Middle-men ecosystem

In India, one thing I quickly found out is that the ecosystem is built in such a way that unless you do your own thing, you will be bleeding money. Take visa applications for example. All my life, I have done my own visa applications (and I have done it many times, thanks to my foreign student/worker status as well as my love for travel). US visa applications from Kolkata are easy. I have driven to Washington DC at 4 am to reach the German consulate on time. I have driven all day to apply for a German visa in Chicago, struggling with finding parking more than driving. I have traveled for 8 hours in a bus to go to Berlin for a US visa. Long story short, I am used to spending a lot of time to get a visa.

Back in India, I have an upcoming conference in Canada and need to apply for a visa. The travel agent my employer hires assures me that they will take care of everything. That, they do. They do the paperwork and get me appointment dates. They compile the application together, book me a car, and come to my office to give me my file. All this looks great on paper. But here is the catch!

I don’t need a car, I can take an Ola/Uber. Yet, they hire a car for 4 hours that will wait till I submit my visa paperwork and bring me back on campus. It roughly costs 1,500 INR. I could have taken a cab for less than 150 INR round trip. But they do not let me do that.

They tell me that “their man will be waiting in front of the Canada consulate.” I am still not clear what the role of this man was. All he did is take the stairs with me to the second floor office, hold my bag (although I asked him not to), and wait for a few hours till I came back. Yes, I needed a photocopy in the meantime, which I could have totally done on my own. I ask him to go home but he assures me that his travel agent office is next door and he is happy to wait. Till date, I still don’t know what his job was, but he would have taken a commission in the process.

And yes, he put me in some premium waiting lounge without asking me. All that premium lounge does is seclude you from the suffering of the common man. While everyone waits in the common area, only six people get to wait in a special room. They ask you for tea and coffee, which I never needed anyway. They have a bowl of unhealthy chocolates and cookies in front of you to munch on. They assure you with bold letters on that application you signed that up to six sheets of photocopy is free for people in the premier lounge. How much does 6 pages of photocopying need? I am used to carrying 2 extra copies of all documents anyway. I still had to wait there for 2 hours. The man whose role I did not know assured me that I would have had to wait for five hours otherwise. I was half ready to stay there for a few more hours and see if his claims were true. Oh, and they charged me 2,000+ INR for access to the premier lounge I never wanted in the first place.

You might be wondering what a miserly, complaining woman I am. Yes, I am careful about my money, that money came from my grant and I have a limited budget. The visa itself cost me 14,000 INR, but with a car and a middle-man and a premier lounge, I will be shelling close to 5k INR more in my estimate. I watch my money like a hawk, and I am proud of it. And other than money, I also have problems with the lack of transparency. The travel agent I worked with never told me about these add-ons and the amount I have to shell out in the process. If you are not careful, you end up wasting a lot of money. The ecosystem is built in such a way that there will be a middle-man at every node asking for money.

It has been a sharp learning curve for me the past 6 weeks. Surviving and thriving in India takes a different mindset. I am very happy that I am back for many reasons. But I have quickly learned to get my alert radar very active. Every person I do business with, I clearly ask them how much money they will charge and how many people will be getting a share of that money. Talking about money is somewhat of a taboo in our culture, but screw all that. I have quickly learned to unlearn a lot of my prior programming. I know that if I have to survive here for the next 30-35 years, I will be encountering a lot of middle-men after my money. The only way I can deal with it is by keeping my alert radar at high levels all the time and doing as much of my paperwork as I can on my own.

PS: On a different note, I am considering moving away from blogging. I have found other platforms on social media that are way more interactive. The only reason I keep writing here is sheer nostalgia for having owned this space for 13 years now. I started blogging way before I knew of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Now, I have found all those platforms and no longer know what I am doing here.

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No kidding

I overheard two women in a conversation, telling each other how many training sessions they have done over the summer. “Two,” said each. Then, one of them added, “Person so-and-so has done nine.” She paused briefly before adding, “She has no children, she has all the time to travel for these trainings.”

I flinched at the multiple assumptions being made here, not to mention the snarky, sarcastic tone. How many times have people assumed that I will do something because I do not have children? How many times have people seen me neck-deep in work and flippantly attributed it to childlessness? I work seven days a week, I go to work on the weekends too, and I have no hesitation or guilt about that. When people are traveling or entertaining friends, I spend my weekend conducting research. I do it because I treat my work as a passion, as my identity, and not as a 9-to-5 engagement. I take ownership of my work, treat my work as a means to a better, independent and intellectual lifestyle. I watched exactly one movie at a theater last year, I have not made any friends in the new city, and I am okay with that (I have other things to do with my time now). I don’t put in the extra hours merely because I do not have children. I could be pursuing a dozen different things, including sleeping, if I did not feel so strongly about my work.

I have often witnessed people looking down on others who haven’t prioritized procreation as their vocation. I pick on these implicit biases a little better than the next person, having been at the receiving end of it many times. Notice how an ambitious woman will be shamed because she has no children (often by other women), but not an ambitious man. A man who undertook nine trainings in a summer, children or no children, will be revered, treated as a role model, and depicted as an exemplary professional. Only a woman is a childless freak if she has enough energy to pursue the same amount of work.

There is more to observe and learn from the world around us than there is from fictitious, unrealistic movies. See if your married friends who once hung out with you are treating you differently, do not invite you home anymore, but are still hanging out with other married friends. You need to get better friends in that case. See how advertisements around you are sharing implicit messages about only one kind of life as an ideal, happy life, the one where you have a spouse, a pet and multiple children. Insurance ads. Home ads. Toothpaste ads will often show large, happy families smiling together, and so will cooking oil ads (with often the woman cooking). It looks like single people do not brush their teeth and do not cook for themselves. My two cents- don’t put your money where you are being marginalized.

See if your workplace is giving you job duties they are not giving your peers who have families. See if you are repeatedly being made a victim of micro aggression. When your boss asks you to stay in office till 9 pm, but not your peer who has children, there is a problem. When you are asked to travel at odd hours but your peers are not, you need to step back and voice your concerns. It is easy to assume that women who do not have children have all the time in the world and are hence available to take on extra responsibility at work (often without adequate compensation). Keep your eyes and ears open for such discrimination. You do not owe anyone an explanation about how you spend your time at home, why you spend your weekends working (or not working), or how lucky you are to have all the extra time in the world (an ill-conceived assumption at the least). You could be caring for the elderly, you could be grappling with a personal setback, and even if you are not, you do not owe anyone an explanation.

