Nepal: A Tragedy Made into Farce by Us

(Buddha smiled again, a scene from Nepal after earthquake)

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, said Karl Marx in his views on 18^th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Earthquake is not history in itself though it creates history and changes the existing discourse of history in a given context of its occurrence. Though it does not repeat itself the way history does, the expressions of it in the form of news, pictures and videos in the age of facebook and twitter, make it look like history that repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. An extremely disturbing earthquake in Nepal which took the lives of approximately ten thousand people and rendered contemporary and traditional architecture and cities in mere rubbles should have remained a tragedy in the minds of the people who have witnessed the horrifying pictures from the ground zero. But somehow, Nepal tragedy has now crossed over to the realm of a farce, thanks to the social networking sites.

In 1992, when the first Gulf War took place, French theoretician, Jean Baudrillard argued that it was just a simulacrum, an illusion of war, created by the streaming of CNN images that primarily conveyed the scenes from the war front to the world. Pushing the limits of the logic of theories pertaining to simulacrum, Baudrillard had argued that the war could have been one waged purely in/for the television. We wished his argument was true though later events proved that it was not true. Baudrillard was extending what Walter Benjamin had left half way. Benjamin had talked about the ‘originality’ of a work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. When an image could have had its identical reproduction, where one could locate the original one, was the issue that had set Benjamin thinking. Between Benjamin and Baudrillard we had the French Situationsit, Guy Debord, who spoke of a society of spectacle where ideas communicated not through words and images but through the meanings created out of images of the actual event. Today, in the case of Nepal tragedy, these three aspects seem to have to play in a big way in the social networking sites, rendering the actual tragedy into a farce.

(from Nepal)

Unlike Baudrillard, I do believe that the Nepal tragedy has occurred and it has destroyed the landlocked country considerably. I believe it not just because I had felt the tremors but because I had also seen real people dying there through television and newspaper reporting. The sense of tragedy prevailed on the first and the second day through television reports and newspaper analysis of data and expert opinion. Then it started turning slowly into a farce. Reason is nothing but the overkill of the event through image sharing and politicizing of these images in the social networking sites. Images came from the people who were trapped, from the journalists, from NGO workers, army photographers, government servicemen who were pressed into service there not only from Nepal but also from other countries like India. Then soon came news and image reports from the foothills of Himalaya where international trekkers were killed due to the avalanches evoked by the tremors.

If Baudrillard was right here, if one had thought so a couple of days after the tragedy nothing could have been said to counter him. Had the tragedy really happened? Or is it a series of images transmitted through the social networking sites, where the actual tragedy looked like an event enacted for the pleasure of cameras. Visuals came as authentic comparisons between the places before the earthquake and after it. Beautiful shrines are destroyed completely and the comparisons have been good enough to shake someone up completely without real tremors. Cities have been razed, roads have been ripped apart, buildings have been cracked and tilted, and thousands of people have been caught within the rubbles. Following these there were simulations and self referential photographs. Benjamin’s theory of challenged authenticity became true not because there have been identical pictures reproduced for convenience but pictures that looked identical from other geographical locations were used for enhancing the tragedy in Nepal. A video footage from Syria was used by some networkers and also a picture from a Bangladesh building collapse was used to highlight the romance of death through certain amount of poetic justice; let even death not do us apart. Nobody dared to ask a disturbing question whether it was a husband hugging a wife or a molester taking advantage of the situation and got killed as heavens came tumbling down in pieces of brick and mortar.

(The Syrian child who took a camera for gun)

In Nepal we also saw how Benjamin was overtaken by Guy Debord, who proposed the idea of a spectacular society where relationship between images created meaning rather than the images or the actual events did the same. The meanings thus created are displaced from the actual truth of the events as two images could be taken from two different angles of the same event and also could convey a different meaning as seen from those perspectives. This is still a legitimate point. But what about those meanings created by the images and their mutual relationship; that means two disparate images could correspond to each other and create a new reality. In the overkill of Nepal images we saw such an onslaught of meanings as different images from different sites created a new reality/truth/meaning enhancing the magnitude of the tragedy helping the feature writers go for another overkill of the same with words. Unfortunately this happened with the misreading of some journalists of the places as seen from the helicopter of the Prime Minister of India, and dubbing them as Dalit villages. Now, we are even forced to doubt the veracity of that image of the PM sitting inside an aircraft. The most interesting thing, at the same time pathetic and curiously stereotypical but passed off as poignant considering the gravity of the situation is the images that look like images that we have seen elsewhere. Recently, a small child from Hama in Syria ‘surrendered’ to a cameraman when he trained the camera at her thinking that it was a solider pointing a gun at her. It was a poignant picture that raised a lot of hue and cry and also interest in both the child and the photographer, circulated widely in the facebook and twitter. Alas, in the Nepal pictures too one could see a series of pictures of children folding hands before cameras seeking help from the sympathetic world secure out there. This was an outright stereotyping of the innocence of kids forcefully made to pose so because there was the famous ‘Syrian’ girl as a frame of reference for the hopelessly unimaginative press photographers (at least some of them).

