Diluted Death

~*~*~

My friend called me this morning. The voice of doom sounds feeble. "My brother Danny* died, Lav". She pauses. I can hear her choking. My friend makes it a point to call me a day before New Year. She always wants to be the first to wish me. This time she has called a day early. Not to wish me. But to tell me that she has lost her only brother. I ask her in a stunned state, parking my car to the side of the road, what happened. Drug overdose.

Danny was young. Very young. He celebrated his 22nd birthday exactly a month ago. Death cannot touch a young man so soon. Not when the parents live to see their only son die before them. Death is cruel, unfair, cold, determined.

Drugs diluted Danny. Death diluted that hope to survive.

I turn the car, and head to be with my friend.

I knew Danny. He was a normal kid on the block – wearing a t-shirt that often had funky messages, loose jeans hanging from his hip, spiked hair that made him look like a rock star, and not to forget his ears pierced and a tattoo on his left arm. Those are fashionable traits for a young man, who appears “Yo” to his pals. The tattoo on his arm was a tombstone with a cross that reads RIP. The prophetic Rest in Peace.

Danny a Product of Culture

Peer pressure forces you to act and behave in conformance. The desire for upward mobility in a social strata forces young kids to be “trend setters”. In the meanwhile, fashion statements of smoking out cigarette fumes in surreal patters, holding a bottle of beer, listening to hard rock, speaking grotesque yet surreal truth about society, life and world, almost in post modern, existentialist manner is a place one starts. Souding deep and philosophical is cool. And then there is social networking that is connected to the cool world all the while.


The Call Centre World

Danny worked in a call centre. Call centre jobs are available to students relatively easy. A tele-marketing job got without too much toil. One merely needs basic education and basic spoken English. The call centre teaches American accented English that adds further to the fashion lingo. What happed to a normal kid on the block like Danny happens to most boys and girls his age. They are allured of money, status, and independence. They quit their studies, because the only driving force is economic independence that they have the means and capacity to exercise independent and responsible choice.

Then comes the world of the Call Centre. High stress. Acute deadlines. Risk of being given a pink slip unceremoniously. Free sex. Fragile, strained, stringed relationships.  Long working hours. Phased out brain. The stress leads to taking measures to ease the pain. It begins with caffeine, a fag, and then graduates to drugs. You live in a muddle. Trying your best to clean it up, and failing constantly.

Danny was put to rehab. He came back home in a few months time. Clinically most people fall into a relapse. So did he. He dressed to meet his friend. What followed after he stepped out of his house, with a promise to his mother that he will be back soon, no one really knows. Until a sedated friend uses Danny’s phone asking his mother to rush to the hospital. He was dead long.

It is IT

Parents feel proud that their children do well. IT has given a new meaning to the traditional way of life. It has juxtaposed two worlds, that are contrary to each - the traditional with the modern. We may feel proud that the IT industry has offered job opportunities to many. But it has also taken away the youth to easy un-introspective careers. It has allured students to abandon a path towards an academic exercise in the promise of earning fat salaries that parents would not have dreamt to earn as much even until retirement.

This tilt in the socio-economic world is forcing many young men and women to a new world view that has given very little time to evolve, grow and develop naturally. The IT world has come too sudden and in a way manipulated the society into a capitalistic and consumerist world.


Messages Left Behind

I am curious at what messages Danny may have left in his public profile. I read through some of the lines that may sounds very post-modern. It leaves me numb. It is a mind of a psychic overdrive? A feeling of grandeur? Is this a result of the constant ebb and flow of the dependence on drugs that brings these fatalistic lines out?

LIFE IS SHORT SO JUST LIVE IT NOT LEAVE IT..........


HAVE FUN ALWAYS N U LL FIND THAT LIFE IS REALLY ROCKING.........


LEAVE UR TENSIONS 4 2MORRO N BE SURE THT 2MORRO NEVER COMES!!!!!!


just remember one thing :


NEVER SEARCH UR HAPPINESS IN OTHERS IT LL MAKE U FEEL ALONE.....SEARCH IT IN URSELF, IT LL MAKE U FEEL HAPPY EVEN WEN UR LEFT ALONE........


Reading the Diluted

I try to fathom what these mean...I find it difficult to crack the codes of the mind that wrote these lines to describe oneself.

May be Danny would have thought he knew what he wrote here . Or did he? Or was it the writings of a mind that was being smoked into nothingness? A reality different from the courage of perseverance? A clarity of the mind without the confusion? Was it a reality of doom where the circle of life was a fateful existence...

Father..i wanna kill you...mother..i wanna fck you


"Father i wanna kill you...mother..i wanna fuck you" is simple....


Kill the father is kill all alien concepts instilled in you..that are not your own.


Fuck the mother is get back to the essence,back to reality..mother..child birth-reality..embrace reality and get ur own concepts.

~*~*~

PS: The name has been changed to hold on to the memory of a young boy who was loved by all around him.

~*~*~

The Rape Culture – A Moral Curfew

"...Why does Samuel Butler say, "Wise men never say what they think of women"? Wise men never say anything else apparently."

                                                                                                   Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

*~~*

The cases of rape, molestation and violence against women never make news. It is not considered a unique story to capture important print. Even if there is a compelling tale, it is tucked into the deeps of neglected pages where reader’s eyes seldom scan.  Then, suddenly from nowhere, there is prime time news covering a story that begged to be heard for sixteen years, of a child molested by the then Inspector General of Police Rathore who drove her to ending her life. She consumed pesticides. She dies. Her dreams of becoming a Steffi Graf go to the grave with her.