If people are talking about you in a different, derogatory way because you do not have children (or telling you that you will not understand because you do not have a child), if people at work are taking liberties and giving you extra work at odd hours because you do not have children, if your friends are making less of you or your interests because you do not have children, we have a problem.

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50 shades of patriarchy

There is a uniformed cop at the gate of CCU (Kolkata's international airport) who checks each person's passport and airplane ticket before letting them inside the airport. Since my father is standing ahead of me, the cop checks my father's passport and ticket first and nods an approval. Then the cop looks at my passport and ticket, looks visibly confused for a few seconds, looks at my father and then me, and turns around again and hands my passport to my father. In a split second, I know exactly what is happening. I grab my passport back from my father and say loud enough for the cop to hear, "My passport needs to be with me, not anyone else."

I wonder what you will call it. My father thought that it was misjudgment and confusion on the cop's part. Same last name and same destination is usually for married partners (especially if the destination is Bangkok), but I am not sure one gets to see many father-daughter duos headed there (without a mother or a son-in-law in picture). However, I am convinced that if this scenario was randomly repeated, say, a thousand times, one would observe a binary trend one could confidently predict given the power of numbers. That trend is not confusion or misjudgment, as my father thinks. It is called patriarchy. It happens when I take my father to a vacation, yet my passport is handed back to him because he is assumed to be my caregiver. It happens when I treat a male friend to lunch, yet the waiter comes and confidently hands over the check/bill to my male friend.

Patriarchy is not necessarily always practiced by men. This cop happened to be a woman. 

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Love is color blind

A grandma was fondly showing me pictures of her newborn grandson.

A professor grandma. A researcher grandma. A grandma who has spent many years working on feminism. Black history. Black feminism. 

I don't even know half the names of Black writers and activists she talks about. Excited, I scribble down the names. I am going to look them all up.

Between such conversations, grandma fondly shows me more pictures of her newborn grandson.

I am willing to overlook the fact that she just reiterated, rather unnecessarily, that her grandson is a US citizen. Others do it too, the ones who need constant validation that they fit in, but she is different. She is a professor grandma. She has somehow earned my respect. No human is without biases. I have mine too. 

And then, the unthinkable happens.

She says, "Look at my grandson. He has different colored hair than all of us. Since he was born in the US, he has brown hair. Isn't that amazing?"

My make-believe world of role modeling professor grandma comes crashing down. I look closer at the picture. Not a wisp of brown hair. I also happen to know the parents. Not a wisp of brown hair from there either. Is it my ageing eyesight? I wonder what other strange ideas brew in grandma's imagination. Grandma does not live in the US by the way. Grandma lives in Kolkata. Is love that "color blind"?

Genetics died a mocking death that day.

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When success sucks

A recent conversion with a colleague hinged on women in academia who are single. Although this conversation was based on anecdotal evidence, I would love to collect data to examine some evidence-based trends someday.

Back to the conversation, we felt that there are far more single women than men in academia- women who have faculty or non-faculty careers, women who are highly educated. In the US, I see so many women academics roughly my age who are single. Conversations with more men (those who are highly educated as well) confirm what some of them want- women with jobs but not necessarily careers, women who will have the mindset to shift cities or countries or continents or careers. That is why, perhaps, I see so many Indian men making their annual pilgrimage to get married to someone living in India, but the reverse is so rare- a guy moving with the uncertainty that he may or may not become gainfully employed in the US right away. Count the number of women you know who got married and hence moved to the US, and the number of men who did the same. Not to mention that we shared sad, yet funny stories about women who have been called "too educated," "too independent," "too liberal," and "too ambitious." The same traits like ambition, independence, and education that make men attractive may not have the same magic effect on women. Then again, we are speaking anecdotally here, and trends always have outliers. So for every ten or hundred women who have experienced similar things, one of them will always say that the world is not as bad as we think and they did not have any problems finding their suitable boy or having to choose between a suitable degree and a suitable boy.

This reminded me of a fictitious short story I had written sometime back.

The matrimonial ad said- “PhD, research professor, based in the US.”

“How many responded?” she asked.

“Three hundred,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“How many responded?” he asked.

“Three,” she said. “A schizophrenic, an unemployed man, and you.”

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Questioning the mass tags

"Thanks Bogola Kanti Basu for nominating me. Let's start a game. I am an Indian gentleman and I love to wear lungis. I love lungis. Silky, flowing lungis touching my skin in fifty shades of colors, giving me a taste of freedom, liberating me and making me feel twice the man that I am. I am tagging some of those men who I think look excellent in lungis. I would request them to post their pictures in lungis and nominate/tag some of their man friends to post their pics in lungis and nominate others. Thus we would carry on the game. You can tag me also if you wish. Please copy-paste the text on your timeline along with your photo. It is not mandatory to play, but I shall be happy if you join. Come on dashing gentlemen, just do it."

The "instruction manual"-like tone of this post aside, this is what gender equity looks like when we talk of awards and nominations and playing tag on Facebook. It's a different story that I have never known a man who would start a thread like this.

In school, I never understood why (many) girls always went to restrooms in groups and giggled there. I need my privacy and the last thing I want is company in the restroom. And now, I don't understand why it is mostly women who indulge in these herd-based self-glorifying tag ceremonies. Sari wearing tags. Motherhood tags. Single women tags. Handbag tags. Wearing a sari is great, and so is being a mom. Why glorify it into a narcissistic obsession of elevating it to a mass-level ceremony? This probably stems from a deep-rooted conditioning (most) women have, where they derive their worth from how they look- the clothes and jewelry they wear (even modern women with careers), the makeup they put and the way they raise their children. I use the word “they” and not "we" on purpose, since I do not identify with them. What is the need for playing tag anyway? And why do men never do it (unless it involves pouring ice cold water on yourself)? Book-reading and movie tags are still useful since I get to know about new books and movies at the end of the day. But why should I care about the saris you wore and the makeup you used?

