Tag: FAMILY

Interview | ‘People Don’t Turn Intolerant Overnight. It’s a Slow Process’: Author Anees Salim

‘The Bellboy’ author talks about the genesis of his recently published novels, the flaws and virtues of families he likes to explore, religious polarisation and and why he writes only to please the reader in him.

Anees Salim has published seven novels in just over a decade after 20 years of getting rejection slips from several publishers. In 2012-13, four of his novels – Vanity Bagh (Picador India), The Blind Lady’s Descendants (Amaryllis), Tales From a Vending Machine and The Vicks Mango Tree (HarperCollins) – were accepted and subsequently published in quick succession.

Over the years, his novels have been translated into several languages and won him several awards, including The Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction 2013 for Vanity Bagh, the 2014 Raymond Crossword Book Award for Best Fiction for The Blind Lady’s Descendants, the 2018 Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, and the 2017 Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize for Best Fiction for The Small Town Sea.

One of his latest novels, The Odd Book of Baby Names (Penguin India), explores familial bonds between an eccentric king, one of the last kings of India who is dying, as eight of his 100 rumoured children “trace the savage lies of their father and reckon with the burdens of their lineage.”

Another recently published novel, The Bellboy, which has also been published in the UK by Holland House Books, narrates the life of a 17-year-old Latif on a small island where he is appointed as a bellboy in a hotel where people come to die. After his father’s death, drowned in the waters surrounding their small island, the boy has to provide for his ailing mother and sisters. Latif’s life changes when he finds the corpse of a small-time actor in one of the hotel rooms.

Muslim characters play important roles in all his novels. Anees writes about them, he once told me in an interview, because he has “a decent understanding of their apprehensions, crises and misunderstandings.”

In an interview with Majid Maqbool, Anees Salim talks about the genesis of his recently published novels, the flaws and virtues of families he likes to explore in his fiction, themes of religious polarisation in his work, and why he writes only to please the reader in him.

Below are the excerpts from the interview, which have been slightly edited for style and clarity.

Your recently published novel The Odd Book of Baby Names is very experimental and different from your previous novels in terms of its unique narrative style with multiple voices talking about a king who is at the fag end of his life, dying, and coming to terms with his lost kingdom. Did you intend to capture a certain power dynamic and attendant bitterness and nostalgia of lost power and glory through this novel centred on a king and his many children?

I tend to believe that Indian kings and their descendants lead an embittered life. They could still be unimaginably wealthy, but I assume the idea of democracy has left them rattled forever. But The Odd Book of Baby Names is more about the loss of hope than about the loss of power.

Out of the nine children of the dying monarch, only the two illegitimate sons are affected by the fall of the princely state, others are destined to live lesser lives anyway. My attempt was to celebrate different shades of pain through nine different characters who are strung together, though tenuously, by lineage.

Your novels often explore themes like familial bonds and family dysfunctions in different settings. What is it about families, relations, power equations and family dynamics that make you want to explore these themes in your novels?

Families can be good, bad or ugly. But they are goldmines of stories. If you look closely, every piece of fiction deals with familial bonds in one way or another. Some, like mine, discuss them in detail. For me, families serve as a good springboard, though I often end up writing more about their flaws than their virtues.

You have published novels every few years since 2012. How has the BJP’s victory in 2014 and the subsequent shrinking of dissent, restrictions on free press, and attacks on minorities, including Muslims, affected you as a writer and novelist who also grapples with and writes about contemporary times?

I believe art thrives in the face of adversity; especially, the art of writing. When you feel you are restrained in one way or another, you find newer ways to express yourself.

As a writer, I face the same challenges as I did before 2014. People don’t turn intolerant overnight. It is a slow process.

A writer is probably among the first to see the dark clouds on the horizon and shape a piece of art out of the approaching darkness. In my case, Vanity Bagh, which discusses the religious divide and the air of violence it creates, was written much before the religious polarisation peaked in the country.

Also read: Book Review: Fighting for an India Under Communal Assault

Another novel The Bellboy was recently published. It is described as much “a commentary on how society treats and victimises the intellectually vulnerable as it is about the quiet resentment brewing against religious minorities in India today.” How do you enter and intimately write about the lives of invisibilised characters, the people who live on the margins of our society? Does it stem from your own experiences and memories of growing up in a small town and travelling around the country in your younger days?

Yes, I like to sketch characters out of people I have come across at various stages of life and chronicle their stories. The protagonist of The Bellboy is modeled after a boy who worked as a domestic help in my hometown, though his fate resonates more with another boy I briefly knew. In fact, I stitched two of my childhood acquaintances together to create Latif, the protagonist of this book.

The Bellboy is also getting published in the UK. Does finding international readership put more pressure on you as a writer, making you more conscious of your readership? Does it in any way affect the storyteller in you and the stories you want to tell as you write more novels in the year(s) ahead?

The moment you write for a particular audience you stop being a storyteller and turn into an advertising professional. I work in advertising and when I sit down to write I eschew all strategies and try my best to be a raconteur. I write every passage to please and entertain just one person: the reader in me.

And there is always a conflict of interest between the writer and the reader in me. The writer in me wants to show off whatever little talent I have by crafting long and complicated sentences. The reader in me prefers short, simple sentences. The latter wins, most of the time.