He lives on. Promoted to Director General of Police of Haryana. Recipient of the Presidents medal for meritorious service to his land. The epitome of valour, character, defender of law. Then nearly two decades later, the law finally manages to catch up with him. Delicately offcourse. He is sentenced 6 months imprisonment with a surety of 1000 rupees. To top it all, he is granted bail.

We live in a fair world: Molestation and Rape and Theft and Murder are Bailable Offences.

Under the Indian Penal Code, molestation is a bailable offence under section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Under new laws on terrorism, not giving information of a tenant to the local police is made non-bailable under section 188 IPC. Inflicting grievous injury with sharp weapon is bailable under section 324 and 325 of the IPC. The mere possession of a knife is non bailable under section 25 of the IPC Act.
Receiving a bail under the bailable offence, therefore is a right. No application is needed to file for bail. The court grants bail, thinking him fit to be free.

Freedom is the retired DGP Rathore’s greed. He saved himself so long he was in service, using his office to wield power over his victims. He was asked to pay a bond of 1000 rupees. The bond amount merely proves how trivial this case is. It must be noted that the bond amount is fixed depending on the circumstances of the case. This is an old tale of mere molestation. How does it matter if this is a tale of Ruchika. There are unnamed women who have gone her way, without making it to the headlines, long after.



A woman is molested every 26 minutes in this land. Every 34 minutes a woman is raped. Every 42 minutes a woman is sexually harassed. Every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped. Every 93 minutes a woman is killed. In Punjab alone a woman is raped every six hours. A woman is gang-raped every four days, and yet only 321 rape cases were reported to the police last year. It is all about statistics. It needs to be low. Complaints are not treated as First Information Report (FIR).

The statistics could be much higher. The occurrences of sexual atrocities are coffined in the four walls of the house for fear of victimization and cultural taboo.


Moral Curfew

We live in a RAPE culture. This has now become the norm of our land. There is a moral curfew imposed in our consciousness by the double standards we live in. The moral consciousness is a turncoat that is worn depending on which side of the fence we live. Our parents fail us. Our education system fails us. Our society fails us. These uproars need to be heard not every other decade. Ruchika was expelled from a prestigious convent school stating lack of character and poor morals. The molesters own daughter studied with her, and the school chose to favour the influential. When her brother (who was only 14 years of age) was charged for the sixth time for a spurious thefts, she blamed herself even more. That evening she put an end to her life.

The Language of Rape

Our language teaches us the culture of rape. We fuck the world. The world fucks us. It’s a poignant curse word. Used with passion. It is a favourite curse word of most. Used interchangeably with Screw. The word connotes every meaning of the English dictionary to the force with which it is uttered:

A simple machine of the inclined-plane type consisting of a spirally threaded cylindrical rod that engages with a similarly threaded hole.

A propeller with several angled blades that rotates to push against water or air.

The plethora of Indian “Rape” lingo are equally repelling: “behen chod”, “theri ma ki”, “randi”, “gaand ka ched”, and a countless more words that I shudder to spell here!
 
When such all-pervasive language pervades the grammar of our minds, how then can we have a world free of the act of rape?

The Rape of Innocence

Innocence is raped. Repeatedly. Over and over and over again. There is a moral degradation of our grand “Indian” values. The moral curfew has taken precedence due to the constant percolations of the patriarchal value system that constantly states that men are sexually aggressive and the female is passive and therefore she must be submissive.

Rape and molestation are traditional concepts of male aggression against woman’s sexuality. The definition of rape is when the woman is subjugated against her will. Men who molest children do it with a sedate glee, that their acts are an outcome of social convention, free will, and devoid from a threat of punishment. This drives them to perpetrate violence time over time.

Sexual attitudes and practices are often learnt and not instinctual (as most would believe). In this country, children are raised to believe that boys are stronger than girls, and therefore logically more sexually active and aggressive, while the woman must be passive and submissive. It is also assumed that men cannot control their desires and every woman is taught that she must be the responsible party in any sexual encounter. The rapist gives reasons to why he could not control himself. The woman is blamed for her character. For the clothes that she wears to arouses a man enough to leap on her. Or better still, that he was drunk and knew not what he was doing. Either which way, a woman is at the butt end of life.

Child Molesters Love Children

It is always a known member that turns predator. A friendly person, a kindhearted soul, an ever generous, giving individual – these are qualities that are needed to assure a child that there is no monster behind the benign smile. This smile has been with Rathore, since the time he called her to his office on the pretext of encouraging her to take up a tennis coach. She did not know that Rathore had intentions otherwise. He was after all the president of the Haryana Lawn Tennis and a man earnest to help her take her sport to the next level.

He did what every child molester does. Offer candy.

A Thought Every day

Not a day goes by without the thought of feeling that you are scanned by searching eyes, groping you, fantasising about you. The eyes follow you everywhere. You step in a crowded bus and you are rubbed, touched, felt and teased. You step in a rickshaw, and you may see exhibitionism at your face. There is no place that is free from these glares.

There is not another thought that does not surface- the fear of rape. Day after day. After day.

The curfew is imposed. The men are out and women are “curfew-ed".

~~*~~*~~*~~

Girl Child Day

A woman is to a man what a slave is to a master
                                                            - Plato

It may be that Plato articulated the master-slave relationship as he saw it. It may be that Plato believed it, for that was the norm. Centuries have passed. Woman is seen in realtion to man. Slavery is abolished. Or is it? Woman is the Second Sex.

 “...what particularly signifies the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other.” (Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex).