On a similar note, far more women post pictures of their wedding and continue to do so than men. I am not talking about the outliers. And none of the tags going viral involve career achievements, incidents of personal courage, or overcoming a disability. I wonder why?

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Fruits of labor

Imagine a life where the only responsibility you have, even if for a few weeks, is to buy seasonal fruits from the market while returning home. This started when I got my first job in 2005. Although earning, I was not expected to contribute anything at home. So I started buying fruits on my way back, as much as I desired for the entire family (although I always ate the lion's share). Kalojaam (blackberry), jaamrul (Java apple), lichu, safeda, you name it. I would happily come home, two large bags of fruits in hand. With my meager salary, I had never felt richer.

The trend continues. No matter whether I am in a bus or taxi, I always get off at the local market to buy fruits while returning home. I get on my haunches and hand-pick fruits. This time, I spotted a particular woman seller in between a bunch of men. Being appreciative of this, I started chatting up with her.

"Kalojaam koto kore?" How much? I asked.

"Ten rupees for 100 grams." she said.

Fruit sellers always quote prices for 100 grams here possibly because it tricks the buyer into believing that they do not have to spend much. Kaalojaam, or black berries are a close favorite after mangoes and litchis, and I have never found these in the US/Germany. So when I ask for 2 kilos, her jaws drop, and she gives me a 10% discount. I never haggle for prices, something that Ma and I always keep arguing about. Ma's point is, sellers always inflate the prices because people are going to haggle. My point is, if the price sounds reasonable enough (most things do now, since my euros give me even more buying power), I do not want to haggle with a poor man who is sitting in the sun and trying hard to make a living. If one does not haggle at Pantaloons and Westside, why haggle with fruit sellers? Those 10 rupees I save is not worth the kicks one gets.

So I continue to buy fruits from her whenever I go out, and we chat up. Now, she starts to watch out for me as well. One day, she gave me good quality plastic bags for things I had bought from another place because I was not carrying a grocery bag. The other day, she gave me a handful of kalojaams for free to chew on as we continued to chat. Every time I put a few in my mouth, she would choose a few good ones and place them in my hand. Who would have imagined making a new friend at the local market over buying kalojaams?

She was thrilled when I asked her name. She was even more thrilled and blushed profusely when I asked if I could take a picture of her. So she posed nicely and gave me her best smile.

Grandma and I have forgotten to eat other things, and have been happily overdosing on kalojaams ever since, our teeth and tongues perennially violet in color now. 

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Water we waiting for?

A disaster of the somewhat innocuous kind brought all the 12-15 odd families in our building together. Usually, we do not keep track of the ongoing of our neighbors. We nod curtly and smile if we bump into someone in the stairway. But last afternoon, the water pump malfunctioned and we lost running water. We waited until evening, but nothing. The supply of stored water was slowly running out. Late evening, ma started making a few phone calls, asking when it would be fixed. We were supposed to visit a family friend nearby, so we showed up at their place with 6-8 empty bottles to stock up on drinking water. While coming home, we saw that all the men of the building were assembled together discussing what needs to be done.

Early morning, people were ready with buckets to fill up on municipality water that stops after 8 am. This actually gave people a chance to say hi and make small talk, since everyone was queued up with a common goal. As the line was getting longer, ma went to the neighbor from the adjacent building to stock up on buckets of water (which I dutifully carried upstairs). The neighbor also invited us to come back and take a shower if the water problem was not solved. This water crises forced me to meet at everyone from the building I usually do not go out of my way to meet.

9 am. The problem is fixed. Water is back. We are back to living our normal, isolated lives, watching TV with family and getting back on the internet. No more communal gatherings with buckets in hands, chatting up with real people. We are back to chatting virtually.

Water crises is bad. But thank god we did not lose electricity or internet. I also got a good workout first thing in the morning. I always look at the brighter side.

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Living up to the image

My friend and I are dining at an upscale restaurant in Park Street, Kolkata. We have a lot to catch up on, but neither or us are ravenous hungry. So we order soups, appetizers, and drinks. Hours later, the person attending to us, polite and well-dressed and so far attentive to our needs, asks us if we are ready to order the main course. As we are very full, we politely decline, asking for the check/bill instead. At this point, our man laughs loudly and asks us, "Oh, are you dieting?"

A seemingly lame attempt to make small talk although an innocuous question, right? Wrong. Context is always important. Would he ever ask this to his male guests? Not only it is none of his business, questions about food, dieting, clothes, etc. are deeply tied to body image. I am tired of every friend and relative in Kolkata, male and female, commenting on how I look, how much better I used to look in the past, and how I must do certain things to make sure I go back to looking my older self again. These people are no brand ambassadors of good looks and fit lifestyles themselves, although I see them as people and not as balding people, pot-bellied people, smoking people, unfit people, or obese people. These people have no curiosity about my life other than my looks- nothing about where I work, what I do for a living, what I think of some of the pressing issues in the country, and so on. And now, this comment about dieting comes from a complete stranger, a person whose job was to serve us food. Because women are supposed to diet and look pretty and deck up and please others according to set societal norms. And women are either too thin or too fat or too dark or too bold.

Inadvertently or otherwise, stop reinforcing gender stereotypes, or any stereotype for that matter. It is not cool!

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Black and White

Please share widely

A derogatory picture from children’s textbook depicting “beautiful and ugly” is being circulated widely and has been the topic for a heated discussion. A few things come to mind as I look at this picture that transcends the skin color divide.

1. “Beautiful” means light-skinned and “ugly” means dark-skinned.

2. “Beautiful” means wearing jewelry and “ugly” means the lack of jewelry.

3. “Beautiful” means having blonde hair and “ugly” means having dark hair. What people from the Indian subcontinent have blonde hair? This basically means “beautiful” is Caucasian/White.

4. “Beautiful” means some fancy dress and “ugly” means wearing a sari.

5. “Beautiful” means being rich, probably upper caste and “ugly” means being poor, probably lower caste and doing menial jobs.

