him you had disappeared soon after he last saw you. He said, ‘I’m sorry for you,’ and looked sadder still. I said I was searching for you because everyone else except your mother thought you were dead.’

‘Alone again in the car I saw a vision of you with the blood pouring out, black as oil, I could see the stars in it. Your body sinking into the blacksand but for a finger or knee or shoulder. The blood was then blue then purple then red as the sun went up.’

‘When I opened my eyes the stars were gone.

Front cover of Still Life
Still Life || Anoushka Khan

We were no longer ghosts under an ancient sky but humans with a beginning and an end, clothed in our machine-spun fabrics and so pale in the white light from the city below.’

‘There is dignity in death’, my father said. ‘Even decay is beautiful.’

‘You weren’t sitting there smiling and smoking. There was no one inside.’

‘I stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked carefully at the sharp rocks far down, hoping not to see you but wanting not to miss you.’

‘Then I sucked my breath in and ran screaming into the shadowy thing and it exploded around us. Inside it were pieces of light and dark that flew out, so many of them that they were all I could see.’

**

Still Life is an experiment with visual storytelling, using pictures and words to create a world that is both unsettling and extraordinary.

Seven reasons why ‘Cages’ is one of the foremost feminist texts of contemporary Indian literature

Posted on by ananya

Set at the gritty intersection of the world of prostitution in Kamathipura, the Bombay underworld and Bollywood in the 1970s, Cages: Love and Vengeance in a Red-light District is inspired by the true story of Kumud, a sex worker who dared to own her sexuality and play by her rules. A fast-paced tale of a woman who was not ashamed of her occupation, it is honest in its portrayal of the persistent cruelties-small and significant-faced by sex workers and celebrates the power they have to triumph over it.

Even fifty years after it was first written, Cages remains extraordinarily relevant, a courageous exploration of themes of patriarchy, gendered violence, sisterhood and the validity of a woman’s sexual desires. Read on for some of the reasons that Cages reminds us that feminism is necessary for as long as predatory men are around, women will have to fight to retain control over their bodies, their identities and their ability to say no.

 

  1. The unapologetic rejection of the rules of traditional morality that women are expected to follow to be considered ‘worthy’ of receiving basic human dignity and rights.

I’m sorry if it disappoints you to know that there is no glorious, uplifting message in my story. No moral lesson at the end. This is not the story of Sita, Savitri or the Blessed Virgin Mary. To those hoping for an inspirational tale of such noble and refined women, I would suggest that it will be wise to stop reading right now and get a refund for their hard-earned money.

 

  1. The incisive dissection of the Madonna-Whore dichotomy, which does even so-called virtuous women a disservice by placing them on a pedestal.

Dig deep into the mind of any pativrata—that loyal slave married to a single man—and you will definitely find many men lying in dark corners. Peep into the heart of a whore who beds hundreds of men and you will be amazed to discover just one man sitting on the throne within…Which of these two women deserves to be placed on a pedestal?

 

  1. The celebration of sorority, wherein extremely patriarchal structures the only resource for women in the bonds.

Our madam, Sakhu Bai, was a caring soul. She addressed us girls as ‘beti’ and pampered us as if we actually were her daughters. Apart from me, there were three other girls—two giggly twins, Seethe-Geethe from south India; and Nirmala, a busty girl with black lipstick, from Pune. They welcomed me into their little circle of sisterhood.

 

 

  1. The pivotal role of Gangu Bai, the real life brothel owner who ruled the male dominated world of Kamathipura with an iron fist, but fought hard for the dignity and rights of prostitutes.

No wonder all the girls in these disreputable lanes looked up to her and called her their mother—she was truly maternal in the way she treated us. Every Diwali, she would gift all her girls a brand new sari. If any girl under her roof fell sick or contracted an STD, she would bear the entire responsibility, including paying the bills for her treatment. When a prostitute became too old to entertain, she was retired with a respectable pension.

 

  1. Kumud’s extraordinary determination and courage through the course of her life, in defending her principles and dignity in the most difficult of circumstances.

But I held firm to my principle of not accepting more than ten clients a night. Little did I know that in Kamathipura, principles among whores were as dangerous as honesty among the cops.

 

  1. The consistent emphasis on consent through the course of the book, and Kumud’s insistence on defending her right to refusal, that sex work does not automatically negate the significance of consent.

I shook my head. ‘What if I force myself on you?’ ‘That would be rape.’ Though he was drunk, he burst out laughing. The word ‘rape’ from a prostitute’s mouth was hilarious for him…What followed next can only be classified as rape. I have no other words to verbalize it.

 

  1. Kumud’s insistence upon taking ownership of her identity, simultaneously making no apologies for her professions while refusing to be defined by it.

Almost all prostitutes have more than one name. One name a prostitute shares with her clients. Her friends know her by a different name. The third is her real name. That name has the fragrance of the native soil of her childhood—and that name has nothing to do with the many fake ones she adopts for the profession.