The Bellboy by Anees Salim. (Penguin, August 29, 2022)

In The Bellboy, you delve into and confront questions about death, existence and loss. This is echoed by the symbolism of the novel, too, such as the sinking Manto Island. Why did you choose to explore these particular themes in this novel?

For me, the setting of The Bellboy works in two different ways. One as the prototype of the world we are living in, the other as the mere backdrop of a story which talks about the potential displacement of a group of islanders. Either way, the book is not about a beautiful sunrise, it is about a grim sunset, and I could not have avoided the touch of gloom or the sense of loss. 

What drew you to write the book in an island setting? Do you prefer the realism of writing about places as you see them, or of drawing on your imagination to create settings?

I think I have an infatuation with water bodies. But that’s not the reason why I set this book on an island. The island in the book is modelled after a place that exists in the same geographical location as my hometown. The impending death of this island has been written widely about, and I always thought this place had a story to tell.

While the setting was real, I created everything on the island the way I wanted. I could have visited this island before writing this book, but I chose not to. For me, writers are the best architects; words are the best building materials. So I decided to shape the island the way I pleased.

You’ve indicated before your impulse to “be an ambassador of the marginalised people and tell their story” and that with this novel, you are exploring neurodivergence. Do you have any particular themes in mind you would like to explore in other works?

I normally write about people I know, people who have touched me with their pain or plight. To answer your question, I am just beginning to write my next book and I am not sure which way it will go.

Review | Reena Kukreja’s Book Focuses on Cross-Region Brides. But What About Local Brides?

One questions the direction the book ‘Why Would I Be Married Here?’ takes us – cross-region brides remain commoditised victims, their lives terrible and radically unequal to local women.

Reena Kukreja’s book, titled Why Would I Be Married Here?: Marriage Migration and Dispossession in Neoliberal India, based on several studies and surveys, talks about cross-region marriages, globally and in India, in which women move largely to – if not from – rural areas.

With the help of research on marriage and migration, it is learnt that migration of women is common across the societies where unequal gender opportunities and responsibilities persist. The out-marrying women most likely belong to the marginalised groups in their own society. For them, marriage is considered to be their path to social and economic survival, and/or a hope for a better life, despite unequal and hierarchical gender and intimate relations in the societies they move to.

Why Would I Be Married Here? by Reena Kukreja. (Cornell University Press, April 2022)

Further, gender relations that are shaped in regional and global economic and political processes are exacerbating socio-economic inequalities, producing both ‘regular’ and new, long-distance marriages, in which the control of women’s productive and reproductive labour is at play.

These studies, including what’s mentioned in Kukreja’s book, focus on the factors giving rise to cross-region marriages, including social and individual motivations, the modalities of the movement such as mediators and transactions, the legal, ritual, and social status of the marriages and of the women who have migrated, and their lived experiences.

Caste and religion, the compulsions to enter non-normative marriages wherein social surveillance remains strong, and the nature of relations between affines – the families now linked by marriage – are specific themes in the Indian context. There are several studies on cross-region marriages – some of which are cited in Kukreja’s book – which include several districts of Haryana, east and west Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Rajasthan, and at least one district in south India. The ‘bridal’ source regions are in West Bengal and Kerala (and Orissa, as per Kukreja’s book).

In her book, Kukreja takes this work further, through the surveys, counting the total numbers of cross-region brides/wives, covering lesser-studied districts of Haryana and Rajasthan, and extensive interviews in the source districts. She proposes “an inter-sectional theoretical synthesis of feminist political economy and Dalit feminism”.

Stating that the phenomenon has been produced by “neo-liberalism” and “neo-liberal culture”, she wishes to frame the experience of cross-region brides by extending David Harvey’s idea of accumulation by dispossession to the “intimate sphere of marriage and family life for lower class rural women”. She sets this out over six chapters.

Discussing cross-region brides’ paid and unpaid work, coping strategies of the rural poor, and concurrent contours of caste/community relations and violence, she elaborates on why increasing numbers of men in Haryana and Rajasthan marry wives from afar. The chapter on parameters and compulsions of cross-region brides’ natal families, and the women themselves, in entering long-distance marriages debunks ideas that daughters are sold by uncaring families. They are pushed by growing pauperisation, an outcome of contemporary political and economic processes.

She joins other scholars in carefully taking apart the ‘moral panic’ around allegations of trafficking, stressing the multiple modalities and ambiguities in arranging cross-region marriages. The scales of transgression become visible, wherein long-distance marriages can hide the violation of caste endogamy, and are more acceptable than local violations.

The last two chapters focus on the lived experiences of cross-region brides. They become wives, but are marked by the “stain of the internal other”, particularly of caste, colour, and culture. They enter into difficult intra-household and community negotiations, which deny them these representations, and impose labour demands on them.

Also read: Review: Caroline Elkins’s History of the British Empire Is Indifferent to Indian Scholarship

More assertion than analytical demonstration

This is an extensively researched and important read for those interested in cross-region marriages. Unfortunately, despite much that the book has to commend itself, it does not fulfil its promises, some made more through assertion than analytical demonstration. In this article, I focus on a few issues.

The first is a common misstep in the discourse today: the neo-liberal shift in the state policy is taken as ab initio for everything unjust and unequal. Despite an occasional caveat that, of course, there were inequalities, poverty, patriarchal relations, and caste oppression prior to this, it is as if it is not class society and capitalism in themselves, but neo-liberalism that produces systemic dispossession, alienation, economic differentiation, and individualisation.