I am not sure if I missed any other messages. First, why do we need to teach the concept of beauty and ugliness to children, especially using living examples? A pile of garbage is ugly. The devastation after a war is ugly. But people? Children pick on these cues very early, and now, this picture reinforces so many stereotypes, blatantly showing the aspiration of people from the subcontinent to look like a White person. Long before the evils done by the film industry or the skin care industry, beauty standards were set by the colonizers. We lost our souls and pride to them long back. We just did not know it. Why should a “beautiful” woman need to look this way otherwise?

Someone asked me what should be done. This is what I said. Teach the kid. Ban the book(s). Spread the word. Write about it. Detect the publisher of the book. Wage a campaign. Stop using fairness products. Stop reading books and magazines that promote these values. Stop dressing your children like Elsa and Anna and White queens and princesses because they are eventually going to grow up with identity crisis. Be mindful of the language used in matrimonial ads and boycott ads that promote discrimination based on skin color. Stop aspiring for a light-skinned daughter/son-in-law. The possibilities are as endless as our imaginations and our intentions.

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A lone breakfast

A lone breakfast it was, my first breakfast in Baltimore 
After a social 5 days in DC that had made my spirits soar

The china was disposable, the eggs were cold 
The milk was 2%, the bread smelled old

Woke early and showered and looked my best
Without any electronic gadgets, I left the nest (hotel room)

Found a corner spot overlooking downtown, all nice and sunny
Watching sharply dressed office-goers heading to make some money

It was a gorgeous day
Warm and springy, inching towards May

Yet alone, I sat and ate and ruminated in a room full of people
To make small talk, big talk, some talk, none at my table did join
Heads bowed to technology, checking emails and browsing Facebook
Everyone was simply busy staring at their groin

So the pretty lady ate on her own
Lost in her thoughts, not lonely, but alone

Wishing herself away, to some rambunctious crowd in Europe, Latin America
Sharing travel tales with random globe-trotting penurious dudes and chica

And that's why I prefer busy hostels with swarming backpackers sharing world travel tale
Choosing the comforts of companionship to the comforts of a swanky but lonely hotel

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Why am I not playing the “fabulous woman” tag either

A few days back, there was a lot of hullabaloo when I questioned women nominating each other to rise up to the challenge ofmotherhood and post their pictures. Thinking that two wrongs can make a right, someone with a lower IQ started this even more disturbing chain of nominating each other who are proud to be fabulous women. Here, take a look:

“I have been nominated to post a picture that makes me happy/proud to be a woman... I'm going to tag the ladies that I think are fabulous, and who do not need to be a mom or a wife or a daughter necessarily, to post a happy/proud pic of their own. If I've tagged you as one of these awesome women, copy the text and paste it to your wall with a picture, and tag more ladies who can hold their own, without any labels!!!”

Now this is what I find so wrong about this post other than the three exclamation marks, there periods and typos (picture is not pic), and the fact that you claim “without any labels” although you ARE labeling yourself happy/proud/fabulous/awesome/lady in these lines.

I don’t do these tags because I am not considered as fabulous [insert noun of your choice] by most women. Neither married, nor a grandmother or mother, nor a wife or even a pet owner, most women consider me a freak, someone not in their league. And why wouldn’t they? I am in my thirties and still single by choice. I spend my free time traveling the world or watching air crash investigation videos. I live in hostels during my travels. I try to avoid Indian potluck parties, and show no interest in bonding with women who cannot hold a conversation beyond the prices of lentils at different Indian stores or an impending visit of in-laws in summer. I am not a part of any makeup group where you post (scary) close-up pictures of all the makeup you were wearing when you went to do that weekly grocery chore. I don’t pose wearing sarees and standing in a group like the choo choo train, exactly at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground, showing shiny straightened hair and perfect dentition. I have nothing to contribute to a conversation about diapers, Gerber, or how scary it is to drive a car. Most Indian women of my generation wouldn’t even consider inviting me home, let alone tagging me in any of these posts. However, there are more important reasons.

I see these tags and labels as being not only offensive, vain, narcissist, and divisive, but also dangerous. A combination of two words often has more meaning than the simple addition of these two words. For example, to call myself fabulous is something (honest, maybe vain at the most). To call myself a woman is a truth. But when I call myself a “fabulous woman”, it has many underlying layers of meaning. Fabulous compared to whom? Other women whom I am calling less fabulous? Or a fabulous woman, compared to a fabulous man? And what exactly have I done to deserve this label? Even if I was fabulous, shouldn’t others be the one calling me that?

Now think about this. What if men started a similar chain of posts, tagging each other as fabulous and posting their pictures? What if they started describing why they are fabulous? It will not be long before someone is going to call on them, labeling them sexist (even though they never posted anything sexist). Sexism isn’t always about men propagating it and women being at the receiving end. I find this post on Facebook equally sexist. If I was a man writing this blog post, I would be instantly labelled a sexist. 

In principle, I usually post stuff that is either informative or entertaining for others. This kind of post is neither. It is not like those “ten books I read” or “twenty movies I loved” tags, which at least is informative to some. It could be vaguely entertaining for the self, but not for others. Can you tell us why do you consider yourself a fabulous woman? Have you overcome a disability? Saved someone from drowning? Climbed a mountain? Donated for a cause recently? How exactly is the narcissistic picture you just posted portraying the legacy of a fabulous woman? To call oneself fabulous (or fabulous human) is something, but the tag of a fabulous woman comes with even more accountability. And by the way, what is the credibility of the woman who just tagged you (and herself) as being fabulous? What is her claim to fame?

Would you be okay sharing stories from your life you are not very proud of? Like maybe when you hurt someone or judged someone? Would you be willing to own up to those stories? Stories of glamour and glitter don’t make you fabulous. Stories of you being first in class don’t make you fabulous unless you are willing to share stories of the times you failed. Stories of you flaunting your shiny new car don’t make you fabulous, unless you are willing to share a story of about your shortcomings. And even if you did those, let others be the judge of whether you are great or not.

