torture garden

Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) was raped as a child by the Jesuit priests who were supposed to educate him.

He wrote, "The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture garden. Passions, greed, hatred and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism and religion; these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering."

Not surprisingly, he embraced anarchism, which aimed to sweep away organized society, and replace it with a culture of equals. He did so, despite the fact that as a businessman, investor, journalist, novelist and dramatist, he was extremely rich.

Mirbeau claimed that he wrote 'The Diary of a Chambermaid' to expose the plight of French domestic servants,  preyed on by employment agencies and brutalized by their owners. He used his inside knowledge of the upper classes to attack them.

Celestine, the protagonist of the book, is a cheeky, voluptuous maid, exploited by men and women alike for their sexual fantasies. Celestine moves through various upper class homes, with barely concealed contempt and disgust for her employers. She sees it all - shoe fetishes, women with dildoes, a dying boy's sexual urges, sadomasochistic frenzy, pornography, bestiality, never losing her own perverse sense of humour.

In a scathingly cynical end, Celestine chooses to marry Joseph, a gamekeeper, a virulent anti-Semite, a sadist and probably a sexual murderer. Joseph steals their last employers' silver and uses the money to open a bar in a small, seaside town. Celestine and he settle down, become rich, and Celestine with 'upper class' fastidiousness, begins to complain of her "thieving, shameless" servants.

In 1900, the book was taken as erotica rather than crusading fiction. Celestine was too robust a heroine to be identified as a victim. She took too much pleasure in the cruelties perpetrated on her.

- Taken from John Baxter's introduction to the HarperCollins 2006 edition of 'The Diary of a Chambermaid'.

While I was reading the book, a daylight robbery occurred in our housing complex. Four men knocked on a door, entered the house by force, and holding up an old woman, went off with her jewellery and cash. The fact that they entered this particular house on a Sunday afternoon, indicates that they must have inside knowledge of it, they must have known that they would find only an old woman there, and plenty of loot.

Security was beefed up, the security agency got a stern warning, the lift-men and watchmen were scolded harshly for failing to provide adequate security. I am sure all the residents wondered at least once, secretly or openly, as to which one of the security personnel was party to the robbery.

What surprises me about Indian society today is not the amount of crime, and violence that exists, but the fact that there is not more. One only has to look at the inhuman conditions that the people who work for us live in, particularly in cities like Mumbai; their unfairly low wages which ensure that they will never get out of those living and work conditions; the day to day treatment meted out to them, usually rude indifference coupled with an expectation of gratuitous politeness or humility from them; a 365 days per year work schedule; to know that there is something skewered in our system, and sooner or later it has to collapse.

As for sexual exploitation and abuse, there is no dearth of that either in our society. Is there? Sexual needs in our employees, particularly those who live with us, make us uncomfortable. We actively discourage the girls working in our houses from having boyfriends and turn a blind eye to the measures taken by the male workers to fulfill their needs, most of whom live away from their families. However, our own sexual need of our servants is taken for granted. When found out, it could be understandable, forgiven as a momentary lapse or condemned, depending on the manner in which it comes out. The shame is in the nature of the proof, and not the deed itself.

The relentlessly unforgiving stance of Celestine in 'The Diary of a Chambermaid' makes for an effective critique of the bourgeoise, their grotesqueness hidden under a thin veneer of respectability. Perhaps in 1900, the book did shock French society out of its complacence.

But does Indian society today react any more to such expose´s? Has not the intrusion of the media in every aspect of our lives, made us more insensitive to any portrayal of stark reality? Does not every new expose´ make us more cynical, more thick-skinned, even abetting us in our own evasions of morality?

Each employer that Celestine works for, insist that they will call her 'Mary', as 'Celestine' is a name too fancy for a servant. What they of course seek to do, is stamp out any trace of her identity apart from being a maid. While in our society, we do not change our maids' names, a 'Sunita' is easily replaced by a 'Lalita'. Extreme poverty ensures that there will never be a shortage of servants in Indian society, at least in our lifetimes. The few days of hardship suffered by us while the turnover takes effect is to be grumbled about, a calamity rocking our domestic peace.

