Now I'm a believer..

'She'd stopped eating, they said. For 3 weeks. She's drinking a bit. It's what happened last time. She's not talking to anyone at all. No, she's not talking to herself . Besides, she's diabetic. you need to come'.

"When did they call?"
"Late yesterday evening, after you and J had left."

At the end of a day that started around eight in the morning and dragged on until late evening, we'd clocked several achievements to our credit, chief among which was managing to lock someone out of her own house. This was made that much worse because she'd refused us entry earlier, since we were strangers, which we actually were (though we'd flashed IDs).We had hung around outside, trying hard not to look dodgy, in the middle of this sprawling, rather homely council estate, while telephoning her daughter who'd agreed to come down and let us in. The daughter had warned us that what had happened actually would, but we had finished early with our previous patient and decided to jump the gun.

So much for our enthusiasm. To cut a long story short, the woman came out after a while, to (presumably) check whether we'd gone, and much to her chagrin, found that we hadn't. Disgusted, she told us to leave, and turned to walk around the house, which, to me, seemed to imply that she would get in through the backdoor. Taking this as a final dismissal (at least until the daughter arrived), I shut the front door (which was wide open), in the interests of her safety. Or so I thought, congratulating myself smugly for my presence of mind. Until she returned. Apparently, the door round the back, contrary to expectation, was locked.

Much to our relief, when she discovered what had happened, she laughed. Repeatedly, loudly and rather scarily (or so I thought, half expecting her to take out something and shoot me). Turned out she was genuinely amused.

And so we found ourselves, an Australian nurse, an Indian doctor and a tall, striking, barefoot Jamaican woman in a golden turban, clad in an overcoat and little else, standing together in the autumn chill. Needless to say, we got talking.

Not exactly the way we'd planned it, in more ways than one, because she asked most of the questions, enquiring about everything from our families to what we liked to listen to. As the autumn sun dropped rapidly, the shadows deepened. As did our conversation. The nurse, who was watching her terminally ill mother fade, had been a bit shaky all week and the conversation seemed to have a calming effect on her. She smiled. The lines between the treaters and the treated blurred.

Our patient disappeared on two occasions, into the bowels of the great estate, reappearing as abruptly as she'd gone. The second time, she startled me out of my wits, because everything was still, my mind was drifting, and then I gradually became aware of being watched. I turned, warily, and there she was, unexpectedly perched on a high ledge, looking down at me quietly, turban aglow in a stray shaft of the setting sun, her coat flying in the wind.

After a while, she started to hum, gently.

She liked gospel, she'd said.

Earthquake in Indonesia

Alertnet reports on the earthquake in Java-

The 6.2 magnitude quake struck just after dawn and was the third major tremor to devastate Indonesia in 18 months, the worst being the quake on Dec. 26, 2004 and its resulting tsunami which left some 170,000 people dead or missing around Aceh.

Indonesia sits on the Asia-Pacific's so-called "Ring of Fire" marked by heavy volcanic and tectonic activity.

Yogyakarta is near Mount Merapi, a volcano on top alert for a major eruption. A vulcanologist said the quake was not caused by the volcano, but its activity increased after the shock.
Yogyakarta city is about 25 km (16 miles) north of the Indian Ocean coast and 440 km (275 miles) east of Jakarta. Yogyakarta province, which includes the city, has a population of 3.2 million. Central Java province also suffered damage.

The BBC has the latest news and video updates.

Central Java has three world heritage sites, including the temple of Borobudur.

Mr. Gandhi does Mr. Patel does Mr. Gandhi

Jokes apart, it's the great man himself, speaking of non-violence, no less. He's 34th on the links list (yes, I counted). It's in Quicktime, so it should download eventually, even on a slow line, if you wait long enough. The list is heavy with Americana, but if you are a history junkie, there are some glorious bits of trivia among all these voices from the past, like the sailor at Midway, Shackleton, and Mandela. Incidentally, we heard Mandela at Trafalgar Square last year for Live Aid, and the voice had lost none of it's power. As for Che, the Lady heard his voice and said, "Now, that is a man." Which reminded me of Sue, who, a long time ago, sitting around in the old Nightwatchman, looked at us gravely and said, "When he speaks, I could strip."