Not only is taking co-occurrence as a causal relation methodologically problematic, but her timeline is not in keeping with the “outcome of neo-liberalism” thesis. Studying social change requires a careful look at the past and the chronology. Published research on districts in Rajasthan, akin to those Kukreja studied, has found intense work demands on peasant women, a factor she highlights as necessitating a wife and straining familial relations, evident in the early 1980s and made by both natal and marital families.

Cross-region marriages were already increasing in the 1990s in Haryana, and prior to this, in Uttar Pradesh. With the growing non-household employment, intra-caste differentiation had been long developing, permeating the contours of caste endogamy, furthering the hierarchical and differentiated marriage market, and making marriage difficult for many people, particularly poor men and women. New mores meant that both men and women now refused to live in possibly polyandrous households, increasing the proportion and numbers of men who would marry and whom families often ignored.

Harvey’s formulation of accumulation by dispossession has furthered the understanding of processes in the spread of capitalist relations, intensified and accelerated by financialisation and the withdrawal of state services advocated in neo-liberalism.

Kukreja wishes to use this idea to understand the intimate sphere, arguing that we cannot rest our entire explanation of increasing cross-region marriages on the masculinisation of sex ratios. To do so, however, the dialectical relation between dispossession and accumulation, inherent in the formulation, must be established.

Who or what is accumulating when cross-region brides are experiencing multiple dispossessions of matrimonial choice? The men they marry are not accumulating for they have also been dispossessed of local matrimonial options. Is not the low status of the women who come from afar pre-given by the low status of the men they marry? Is it the men who can marry locally? Or is it the women whose families give larger and larger dowries?

Why not speak of the commoditisation of the men who can command increasing dowries rather than the women whose families must pay more or marry them afar? Why not see the possibility of cross-region marriages as an added, albeit unequal, path out of social stigma for men, and social and sexual stigma and pauperisation for women that marks singlehood in a context of compulsory heterosexual marriage?

In South Asia, the last point remains hegemonic and is largely “family-arranged” within caste and community endogamy and parallel marital payments, albeit none of these dimensions are static. Most women (and men) have no choice – structurally and culturally – to not marry or whom to marry, whether local or long-distance.

Kukreja seems to forget this, despite her notions of “compromised agency” and pointers on coping tactics of cross-region brides. One questions the direction the book takes us – cross-region brides remain commoditised victims, their lives terrible and radically unequal to local women.

Yes, cross-region brides move to contexts that are likely to be dramatically strange and harsh for them and this differentiates subjective experiences in local and long-distance marriage regions. But have the gender and domestic relations for local women who have married with large dowry changed so dramatically, their bargaining power so multiplied that they can refuse to labour in their marital homes as Kukreja asserts? A surprise for many observers, even those who argue that things have changed.

Opposite pulls in social relations, trends, and women’s agency in different groups in the same society and an increasing divide in society is something M.N. Srinivas suggested long ago. However, I fear that the conclusions here are marred methodologically.

From one group of women, cross-region brides, we hear their self-narrated experiences of difficulties and anguish and the rhetoric about them from local older women and men, mostly negative and/or prejudiced. We do not learn of the familial experiences of local, in-married brides through conversations with them, but by what the cross-region brides and others say about them – that they are now able to lord it in their marital homes.

How has she taken into consideration that interviewees also speak to the moment and what they think will grab the interests of interviewers; depending on that, everything can be bad or good in their or others’ lives? Critically, for a comparison, we must hear their own experiences of family practices from a range of local brides.

Kukreja elides her own statement that marriage (in this context) is a moment of traumatic rupture for any new bride. While natal kin support is particularly hard to access for cross-region brides, it is not forthcoming for the poor local women we hear little of and, as many sayings indicate, can peter out for the women who have married with large dowries and have ‘strong’ natal families.

Certainly, talk about the ‘other’, which reiterates racist/colourist, ethnic, and caste prejudices and their strangeness, which Kukreja elaborates, shape can have iniquitous implications for social and political relations, experiences, and subjectivities. Yet, I was struck by her constant denial of any genuine empathy and kindness for the cross-region brides by almost all local women; it was always instrumental. Within hardship and discrimination, cross-region brides build emotional bonds with their children, even their husbands, and local women – indicated by Kukreja and more so in other studies.

Should an intersectional Dalit feminist framework not take a closer look at poor and Dalit local women and the significant numbers of Dalit men recorded as marrying cross-region brides? Do the Dalit women married to ‘upper caste’ men acknowledge that they may have regional caste sisters experiencing similar difficulties and the loss of natal kin? The differences and directions of change in ideas, values, processes and social relations – caste, community, familial, work – cannot be seen or analysed without taking the multiple experiences, contradictions, complexities, and commonalities of the varied groups into account.

To understand them and the regional differences, one requires a sense of the social fabric (albeit hierarchical) of these villages and communities, in the present and the past. Other than a few ground-breaking and feminist histories – limited to Haryana – Kukreja relies on statements of her informants (largely ‘middle/upper caste’ in the destination areas), describing a rosy past in which “what ought to be” is compared to contemporary familial and social tensions.

More attention to the large range of sociological work, however flawed, on caste, gender, marriage, familial, and community relations in different settings across north India, factoring in their different times, could have enabled a nuanced and more substantive analysis of the dynamics and causalities of micro and macro continuity and change, commonality and difference in the relations and lives of unmarried women – local and cross-region.