The conditioning of the Second Sex, the other, the female, takes place soon after birth. She may grow up without feeling the distinctions of her sex or her power to explore the world like the male child of her age, but as she becomes bolder, assertive, articulate, she falls trap of the gender conditioning. She then grows away from the realization of what she was when she started out. The memory of her A-Sexual being is long forgotten. She begins to align her life into the nuances of the masculine world.

The XX Chromo

A woman's world is fractured from the time of conception. It starts from the very stage when rapid cell division takes place. When the mutation of chromosomes begins, sex determination sets forth. The survival game begins. In the world of the XY, the chance of the XX surviving is bleak.

Gender inequality takes covert ways to bring about a masculine order. The dichotomy between the Male and female to survive kicks in – and mostly, even if the female foetus is far more resilient, the chances of survival in a patriarchal world is bleak. The female foetus, it is scientifically proved, has lesser chance of miscarriage then male foetus. But once born, survival becomes a wild game. Nutrition and health care is always given far lesser priority. The male child is fed better and more frequently. The girl child may not survive her third birthday.

Step into a rural village in India. Female infanticide – a systematic killing of the girl child at or soon after birth is prevalent. Even if a child survives the pangs of coming to birth, she may not survive her fifth birthday, as she has every chance of dying of malnutrition. Her brother gets all the attention and the nutrients to allow him to survive. It makes economical sense for the family to protect, nurture the male child – he will grow strong to be able to earn and provide for the family.

Missing Women – Gender Fixing

Over 100 million women are "missing" worldwide and it is argued that over 50 million women are missing in India alone. This gender fixing continues unabated. Dr Amartya Sen’s study of the missing women in a British Medical Journal in 1992 paved the way for a thorough examination on gender discrimination.

The female ratio in Karnataka is below 930 (per 1000 men) in places like Bijapur, Gulbarga, Bagalkot, Bidar, Belgaum, and Bangalore Rural. I make mention of this because I have seen this trend far closer in the areas of Bagalkot (Badami)when working on the flood relief activities.

Child marriage, unequal education opportunities, discrimination in employment, victimization due to caste and creed, persistent domestic violence, lack of property rights all adds up to the early exit of the woman. They perish also from lack of health care.

A New World Order

A woman can only be an agency of change for her own sex. Women who have arrived at the scene of change need to be the harbinger of more change. Independence to a woman is got through her purse. This can only be true, if education is made available to every girl child. Educate a woman, her entire family is educated. This broadens the horizon of the house she lives in. Thus the change peculates to the neighbourhood, to the village and then to the world.

Woman needs to be the agent of her own change.

To the girl child erased from the face of the earth...
To the woman who knows her then, and realizes her now...
To the woman of change...
To the woman who remains a child in her heart...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~*~*~*

Dalith Women March Towards Economic Empowerment

Anekal is a small taluk that is caught in the midst of the pompous development of the real-estate on the Sarjapur-Hosur stretch. Anekal is about 30 km from Bangalore. It is a place caught in time. A place within the Bangalore city limits and yet on the fringe of the “outer-rural-Bangalore”. It is a place caught in a limbo - neither here, nor there. Such is the predicament of the people of Anekal. But, what is interesting is that the women of Anekal define the quiet laid back, rustic dwelling into one that is full of strength and vigour from within.

Women Make Anekal

Women make Anekal. They group together to join in a collective mission to address the concerns that plague every village in India. Anekal is no exception to problems. There are 35 villages that come within the fold of the Anekal taluk. It is often that women exhibit strength and will to sustain their homes. This instinct takes them to embrace the world around them, and thus they evolve to be life givers to the community and the world.

Thus is the tale of many women in Anekal. Realizing that the region around them is disintegrating rapidly due the lack of educational opportunities for the children, poor health systems, debt ridden families, migration of people in search of work, the women felt a need to evolve ways to sustain themselves.

With this being a mission, women like Venkatlakshmi, Suguna, Rathnamma came together to start their own Ramabai Cooperative society. They named it, rather poignantly after the wife of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

The Ramabai Cooperative Society

What lies at the heart of the Ramabai Cooperative society is the unfailing vision to serve women and help groom children to a promising world. The consumerist society has flourished and so has the banking industry. In the name of being instruments of development, private banking has infiltrated rural India. The agenda of these banks are to thrust money into the hands of people and charging a hefty rate of interest.

Anekal has over the years witnessed the mushrooming of many such banks that lure people into taking loans, without making any effort in training or informing the villagers on the prudence of either money or banking. There are instances where these banks thrust cash of large denominations into the hands of people and document the reason for the loan as “to set up dairy”, even if the villager has not a single cow!

There have been several instances where families were given 5 lacks as loan. The family knew not what to do with such a large amount, that after spending 2 lacks, they realized that they were not in a position to utilize the remaining money. Thus going to the bank and returning the amount.

These incidents are common. Today most of the villagers are in perennial “chakra badi.”

After endless searching for what could be the best way to safe-guard the village from disintegrating into debts with private banks, the only solution that the women thought was to have their own bank. Anekal is further divided because there is a substantial population of daliths who face discrimination time and again.

The Women of Anekal – A Success Story

The Ramabai Cooperative society today has a total of 460 members. Since the time it was founded in May 2009, the bank has helped many children with tuition and college fees. It clearly is at a place where it wants to branch out into areas where it can grow from strength to strength. It now needs innovative methods to diversify in areas that can help solidify its ground and expand its reach of influence.

The women who make the cooperative are brave, resilient, courageous beckons of light.