P.S. The Nightwatchman link, which is a bit sad, hints at some of what's been lost as old Bangalore makes way for whatever. The old Nightwatchman was new, and hence, too expensive for us, in 1993, when it opened. We still managed to go, occasionally, courtesy the architect, whose progeny was one of our own. I'm sure all of us can now afford to go whenever, but I don't think any one would want to. Give us back our Hotel California and Temple of the King. And our late nights. And our drag races down Hosur road. And Scottish and Peco's and 19th Church Street and Imperial and Empire and Amaravathi and Autumn Muse and Cul-Ah and Fanoos. And Blue Moon and Blue Diamond and Plaza. And Sardarjee's Dhabha on Hosur Road. And Rajkumar in the evenings, walking around Sankey Tank. And the thump of Bullets and Yezdis headed into the hills. And ajji in Jayanagar with her fragrant weed.

Open the clubs. Take the doorframes off the pubs. Stop the clocks until 2.00 am. Bring it all back. Let our city breathe.

Sexuality in conversation

References to sexuality cropping up in everyday conversation is not unusual. It can happen whilst chatting about a hundred everyday topics. It happens at work, after work…everywhere. It’s routine and what’s more, it can be an instant icebreaker. Being relaxed about it implies that you’re not a closet fundamentalist who secretly assigns those who have sex outside marriage, procreation, religion, race, caste and inside condoms to eternal damnation, hellfire, slow torture in the afterlife, rebirth as a lab rat, eternally un-dead type of trauma etc. It means you wish fantastic and safe sex upon all your fellows. This instantly transports you into the fun-to-be-with category.

However, when this involves someone who has a sexual orientation or gender identity other than the conventional, the goal posts shift somewhat subtly. Many gender-content heterosexuals haven’t yet mastered the art of conversing about other sexualities/gender identities with the same degree of comfort that they bring to talking about their own. This leads to the following ploys being employed-

1. Ignoring the reference altogether i.e. pretending a momentary lapse of hearing and carrying on in a more comfortable direction;

2. Making a joke of various aspects of the appearance, manners, personal attributes and lifestyles of those with sexualities/gender identities other than their own. This can often involve slang catchphrases. If cornered, these people will insist that they are not homophobic or intolerant of gender dysphoria (often unconvicingly), but just find some things about people who are neither heterosexual nor comfortable with their gender phenotype ‘too funny’;

3. Admitting, calmly, to outright homophobia and prejudice. This can be followed by an uncomfortable silence, random others chipping in with their hitherto masked prejudices, or by the conversation being hurriedly diverted by a sensitive presence;

4. Talking about it briefly, with a shrug of the shoulder, a smile or a quick grimace, which is intended to convey (all at the same time) that ‘I am straight, I have no gender issues, I am broadminded enough to empathise with people who aren’t like me, but I can also understand where all the people who are uncomfortable about these issues are coming from, and so if you want to crack a joke about it, I'll be a good sport and laugh about it.' I used to belong to this category some time ago.

There is of, course, a growing number of people who deal with this without any discomfort. This post is not about them. The point of this post is a basic, purely democratic question. The references, when they crop up in conversation, is about someone else’s sexuality, someone else’s gender identity, someone else’s gender dysphoria (with it’s associated, often, devastating psychological and physical fallouts which the gender dysphoric person didn’t quite volunteer for, since it's well-established that they don't have a biological choice in the matter) and above all, someone else’s life and personal space. Why are others so uncomfortable about it? When you are more than uncomfortable, what on earth makes you think that you have a right to take a pseudo-moralistic, quasi-judgemental stance about it? When we are talking biological blueprints, what on earth does morality have to do with it?

Perhaps there is something about sexualities and gender identities other than your own that makes you just that teeny li'l bit insecure about your own sexuality and gender identity at some level. In other words, our external discomfort mirrors our sudden, unexpected and threatening (which could be related to socio-cultural backgrounds) internal discomfort with our own orientations. And carrying that a bit further, perhaps the intensity of your reaction mirrors the intensity of this internal tension.

Opinions from all positions are welcome.

P.S. There is something related and interesting being debated here.

this is our plague, and that means all of us

N, who probably visits this space as much as I do, had this to add to the previous post.

Jacob Zuma rides again

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world and the highest number of deaths from the disease till date. It also has the egregious distinction of having one of the highest rates of rape in the world, not to mention a growing problem with infant/child rape.

The aetiology of this ongoing crisis is multifactorial and much research has looked at specific aspects of the problem.