The hardship of our servants is perhaps pitied if we are sensitive souls, but usually dismissed as their 'karma' even by themselves. We all know that the poor are poor because they drink, because they are superstitious, illiterate, lazy, stupid. If only they had been clever enough to be born as us.

Viewed the book

Teja likes to switch on his night lamp and open a book the first thing he gets into bed. He started doing it first to impress me. Now it's a habit.

The other day, I walked in and he was holding up a book. I rolled up his 'charsa' and put it over his eyes. He continued holding up the book.

I said, "You are still reading?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "I've covered your eyes, and you are still reading?"

He said, "Yes."

I gave up, and removed the 'charsa' from his eyes.

I said: "How?"

He said, "I've decided to give 30 seconds to each page. That's it. That's the only way I'll ever complete a book."

I said, "So whichever line you are at, when 30 seconds are up, you move to the next page, is it?"

He laughed.

He said, "You are very funny. What's it got to do with the lines?"

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "How would I know 30 seconds are up when I am reading?"

I said, "Yes, how?"

He said patiently, "Obviously I cannot read the lines. I keep my eyes on the page, and I count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 up to 30. Then shift my eyes to the next page."

I was tongue-tied.

He said, "I sense some things on the page. And make up my own story."

I said, "Hmmm. Nice."

He said, "Look, this last page, I know there is a girl waiting at the bus stop, it's late at night, she was at a disco earlier. Maybe, there will be a murder, maybe something else."

I said, "Seems as good a way of reading as any."

'Boi Dekha' or "Viewed the Book" is popular Bengali slang for watching a film. So, Teja is in good company, as Punjab-da-Puttar would affirm.

Later, at dinner, Teja missed an entire conversation between Pu, Sesh and me. After the Ramayan was over, he said, "You know there was this story about Ram."

I said, "Teja, where have you been? We've been talking about this for the last 10 minutes."

He said, "Oh, I was talking to Sesh."

I said, "You were not."

He said, "Yes, I was. Without saying anything."

It didn't matter that Sesh hadn't heard him.

We all agreed that Teja is moving to greater philosophical heights than we are yet aware of.

The broken people

Last year, I thought it was time for Dhanno to begin cleaning her own bathroom and toilet. When I proposed it to her, she was shocked. Until then, usually I and sometimes Tai had cleaned it for her.

Perhaps she had never realized that someone did the job for her. Luckily, she was reading bits of Mahatma Gandhi's 'My Experiments with Truth' then, and we crossed over several issues with the thought that Gandhiji cleaned his own toilet.

It's the same with our public spaces. Most of us assume there is someone to clean up. So, it's chuck, spit, pee, shit.

Read my review of 'Untouchable' by Mulk Raj Anand, here.

The Guide

Days when I am stuck
For words,
I read old books.
Books written 50 years ago
comfort.
R K Narayan's 'Guide'
written in 1958.
It was a toss between
seeing the film
or reading the book.
Films made 43 years ago
comfort too.
Even if they veer wildly away
from the book.

Greenbeard

Greenbeard is a new 'artlit'zine, edited by a blogger friend, Madeleine in the Shade. Check it out.

Indeterminacy's short story, Timbuktu is goo..oo..od.

There's some stuff by me too.

tatoo artist

Spent two glorious days book-collecting at the Strand sale. One of the pleasures of being gainfully employed is being able to buy as many books as one wants. Well no, "as many books as one wants" is always too many.

We discovered Norman Rockwell. Surprisingly, even Teja had not seen his work earlier. Dhanno loved the prints, and declared that she was not going to give them away (the way we usually do).

There's one print, the Tatoo Artist, that I would love to send to Saif Ali Khan. It's a tatooist adding a new girl's name to a list of crossed out names on a sailor's muscular arm. I don't know if Saif would appreciate the humor of this, it's a bit mean. He's fed up by now, I'm sure of the countless zoom in's to his arm. After two weeks of discussing Saif's tatoo, today the Mumbai Age had a full page article on how tatooing a lover's name shows signs of emotional instability. And yet another photo with the tatoo. The poor guy, is anyone looking at his beautiful face anymore?

poetry and theosophy? in bumm-bumm-bhole-land? kidding, right?