Venkatlakshmi – A simple, yet strong willed woman, who mobilized the women of Anekal to come together to found the society. A dalith woman activist, who continues to fight for the emancipation of women, making it her one mission in life. She realizes that the only way to make a community healthy is through the concerted efforts in areas of education.

Today, she is fighting for the 350 youth who are in jails in Bangalore. These young men have been working as labourers in the real-estate areas of Bangalore, and with every land grabbing/illegal construction that is prevalent in Bangalore, these men have been caught between the land mafia and the big real-estate builders. These are men who have been used as pawns by the land mafia. Today the youth are lurking in the jails of Bangalore, and there is no help to get them out. Venkatalakshmi is now involved in seeking their release. This is a long battle, she says. And therefore, she knows that the only way to emancipate a community, a village is through education, vocational training and women and dalith empowerment and awareness of one’s rights.

Rathnamma—works as a volunteer with the society and renders a helping hand with the bank. She worked as a supervisor at the anganwadi . Today she mobilizes women into taking claim of their lives and is strengthening the cooperative with her enthusiasm and will.

Suguna—A woman who suffered much in the hands of a firm patriarchal society, was confined to the four walls of the house, forced to live a life of isolation. It took immense strength to break free of a oppressive household. She has re-claimed her life. She broke free from the shackles of dependence and being considered a non-entity. Today, she talks about her struggles to dalith women, motivating them to fight for right-living. She has made it her mission in life to serve and fight for women’s rights. She represents a calm strength and today joins hands with the cooperative society to work towards the betterment of the community.

...The men who work on one mission...

A special mention must be made here: There are many men too who have joined the movement with the common goal of creating an equal order.

Prabakar has been a social activist for dalith rights for many years now. He was the founder of the Human rights for Daliths and today believes that a lot of energy needs to be spent in hard core development activities, such as training the youth in different means of employment, health care for women and children.

Rajappa has worked in areas of land-rights for some years now, and today he joins hands with the women in consolidating their efforts in building the bank. He gives training to the women in book-keeping.

Kantakumar worked in areas like “right to water” campaigns, child rights, and in areas of slum rights and fighting for the urban poor. Today he devotes his time in making Anekal a land of promise.

Tomorrow – A Vision

To make an idea into a quantifiable action needs a dream. This dream has seen reality. To make reality a success, it needs nurturing hands. This is a long and ardours journey. Many years of toil and effort is the only sure way to realise the vision of a dream. This is the need of the hour.

The women of Anekal need a momentum to take their efforts into another level. Today they realise that there are a few burning issues that needs to be tackled, systematically but immediately. The areas are:

1. Education – The children of the community, without any sex discrimination needs education not just at the primary level, but at the secondary and collegiate level. The students who have dropped out of schools must be given a chance to take up education. Else, alternative methods of vocational training must be provided. The community must overcome the effects of poverty when sending the children to schools.

2. Health – The access to essential medicines, maternal, child and reproductive health care and health-related education needs to be integrated .

3. Dignity and pride of one’s identity -- The daliths in this country face systematic alienation and discrimination. The discrimination is at every level and often they are considered to be lesser. The dignity and pride in their own, of who they are, needs to be inculcated and reinforced. This no doubt takes years and years of effort, but awareness needs to be spread to the young children in schools and colleges that they need to be proud of their identity.

4. Livelihood – Due to the hierarchies of society and the lack of a through education system to help children of the community grow, most of the youth (both boys and girls) fall by the way side. The girls go to local factories to work, and the boys tend to hang around unemployed. The need therefore is to teach vocational training, develop skills or alternative employment.

AID Bangalore Join Hands in Change

AID is rendering its support in the vision and mission of people of Anekal. Headstreams and AID Bangalore, together with the men and women of Anekal are brazing together to accomplish the five most important areas of equitable development.

In the several meetings with the leaders, it was decided to firstly get the required data on:

• Coming up a mission statement and a vision/roadmap of one and five years.

• Data to establish the number of school dropouts, the requirements of the youth through interactions with them, the number of high-school, pre-university students so that there is a road map to taking them to the next level.

• Have further discussions with the community on ways to give the ideas that have originated from originated from the field (revenue generating like dairy farming) an impetus.

~*~*~*~

Down to Dust – A Crumbling Journey of the Historical City of Hampi

Bricks have crumbled down. The mud that heald the bricks has melted in the rain. The stones lay bare. Pile on pile. The house abandoned. The sky suddenly looks bare and clear. The levelled houses now enable you to look beyond the horizon without stretching your neck.

I have walked for hours. Into deserted villages. Not a human being in sight. I see houses have been made secure homes of arcane has weaved a wonderful webs from crumbled wall to wall.

I take pictures one after another. I pause. I click.  The floods have just ripped houses. The inners of the house lays exposed as if the intestines of a living being are ripped and pulled open. The blue doors could be seen from afar. It stands precariously across stones. There is not a sight of a person anywhere near. If I did manage to see a stray person, I’d stop and speak with them. It was a relief to know that the houses started to crumble in the day, and before the houses could collapse, evacuation arrangements were being made.

                               

This may have been used to cradle a child. The child is not seen anywhere. Nor the mother. The saree hangs from the ceiling.

The coal has gone cold.

 This house lies abandoned. I walk into the house, looking around. I sit on the floor for sometime, and envision how life would have been spread, should things were equal. I know it is unsafe to walk into houses that could collapse further, due to the slightest movement around it. I look around, and the bumpkins catch my attention. This must have been the only food in the house.