Thabo Mbeki spent many years denying that HIV had any connection with AIDS , and continues to undermine the efforts of the country's public health community and civil society at periodic intervals. Thankfully, this has been replaced in recent years with a more positive, though often heavily spun take which stops short of acknowledging the magnitude of the AIDS crisis engulfing South Africa, which has often left campaigners in the field shaking their heads in exasperation.

One of the greatest triumphs of civil society in South Africa has been to get the government to first admit that there actually was a problem, then outsmarting Big Pharma to ensure that antiretrovirals could be made available at an affordable price , cutting deals with generics manufacturers from Brazil and India, and thereby setting a sparkling precedent that has lent courage to governments of poor nations beset by HIV/AIDS across the world.

Into this seething cauldron walks Jacob Zuma, a third-rate sleazeball embodying the worst attributes of the venal political class we are all forced to put up with across the world. The problem was, this particular sleazeball used to be the Vice-President of South Africa and the head of the National AIDS council. What does he do to protect himself against HIV? He takes a shower. And proudly proclaims it to a nation battling one of the worst epidemics in living memory. He also believes that if a woman wears a skirt, she is inviting him to have sex with her.

Now that he's been accquitted, Goldenballs intends to run for the presidency, while the victim, a leading AIDS rights campaigner, has to seek refuge under a witness protection programme abroad. The Zulu nation, his electorate and his daughter should be proud.

names and identities

People pronounce your name in myriad ways in a multicultural city, that too, in a ‘foreign’ one. I have never regarded London as ‘foreign’ in any sense, from the moment I decided to move here, until now. But then, that is what this city is all about; making Londoners out of just about every 'foreigner' who happens to stop by. A place with no instinctive fear of the 'other', we are all others, a whole, chaotic city full of others good humouredly coping with the 'foreigner' next door. And pigging on each others' food at the slightest opportunity. A city of contradictions, counterpoints, oddities and incongruities. I am an Indian and a Londoner. No, I'm not vegetarian. Actually, I eat a number of things that move. A spaceship just crashed in Waterloo place. And a small girl came out. The thing is, she was 16 ft tall. And then she went to sleep. When she woke up, an elephant gave her a shower. The Sultan's elephant. And oh, the elephant was a mechanical one. That's allright, then.

On a National Express coach accelerating away from the Ferrari showrooms of Park Lane into the all too enveloping darkness of a motorway ride to Birmingham, my decision to move here came in part, from a brief brush with ‘failure’. Failure, like being foreign, was not something unfamiliar. I'd had to cope with the former differently each time, which ended up working out in often weird and wonderful ways . The latter had been dealt with by a series of departures, of which the previous two, surprisingly, had been from places where I seemed to sort of belong. That was extraordinarily rare, and so, painfully precious. This had resulted in a vague anxiety that, after so many years of struggling to come to terms with a permanent sense of being out of place, I had copped out of the very situations that made closure appear so tantalizingly close.

Then along came London, where failure and otherness seemed to merit no more than a shrug of the shoulder.

Which brings us back to the name business. I have no sense of a ‘nominal identity’ (for want of a better phrase). That is, I don’t give a shit how anyone pronounces my name, as long as they don’t make it sound like something grotesque. In fact, I like some of the names mine get conjured into, when then, I am suddenly transformed into this magical, mysterious stranger with an exotic name I have never known. A twin separated at birth, an identical other, strange and yet the same. Suddenly, I am perhaps Georgian, or Samoan, or Indochinese, or Chilean. I could be from the Antioch of late antiquity or the streets of Bombay. The possibilities are infinite. I sort of like that :-)

However, as I staggered into the gym today out of a sense of duty more than anything else, bone tired and feeling that crossing thirty does perhaps change one’s body in some ways, something happened. I was greeted by the familiar face of the strikingly composed half-Indian girl with the fully Indian name who womans the desk. I said a perfunctory ‘hi’, my mind a million miles away, barely glancing at her. We’d seen each other a hundred times before, but rarely smiled at each other. The tiredness and surliness probably showed on my face. She said ‘hi’, swiped my card, released the turnstile and handed me my towel. Reflexively, I grunted ‘thanks’.

She looked up from the computer screen (where my name had probably showed up), smiled and said, calmly, ‘Thank you, Never-mind’, each syllable of my name perfectly balanced, the intonations in exquisite cadence, like slow jazz on a summer night.

It had rarely sounded better.