In conclusion, it is important to emphasise that it is not just the flaws that compelled me to point to furthering the understandings of contemporary India, but the richness of this book that has provoked this discussion. As with any review, it cannot capture all that is in it.

Rajni Palriwala is a professor of Sociology at Delhi University.

UP Govt Extends Deadline for SIT Probing Hathras Case

The special investigation team, constituted on September 30, and led by Home Secretary Bhagwan Swarup will have 10 more days to file its report.

Lucknow: The UP government has given an additional ten days to the three-member SIT investigating the alleged gang rape and killing of a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras as the “probe is not complete”, a senior official said Wednesday.

The special investigation team, constituted on September 30, 2020, and led by Home Secretary Bhagwan Swarup, was initially given seven days to submit its report.

But the UP government later sought a CBI probe into the case and the criminal conspiracy to spread caste conflict it has suspected. On Tuesday, it told the Supreme Court it wanted an apex court-monitored CBI inquiry into the incident to ensure “no vested interests will be able to create a fake, false narrative with oblique motives”.

“Yes…the time for submitting the report for the SIT has been extended by ten days,” Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi told PTI.

Asked about the reasons for the extension, he added, “The reason is one. The probe is not complete.”

Also read: Website in ‘Foreign Plot to Cause UP Riots’ Says ‘Avoid NYPD, White Supremacists’

The Yogi Adityanath government is facing severe criticism for its handling of the case, particularly after the local police cremated the woman’s body at night without the family’s approval. However, officials said the cremation was done “as per the wishes of the family”.

The government has claimed that some people were trying to foment caste tensions in the aftermath of the alleged gang rape of the woman by four ‘upper caste’ Thakur men on September 14, 2020. Quoting an FSL report, it has also sought to deny the rape charge in spite of oral evidence recorded in the form of a video statement by the victim.

Referring to recent incidents, Chief Minister Adityanath has said that “anarchist elements were trying to trigger communal and caste violence in the state.”

The woman died on September 29, 2020, of the grievous injuries she suffered during the assault.

Now, TMC MPs Stopped From Visiting Hathras Victim’s Family

On Thursday, members of the Congress and Samajwadi Party had been stopped from making their way to Hathras.

New Delhi: The TMC on Friday alleged that its leaders were stopped by the Uttar Pradesh Police from meeting the family members of the Hathras gangrape victim. Reports have said that Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien was pushed to the ground by UP police, in an attempt to stop him while party members made their way towards Boolgarhi village.

In a statement, the party said that the delegation of Trinamool Congress MPs was stopped by police around 1.5 kilometres from the victim’s home.

“A delegation of Trinamool MPs have been stopped by UP Police from entering Hathras. The delegation had travelled about 200 kms from Delhi. The Trinamool MPs were on their way to the village in Hathras, travelling separately, to express solidarity with the grieving family and convey their condolences,” the statement said.

The delegation also included Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Pratima Mondal and Mamata Thakur (former MP).

One of the MPs who was stopped said, “We are peacefully proceeding to Hathras to meet the family and pay our condolences. We are travelling individually and maintaining all protocols. We are not armed. Why are we stopped? What kind of jungle raj is this that elected MPs are prevented from meeting a grieving family.”

“At this moment, we are just 1.5 kms from the victims home in Hathras, explaining to police officials that we will walk the 1.5kms to the victims’ house in Hathras,” the statement said quoting the MP.

Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were on Thursday arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police after they were stopped from marching towards Hathras to meet the family members of the Dalit woman allegedly raped by four men on September 14, 2020.

Video Used to Push Misleading Claim That Hathras Victim’s Family Performed Her Last Rites

Sister-in-law of the deceased alleged that the police placed someone near the pyre to falsely project that the family was present during the funeral.

A 19-year-old Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras was allegedly tortured and gang-raped by four upper-caste men on September 14, 2020. She succumbed to her injuries on September 29, 2020. The UP police reportedly cremated her body in the dead of the night early September 30, 2020, as family members and villagers attempted to stop the funeral process.

The accused were charged with gang-rape and attempt to murder ten days after the incident based on the victim’s statement who was fighting for her life in Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital. Following her tragic demise, the UP police said there is “no proof” of rape. Hours later, she was cremated without the family’s consent as cops blocked relatives, the media and protesters from the funeral ground.

The police denied that the woman’s last rites were performed without her family’s permission. A video has been pushed on social media platforms to support the police’s version of events. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Haryana IT cell head Arun Yadav tweeted, “Victim’s family did her last rites themselves.” He blamed the media for ‘propaganda’.

The video shows a person behind the camera questioning an elderly man’s relationship with the victim. While the old man is barely audible, people around him say, “Ladki ke baba hai ye (He is the woman’s baba.)” The word ‘baba’ could mean father, grandfather or an elderly male relative/acquaintance. The voice behind the camera then says, “Aap baba ho na? (You’re her baba right?)” to which the man nods his head in affirmative. “Acha thik hai (Alright then),” the person behind the camera says, following which the audio is muted for six seconds. The subsequent scenes show people, including the elderly man, performing rituals around the pyre.

Also read: UP Police Now Claims Hathras Victim Wasn’t Raped, Matter ‘Twisted’ to ‘Stir Caste Tension’

The same video was tweeted by Priti Gandhi, social media in-charge of BJP Mahila Morcha.

BJP UP spokesperson Shalabh Mani Tripathi retweeted the video posted by Prashant Patel Umrao.

