Our middle-class sensibilities, our backward-class shackles

Ten years ago, a teenaged girl was raped in a Mumbai local train. There were five other men in the compartment but they did not stop the attack. One of them was a journalist, and I still cringe saying that. It is a profession I practise, too, and it is widely understood, but not often said, that journalists are those whom people turn to when all avenues fail. The power of the printed word (and now the spoken or shouted word on television, too) endows us with a sort of authority which we sometimes (often?) misuse. But what it also gives us is a responsibility. The responsibility to use the word well, and to do good towards our fellow human beings with it. But in the case of the train journalist, Ambarish Misha, that responsibility apparently did not cross class barriers. He watched as the man raped the girl, scarring her for life (there is no question of "probably" here, rape scars the victim for ever), but he did nothing and remained silent, as he brazenly confessed the next day, because he was "burdened with his middle-class sensibilities". That means: the girl was obviously from a lower class, poor, already wretched, and "these things happen to them all the time". He may not have said that last phrase but I bet he thought it.

That was a train. Ten years later it is a different city, a different vehicle. This time there were more rapists. The victim was accompanied by one man. The outcome was a murderous assault on both, and a traumatised young woman who battles for life. 

I wonder if anyone has asked Mr Mishra what he thinks now.

Because his silence ten years ago is part of the reason this has happened, again and again. Because of the conspiracy of looking the other way even when an atrocity is happening right in front of us. Because of the pretence that certain classes of people, certain sections of society, and - yes - certain genders of the human race are "other" - and so, something bad happening to them is something bad not happening to us. Because we think that this pretence justifies our silence and our inhumanity. Mr Mishra's silence ten years ago joins the raging screams of silence all around us that drown out the unheard pleas of traumatised women and children. The longer we cower behind our so-called sensibilities, the greater our burden of guilt. But silence is not an option. It never was, and now it has become unavoidably clear that it cannot be.

We tend to think that the people who commit rape, and the people who condone it, must be different from us. They must be uncivilised, uneducated, criminalised in some way, brought up to believe the wrong things about humanity. Then along comes someone like Mr Mishra, typical of a middle- or upper-middle-class professional, aware as well as educated, nay, practising a profession of enlightenment. If he could stand by and claim helplessness while a young woman was raped in the very same space that he occupied, what can we expect from those who are considered less than him by these parameters? In the final reckoning we are all human beings, but in our assumed wisdom we have created barriers and labels which are supposed to distinguish different classes and levels of human beings from one another. But as it turns out, in the final reckoning there is not much difference between us, after all. There is only one line, drawn ages ago - the line between the oppressed and the oppressors, and in that train the woman was the oppressed. By not coming to her aid, Mr Mishra joined, however unwittingly, the ranks of the oppressors because, as I am sure he remembers and may even have quoted somewhere, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

But of course, far from doing nothing, people in India do a lot when it comes to sexual assault. They ask questions, they point fingers. They ask why the victim was in that place, at that time, wearing those clothes. They point at - I don't know, her hair, her work life, the look on her face. Anything will do, as long as it deflects attention from the fact that a fellow human being, one of us, behaved like a monster. If we make it look like it was not his fault, maybe we won't feel complicit in his act.

As one commentator says, the change that needs to come about is a deep-seated one, a change in attitude. "It is idiotic to expect that policemen, or lawyers, or judges can prevent rape if we cannot prevent people from thinking that any kind of sexual violence is justified or forgivable," she says. 

It's not rocket science we are talking about, it is merely ensuring that the city is not a danger zone to be navigated with fear. Things that need to be done start with making public transport accessible and safe, public spaces accessible and safe, lawmakers and law-enforcers accountable, and most of all streamlining the judicial system so that the victim does not become further victimised by publicity and long-drawn-out legal proceedings. The government has to demonstrate will, and the determination that every woman under its governance will be safe. It can be done.

One more change besides all these needs to be brought about, and for this we need not look further than our own minds. It seems almost ridiculous that human beings need to be reminded to be human, but apparently it is required. We need to start saying No. No to violence, No to oppression.

Oh, if saying No were so easy, we would all do it. But saying No can pull us into the camp of the oppressed, it makes us vulnerable, and most of us have a lot to risk in terms of family, if not one's own life. The answer is that we must be empowered so that we need never fear saying No again. This empowerment can best happen, of course, when everyone is enlightened but that hope took its last breath for me ten years ago. The answer, I am convinced, is for every woman to be able to fight back against an attacker, either though unarmed self-defence or with a weapon. Women have begun carrying objects of personal defence, but there is always the danger that these can be grabbed and used against them by an attacker. What we can do is to teach every girl to defend herself (compulsory NCC training, perhaps). And what we can also do is come to the aid of a woman in distress. It's not that difficult.