The pumpkins must have been stored for consumption for a later date. Despite the hunger and destruction, it looks like this has been safe. It also shows that no one in the village thought to take it away for themselves.

Haunted.  A thin filter of Cobweb has curtained the house.

I cannot resist entering these “once upon a time” dwelling. I want to see how it feels to see the world from inside the house. All I can see are the stray rays of the sun filtering into the crumbling house. I see more shadows than clear light.
The Hanuman Temple stands amidst all the destruction and the fury of nature.

Hanuman is worshipped by villagers as a protective boundary guardian for their village. He is a god who is untouched by the menacing effects of Shani ( the god of ill-luck and vengeance)

Hanuman Stands at peace
The god a mute spectator to all suffering around

It is ironical that the temple has been untouched with any of gods fury.
The people of the village had only recently
built the temple.

All the worship
had gone into building the temple strong
Only if their house were built with similar faith.
There is gloom all around me. Stillness is all pervasive. My steps stagger to go into the village. I have walked long. I stand and pause. I look around. I put my camera aside for a while. There sure cannot be two pictures of the same kind. But, it’s still all the same. The mood is still unsettling.

I suddenly see colour.

My eyes look further. I see an old man walking with a stick in his hand. He stops.
I reckon, it is a difficult walk down memory lane for him. That is the only pink I see around me.

I try to catch the contrast in my camera.

He walks quietly. Slowly.

Minding his steps. He takes great care not to look at the ruins around him.

My eyes are fixed at him, until he disappears...                    

Muted Silence

The man in the pink turban is slowly swallowed into the colossal crumbling walls...

Two Little Children Lost in the Crumble

I notice that I have been followed by two little children.
They must be now all too familiar with “outsiders” coming to see their village. I wonder what they think of “curious” onlookers like me. I see the same curiosity in their eyes...

I am almost stunned at the beauty of these women. It is afternoon and I walk up to them for a chat. There is silence. We gaze together at what our eyes can reach. Nothingness.

They ask me if I have had my lunch. They offer me lunch. But I politely decline.

I know that if they serve me lunch, then they will go on an empty stomach that evening. The women have managed to salvage a little onion from their fields. This is the only house that has stood the test of the floods. The women tell me that they were saved only because the house is newly constructed.

Innocence and Experience

I love being with children. They took an instant liking to me. I felt one in their company.

The more I spoke to them, I realized the more students came out from their classrooms. The smiles on their faces, despite the difficult times were the hope I carried with me. I did not have the heart to ask them about the struggles that they would have known or seen through their elders. I just stuck to asking them what they study in school. Do they like coming to school. Most of the children had lost their books in the floods.

Each of the children want to be photographed. And in all of the noise and giggle and fun around me, I try to capture some!

A midday meal brings children to school. They eat a little and take the rest for the other sibling at home.

The classroom has ben converted into a make-shift dwelling. Here is a mother who was rescued from the floods and delivered her child in the school.

Tinned dwelling

Myopia

The victims of the  2007 flood need attention. They  are a forgotten lot. Their needs are as important as anyone elses.

These people affected in a similar catastrophe in 2007 are living a life in a limbo. They continue to live in make shift, tined, temporary shelter. There is no way the civic authorities are going to listen to the demands, now that there is one more on their plate. These men and women continue to wait for compensation and alternative houses.

This woman (a widow, a dalith, a labourer...call her what you will...) has been waiting for many years now to move away from the tinned shelter that she now calls home.

Will it be an endless wait for her?

BADAMI - A Land Flooded

Badami is a historical place. It is a tourist destination that boasts of a by-gone civilization rich and grand. Just as much as there is grandeur in the historical heritage, there is a stark contrast to the life down the hills of the rock cut temples.

It is a place with sharp contrast.

The 2009 floods have hardly been a leveller as death is always eulogised to be. Here the floods that brought down houses, uprooted lives, displaces villages has just about levelled the land to create a deep chasm.
It is over a month now, since nature showed its prowess over a poor agrarian area of the Bagalkot district of North Karnataka. I travelled down to Badmai on October 23-25th 2009 to help with the relief and development activities.

BADAMI

This is one of the worst hit places and even though there may not be visible sights of the floods, one needs to move inward into areas like Maneri , Khyad, Ingalagudi, Kittali, Sulla, Hebbali, Mumaraddikop, Jakanur villages. These are villages that are dotted around the Malaprapha river. When the river overflowed, it broke the banks, and flooded the stretch of inhabited land. People who lived around the river banks.

This massive destruction could have been averted – as these places see periodic outbursts of the river – and nothing was done. Yet another year of massive destruction – where if the government does not take the “re-location”, ”movement” of the villages does not take place before the next monsoon, in all likelihood, history will repeat itself.

People who were affected with a similar catastrophe in 2007 are living a life in a limbo. They continue to live in make shift, tined, temporary shelter. There is no way the civic authorities are going to listen to the demands of these men and women who are waiting for compensation and alternative houses.

The 2009 victims have every chance of living a life like the 2007 victims of floods.