Several BJP members and supporters also shared the video — Vikas Pandey, @BefittingFacts, Ritu Rathaur, @chintanvedant and @BobbyGandhi3.

Hathras District Magistrate claimed that the deceased’s father and brother consented to the funeral and her family members were present during the last rites.

Did the victim’s family members participate in her funeral?

India Today journalist Tanushree Pandey was reporting live from the ground in the early hours of Wednesday. She tweeted a video where villagers and family members are seen blocking the ambulance and begging the police to let them take their daughter home. The pleas, however, fell on deaf ears and a burning pyre could be spotted at a distance.

The victim’s brother confirmed to Alt News that no one from his family was permitted to attend the cremation. He also said that his grandfather died in 2006 which means that the elderly man in the video cannot be the woman’s grandfather.

Several other outlets showed visuals of women blocking the ambulance carrying the victim’s body. Mojo spoke with the woman’s father who stated that the police locked the family inside their house and conducted her funeral in their absence.

NDTV spoke with relatives locked inside their houses alleging that neither did they consent to the funeral nor was the victim’s body handed over. One of the men says that the deceased’s father consulted relatives and decided that the funeral will be held in the morning with all customs and rituals.

Also read: In Hathras Rape Victim’s Village, Caste Discrimination Is an Everyday Reality

However, the police did not permit the family to attend the dead-of-night cremation.

The father’s statement was also taken by NDTV at night when the cops formed a human chain to disallow people, including media persons, from entering the funeral ground.

CNN’s Marya Shakil reported that the family’s wishes to conduct a funeral with Hindu rituals were not met as the police performed her last rites. The victim’s mother said, “They [police] did not give my daughter’s body. They took her away. They could’ve at least let me see her face one last time. But they didn’t let us bring her body home. We pleaded but they didn’t listen.”

In another video, the mother can be seen inconsolably wailing and saying that she wants to perform her daughter’s last rites with Hindu rituals.

The victim’s brother also said that her dead body was forcibly cremated.

Her sister-in-law alleged that the police placed someone near the pyre to falsely project that the family was present during the funeral.

Journalist Arvind Gunasekar wrote that the Uttar Pradesh government claimed that the victim’s ‘uncle’ performed her last rites. However, her parents maintained that they weren’t at the site.

According to an NDTV report, “Amid spiralling outrage, the Hathras police claimed the cremation was carried out with the family’s consent and some members were present. It turned out to be one uncle – not her parents – who was called and shown the cremation.”

Initial reports from the ground do not support the UP police and state administration’s claim that the funeral was not conducted forcibly. Scenes from early hours of September 30 show a distraught family begging cops to let them take their deceased daughter home one last time.

Their pleas were met with coercion. Family members were locked inside their homes while the police formed a human chain around the funeral ground where the alleged rape victim’s body burnt without her parents in sight. A video of a frail elderly man tossing logs of wood in the pyre was used to claim that her family performed the last rites. The man, however, was not a part of the victim’s immediate family.

The article first appeared on Alt News. Read the original here.

My Secret Life: Indian Parents, Pride Parade and Troublesome Lies

How I realised I have been protesting all this while – within the closed quarters of my home.

“I’m going to meet a friend. Will be home before six,” I told my mother on a Sunday afternoon while she was busy boiling rice in the kitchen.

“Aur lunch?” she asked.

“Baad mein,” I said, and quickly went out to call a rickshaw.

There was no friend waiting for me and I was definitely not going to be back before 8 pm. I was going for the Delhi Pride Parade and I had lied – yet again.

I had to lie because my parents don’t approve of me participating in parades or protests. The protests or the “useless naarebaazi”, as they like to call them, are merely a distraction – an excuse to dodge studies. For them, the best way is to blindly gulp whatever – good or bad – the government serves.

They ridicule armchair activists but indulge in the same. They’d speak highly of a 1950s Raj Kapoor film, like Awaara – which had multiple shades of rebellion and an overarching socialist theme – but wouldn’t want to see their own daughter walk on the streets holding a rainbow banner. They’d quote writers from the Indian Progressive Writers Movement, who were anti-establishment and frequently took out protests in the pre-Independence era, but would mock their daughter for reading an Amartya Sen or an Arundhati Roy book.

Dear Ma and Papa, if you were so averse to the idea of “useless naarebaazi”, why did you expose me to such films and literature in the first place? And if you did, how can you box me now?

I would often pose these questions at them as an adolescent. Over time, I realised that those questions were falling on deaf ears. My parents were (and still are) not ready to listen.

Also read: Childhood Scars Aren’t Quite Like Heartbreaks – They Never Heal Completely

Hence, I started lying. I started making up excuses. I started inventing names of imaginary friends who wanted to meet me for a coffee whenever there were protests, film-screenings or talks happening in the city.

The initial few times were scary but I got more and more used to it. The whole process was fun and exciting and nobody knew. However, the exercise of lying got exhausting after a point. The pressure to live a double-life started taking a toll on my mental health. And eventually, lying became a habit and I became good at it.

But sometimes I forget that I had lied in the morning. I forget to weave a cover-up story. I forget that I live two lives.

This time, on the day of the Pride Parade, when I came back home at around 8.30 pm  – after of course wiping off the rainbow stripes from my cheeks and unpinning a badge from my kurta – my mother asked: “Tumne lunch kiya?”