You can argue that these are innocuous posts that do not mean much. For me, if you post something on social media, it comes with a lot of responsibility. Be accountable for the words you write. Take responsibility for the messages you give and the energy you bring in to a conversation. Nothing you post on social media is innocuous or without a message. It shows who you are, and what your values are (much more than your claims of who you are). I find it intriguing that men never participate in such posts (unless it is a challenge where they have to pour a bucket of ice on them in the freezing cold). It’s women who tend to propagate such divisive messages. Married versus single. Mother versus non-mother. Awesome versus not-awesome. And women versus men.

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Othering the non-mother and the lesser-mother

Update: Another post I wrote on this.

“Accepting the motherhood dare. I was nominated to publish a picture that makes me happy to be a mom. I am going to tag a few friends who I think are fabulous mothers and can rise to the challenge of publishing a picture of their own.”

I find the wordings of this post utterly disturbing. I repeat, I am talking about the wording of the post, and not about the concept of posting pictures of your children in general. I enjoy seeing the pictures of (most of) your children on Facebook, until you get to an obsessive point. Some of you, I do not know and do not care much. Most of you are my friends, and I feel happy. I even “Like” and of late, “Love” some of those pictures.

However, I find the above “motherhood dare” game disturbing at many levels. When I first saw a few women chip in, I shrugged it off as one of those low-IQ-but-innocuous chain posts on Facebook. Posting the color of your bra, the size of your shoe, we have seen it all. However, this post grew viral in no time, and everyone and their aunt were suddenly rising to the challenge (whatever that meant). I found a well-written article that mirrored my thoughts. So I posted it on my wall, asking what exactly was challenging about publishing pictures (that you do anyway), and what exactly was the “dare” part of it? Many got angry. Women who never write on my wall started defending themselves. Some who have not interacted with me in the last ten years “Like”d the posts of others defending themselves. Clearly, I had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

To paraphrase some of the conversation (since I cannot directly quote people without their consent), women asked what is wrong with posting motherhood pictures when people were posting pictures of their life events anyway. Everyone refused to see that I had problems with using words like “dare” and “challenge”. I had recently met a Mexican immigrant, a single mom of two who worked four jobs and earned meager wages cleaning people’s homes and toilets. If she fell sick, there would be no money coming. To me, that is a challenge. I recently met an eminent professor, a stalwart in her field, who had to bring up a child while being a graduate student, TAing three courses and doing full-time research. She had no help from parents and one day, she passed out in the parking lot out of sheer exhaustion. That to me is a motherhood challenge. I know a parent whose newborn was secretly taken away from them because the partner did not get along with them and decided that they will no longer have a role to play in their child’s life. The parent has been fighting for their rights. To me, that is a challenge. A fellow blogger has had the most difficult birth that I have known of, fighting against all the odds to keep their premature newborn safe and healthy. I know women who want children, but have not been able to conceive. That is a challenge.

To me, my own life choices are somewhat of a challenge. I wish to have children, but have never had a stable job, have been working in yearly contracts for the past several years, did not find a partner whose intellect complements mine, a person who can look beyond the money he makes and the model of the car he drives, and refused to get hitched to anyone just to get some stability and security. I know that I am running against time, and I may not have a child in this process of getting set up in life. But I do not earn enough right now to raise a child on my own, and I have decided to stay single until I find someone who believes in an equitable relationship and makes me feel that we are worthy of being with each other. There are mothers who are alone and working very hard to make ends meet. And then, there are women who want to be mothers, but cannot be due to many reasons. To think of some elite, privileged, smug women who have access to all the basic needs, who are social media savvy and posting their pictures as a challenge, a dare, seemed somewhat ridiculous, insulting, and marginalizing. Marginalizing not only to the non-mothers, but to the lesser-mothers. It’s like welcoming some people to an elite club and telling the rest that you do not belong here. As I reflected on my post and the angry comments it instigated, a few things came to mind:

1. My biggest question was, “So what exactly was so challenging and daring about this post? Did you overcome a disability? Climb Mount Everest perhaps? And when you handpick some of the so called “great moms” according to you, aren’t you marginalizing the “lesser moms”? Why did most people think I was making a personal attack against all the mothers of the world, and to the concept of motherhood in general? What might have led to such wide discrepancy in understanding?

2. Why were women writing on my wall, dissing me and defending themselves? While they posted pictures on their walls, I posted my thoughts on my wall. I never questioned them or commented on their posts. They did, to me, on my wall. Isn’t that intolerance towards alternate-opinions? Not only do you do things you assume correct, but argue and shut people who are differing in their own spaces?

3. I have heard so many women say, “Motherhood makes me complete.” Why haven’t I heard the same thing being said by men, that fatherhood makes you complete? And why don’t women (or men) say, “My job makes me complete. My degrees make me complete. My parents make me complete. My dog makes me complete.” and so on? Of course this is a general question, a reflection, and not a criticism. How can any one thing make you complete and the lack of it make you incomplete?

I had looked forwarded to some constructive comments and reflections. Something more that “You are wrong and you need to feel happy for mothers just like we feel happy for you when you visit a new country or get a new job.” None came. What came were lame, weak explanations something on the lines of, “We are modern day women. We do not judge you. It’s the older generation that did. Our generation is very progressive.” Some more sweeping generalizations on the lines of “these things never happen in our generation.” Perhaps this is what blind racism or blind casteism looks like. To totally not acknowledge that racism and casteism still exist.

Interestingly, women from our generation give me a lot of flak about my life choices, and these are women roughly my age. When I finished a PhD, they said, “Get married now, and your life will be complete.” When I found a new position and moved continents, they said the same. It is like something was always amiss according to them. With every milestone I reached, the need to be coupled to feel complete became even more profound. And the judgment came too. Big time. “This is abnormal. How long can you stay alone? Everyone needs someone. How will you have children?” People assumed things about me, that I am alone and lonely and unhappy. The discrimination was always there. Unmarried or childless women are still treated as second class citizens by our own clan. This, I speak from personal experience. 

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Is free really free?

Today, at Target, I was at the checkout counter after buying things when I realized that I forgot to bring my bag. Since there were not too many things, I said that I do not need a bag, and will just carry the stuff in my hand. The lady at the checkout counter looked really surprised and said, "But we do not charge you extra for plastic bags. It is free." I said, "That's okay, I still do not want them, they are not good for the environment."