What is the human cost of shame?

Posted on by ananya

In the early dawn one day in 2014, a man discovered the dead bodies of 14-year-old Lalli Shakya and 16-year-old Padma Shakya hanging from a mango tree on the edge of their village in Uttar Pradesh. Upon hearing of the discovery and reaching the bodies, the grief-stricken women of the family formed a protective shield around the tree. They knew that if their girls were taken down immediately, they would be forgotten, lost in a brutally inefficient and prejudiced system; but if media arrived, and photos of the bodies went viral, those in power could not ignore the deaths and justice would be served.

A shattering, utterly immersive work of investigative journalism, based on years of meticulous reportage The Good Girls slips behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honour in a village in northern India to uncover the real story behind the tragic deaths of two teenage girls and an epidemic of violence against women. Read on for a glimpse into the devastating fault lines created by caste, gender, technology and revealed by a tragedy that shook the imagination and hopefully the conscience of a nation.

 

 

In the year that Padma and Lalli went missing, 12,361 people were kidnapped and abducted in Uttar Pradesh, accounting for 16 per cent of all such crimes in India. Across the country, one child went missing every eight minutes, said Kailash Satyarthi, who went on to jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize with Malala Yousafzai. And these were just the reported cases. The economist Abhijit Banerjee, who later also jointly won a Nobel Prize for his approach to alleviating global poverty, explained that ‘parents may be reluctant to report children who ran away as a result of abuse, sexual and otherwise.’ He added that this was likely ‘rampant’. In fact, some parents sold their children or deliberately allowed unwanted daughters to stray in busy marketplaces. No one reported them missing, and so, no one looked for them. Even in a tiny village like Katra where everyone was of the same social class, the Shakya family believed that the police would still take sides. They would choose to favour the person of their caste. And told that the culprit was Yadav, they would most likely wave away the Shakyas, being Yadavs themselves. ‘Raat gayi toh baat gayi,’ they would say, grunting back to sleep. The night has concluded and so has the incident. ‘It was easy to ask why we didn’t immediately go to the chowki,’ Jeevan Lal would later complain. Time was scarce and he preferred not to waste it on a thankless task. There was, however, another reason that Padma’s father held back. By 10.15 p.m., a dozen men were searching for Padma and Lalli in the Shakya family plots. Some in the group assumed that the girls were injured and unable to call for help. Around the search party, termites crawled, mosquitoes buzzed and moths fluttered. As the heat drained out, the field rustled with snakes slipping back into their holes. Nazru excused himself – to eat dinner, he said. The others waded through the upturned earth of Jeevan Lal’s property. They tramped into the orchard. They arrived at the dagger-leafed eucalyptus grove. They went as far as the tube well that adjoined the Yadav hamlet. They moved quickly and, at the request of Padma’s father, they didn’t call out the girls’ names. They were as quiet as they could be. A villager who lived some 400 feet from the Shakya plots had gone into the fields to empty his bladder several times that night, but when questioned about it later he said he didn’t hear or see anything. Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that a group of men armed with torches and tall, heavy sticks were in search of missing children. Jeevan Lal didn’t need to spell out what was at stake, but he did anyway: ‘Our daughters are unmarried,’ he said. ‘Why would we ruin their chances of finding a good match?’ The other villagers would have asked why the girls had been allowed out at night with a phone, and without a chaperone. ‘There’s no point crying after the birds have eaten the harvest,’ they would have said. But the girls had been taken by Pappu. Nazru had said so – and Jeevan Lal knew this, even if the others didn’t. ‘This is the sort of place where people cause a commotion over a missing goat,’ a village storekeeper later said. ‘If the girls were taken by Pappu, as Nazru said, why didn’t the family make any noise or call out to anyone?’ They didn’t, because it wasn’t just the girls’ honour that was at stake, it was the family’s too. And the family had to live in the village. And so, just like that, in less than an hour since they were gone, Padma was no longer the quick-tempered one. Lalli was no longer the faithful partner in crime. Who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the status of the people left behind.

Sanskrit love poetry at its peak

Posted on by ananya

Amaru Shatakam is a collection of a hundred love lyrics. It is regarded as the greatest of such works in ancient Sanskrit.

Little is known of the poet Amaru, except that he could put the emotions of a whole poem into a single stanza. More than a thousand years old, each of these verses gives vivid glimpses of human love in quite a modern manner.

The love these lyrics picture, has physical, emotional as well as social aspects. Delightful or  painful, it is felt by women as well as men.

To give readers a feel of these sensitively drawn portraits of love, in separation and loss, in desire and fulfillment, here are a few samples of these Amaru lyrics.

 

A first look

 

Your gaze is languid, soft with love,

you shut your eyes repeatedly,

and open them for just a moment

to stare or shyly dart a glance

full of some inner feeling.

Say, young lady, who is he,

that lucky man you are looking at ?               (4)

 

A first query

 

‘You simple girl, do you intend

to be so naive all the time?