I fumbled because I had forgotten to prepare a chain of believable lies. “White-sauce pasta aur gulab jamun,” I lied, looking straight into her eyes like a true method actor.

My mother was convinced and I thought that the show was over until I heard dhol beats from the parade coming from the living room. My father was watching visuals from the event on a news channel and my heart started racing. “What if the camera pans at my face? What if he finds out?” I panicked.

Nothing happened, phew.

But my legs were hurting really bad and my stomach was making weird sounds. But who could I say this to? I had forgotten to grab something to eat while coming back home. I was really hungry.

Lying to go to a protest is definitely tiring and it is not something I’d like to do for a long time. Some day, I want to confront my parents and tell them that I should have the right to take my own decisions – be it going to a protest or reading a ‘forbidden’ book (without having to find different ways to hide the hardcover).

But, I have to admit that it’s thrilling when I chalk-out an escape plan the night before a ‘scandalous’ event takes place; or when I wrap a newspaper cover around a book like The Communist Manifesto while reading it. I feel a sense of victory when I come back home and convince my mother that I did have the white sauce pasta and gulab jamun for lunch, even though it’s a horrible combination for an afternoon meal. I feel content when I scroll through the pictures on my phone – I can never post them on Instagram.

I like to attend protests, the pride parades, the weekend meetups because I feel safe at these places and don’t feel judged. There is no pressure to perform or lie. I learn a lot when I attend protests and ask silly questions to those drenched in sweat with their clothes smeared in mud.

I had a similar eye-opening conversation at Pride this time. A girl in a pretty red sari told me that protests are of different kinds and aren’t just about taking to the streets. “My way of dissent can be different from yours,” she said.

And in that very moment, as the crowd shouted ‘Love is Love’, I realised that I too was protesting all this while – within the closed quarters of my home.

Also read: Ghosts of My Family’s Past: Rage, Endurance and the Fruits of Toxic Masculinity

There have been instances where I have blatantly broken the unsaid curfew – I have gone out at 7 pm for a film and have come back at 10 pm. I have stopped wearing a religious locket because I didn’t want to. I decided to do a masters at a university my parents were apprehensive of. I decided to take up a job at a place they love to hate. I have been on dates with Muslim men.

And this time, when I went for the Pride, I came back at 8 pm (not 6 pm, as promised).

But there’s still a long way to go.

Although I have broken some rules at home, I still feel tied to so many things sometimes. There is still a lot of hesitation. I have to bottle-up my feelings, which I often crave to share with my parents and other family members.

My emotional outbursts often find their way into my Instagram stories and posts – which are mostly absurd, nonsensical but absolutely real; I can’t pretend all the time.

On the day of Pride, I wish I could have come back home proudly spouting the rainbow stripes on my cheek and a badge pinned to my kurta. I wish the camera of the media crew had panned at my face and I could say: “Yes Papa, that’s me!” without any hesitation.

But until then, it’s time to prepare for a weekend film-screening (a banned documentary). Will probably tell my parents that I am going out for a pre-wedding celebration.

Goes well with the season.

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty 

My Internal Conflicts in a Conservative Family Setting

‘I want to express my opinions and be heard but at least I can do that and be laughed at’

The poem is a sneak peek inside the heart of a young Indian girl belonging to a conservatively modern family, who studied social science at the London School of Economics and now struggles to keep up with the beliefs and expectations of her family – but loves them deeply.

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I study about agency and voice
But at least they gave me a chance to educate myself.

We discuss about solutions to crimes against women, in our class
But at least they let me wear things that are respectful

I debate my classmates about feminism
But at least I have the chance to make my career in a year.

I discuss my passion to fight for human rights
But at least I have the luxury of having a ‘practical’ career outside home.

I study about identity and representations
But at least I get to have some say about who I want to marry within our religion.

I share articles about menstruation myths
But at least I can interact with my father when I am on my period.

I talk about the right to free speech
But at least I am able to secretly write about what bothers me

I listen to podcasts about finding your purpose in life
But at least having kids is already on top of the chart

I fantasise about sharing life with an understanding partner
But at least he will be able to give me everything I need – economically

I want to travel the world alone
But at least I can do that when I have a partner

I share my desire to study more
But at least I can do that, if my in-laws give me the permission

I want to express my opinions and be heard
But at least I can do that and be laughed at

I tear up see my sister go through the same
But at least she has it slightly better then me, as they say

I do not want to feel guilty for feeling this way
For at least I have loving parents, no?

I just want to have a simple happy life
But at least I am a good daughter, no?

Yashi Jain is a 22-year-old masters student in Development in Media at the London School of Economics.

Featured image credit: Unsplash

‘I Feel Betrayed’: No One Prepared Me For the Real World

I had to do a masters in social science to understand the reality because I was never taught how caste, class and gender actually play out in society.

From learning ‘honesty is the best policy’ to ‘God is one’, all of us grew up to realise that lying becomes essential to survival and that had there been a single God for us all, this world would have been a different place today.

I, as a 24-year-old, sometimes feel betrayed.

It feels like my whole childhood was a lie. All those moral science books were nothing but sheer and utter lies. The quotes that we recited every day during school assembly were far from the truth.

I had this epiphany when I realised that everyone around me wants a Ram Mandir to be built in Ayodhya. I’ll refrain from delving into the politics of the issue, but that was the first time I realised that there isn’t a single, solitary God. There was a mosque there and prayers were already being offered.