This brief conversation made me realize that the crux of the problem is what the lady said. "But we do not charge you extra for plastic bags. It is free." Just because it is free does not mean that we need it. And many of us do not realize that free is not really free. Somewhere, someone would be paying the price for the thoughtless use of bags, or anything for that matter. Disposable plates. Plastic spoons. Bags. Bottles. The list is endless. What we do everyday is not sustainable. Somebody out there is already paying the price for our lifestyle. 

If you do not believe me, do take this footprint calculator quiz. It tells you how many Earths would be needed to sustain the resources if everyone lived the same lifestyle that you did. The results will depress you.

Being a part of the American society, I have witnessed up close, and at times even emulated the lifestyle that people adopt here. But I know that this is not sustainable. “What if I can afford it?”, is what you may argue. And I’d say, that even if you could afford it, the planet does not have enough resources to support your lifestyle. Over the years, I have consciously stopped doing many things that I used to do mindlessly. My intentions were not bad when I did them, I simply did not think about the consequences. I’ll give you some examples:

Things I try to do/not do now that I did before:

·         I no longer use disposable plates and spoons for parties. It does not make sense to use things once and then throw them away. Instead, I use proper plates and spoons. A little scrubbing and washing the dishes will do far less long-term damage than mindlessly using disposable items.

·         I use the dishwasher (a full load of course) only when I am too tired to do the dishes. Which comes down to once a month. The rest of the time, I use my strong, masculine hands.

·         To reduce the number of trips made, I go to the grocery stores right from work, than push it to the weekend.

·         I always carry 4-5 “bajarer tholi” (strong, reusable bags) that I especially got from Calcutta that can easily hold a lot of weight.

·         No more Costco and Sam’s Club memberships. I was a Costco member once, and what that meant is I hoarded things in bulk that I did not even need, making my house look like a warehouse. When you have more, you use things without sense. When you have less, you are more careful. I once bought a whole bunch of paper towels back in 2009, and five years and two cross-country moves later, I still have some with me.

·         I never use the air conditioning in summer. I am used to the warm weather, and even find it comforting, because it reminds me of where I grew up. I simply open the doors and windows in summer, letting the bugs and flies come in, and happily live through the heat and humidity. Winters are a different story of course.

However, all that I do is far from being enough. One, I need to know of better ways to recycle, use less, and use carefully. I am trying to find a course that I can take, or identify a resource that will help me do these. And as a single person who drives a humble sedan and flies a couple of times a year, I see myself lower in this food chain of indiscriminately using resources. Think about the families with kids, that use diapers like it is nobody’s business, drive vans, and live in huge homes. Some of my friends in the US live in homes that are no less than mansions. Sure, they can afford it, but can the planet sustain all the heating and water usage?

As a kid, I was never aware of the word recycling. Yet my family was always recycling. It was built within the system. There were no plastic bags when I was little. My grandma and mom never threw the empty Horlicks bottles (or any other bottles). Those glass jars were always recycled and used to store things. There was no mineral water in plastic bottles. No one ate in disposable plates, not even during parties. The vegetable peels were all collected for the cow to eat every day. The tap was never allowed to run freely while we brushed our teeth. Milk was delivered in containers, and not in plastic bags. Newspapers were made into paper bags (kagojer thonga). Gadgets were not bought (or thrown away) mindlessly like we do now. We mostly rode the rickshaw, enjoying the breeze. Recycling and conservation of resources were inherently built in the system.

I am taking an online course on Coursera, called, “An introduction to the US food system:Perspectives from Public Health”, that covers a lot of interesting material about food as a resource, and how water and soil are resources that are being used indiscriminately.

We could argue and debate about this endlessly. But it is undisputed that behavioral change needs to set in. People need to be aware that it is not okay to consume all the resources that we do. And behavioral change cannot come until we step in as larger communities and societies, advocating some dramatic lifestyle changes.

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Expecting Less

My best friend from high school did not tell me she was expecting until she was six months into her pregnancy. That too happened during a conversation when I insisted she come visit me for a few days, since I did not have time to take off from work and travel three thousand miles to go see her, and she had to let me know she has been advised against traveling. I congratulated her and said all the right things I have no personal experience about myself (hope you are feeling well, hope you are not to scared, etc.). Yet in a certain way, I felt distanced. This is not because I have not embarked on the marriage-leading-to-family bandwagon myself. This was because despite being close friends, it took so long for me to know.

As a person interested in learning about human behavior and motivations (because this is what I research about, although from a different perspective and with a different population), I started thinking of the various factors that would have made her decide against sharing the news earlier. I know from personal experience that a lot of women do not share their news of pregnancy, do not buy clothes or toys for the baby until it is born, or do not like their friends photographing pictures of their babies. Although I do not get the point, I respect their decision and leave them alone. It might have been that. For me, it would be nothing short of good news like passing your PhD dissertation, getting a job, or buying a house. Since I would not hesitate to share such good news, again, I failed to see her point. My mother had a different take on it, a cultural and gender perspective perhaps, although in an absurd way. She said my friend must have been “shy” to share the news. Although I know what she means by being shy, it is a ridiculous concept for someone who is exactly my age, lives in the same society, and is of a similar mental makeup. I do not know if there are other reasons, but my most plausible explanation so far is the following-

With time, we tend to hang out with similar groups, and resonate with people who are similar to us. I sense she would have shared the news earlier if I had a baby myself, was expecting, or was at least married. Ever noticed that married people mostly tend to hang out with other married people, graduate students tend to hang out with other graduate students, and Bengali people tend to hang out with other Bengali people? There is a common ground, a common theme underlying all these instances, be it commonality in culture, language, marital status, or stages in your career. If this is the case, it is not good news for me. All it means is that yet another friend moves on with their life. When we grew up together and were great friends, we had common themes binding us. We were in the same class, studied the same subjects, took tuitions together, lived in the same neighborhood, and had the same friend circle. Now, we do not really have anything in common anymore.

I am too old to make new friends based on commonality (for example, single women in their thirties interested in academics, writing, and discussing the specifications of the camera they use. Imagine the odds of finding one in my town?). And it seems I do not fit into certain existing circles anymore. Which boils down to pretty much what I do in my free time anyway- play online scrabble (alone), read books (alone), watch movies (alone), and congratulate my friends during those occasional phone calls when they tell me they are getting married the next day, or having a baby over the weekend.