The problems that the villages encounter are multi-fold. Though the village visits that were conducted, extensive amount of time was spent speaking to the victims and these were the areas that need to be addressed immediately:

• Immediate relief and rehabilitation

• Providing basic amenities to people living in temporary places like government schools

• Providing “temporary” shelter that can be “lived in”

• Providing land in areas that the government will allocate

• Providing alternative employment to people

• Restrict the movement of landless labourers to places like Mangalore

• Search for methods to introduce the NREGS programs

• Provide sanitation facilities – which is non-existent in these areas

• Bring relief to farmers and the landless people who are in financial debt

• Ensure the education system is functioning in these areas ( as now the government schools have been places of temporary shelter and storehouses of relief material)

• Ensure that the relief materials that are horded by a few people in the village is release to the needy

• Look at the needs of the women, children, widows and the old

• Provide education and alternative employment methods to the youth

• Loss of life-stock and crops – need ways to revive and compensate for the loss

• Co-ordinate with civic authorities to ensure the rehabilitation is done in a smooth and systematic manner, where every individuals needs are met

• Provide assistance to the 2007 victims to get their permanent houses allocated

• In the interim provide the basic necessities of health and sanitation

Statistics that Speak for Itself in Badami

• 9679 houses in Badami have completely collapsed

• 429.08 lacks has been allocated

• 15580 houses have been partially destroyed

• 19 villages have been completely shifted

• 20 villages in the Maneri Village need partial shifting

• 2121 temporary housing is being looked at RADR

• Total number of deaths in Bagaloke district is 36

• Total number of deaths in Badami alone: 06.

• Compensation has not been given to all. It is varied in different villages and can sometimes be perceived as being discriminatory

• In Maneri Village compensation is distributed to a total of 25 houses where 37, 000 is given for only 10 houses that have suffered extensive damage, and 7000 for 15 houses that has partial damage. It must be noted that the definition of “partial damage” can be disputed.

Observations and Action Items

The cultural, political, social, and economic undercurrents make the region complex and the rehabilitation effort is surly going to be slow, and often meted with sever hurdles. This is, to say the least, going to be time consuming and the progress will be slow. But, nonetheless, the change has to come from within than without. Local NGOs need to work closely with the community and integrate each of the development work such that it is inclusive of all people, devoid the distinction of caste and creed.

The constructive methods of bringing change is hard and slow, but can be achieved though systematic effort. Each of the observations are also action items that needs to be chunked into activities that need to be implemented to bring about a systematic change.

Some of the observations that can prove to be bottlenecks in expediting relief and create an equal order are:

• Caste hierarchies – Caste hierarchies play a crucial part in the fragment of the region. The daliths are the lowest and often the most deprived of the people. They suffer perennial difficulties not just through sever discrimination, but even aid trickles in slow.

• The distinction because of caste means that there is a distinction between the rich and the poor – often the rich are the upper caste. The tragedy has not been a “leveller” if one can call “death and destruction” a leveller. This has just expanded the divide furthermore.

• The allocation of land and the building of tinned temporary shelters are automatically going to be allocated by the cast hierarchy – often the lower caste getting the last of the facilities

• Women and children continue to be the marginalised. Dalith women are the “marginalized of the marginalized”.

• The daliths have no land to call their own. They work for everyday wages and some are bonded labourers in the hands of the rich farmers

• The men toil in the fields of the farmers for a wage amount of 40 rupees per day, and the women are paid only Rs 20.

• Most of the people therefore prefer to migrate to places like Mangalore where atleast the everyday labour amount is fixed to 200 and above.

• The people are in severe debt.

• The quality of education is poor, and one can see very few children who have finished 10th standard. Most of them would not have even stepped into a school.

• Heath and sanitation is poor and this is the carriers of disease and can have drastic impact in the health of the region. There is much to be done in this region. A systematic awareness program needs to be done, involving the health departments and other government bodies to change the mindset of people.

• Child marriages are prevalent. This needs a systematic understanding of the socio-economic –cultural understanding and steady effort needs to be done to curtail it.

• Alternative employment methods need to be defined to help the landless labourers with alternative employment.

• The youth (both boys and girls) need counselling and training in order that they are hopeful of a better life ahead. The dreams that the children have is bleak. Most just dream of following their father’s footstep. Some who want to differ, dream of becoming a driver.

• Women’s health needs attention.

• Civic and government authorities sometimes how apathy and political ill-will of helping the needy.

• People need to be mobilised to fight for their rights.

• People need to be trained on the different methods they can work to get the government to deliver on the tall promises it made.

• The 2007 flood victims need attention – even though they are a forgotten lot – their needs are as important as anyone else.

Caste Discrimination and Hostility

• The incidents of discrimination and hostility towards reaching out to the poorest members of the community continues. On Thursday (22 Oct 2009) when distribution was happening in Badami taluk, a youth from the community (Mallesh) had helped Swarna and the team members in identifying the poorest and most vulnerable households. The 'village elders' took offence to this, and fined Mallesh Rs.500 and asked him to apologise publicly before the community members. He has now made up his mind to leave the village along with his wife and father and migrate to another place (Mangalore) where they will work as construction workers. We offered to find him another job or an opportunity to work with us. But he had made up his mind on moving. He wanted to earn enough to educate his sisters.

• As always, here too it is being increasingly seen that the dalits and the most vulnerable households are the last (if at all) in accessing the relief materials sent to each village. Distributions of such materials have been temporarily stopped. It was decided that the distributions would be continued once the people moved to the temporary shelters, as only the most affected people (in most cases at least) would opt to move there, while those had some means of survival/ housing would continue to live in the villages.

• We have prepared a survey format to monitor the facilities and provisions for basic amenities and also to identify issues pertaining to health, education, migration, livelihood, gender, women and children in temporary shelters.

• It is planned that the above survey will be carried in all areas wherever we can reach out. The format will also be shared with other organisations and groups so that they can effectively monitor these aspects in their areas and also notify the authorities as and when issues arise. At a later stage, a joint meeting of all the organisations could be called to identify issues which need to be taken up for group advocacy.

