India's Daughter - Beyond the documentary

Its been more than two years and no one here did it, but then a foreigner makes a documentary and suddenly our egos are on fire.
If we are really that averse to sympathy (which does not seem to be the point of the film, anyway), we will not wait to be sympathized to realize our dignity.
Not allowing it to be viewed in India shows cowardice and diffidence, not a supposed pride or a feigned patriotism. And also, of course, the quintessential Indian quality - we have to grind everything down to differentiation, politics, racism, and stupidity.
Any rational person who has seen the film will agree that it is not in bad taste or derogatory to women or to India.
It just shows the bare facts. It NEEDS to show the facts, not clever editorial tricks.
And yes it shows our widespread misogyny, the patriarchal mindset, and the insensitivity.
Averse to truth?
Well, you cant refuse to hold a mirror to yourself and then break one when it is being held.

Why would a foreigner make a film about our incident?  You ask. Why make a big deal out of it and show it to everyone when there are such things happening everywhere too?
Simple logic. Because, my dear, beyond our castes and religions and nationalities, apart from social, cultural, political, and a lot other approaches, there is a broader arena called humanity, and a 'humanistic' approach. Once you start seeing things from that perspective, you would automatically start working for the cause and not for baseless accusations. Not everything is about conspiracy and agendas and grand schemes. Unless you are trying in vain to save your own skin, that is.
Secondly, this incident DID spark unprecedented outrage and it is NOT a secret from anyone in the world, really. So yes, the media IS MEANT to work on issues that have such mass impacts around the world.
The question, instead of being why a foreigner did a movie about a culture she cant understand, should actually be, why didn't ANYONE in India who understands 'our culture' so perfectly well, do one? Or, if that is not a comfortable means for us because we still uphold unfounded views on shame and such, did India do ANYTHING substantial at all, after the incident, to ensure that people are sensitized more, made more aware, the culprits given harsher punishment (in practical), and thus prevent things like this happening? Unfortunately no.

And unfortunately, we never seem to get off our butts unless we are whipped off our seats. Nudges don't seem to work.
Media is the most powerful tool and it is meant to be used for a greater good, whether it is done by Britain or India. And again, why don't we have more programs like this which REALLY reaches the core and is qualitative, open, educative, eye opening, challenging and competitive too?  Do we need to always wait for triggers? Can't we work without catalysts?

Does not feel good to have fingers pointed ! Does not feel OK to have our roots exposed on a global platform! Really? Well then fabulous! So, instead of reacting with baseless arrogance, use this as a blessing in disguise and PLEASE START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE ISSUE!
Take it as a challenge to assert our country in the RIGHT way - Have the documentary shown in every school, every slum, every college, every workplace; have education volunteers and social workers talk to children and teenagers, organize a mass movement where every wall in every home in the country realizes that rapes and gender inequality and ANY violence against women will not be tolerated.
Impose harsher action against culprits, prove that that action will actually be taken, have the men realize that every eye is watching their every move, raise your voice against every act of crime and work on instilling a true sense of safety among the citizens. Make it a 3 year or 5 or 7 year plan to make our country rape free (Sorry but I am unapologetically idealistic), and then you can yourself invite the BBC to make a documentary on how we have tackled our problems and issues.
Because if for some strange reason you take this documentary as an assault on your prestige and global face value, THIS would be a proper and dignified response, not banning the film or getting tangled up in trivial justifications and blame games.
It is already proved that we are great at reacting and not at responding to the 'why' and 'what' and 'what next' of anything; so now that the fire has been lit and the whole world is watching us, use that fire with intelligence to light up our society than to keep burning ourselves, again and again. Because we the nameless, common mass of the nation are really done with everything and are on the brink of diving headlong into positive change, whether it happens in peace or with protests.

No matter what we ban or not, our truth is not a well kept secret from anyone, and at this stage it SHOULDN'T be. Yes we need empathy, yes we need as much support and assistance as possible, and we will keep getting it from everyone, because we have allowed our pit to be dug this deep.

And yes, there are rapes and violence and  several other atrocities happening everywhere. Wherever there are humans, there will be problems, whether it is India or London or Pangaea. No one is idolizing or defending a particular culture here and saying the other is full of loopholes. This matter goes higher than high school politics.
But what we DO need to realize is that we are still not even open to accepting our loopholes yet, and you need no more proof than the events of the past few days for this. We live in denials, and we give ridiculous justifications and excuses.

I don't know much about the complications of how the film might hamper the process or the system, and frankly, as a common citizen, I don't care. If systems are formed to protect us but they fail to do so, then we have all the right to fail in our loyalty to them as well.
And thus, we pointing fingers at anyone else will only make us look more pathetic, not protective and patriotic as we foolishly seem to be thinking right now.
Because seriously, if people who are supposed to be 'protecting' us in their respective positions and powers have such unimaginably low standards of respect and esteem as is seen in the documentary, and we allow them to continue, we will soon not have much left to be patriotic about.

We'll have umpteen films made on us, and they won't be out of empathy for much longer.