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Happy Diwali, Bollywood?

I always thought that Bollywood would have a healthy collection of songs suitable for any Indian festival, but I am not so convinced anymore. The lack of an optimal number of songs dedicated to the festival Diwali (optimal number n being greater than five) only reconfirms my theory that ours is a sex-driven race, just like any other species in the animal kingdom. Have you ever thought why there are hundreds of songs for Holi, Sagai, Sangeet, Shaadi, Karwa Chauth, God Bharai, or even Nag Panchami (characterized by the sinuous dance moves of a reptile-turned-heroine-turned-reptile cursed by some black robe wearing evil man) but only three songs for Diwali? I would argue that in a testosterone and estrogen-driven society where macro-level phenomenon like preening, grooming, mate hunting, courtship, marriage, and procreation exist in any random order, there is no respectable place for a festival which lacks the insinuations of the primal needs of man, namely rain, color, hormones, or the need to touch, want, and hug. Come to think of it, there are hundreds of songs not just for festivals, but for seasons, be it the cot-displacing brrrring of the winter when the khatiya is begged to be sarkaoed because of jaada, the jeth ki garmi waali dopahar (where the heroine instructs the hero - aake god mein utha thaam le baiyan), or the obvious tip tip barsa spawning season. After all, what could be so inviting about a festival characterized by crackers, ear-deafening sounds, the smell of gunpowder, and a bunch of cranky policymakers unhappy about noise pollution? Images of a heavily endowed woman in a flimsy white sari drenched in the rain running around while a male chases her with Holi colors rings a few familiar bells. However, imagine a woman gyrating her hips with a bunch of sparklers and crackers in her hand, hurling fire crackers at unsuspecting males every now and then and singing “Wanna be your chammak challo”? I fail to imagine the latent sexual overtones in this setting. No wonder Bollywood has never really considered dedicating entire songs to the pursuit of the celebration of light and sound, two very important concepts in an extremely dry subject called physics. Sure there are songs with occasional shots of the chick and the lad entwined, playing around with a bunch of sparklers (remember the song Mujhse Mohabbat Ka from Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke?), but a random youtube search for Diwali songs yields three results, one from the movie Home Delivery which is not really a “pataakha” item song in any respect, an old song from the time of Akbar where Mukesh’s adenoidal voice (although very melodious) of “Ek who bhi Diwali thi, ek yeh bhi Diwali hai, Ujda hua gulshan hai, rota hua maali hai” sets off a chain reaction of melancholy potent enough to extinguish any number of sparklers and crackers in the world (let’s face it), and another song from the year 1946, where the heroine’s sad state of mind reminded me of the day I had cried buckets at the scary thought of turning 30 because I was convinced that I was approaching senility and half-life decay at an alarming rate. Surely the Ramsay Brothers show more tactile actions (also known as touchy touchy) and hanky (s)panky (amongst ghosts and haunted spirits of course) than these songs do. Sure, there is one song in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham where SRK makes the grand Bhagwan Ram like entry, but then again, every song in that movie reeks of showoff, celebration, and affluence. No fault of Bollywood, which is just a reflection of the evolution of human race (or the lack of it), which brings me back to my irrefutable theory that everything in life ultimately boils down to preening, courtship, mating, and procreation. And anything that does not involve diaphanous clothing, the consequences of global warming (bouts of hot, wet, and cold weather, pun unintended), an umbrella, a few bees buzzing over a rose, a cot (khatiya), or even a reptile-dance number to save the mate from the curse of the evil man will never make it to the Hindi silver screen.

A very happy Diwali everyone, never mind the disappointment Bollywood has brought us.

[P.S.: I thank my friend S who made me notice the scarceness of Diwali songs in Bollywood, something that I had entirely overlooked for reasons not quite clear to me].

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Kawta Jaama Holo?

I was shaken out of my reverie where I heard the loud ghonta and shaankh in the wee hours of dawn. It had drizzled the night before, and the cold and dampness in the air made me want to cocoon myself tighter. Shaking off the remnants of sleep, I tried to bring my world into focus again. Apparently, I was no longer in Calcutta, a city where I spent a significant amount of my youth. I was in the U.S. of A., a home away from home, where the heart of Ma Durga beats in a nostalgically similar, yet a painfully different rhythm.

My cousin texted me “Shubho Mahalaya” the other day. It is that time of the year when Ma Durga, her children, and Mahishasura are busy getting spruced up for Pujo. However, Pujo is a different story in this country. Ma Durga’s calendar has been modified for years to suit that of her devotees for the probashi (NRI) Bangali in the US. She visits home not per the tithis of the calendar, but during the weekends, and in the vicinity of community colleges and high school buildings instead of paara, goli, or raasta. Thakur dekha (also known as, pandal hopping) is no longer an activity I associate with hours of walking, standing in lines, brazening the sweltering heat or the torrential downpour that is so characteristic of the pujo-scape in Calcutta. It was refreshing to see such energy reflected everywhere during pujo. I saw it in the faces of people excitedly asking friends and neighbors, “Kawta jaama holo?” (How many sets of new clothes did you buy or were gifted this season?).The real reason of the question was not really to know how many sets of clothes you acquired, but to open up the discussion about all the great places to shop, not to mention announcing to the world of your own count of clothes. I saw it in the scaffolds of the still incomplete puja pandals. I saw it in those craftsmen working diligently to add the final touches of paint on Ma Durga. The otherwise ill-reputed as “dead” city pulsates with life. The smell of pujo permeates the air- a smell characterized not just by the dhup-dhuno, but by puppy love blossoming in every paara or goli, the enthusiasm of shoppers amidst the crazy stampeding, the smell of roadside phuchka and chicken roll, the heart beating to the rhythm of the dhaak, and by loudspeakers blaring anything from “Anjali Mantra” to “Bangla adhunik gaan”, “tu cheez badi hai mast mast” for the braver communities, or “twinkle twinkle little star” recited in monotony by a 4-year old rising star during those “kalcharal nights” organized by her father who also happens to be the secretary of the local pujo’r committee.