Compose yourself and mind your honour,

don’t be artless with your lover’.

Thus advised by friends, the maid

with a timorous look replies:

‘Hush! Softly! My lord may hear you,

he is here within my heart.                             (70)

 

Lover to beloved

 

‘Beautiful, give up your pride.

Look at me, I’m at your feet.

You’ve never been so cross before’.

By her loved one thus addressed,

she cast a glance from half-closed eyes,

she’d many tears, said not a word.                 (39)

 

A memory of love

When to the bed my lover came,

my skirt not opened by itself,

I held the string, but the dress slipped off

with just a bit left on my hips.

That is all I know, dear friend,

for when he took me in his arms,

who was he and I myself,

or what we both then did together,

I can’t at all remember.                                  (101)

 

Another memory#

Somehow, in a play of pique,

I told him to get out, and he

hard-hearted, just left the bed

and walked away abruptly.

His ardent feelings seem at an end,

but my shameless heart still yearns

for that callous spoiler of our love,

O good friend, what shall I do?                      (15)

 

Once again

 

They were on the same bed,

but lay back to back,

distressed,and they did not speak,

though conciliation with each other

was in the heart of both,

they preserved their dignity.

Than,gradually, the couple turned

heir eyes on one another:

their quarrel gone, and with a laugh,

they embraced each other.                              (23)

 

 

N.B. Numbers at each verse end refer to the book as a whole.

The despair of the barren landscape

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Dust and ash engulf the land, dry rivers snake the earth and a phantom darkness looms over everyone. As most of India reels from this environmental catastrophe, water replaces oil as the most valuable commodity and cities get infested with gangs and powerful religious figures.

In this dystopia, the hi-tech Millennium City, which is inhabited by the rich, overlooks the quarters of the poor. Millennium City gives rise to a form of technology that manufactures artificial humans in laboratories.

Born in one such lab, Haksh does the forbidden: he falls in love with Chhaya, a human.

A coming-of-age novel about violence and transgression, Darklands is about one thing above all: love-both all-consuming and redemptive. Here’s an excerpt from this dark tale of love.

**

He woke up, dreaming of sheep. They were everywhere. Atop a hillock, cascading down a brook, their curly white fur gleaming in the soft, wintry sun. And then, with a slight flutter of an eyelid, they were gone. What surfaced was the wasteland, corroding away in the harsh morning sun. It was still early morning, but the sun was already severe. Through his half-open eyes, still very heavy with sleep, Easwaran tried to look. The dust and ash had begun to swirl across the barren landscape. Some people were up from their sleep, while some had wrapped their tattered blankets around their heads, trying to evade the daylight. Easwaran tried to gauge what time it must have been. Probably still seven. But in the vast, desolate landscape, time and its precise classification had become vestigial rituals of an age that no longer can be. It was reduced instead to a rough probability. As was everything else. Life even. His son was still in the blanket, but Easwaran knew he was wide awake. The infant was still asleep close to him. From a bit afar, towards the edges of the makeshift camp, the lanterns were giving up the last of their flames. Set against the glowing daylight, these tiny flames seemed pathetic, like a puny space rover approaching the cosmic infinitude of Jupiter. But the flames stayed, pale and almost invisible, but intact nevertheless. No one in the camp seemed to mind.

Aakash walked softly over to Easwaran, a cold rifle gleaming in his hand. His face was taut and visible from a distance. Well, at least to Easwaran, it seemed hardened. As if laughter hadn’t meandered on the soft pastures of his face for a long time now.

‘There’s trouble,’ Aakash said, crouching unevenly near the man. ‘Apparently, that Phanai’s lad is missing.’

‘Is it what I fear?’ Easwaran remarked. He was up by now. Granules of dust and ash were on his face, but he seemed unperturbed by this.

‘Could be. But no one knows. I saw him last night, quiet and all by himself, as he normally is. More than anything, he seemed safe.’ Aakash regretted the moment he said this and he even anticipated what Easwaran’s reply would be.

front cover of Darklands
Darklands || Arnav Das Sharma

 

‘Nothing is safe,’ Easwaran replied, his eyes turning away from Aakash and towards the desert landscape that stretched before him and all around and shimmered like a hot metal freshly pulled out of industrial fire.

‘I was thinking of telling Eaklavya that we need a search party. We should look for him, no?’

‘Look for him where? Where do you think he could go? How many nooks and crannies and undiscovered lanes do you see here? It’s a damned wasteland.’ Easwaran tasted the bitter trickle of bile rising in his mouth. He thought he had accepted his fate and along with it, everyone’s. He thought that he had stopped caring. For that was the only way he could make sense of it all. But he was clearly wrong, it seemed.

‘What else are we supposed to do then?’ Aakash asked. Easwaran knew he could not answer that—he didn’t have an answer. He chose to keep quiet. The infant woke up crying. He picked it up and began cradling it in his arms. He recognized those to be peals of hunger. But he also knew he could do nothing about it.

**

 

 

 

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