• People have received compensation from Govt. through cheques for damaged houses - Rs.37,000 for severe damages and Rs.7,000 for other damages. There were lots of complaints regarding the assessment. We conducted a rapid survey in Manneri to determine cases where people did not receive adequate compensation. We found 7 cases which needed to be reviewed. One observation was that most households had severe losses as water had entered the houses (the floors were still damp and unsuitable for sleeping/ storing) and destroyed the floors, household items, food, equipments, etc. These were not taken into consideration while deciding on the compensation.

• We conducted preliminary meetings with youth in Manneri and Kyada to understand the sources of livelihoods and their plans for the future, as migration was seen as an inevitable part of their livelihood strategy. Youth from both areas responded by forming teams to explore possible vocations like cattle rearing, diary, poultry, setting up photo studio, etc. A longer term rehabilitation action is slowly emerging with these small actions.

• The people from Maneri are still hesitant to approach the government to express their grievances and concerns at their needs not being met. This requires effort to mobilize the people to fight for their rights. This also needs to come from within, than without. This needs a few meetings with the villages to motivate them, help them with strategies, and give them the physiological assurance to surpass the difficult days ahead.
 

Plenty to be Done

•  I am co-ordinating with Swarna Bhat and Naveen from Head Streams to chalk out a concrete plan to see how the funds that have come until now can be utilized. The thought that one should hold a little while longer, and spend the money judiciously once the people of the villages in Badami occupy the makeshift camp is a common understanding. That would also mean that the relief supplies will dwindle for the people, and as the months pass, getting the essentials may become difficult.
  
• We as a “Unit” need to help communities generate their own idea of “alternative” employment, or alternative methods to sustain themselves – the money can come in handy here.
  
•  Women’s health, education, and vocational training for the youth is a long term plan that needs to be rolled out in the months to come (some funds will be allocated for this).
  
• Financial help is also needed when the permanent land/shelter is allocated to the villagers.
  
• Provide help to the villagers to get land rights, residence proofs, and implementing government schemes.
  

If you want to join in the collective efforts to bring a smile on the faces of the flood victims, all you need to do is send me a note.

For a better, equal world...

~*~*~*~*

Re-Counting the Days Post IT - From the Pages of My Life

Please See: This is a chronology of my “NEW WORLD”. As I have taken experiences that are recorded from the noting of my diary, I'd like this to be in the same format.

***...***...***

OCTOBER 18th, 2009

Bangalore
Day THREE

I hope I can survive the next couple of months with the little kitty I have made. I do not know how much my final settlement from the company will get me. I need to buy a laptop and that will take a substantial amount of my savings.

I need to now calculate how much I spend. I need to ask “is this really what I need?” If the answer is NO, then I put down the item, or delete it from my mind. If the answer is yes, then I need to ask myself, can this wait for a month. If the answer for this is also yes, then I condition my mind to telling “if this can wait for a month, then maybe you do not need it”.

I need some physical activity. The only sure way is to carry a bucket of water down the two flights of stairs and wash my car. I save a good 300 rupees by doing this job myself. This money can come in handy for other things – paying my electricity bills, or a portion of the maintenance.

When I walk down with the bucket of water, trying hard not to spill the water on the ground, I am aware of the eyes that are scanning me, from hidden curtains. I walk with pride. I bend down and splash the water on my red Danu Rani (I call her my Ferrari). I see women from across the building stop to take notice, when they are drying faded bed sheets on walkway grills. The men with bursting belly look from the meshed windows. They have never seen a sight like this – a woman who wears a bob, wearing jogging tracks, shining her car. I am sure they marvel at this sight. For you seldom find such a sight to behold in a dusty neighbourhood, when all you do is call “Security! Gadi saf karo.”

***...***...***


OCTOBER 17th, 2009

Bangalore

Day TWO

I arrest all my thoughts. I read. I read when I know I must not spend too much time over a trail of thought. One thought must lead to another. Repetition of the same thought leads to nothing. Despair. I receive messages from friends and unexpected people, whose number I do not recognize on my cell. Some messages read “Heard you quit CS. Bravo.” “You always wanted to do this for some time now. Congratulations!”. “What a way to begin on a new day. Happy Diwali”.

I continue to read Alex Haley’s Roots. Kunta’s struggle continues. His memory of the past begins to fade in time. Childhood friends blur out of vision. I drift. I continue to read.

***...***...***
OCTOBER 16th, 2009

Bangalore

Day ONE

It is Dewali. I feel a sense of relief that I do not have to think of the work that is on my plate. The endless technical authoring that no matter how hard you try to work to get it as good as you can, the corporate jargon is thrown at you from people sitting is cosy cabins with a halo of superiority.

I feel relief that now I do not have to try hard to please haloed beings who lack the fundamentals of good human beings. I feel relief that now I do not have to sheepishly smile at the contradictions I see in haloed speech.

I bury my head in my pillow. A little longer. I know I have walked out with equanimity to reclaim my connection with the world. There is a intermingling of memories – some unsavoury, little unpleasant, few absurd, but mostly fun filled, enthusiastic, vibrant criss-crosses.

I thank the halo that circled the mighty brain of grandeur. If not for that, I would not be here.

I thank my many fears – for without that burning nervousness in my naval, I will not know myself. I will not discover my being. I will not evolve.