Teja was taking a taxi to CST. Well, it always seems a shame to waste a free taxi ride into town. And my friend, Space Bar was having a poetry reading there. But as usual, I dawdled until the last moment.

Having spent years of being there for Dhanno in the evenings, unless I was working, I find it almost impossible to step out to do something on my own, unless it's work. Dhanno said, "You've got to learn to go out without me." Well, well, I guess that's only fair. Seems just a while ago, when I was saying the same to her.

I tried making excuses,
which Teja was inclined to believe,
and Dhanno pooh-poohed,
and a few minutes after the very last minute,
with Teja and Dhanno yelling at me, I put myself together,
leaving odd bits behind,
and chose the highest heels in my shoe rack to venture out into the world.
Appropriate enough with my wonderful sense of imbalance.

The thing about Mumbai is that halfway through wherever you are bound to go, you tend to forget, under the assault of filth, noise, traffic, smells, heat, sweat, why you had set out in the first place. It seems the taxi forgot that too, just as we were about to reach the JJ flyover, and collapsed. Don't blame it, for I was feeling a bit like collapsing, myself.

It seemed to be getting later and later. Space Bar's reading was going to last only 45 minutes, and I was wondering if I was going to hear her at all, and whether I hadn't been foolhardy to make a 2 hour trip for something I was going to miss anyway. After dumping Teja and his luggage, unceremoniously on the main road, to make his way to the train station, I decided to get lost on my way to Theosophy Hall.

Leave taxi at the wrong point.
Totter, totter, totter on high heels all the way up Churchgate Street, right up to the end,
totter back,
ask directions of an incredulous woman, "Where on earth is the Theosophy Hall, and who on earth could possibly want to go there, on a weekday evening" kind of a look from her,
cut through the train station, without a ticket,
grab the first taxi for a half kilometer ride,
tumble up 3 flights of stairs,
and see Space Bar in pink.

Thank God, she's wearing pink. Because it seems, the rest of the place has worn down over hundreds of years to grey, grey, grey. I try hard to listen to Space Bar, but before I can catch my breath, she's done. I look admiringly at the people who seem so much at home at a poetry reading. I wouldn't be surprised to see such people in Pune, or Hyderabad, or Baroda, but here in Mumbai they seem superhuman beings. Madame Blavatsky stares at me searchingly with her grey eyes, and I smile back apologetically, knowing I fall far short of any such superhuman tendencies.

However, there's beer later, at Brabourne, an ancient Iranian cafe, where legends more than make up for it's comfortable shabbiness. Space Bar reads some more poetry, which makes it all worthwhile. Then a train ride home, pretending to the people I am with, that I always take the train. Always? When - since I never go out without a ride? But it seems to be a day for doing things I haven't done in a long time.

Late at night, crossing the bridge, striding along, comfortable now in my heels, the beer does cure my imbalance, not so hot anymore, I feel brave, as if I have done something grand. Ridiculous, after having seen all those women in the ladies' compartment, exhausted, at the end of a long day, doing this day in, day out.

Just as I finish writing this, Dhanno comes in with her friend, Shi. Shi's mother is in hospital again, she had a relapse after a surgery for appendicitis, because she couldn't rest enough, and had to take the train into town, everyday to work.

Dhanno likes reading the girlie books by Meg Cabot, Jacqueline Wilson, Georgia Byng. Why deny it, I do, too. The other day, we had a big row because I read a new book before she did. What's the big deal, I thought, a book is a book, the older the better. I like old books, library books, stolen books, stinky-smelly musty books, falling-apart books, long-forgotten books, books that are liable to give me thousands of germs. But to Dhanno, the book was a shiny, new thing which I had somehow spoilt.

To get her back on me, she said, "You won't even remember the story in a week's time". I said, "Well, I can tell it to you now." She screeched. She said, "Tell me the story of the book you read last week - Avalon High". I said, "It's about a ... school." She rolled her eyes and said, "Tell me something that is not so obvious." I rolled my eyes and made funny faces to get out of a sticky situation, but she was not letting me go.