Just as "a victory for terrorism anywhere is a victory for terrorism everywhere", the rape of one woman anywhere is the rape of all women everywhere. To proceed from the one to the other, all you have to do is... nothing.

Tahe dil se

It seemed at first as if it would never end. One week’s taxing work was no sooner done than we were preparing for the next week’s uploads – viewing clips, writing, editing, racing against time. It was made a little more difficult by the very nature of the subjects – heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching. There were topics that almost defeated some of us. Old Age, Ep 11, was one for me; writing about old people abandoned by their children was almost more than I could take. Listening to the Ep1 song, O Ri Chiraiya, and the Ep 4 song, Naav, are among the things that still make me tear up. 

It’s been an emotionally wracking project.

People have been talking about channel ratings and eyeballs and TRPs and seasons, but through all the din I can’t help feeling that Satyamev Jayate is not just another TV show. It is like no other show that has been done. In its essence it is not another programme that ends with the finale – Satyamev Jayate has lit a spark in the hearts and minds of a considerable number of its viewers. These viewers are ready for change – from elsewhere or within themselves. They want to change and bring about change, they have written in asking how they can go about it. 

This momentum should not be squandered. Satyamev Jayate by itself cannot do everything. In its way, it has raised a halla bol, it has given things a push, it has shaken people up. It can’t do very much more. The task has to be taken up by the army now – the army of people all over India who have watched and wept and laughed and hoped again for their country. 

My fear is that we will, like Everybody, hope that Somebody will do something. Anybody can do it, but if Nobody does it, then it will have been a scream in outer space – which no one hears. There has already been a good deal of change happening; the government has responded and organizations have taken up causes with renewed vigour, and overall there is a feeling that if we come together, we can do it.

But my fear is that as individuals we will be unable to change. Our systems, our institutions and our collective functioning may well undergo a transformation, and for that I am sure we will be grateful. My fear is that while outside the home we will become proud Indians, we will raise our arms in the Satyamev Jayate salute; when we step into our front doors we will once again go back to being our venal, indifferent, cruel individual selves. That will be the greatest tragedy.

The only way India can become a better place is if we become better people.  All of us. From the PM to the peon.

Namashkaar, Aadaab, Khushaamadeed, Satyamev Jayate

How I got into working - albeit somewhat peripherally - with the mad realm of television is another story. But the point is that my days and nights have merged - not always seamlessly - and the door that I opened has led me to a whole new world of sight and sound and terminology. All related to shooting and editing. 

In short, I agreed to an urgent request to come on board and help write material for the website for Satyamev Jayate, Aamir Khan Productions' new television show.  

One fringe benefit was that I got to meet Aamir Khan. And I mean meet in the real sense of the word - at work meetings with the team, sitting for endless hours over notes and briefings and presentations and more notes, and tea, and food, and once I even got to pet one of the cats at Chez Khan.

It's only towards the end of the second meeting that I realised with a sudden jolt that I was actually sitting about four feet away from Aamir Khan and talking quite normally (ie, not swooning) with him. It was like a slight time-warp shift at that moment, but there isn't time for daydreaming on the AKP caravan. One moves on, fataafat. It's electrifying, working with Aamir, because his energy is seemingly boundless. He's calm, sharp, doesn't miss a trick, and has a marvellous sense of humour. 

What I like the most about him is that his heart is so evidently in the right place, and moreover he's chosen to do something about it with the resources at his disposal. I've heard cribs that he's just another celebrity trying to cash in on the politically correct thing of being socially aware. But it's much more than that. If it was just that, he could have lent his face to some other production house. He could have done a social awareness ad campaign. He could have contributed a soundbite to some other kind of serial (a la Ashok Kumar in Hum Log, perhaps). But Aamir has put his entire might behind Satyamev Jayate. He's much more than a show host. If viewers are watching one and a half hours of an episode, Aamir has watched tens of hours of rushes and documentation and video testimonies and reconnaissance footage, he has spoken with countless people about their experiences, he has pored over scripts and edited episodes till the wee hours, he has done takes and retakes until he is satisfied that what he wants to say is coming across the way he wants it to.