A Glimpse Inside

There is so much distance between an artist and an art work; sometimes you love the art but not the artist, and sometimes you do not understand the art but love what the artist thinks/feels/his process. One of my favorite artist interviews: Martin Creed :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY3L0cNqDiw

Messages in a Bottle

                                               

(A detail of 'Elite Intervals' - Mixed Media on Canvas, Feb. 2015)

Little Margot had bought herself several new umbrellas; she had quite learnt to enjoy all the rains but sometimes needed to stay warm too. Blue, yellow, white, purple and magenta - all different colors to suit her different moods.
The rains were strange that way - each time it was but glorious water pouring down from the heavens, but each time it made her feel different. Was it all about circumstances then? She wondered. She loved the rain when she was near a cave on soft sands, but hated its prickly drops when she was standing on a stony beach. The only reason she would push away a drop was if she thought she was unworthy of its embrace, and hoping she would one day prove good enough.
She had always found it difficult to know herself, but with this new realization, she became even more confused.
How could she know what she really wanted and what she really was?
She stood upon the waves and emptied herself of everything; and what still remained in her heart, her soul and the deepest part of her being was her in her total essence. A total void of circumstances held a mirror to her inner truth, and how beautiful that was!
Exited to share this beauty with all the islands she had found in her deepest dreams, she wrote her lengthy letters and rolled them inside a bottle to send them across the seas.
As she rolled them out on the sea, the moon rose high and blessed her being.

If given a choice, would she be a bottle or a message inside it ? She thought, for she knew that would definitely be the next step. The bottle experienced all the waves, felt the sunshine and the chill, laughed with the foam and wept with the night snow. The messages, however, stayed safe inside, having very deep words and sentences, but 'bottled' up, literally. No stars, no scars. But they did have an amazing view of the spectacle though, and of the whole voyage.

It was a difficult choice, but Margot had listened to her call and she knew what she would really like. Instead of finding substitutes in messages on yellowed paper, she would roll herself into a sheet, snuggle inside the bottle and bounce down onto the seas. And once in the center of it all, once in the center of life and drama and the beautiful theater of existence, she would break the bottle and pound herself on the deep waters. She would know the visuals, she would know the colors, and she would now feel the chill and thrill and the drowning ecstasy of someone totally unarmed except for their own dream in the wild rush of merging rivers.

Someday, maybe, some sailor would find the smashed pieces of bottle and a bit of her hair floating below his boat.
He would maybe honor her memory with a knowing smile, for that is all we really need - an acknowledgement of our souls, an awareness of our emotions, and an acceptance, no matter how subtle, of our innermost journeys.

Constructions and Re-Constructions

What some people have at their doorstep and they choose to ignore, many others in the world would give an arm and a leg for.

Was skimming through my last year notes from college and something about accessibility and affordability caught my attention. I hadn't' thought or written about it much back then, but somehow it makes more sense now, after an almost unimaginable dream has been lived and is over.
What exactly is accessibility? Well maybe it goes two ways - one where you are aware of something but cant reach it, or you have it but you don't know it. (Both having it and realizing it is a lucky, but perhaps a very dry coming together).
The first situation is usually known in our world as a misfortune and the latter as a privilege, maybe something you are born into as well, a birthright.

Thinking a bit back to man's starting point in life - he is born into a nude space and time - he is shorn of 'circumstances'. (What he is born into is his parents circumstances, not his). He is born on a blank slate; thus during his life, there is every opportunity for him to change where he is, what he is, what he is doing, and what he could do.
If one is born into a financially 'poor' space, that need not be his 'fate' forever. One could say it was 'destiny' or something to have been born exactly in that situation, but actually, being in that situation is a 'constructed' circumstance of his parents as well, if we go back a little; either they were also born such or did not do anything about it. It is a continuing constructed circumstance.
The first step is to be aware of this accessibility to evolution, though, and that is where clinging on to'fate' or 'destiny' happens for the most part. (Is it genuine ignorance or feigned clever laziness?) Either that, or else great snobbery and corruption; which is disgusting rather than saddening.
Change is inevitable, and what we usually don't realize - also greatly accessible. Of course life is hard, life slaps you again and again, and sometimes nothing seems to work.
But maybe, these slaps are a result of man's constructed circumstances.
Constructed spaces. Constructed Time. Constructed beliefs. Constructed clinging to fate. Constructed greed and constructed blame.

Apart from the moods of Nature, apart from her fury and wrath and her beauty, there is nothing, absolutely nothing that is not within a man's reach and control, especially his own life. And yet as a collective, we seem more interested in controlling waves and trees rather than our lives. We need predictions for everything, so that we could 'construct' all our circumstances well.

Maybe, just maybe, true happiness, love and security are just right outside these constructions.

Swalpa Adjust Maadi Please :)

Well hello lovely people of the lovely world !!! :)

Yes, you caught me. My warm greeting is partly an attempt to sound cheerful and partly an attempt at sarcasm.
Getting up everyday has become a re-enactment of my earlier panic attacks; what with such gory news all over. No, don't worry, I will not bore you with what the internet and news has been flooded with for the past couple of days, but will go a step lower, a step personal, a step that though quite trivial and existential in the vast scheme of things, is gradually beginning to answer my questions and fears about the world and its state as a whole.