But that was not enough, because obviously God is not one; people are divided into groups and they have their own Gods. There is a fight to pray for them, a fight over which God came first and a fight to prove their supremacy. The prayers offered in a Mosque reach a different God and the prayers offered in a temple reach another one.

As a kid, I was told that all human beings are equal.

But alas, I realised what a huge lie this was. I remember one Navratra (a nine-day Hindu festival), some Brahmins came to our place for lunch. But this same group of Brahmins also went to my neighbours’ and their neighbours’ house for lunch the same day.

As a kid, I couldn’t help but wonder why we’re so keen on feeding this particular group when we can invite so many other hungry people who are out there on the streets begging for food.

And that’s when it dawned upon me that all of us are not equal.

My 10-year-old self somehow understood class. I understood that some people earn more money and hence live in bigger houses. But that was also the day I understood caste. Of course, everyone is not privileged enough to understand it this way.

Some people have to live the horrible realities of caste every day to understand it.

I grew up with two younger brothers and was always told that there is no difference between the three of us. We all went to the same school, same swimming class and were scolded the same way if we scored less. It was all the same until I realised that I was expected to learn how to make tea, while my brothers were not.

Also read: How My Family Changed the Way I Saw Myself and My Body

This realisation was further cemented when my brother was not even questioned when he expressed his desire to go on a solo trip. And since then, every day, I have been realising that we all aren’t the same. We can never be.

Santa Claus is not real, nor are fairies. I understand that these stories are told to children, perhaps because adults want them to believe in magic, at least till the time they can afford to do so.

But I don’t understand why we lie to kids about human relationships and society. Perhaps because we want to protect them.

As an adult today, I feel less prepared, because the real world is not how I imagined it to be. It’s a far cry from it.

I feel betrayed. I feel pessimistic.

The world that I am seeing today was not the world my parents or teachers prepared me for.

None of the books taught me about caste, class and gender and how they play out in society. I was taught trigonometry and thermodynamics along with several other concepts of math and science that I have scarcely used after school.

But I wasn’t taught the basics of human society. I wasn’t taught why my father is the head of the house and not my mother. I wasn’t taught about why we have a different set of utensils for the aunty who comes to clean our house.

I had to do a masters in social science to understand the reality I’m living in every day. I had to wait to become a 24-year old to understand the meaning of the word ‘patriarchy’, when it could and should have been introduced to me years ago.

What I have learnt in merely a year of pursuing my masters has made me the person I am today – more informed than I ever was. But I still fail to communicate all of this to my parents or other friends who are studying science or business. I don’t know how to communicate this because I don’t know where to begin.

This last one year has been more about unlearning than learning. But I really think this process should have started earlier. We need to teach our kids about gender, sex, caste, class and religion.

We need to tell them about the norms and structures of society no matter how glorious or flawed it is. They can make their own decisions after. Trusting those choices, I believe, would make this world a better place.

Prakriti Singh is pursuing her masters in Media and Cultural Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty

How Instagram Brought Feminism to My Dinner Table

Social media is a powerful medium and can play a vital role in how and what we communicate to those around us.

I was twelve years and one day old when Nirbhaya happened. I followed the story in the newspapers – terrified, angry, confused and horrified. I would read the reports and articles over and over, trying to find some hope in the world around me. This was my “feminist awakening”.

I threw myself into reading about women’s rights and patriarchy. I picked up novels with feminist themes. Over my teenage years, I learnt about the many different intersections of prejudice – race, caste, colour, sexuality.

I made my Instagram account after I finished high school, and my mom promptly followed me on the app. I would share political views on my Instagram stories. I signed petitions online to support net neutrality, cried happy tears on the night the US Supreme Court passed Marriage Equality, mourned the Syrian refugee crisis.

I will never forget the wave of despair that washed over me the day Trump was elected to be the President of the US. Everyone who I met and interacted with on a daily basis knew how strongly I felt about these things, including my mother.

Reports of dowry abuse, rape, caste-based atrocities from India were so dangerously normalised even to my teenage self that they didn’t provoke the tiniest bit of my anger.

Also read: The Story of Two Dead Women Who Taught Me to How to Dance

I was emotionally invested in these human rights issues, even though they were so far removed from my immediate surroundings. Yet, my family said nothing. Not about Nirbhaya, not about Palestine, not about the BJP, not about Syria. They knew I would find all the answers I needed on the internet.

Once I moved to college, I started sharing more about sex positivity, LGBTQIA+ rights, casteism, misogyny, body image – all things that I’d barely talked to my parents about. It was difficult for me to express myself to them, even though I would debate with my peers fervently on these very topics. My perspective was important to me, and I was scared that my parents would not approve of my views – that they would be disappointed instead.

My views came from my own independent thinking. I valued them, but I also valued my family. It was easier to post opinions on Instagram because the people who saw them didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care if they thought I was “too loud” or “too much of a feminist”. But I was scared that my parents would say these very things and that I would not be able to find a middle ground with them. I did not want to express an opinion that they disagreed with and drive a wedge between us.

Also read: My Instagram Trolls Should Help Me Fight Our Common Foe – Patriarchy

But my mom would reply and react to my stories. The replies would express fervent agreement and approval. Instagram posts became a language through which we would talk to and educate each other about these things. Comics, art, articles – we communicated through other people’s words and art. She frequently sent me feminist poetry that made my day and would make me cry if I thought too long about it. I knew that both of us were on the same page about these issues. I knew my mother had my back, and it was a kind of acceptance I had been too hesitant to imagine.