He's no celeb riding on a bandwagon. He's a guy who is doing the job he has set out for himself, and doing it as well as he can.To my mind he's not a film star or any kind of star. He's someone who has seen things that are wrong, has felt a deep desire to do something about them, and has translated that desire into action. Many of us do do what we can. Lawyers fight cases, teachers teach, activists mobilise. Journalists write. Aamir Khan's medium is film. But one film would not have done what Satyamev Jayate is doing. Aamir has taken his expertise from the big screen to the small one - from the multiplexes to the living rooms and community halls of India. He's doing what many others have done before him and will do after him too. The fact that he is a “celebrity” is, to my mind, incidental. But the advantage of being a celebrity is (apart from the hazard of being constantly a target of many kinds) that one's reach is wider and possibly more potent than most other people's. The effect of that reach is making itself evident in the number and quality of the responses in all avenues of media from people who watched the first episode of Satyamev Jayate. 

There are late nights when the long corridor is empty and silent. Doors along the length of the corridor on both sides conceal the frenetic activity that goes on behind them - sound and colour and mixing and "please let me include just two more minutes" when the editor is already wondering how to squeeze in everything that the director wants.

These are nights when sometimes a little tiredness comes and taps on our shoulders. We think longingly of a couch and of "having nothing to do". Will that day ever come, we wonder.

Then the serial is launched, the world explodes with tearful applause, and those bleary eyes, those cramped feet, those aching shoulders all become worth it because Satyamev Jayate has touched hearts. Just the way Aamir wanted it to. The way the team wanted it to.

In memoriam: Bal Mundkur - Slogans, spice and a bite of ‘song’

The personal side of Bal Mundkur – offbeat, eclectic and a tad spicy.

“Bal Mundkur has passed away.” It seemed an impossible thing to believe, but the fell hand had indeed taken him, on the morning of January 7, 2012.

It was on a winter day many years ago when I first met Bal Mundkur at his home, Surya, on the banks of the river Mandovi in Goa. He was, of course, a legend and I trembled inwardly at actually meeting him, albeit in a personal capacity.

His career as a naval officer and aviator had been followed by an illustrious innings in advertising, which he had famously given up to retire in Goa. ‘Retire’ was only figurative, because he proceeded to put his unrelenting energy into designing and building his house, and then lending his prodigious talent to projects which he felt would benefit society, including restoration of a fort and setting up of a museum. He even found his way into an offbeat little film (http://wn.com/rare_indie_goa,_ma_cherie_part_1) which is quintessentially ‘Bal’.

For the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, where he contributed an article on ‘Incredible India: The Inconvenient Truth’, he described himself “as neither an activist nor a frustrated journalist but as a dispassionate commentator”.

People in Goa looked on him with awe, and he was known as a man of exacting standards and uncompromising expectations. Even my “Hello”, I felt, would be subjected to scrutiny. But he was delighted to meet a fellow Konkani, and dwelt pleasurably on the joys of Konkani food, much of which he was not allowed to eat by then. Pickle, chutney and spicy food was out of bounds, but Uncle Bal, as I called him, managed to sneak teekha stuff onto his plate now and then. When he discovered that I can cook, he extracted from me a solemn promise to make him some standard Konkani dishes, among them potato ‘song’ – a simple dish of cubed potatoes cooked in well-sauteed onions, tamarind and a lot of chilli. I made a mental note to tone down the chilli for Uncle Bal, who of course read my mind and said, “Don’t forget, lots of chilli!”

But Uncle Bal had so much else on his plate that he never did find the time to come over for a Konkani meal. With time and circumstances, I didn’t meet him again for some years. But being in the business of media news meant, inevitably, that our paths would cross professionally. When I rang him up after a long interval, to ask for an interview on Ulka’s anniversary, he remembered the long-promised ‘song’, and once again we assured each other that I would cook and he would eat, one day.

As always, however, Uncle Bal had too much going on in his life. One never knew where he would be next – dashing between Goa and Mumbai, scooting off to Europe or South-East Asia or somewhere else – or what project he would take up. Perhaps fittingly, his last offering was the history of Indian advertising, Ad Katha, which was released at Ad Asia 2011 in New Delhi.

But those who know him, know that he would not have rested after this. That fertile brain would have been working on something else, and he would have been ringing people up with exhortations to participate, to donate, to sponsor. His zeal was unwavering and his passion, perpetual. Somewhere he might even have found time to stop for a bite of ‘song’.

We will all remember Bal Mundkur in different ways. I’ll recollect him with a dash of spice.

Originally published on MxMIndia.com.