It has been a while since I have come back home, and needless to say, I miss London.
Like hell.
As an artist I get attached to spaces too soon and too intense, and London's misty spaces and grasses I still feel on my skin.
But it has been great here too, catching up with family and friends, laughing at old jokes, and swimming in a swelling tide of the past and the future together.
One thing irks me though. Many things do, but this one more persistently, and this is where my step of a yet feeble understanding starts.
As a 'young' girl of marriageable age, after having done my MA as well, should I not look to settle down? Usually, no one who lectures me has the patience to listen to my lectures about love or marriage or life, and I am often brushed aside with something along the lines of ' Some things you need to adjust in life'.
Oh well.
Come to think of it; they are actually helping me make my life easier. I could find a very handsome, well paid, 'supportive' husband in any part of the world, and settle to a very convenient, perhaps even luxurious lifestyle. If I agree to 'adjust' a little that is, adjust my thoughts, my emotions, and my personal philosophies a little so that it could suit the situation admirably.
And then my gaze wanders to the vast vast space out in front of my balcony all mingled with so many more lives.
Who would I adjust for?
What should I adjust for?
Whose invisible satisfaction will my personal adjustment satisfy?
Forget about me now, lets not be selfish; but why do humans think 'adjustment' is a way of life, no matter what the matter is? From where does this pathetic and pessimistic view of a human and his life stem from ?
And people have learned to adjust to everything, for that's how the world works.

Adjust to the faith you are born into.
Adjust to the job you end up with.
Adjust to the system a little.
Adjust to the country a little.
Have an oppressive leader? Adjust a little.
Adjust to the neighbors' noise a little.
Adjust to whatever the media of all kinds (the biggest weapon in today's world but perhaps the most stupidly used) feeds you with.
Adjust to the surroundings you are in.
Adjust to the education system and whatever it gives you (or doesn't).
Adjust to the circumstances.
Adjust to the situation you are in, whether you agree with it or not.
This mass 'adjusting' mentality is perhaps the biggest unseen terrorist looming large today.
It is these small adjustments and agreements to oppression to ideas, individuality and existence no matter how small or big which burst as mass exasperation.
Remember all the revolutions in History? It is not a coincidence that all of them were instigated by the mass who were done with adjusting to the systems.
So you keep adjusting until there is nothing left. Yes, squeeze in your butt (and your mind) a little more, you will fit in on the seat, and we can all have a jolly ride :)
Just so you don't take me to be a complete bitch, let me make it obvious that there is a slight difference between convenience and conviction, between being assertive and odious. Between adapting and adjusting. And of course between empathy and adjusting.
The world needs a lot more empathy, a lot more adaptability, a lot more true freedom and not just conditional freedom, and less and less of adjustments and compromises to bullshit.
It is OK to say 'Its OK' now, but it wont be ten years down the line when that 'OK' pays a big price for being on the end of the adjustment chain.

You saw the picture of the thousands of Parisians gathering in unity with candles and slogans and tears and anger against the injustice? Maybe the whole world should gather, at the center of the earth around a huge fire, and burn away everything we have been oppressed and limited with - every old idea, every notion, every system, every organised chaos, and every boundary.

True inner revolution in the masses seems to be a viable answer for today's abstract world.
Unless everyone stops feeling completely and becomes numb.

Feigned Parody

Whatever is good to us, becomes our God.

Give a man a city in the clouds and most times he will refuse its citizenship if the travel requires wings with his own mind.

We build structures upon structures and yet they are turning into houses of fear rather than worship and gratefulness.

Instead of indignation at the loss of common sense and the big label on our foreheads that screams stupidity, we misplace it on religion.

We are given not one but two feet, and yet we feign insecurity and ask for crutches all the time.

This assumption that humans are insecure is the most bloated and stuffy lie ever told.

And are the crutches at least solid ?
Nope.

They can't show us directions anymore, if they are mostly forced faiths and un-experienced beliefs.

Whatever promises security, becomes our goal; whether it is a fellow being disguised as a miracle-man, or a vermilion smeared stone.

Because sadly even our crutches are rusted and over used.

Why create Gods?

Instead of going to the roots and flesh, we keep dusting the skin.

Why try to get rid of our weakness when we cannot see and accept our strengths?

Perhaps the creation of 'religion' was the biggest mistake of humanity.

Whatever is not good to us, becomes our devil.

So, are we going to boycott entire mankind now?

Winter's Skin

It brushes against me,

Against my cheeks

and freezing fingers.

So graciously grey in its icy embrace,

Stabbing me, slicing through its edgy hushed up haze. 

I miss its presence as I drift to cozy sleep.

No longer an alien 

is its thorny touch;

Whistling in my ear it stifles my strolls,

Arched inside my head, like an avalanche it falls.

I could get used to its isolated love.

It makes me real,

this winter's skin.

seeping through settled numbness it spills, quivers

and leaves me, threatened, amidst a battle of shivers.

I've altered into a floating trace of its solid truth. 

(November '13)