Things look somewhat similar here, albeit in a more controlled and otherwise monotonous fashion. You could identify a pujo-hosting high school after hours of being lost in the Amazon rainforests, if only you could find that telltale parking lot filled with the Hondas and the Toyotas mostly in shades of black, blue, or silver. As you shut off the car ignition and adjust your Baluchori sari and the kundan necklace after undoing the seatbelt, other telltale signs clue you in to the venue of the pujo. Mr. Software Sen, otherwise seen in his checkered shorts and Google tee shirt with a cuppa Starbucks coffee as he drives his blue Lexus to office every morning, is spruced up in his dhuti and tussar panjabi and neatly combed hair parted sideways, dutifully handing out lunch coupons and talking unsuspecting and stray pandal hoppers into buying their annual Bangali association membership. Mrs. Anima(ted) Sen, looking straight out of the sets of the movie Devdas in her cream and red sari and her vermilion headed, kohl-smeared eyes and Ma-Kali avatar, chats animatedly about their trip to Greece earlier in summer to spend their 10^th wedding anniversary, urging her bored audiences kitty party pals to check out her Facebook album now replete with “wow” comments and XOXOXOXOs. On a different note, it took years for a dehati-to-the-American-culture like me to figure out that those “showered with love” XOXOXOs found in abundance on Facebook are in no way related to the “kaata-kuti” criss-cross board games you played as a middle school student when the teacher did not make it to class. However, I digress here. The Khokon Shonas and Mamonis are running around in their Baby GAP sweatshirts or Dora pink frilly frocks and Stride Rite shoes. They are happily chomping on their pijjas and Mc Dee burgers especially ordered off the kids menu, because they have been universally stereotyped by their parents to lack the digestive system hardy enough to digest khichuri bhog. Important discussions are churning in the name of socializing and networking- I overhear a group of balding, middle-aged, and bespectacled dadas discussing Green Cards and citizenships, options for stock investment and mortgages, Xboxs andPSP3s, Kinects and Builds, or the awaited deals for the upcoming Thanksgiving Black Friday sales. The mashimas and boudis enthusiastically discuss clothing and jewelry, juicy Facebook gossip, impending annual visits of in-laws, the newest desi store selling Tyangra maach and frozen Lyangra aam, and the awesome videos of their Khokon shonas eating organic strawberries in their Bumbo seats. A bunch of young people form a visibly distinct sub-group – the “fresh off the boat” graduate students, enthusiastically discuss research agenda, upcoming conference deadlines, and demanding advisors, definitely lacking the visible traits and polish of the nouveau riches from the east now living over a decade in this country.

However, no matter how sardonically you choose to look at the Americanized version of Durga Pujo, this is the best you are going to get here. No wonder we convince ourselves over time that there is an undeniable magic, an aura even amidst talks of green cards and Tiffany’s jewelry, our mashima who is visiting her son and his family from Borishal proudly beaming, “amar naati you ass citigen” (My grandson is a US citizen). Our pujari moshai is an investment banker, dutifully chanting mantras, the sacred thread and dhoti a far cry from his menacing corporate look. The dhaaki starts to play the dhaak at some point, ushering people for the session of onjoli, picking up fistfuls of yellow lilies and carnations bought from Trader Joe’s. As usual, I experience the all familiar feeling of getting gooseflesh, tapping my feet to the beat of the dhaak. My blood rings and my soul sings to the beats of the drum. A strange magic suffused with nostalgia fills the air. Durga Pujo will remain a unique celebration for me, incomparable with the pumpkin carvings during Halloween, or the turkey roasting during Thanksgiving. I am shaken out of my reverie yet again when a GAP wearer less than half my height innocuously bumps into me, running around in excitement, followed by his hapless dad who reminds me of a pet trainer. It is the same man who was conversing in Bengali, and now, he is running after his son not with the typically what you would expect “jaashna, jaashna, orey khoka firey aaye” (Come back dear son, don’t scamper around), but with a trained and somewhat accented monosyllabic “Don’t run, come back, sit down, eat your pizza !!”, instructed in a fake accent perhaps for the benefit of the scampering kid who might not understand a word of Bangla spoken at home. I see that “Kaan mola khabi” has been aptly replaced by “You will be grounded!!”.

Somewhere in between my present and my past, in between the uloos (the sounds you make flicking your tongue) and the shaankh (conch shell), I am transported to a different era, awash with joyous anticipation. I am 6 years old and am wearing a bright blue frock my parents bought me from the neighborhood garment store. Then I am a 20 year old, wearing a bright green silk sari that belongs to my mother, that she has painstakingly wrapped around me, safety pins and all. I am with my friends pandal hopping in Madox Square, enlivened by the dazzling beauties exchanging hushed glances and sheepish smiles with the handsomely spruced up pajama-panjabi clad group of young men who have spent the last hour or so visually appraising the chicks (an act also known as jhaari maara). So many love relationships form and dissipate in the vicinity of the pandals by the grace of Goddess Durga every year. While most never make it to the altar, an innocuous glance exchanged or that racing of heart beats as you eyed a bunch of decked up people from the opposite gender works wonders in your otherwise drab life marred by academic pressures, social expectations, and what not. I flip between the past and my 30-year old present, casually glancing around me to look in vain for the now-extinct group of good looking and single men roughly my age. A corpulent mashima just stepped on my sari (and my toes), glaring unapologetically at me for intercepting her trajectory as she walks by. She is the same mashima, I recognize, who was animatedly boasting about her sonny boy studying electrical engineering at MIT. I sigh, zoning out of my surroundings for the moment and focusing on the beauty of Ma Durga’s face instead. Of all the things that have changed around me (for better or for worse) in the last few decades of my pujo experience, people, social dynamics, pompousness and all, Ma Durga is the only one who has not changed, still looking as young and stunning as she used to for as long as I can remember. So beautiful, so powerful, yet so very feminine. The only thing that brings in unalloyed joy for me is the visage of Ma Durga and her children. And the smell of pujo. Not to mention the music of the dhaak. Or sometimes the familiar feeling of excitement I used to have as a kid as I marveled at the six packs and brawns of the demon Mahishasura.

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