Returning home in the break changed everything. We knew where the other stood on a particular issue. Although I was apprehensive at first, I found myself passionately discussing prejudice and politics with my parents – even if I disagreed with them, I would not be afraid to express it. We would talk about how raising boys in a certain way can mess them up for life, how caste and dignity of labour are invisible only to the most privileged and much more. These conversations came from talking about relatives and friends, and while we had talked about these things before, it was never in such depth.

Politics and prejudice are interwoven into our social fabric. They exist in our houses and families. They don’t cease to exist just because they’re not addressed at home. So many injustices are swept under the rug because kids simply don’t have the language to talk about it.

Social media is a powerful medium and can play a vital role in how and what we communicate to those around us. It made me feel accepted beyond the virtual space and helped me find common ground with those that are closest to me.

Shradhdha Das is a media student at Symbiosis Centre of Media and Communication, Pune specialising in Journalism.

Featured image credit: Unsplash/Charles

Can We Be Kind By Being Cruel?

Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong.

Imagine that someone you care about is procrastinating in advance of a vital exam. If he fails the test, he will not be able to go to university, an eventuality of major consequence in his life. If positive encouragement doesn’t work, you might reverse strategy, making your friend feel so bad, so worried, so scared, that the only strategy left is that he starts studying like mad.

Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong. Now research from my team at the Liverpool Hope University in the UK sheds light on how the process works.

We typically equate positive emotions with positive consequences, and there’s research to back that up. Numerous studies of interpersonal emotion regulation – how one person can change or influence the emotions of another – emphasise the value of increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative ones. Other studies show that making someone feel badly can be useful: anger is helpful when confronting a cheater, and hurting another’s feelings can give them an edge in a game.

Now, my team has documented the routine use of cruelty for altruistic reasons. To validate the phenomenon, we hypothesised the need for three conditions: the motivation to worsen someone’s mood needs to be altruistic; the negative emotion inflicted on the other person should help them achieve a specific goal; and the person inflicting the pain must feel empathy for the recipient.

To test what we call altruistic affect-worsening, we recruited 140 adults and told them that they were being paired with another, anonymous participant to play a computer game for a possible prize of £50 in Amazon vouchers – though in reality, there was no ‘partner’. Prior to play, participants were asked to read a personal statement ostensibly written by their opponent about a painful romantic breakup. Some participants were told to put themselves in the opponent’s shoes; others were instructed to remain detached, thus manipulating the degree of empathy felt towards the presumed competitor. Participants played one of two video games: in one, Soldier of Fortune, players had to kill as many enemies as possible and the goal was confrontational; in the other, Escape Dead Island, players had to escape a roomful of zombies without being killed, and the goal was one of avoidance.

After practising alone for five minutes, participants were asked to decide how the game should be presented to their opponents. Those who empathised more strongly with their opponents asked the experimenters to make the opponent angry for the confrontational game and fearful for the escape game – both states of mind that would give the opponent a higher shot at winning the prize.

Our study shows that the tendency to make another feel bad to help him succeed is far more prevalent when the provocateur feels empathy. What’s more, and especially surprising, is the finding that use of the technique is not random. In the shoot-’em-up game, empathetic participants chose music and images meant to induce anger; in the zombie game, they chose music and images conducive to fear. In both cases, these effects gave the opponents a boost toward winning.

In short, humans intuitively have an excellent sense of which negative emotion will work best as a motivator. And the participants’ actions were absolutely altruistic: they chose to induce emotions that they knew would be beneficial for their opponents to perform well in the games, while reducing their own chance of a prize.

Many questions still remain: is this process present during childhood and adolescence? If not, what factors contribute to its development? What strategies do people use to worsen others’ moods in real interactions? Our study looked at the phenomenon between strangers, but what happens when the protagonist and the opponent are close friends or family members? Other research suggests that, in that circumstance, the motivation to use the strategy could be even more pronounced.  Studies that make use of diaries or videos, meanwhile, can shed light on how altruistic interpersonal affect-worsening operates in real life.

Finally, what are the limits of affect-worsening – and can even the most well-meaning, altruistic person end up doing harm? It might be that being cruel is not necessary, and that we are mistaken to think that the other person needs to feel bad in order to achieve long-term wellbeing. Or it could be that the outcome we want will actually worsen the life of the other person. To return to our opening story, perhaps the friend gets into college after prodding, but finds that college is the wrong path for him. Or perhaps the friend is vulnerable, and the strategy that helps him to achieve a goal also lowers his happiness and self-esteem, and provokes a downward spiral nonetheless.

Even if cruelty is effective, is it really the most effective strategy of all? In our original study, participants did not have the option to induce positive emotions in the ostensible opponent. Thus, we were unable to test if participants who experienced higher empathic concern might have wanted to increase their opponents’ wellbeing by inducing positive or happy emotions instead. Our research continues, but one thing is clear: empathising with others leads not only to help and support but also to cruelty. Only further studies will determine how – and if – cruelty can be effective and non-risky for our loved ones and our friends.

This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to Aeon. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making, including commissioning or content-approval.Aeon counter – do not remove

Belén López-Pérez is a lecturer in psychology at Liverpool Hope University in the UK.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Featured image credit: Chris Sabor/Unsplash