I need to step out to meet Prasanna to discuss where and what I want to do, should I decide to join the Association of Indian’s Development. I have a rather detached meeting with him. I cannot bring my emotions to it. I am not emotionally stirred by an issue that I want to make my life’s mission. I know a part of me is dead. I need to soak up the feeling of emptiness. When that is done, my emotions will revive. I tell Prasanna, I am unsure of the areas I want to work in. May be education. May be women’s health. But it must be hard core development work. I know these are vast subjects. I am terrified. I have quit an industry, not knowing what area I want to plunge into. I tell myself, I want to explore. The most brilliant of men and women never knew what they want till they die. I cannot call myself brilliant by any means! I just know that I want to be an apprentice in the areas of development. A true apprentice learns the lessons hard. Sure. When the apprentice masters her art, she would have found her anchor.

I know my reading and awareness of the world around me are lessons of 'pre-school' that will come in handy. I will now soil my hands as I slowly and surely graduate to becoming an informed person in social issues that mean much to my world, my country.

The day has not been easy. It’s been scary. A horror movie being played in slow motion. I want tomorrow to be different. Clear. Unabated of fear.

I lay down. Close my eyes. Memories of the last few hours of walking out of the company flood me.

My diary reads: “The day I left the C Comp, I saw most people in my group and in the Toastmasters club being dewy eyed and sad that I was going – but that is the only way I would want to go. Leave behind a mark ...I have learnt from each one around me and that has made me richer...in the meanwhile, I will try and assimilate as much as I can of life...”

 

***...***...***

OCTOBER 15th, 2009

Bangalore

The Day I Walked Out of Familiar

October 15th was when the curtains fell. The days of IT were over. I came home not sure how life would play out. I had to come home. I could not linger out in the streets of dusk for long. Friends who thought I would be missed, stuck on as much as the evening had to offer. Bidding goodbye is never easy. I hold back emotions. I stay detached. I allow a thought to linger in my mind. I hold back a trace of thought to last a little longer. Then, quietly, I do not allow language to persist. I try to go blank. I enjoy the quite wind kissing my face. I be.

I have the fear of uncertainty that grips me. I am unsure if the world I am about to step in is a world I will live to enjoy. The habits of my mind cannot help to ponder over counter arguments that i must remain in the world of IT – where everything is got. Money. Money gives status. Especially for a single woman like me – it gives me my pride. It gives me the notion of success. It gives my parents the feeling that despite my choices of defiance against systems, I am comfortable in my existence.

They do not know that it is no more of comforted existence for me. Anymore. And yet, despite these brilliant arguments, I have voices of trepidation. I need to succeed. The fear of failure looms large in me.

I know that October 16th is Deewali. Tomorrow is a new day. It’s a long weekend. I tell myself, I’ll sleep till the sun burns the human skin. I drive home. I increase the volume of the pulsating music to stop my mind from oscillating between confident hope and despair. I tell myself I’ll record every day that goes past my life. Then when I am, many years hence, I can know where I was. Once.

October 15th isn’t over. Until I have come to a quite house of bookshelves and Madubani paintings. Until I try and record the events of the day. Until I have put my head delicately into my pillow. Until my eyes close. Drift. Breathe. Slowly. Awake. Sleep again. Breathe. Until the dogs in the street stop barking. Until I tell, hush...

~*~*~*~*~

You are.

It is  not what name others call you that matters,

But what name you  respond to

that truly detrmines who

you are.

~*~*~

- Swahili saying

A Journey in Mind

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

~*~*~

The day approaches. I am about to tie-up my high heels of the corporate world, to ware my sneakers. The high heels were for an elite world. I need my walking shoes, to be sure that the soul wears out silently when I firmly step on the earth. The delicate heals renders no balance in rugged streets of life.

I am about to move to a world beyond marble corridors, exquisite wall to wall carpets that are vacuum cleaned every hour by janitors who are always seen hunched at their work….

As I tie the laces of my "walkers", to set out, I see the gates opening to a “new” world. I approach the gate and push it open. I am drowned by a flood of light. There is nothing but the blinding light. I close my eyes almost instinctively. I draw my hand towards the beam, almost to stop it from blinding me. I stand momentarily out of my pulsating heart – out of a vision.

Before long, as I open my eyes, I see I am in a new world….

This probably is THE most surreal moment of my life as I am about to take the flight of suspended descend down the cliff. This will be a flight that brings to argument a thought that has stirred my deep consciousness in discovering who I am. In the suspended animation, I leave behind a familiar world, to ask myself what motives govern this journey. What is the purpose of life, when I know I am a mere atom in this cosmos?

As I go through these surreal moments, trying to tell myself, that each trail of thought will be recorded, I thought I would share the mappings of my mind – to know how how far I have come, when at the end of one road, that leads to an unknown path.

The surreal recounting has lead me to these brilliant articles. It is a sheer co-incidence that such writings should come my way, almost as if the world was egging me on in putting to practice a thought that has constantly lingered in my subconscious mind.

Shine sent me these links stating “it makes me think about how right your decision is” of making the choices to a “strong life”. There is always more to gain and grow through living a life from the so-called “pragmatic”, “safe”, seemingly “secure” life that most lead. Very few dare to take the path that looks bleak from afar.

For the trepidation that I feel within me, for the strength that I possess inside out, for the times to come, where I will now engage my intellect in the political, social, cultural fabric with the issues that wages in this country, I know I will be where life belongs. Elsewhere.

For that, I leave the links here, so that I can come back to it, when in need.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/courage-to-live-consciously.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-buckingham/what-does-a-strong-life-l_b_309454.html

Knowing I carry hope as I reach the burley gates…I share the possibility to you, my dear friends…who have left baby imprints on the skin of my life’s journey…

To you ALL….

Will remain the SAME!

Ever,

The Bohemian

~~~*~~~