"Ok, tell me about that book you liked so much - Double Act". "It's about twins", I said facetiously. "Oh yeah, and what about that book - Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism". "Oh, I remember that, it's about this girl, Molly who knows hypnotism, and becomes a model, and very rich, and there are all these other kids who are imprisoned, and she rescues them, and they all run away." She said, "NO ONE runs away in the book."

"Fine, so I confess I am a book-binge-r, and hardly ever remember what I've read. That's why I think it's really good you read so little, but read it well, and remember it," I said, to make peace.

At the FTII hostel, with Dhanno, a little infant, curled up beside me in bed, I'd be reading, lost somewhere, and then suddenly she would kick the book, and I'd look at her, and she'd look back with an angry scowl. No wonder it took her years to bother with reading a book, unless she was told to.

Stories at the Coffee Table

Edited by Peter Griffin, Manisha Lakhe and Annie Zaidi
With a foreword by Nilanjana S Roy
Design and cover photograph by Hemant Suthar
A Caferati Publication

A wonderful effort, and I'm so proud to have one of my stories published here.

algebra and life

The other day, Dhanno, in Std. VIII, learning Algebra, also learns that while a man earns 90 rupees for a job that takes 8 hours, a woman earns 60 rupees for the same job. Of course, that is reality, but must it be propagated for future generations, for ever and ever?

I protest, Dhanno protests too, but will it make things any better for her, I wonder?

there is no honey in the devil's larder

Recently I read Jim Crace's collection of short, short stories, 'The Devil's Larder'. The cover is sensuos, a pair of red lips pouting, overflowing with blueish black berries, a smudge of purply red on the chin, is it the juice of the berries or blood, a stray berry falling from the mouth.

The stories are quirky, philosophical, dark, funny, sweetly sombre, unpredictable as short stories should be. They all revolve around food, and the characters who live in them are as different and strange as the varieties of food available in our world. Utterly, utterly delicious.

One blog I love reading for a collection of similarly enticing stories is http://indeterminacy.blogspot.com/.

The stories take off from a photo, and it's interesting to see how different people weave their tales around one photo.

Women Writing in India

I've been reading this amazing anthology of Women Writers in India, from 600 B.C. to the present (1991 to be exact). Edited by Susie Tharu and K. Lalita, the anthology in two volumes, is very well-researched. Because most of the excerpts are from Indian language writing, and beautifully translated, they brought to me a literature that I had otherwise no real access to. Sometimes, more interesting than the actual excerpt itself, is the biographical essay accompanying each piece, a little bit about the author, her times, the context in which she wrote, how her work was recieved and who her contemporaries were. These short biographical sketches pieced together a social history. It made me realize how many freedom fights were fought over the years, how many were won, and how many still remain to be fought.

In a lot of communities, reading and writing for women were caste taboos. One of the most evocative pieces is an excerpt from the simply written autobiography, in Bengali "Amar Jiban" by Rassundara Devi. Written in 1876, it is the first autobiography written in Bengali. The author was an ordinary housewife, who taught herself to read and write in secret, and her account of how she learned to read is one of the most moving pieces of social statement. The anthology is replete with examples of women who broke social barriers again and again to reveal their extraordinary intelligence.

And the battles were not always against the obvious evils, those were relatively easy to fight - but the subtle, subconscious battle against gender discrimination existed even in the past. Women did not accept their subservient roles as silently and placidly as one believes. What amazes me not that women did write so extensively then but the fact that for ages, women have written about freedom, about their yearning for their individual beings, freedom from social fetters.

In fact, the first polemic against gender discrimination, a 40 page tirade "A Comparison of Men and Women " was written and published in a Marathi newspaper, by Tarabai Shinde, in 1882, as a response against the death sentence passed on an unwed mother. This was almost a century before Simone de Beauvoir wrote her acclaimed "The Second Sex".

Check out this link if you want to know more.http://www.english-literature.org/essays/indian-women-writers.html