(a picture from a Bangladesh building collapse circulated in fb as a scene from Nepal)

Forget the theoreticians; the information overkill done by us in our social networking sites itself made the tragedy a farce making a lot of people lose interest in the whole event and leaving the people there to their own devices because we cannot do anything and retiring ourselves into some sort of fatalism. People were pathetic in politicizing the help that our country, India was extending to the ill fated people in Nepal. While the nationalists applauded that the RSS people were going in batches to help the victims in Nepal, most of the newspapers and news channels without showing any sort of journalistic discretion wrote that Mr.Modi led the rescue operations from the front like a commander in chief in a war situation, elevating Modi into a sort of Sylvester Stallone in his First Blood series. We politicized the deaths, help and even the number of army jawans who went there to help the victims of the calamity. It was another war won against the enemies boosting the sagging muscles of our nationalism. Where was Nepal in the whole deal?  In 2004,when Tsunami hit the eastern, southern and western coasts of India, people were imagining the magnitude of the tragedy as social networking sites were not so proliferated in those days. Images came in through television and newspapers, and much later those mammoth waves through youtube videos. Between the tragedy and the image overkill there was enough time to emotionally absorb and logically negotiate the tragedy. In 2001, Bhuj, people waited for televisions and newspapers to talk. Today, Nepal is rendered helpless not only by the devastating earthquake but also by the image and information overkill done via social networking sites. Tragedies are turned into farces quicker than we think. 

Sitaram Yechury, Jai Siyaram: What We need from You and the CPM

(Sitaram Yechury, the New General Secretary of the CPM)

Sitaram Yechury, the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) aka CPM, if we go by his name, should be a darling of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak volunteers whom the youth cadres of the CPM, DYFI (Democratic Youth Federation of India) have been fighting in the streets for a long time. When the right wing fellows see each other they greet the other with this exhortation, Jai Siyaram. The new GS of the CPM has it in him; Sitaram. Siyaram is a complete man, the Lord Ram with his consort Sit/ya. When Sitaram speaks, the right wing fellows cannot just avoid him; how can they defile the lord’s name? His wife misses the honour by a letter; she is Seema Chisti. Had the ‘m’ been ‘t’, there would have been a major crisis in the confrontational politics between the right wing forces and the left wing parties led by the CPM.

Political pundits say that the left parties have made themselves irrelevant in today’s politics as its erstwhile strongholds like West Bengal and Kerala have already gone to Trinamool Congress and the UDF respectively though the history of Kerala’s assembly elections shows that the CPM led Left Democratic Front would come back to power invariably not because they are too good to be avoided but because there are lesser chances of other political alternatives in Kerala thanks to its peculiar political, religious, caste and regional equations. Punjab was another place where the CPM could have thought of staging a better performance but with the AAP touching the root base there, the CPM needs a different approach. The party’s political relevance has been that of a negotiator between the warring factions of the erstwhile Third Front. Now as the chances are gone though the Janata Parivar once again wants to be united and pitch for power in the coming assembly elections in Bihar and in UP before they could throw their hat in the ring for the distant Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

(Jyoti Basu, he could have changed the course of Indian political discourse if he was allowed to become the PM of India in 1996)

‘Historical Blunder’, that was how late Bengal Chief Minister and much revered leader Jyoti Basu observed the toppling of the chances of him becoming the Prime Minister of India as a consensus candidate in 1996 by his own party. History of India would have been different had Basu assumed the role of India’s Prime Minister. The economy that had opened up in 1991 would not have been reversed even if the Third Front was consolidated under Jyoti Basu and such a political and economic discourse would have created a strong opposition in the parliament in due course of time. What AAP would do later in 2013 could have become a reality at least one and a half decade before. A Communist becoming the Prime Minister of the country could have given a new impetus for the CPM to grow nationally with strong representatives coming up in every state supported by lower and middle class cadres and intelligentsia. It would have considerably checked the growth of the right wing fundamentalism in the country. But the theory of equi-distance from all kinds of religious and political formations proved to be a dampner for the CPM. As it was the big brother amongst the smaller left formations, they too could not have followed a different line.

The blunder of the CPM is both ideological and pragmatic. Ideologically, it detested the upper class and wealth while secretly enjoyed the possibility of being in that upper position. The left front under the CPM drew its cadres mainly from the lower middle class and the middle-middle class, feeding them with the idea of class revolution. Often this progressive political outfit used the cadres as cannon fodders than real decision makers. The ideological confusion was palpable amongst the cadres for over two decades as they did not know whether to move towards the open market or completely object it. As everyone is primarily a human being with familial responsibilities and social responsibilities, like any other members in a surviving group they too started looking for easy ways of making money. The recent declaration by the party leadership that the cadres are indulging in liquor and other anti-social activities and also the strong erosion of cadre base in the states like Kerala and West Bengal shows that the cadres are really confused. While the their leaders fight for supremacy like they do in any other party and enter in business deals with film stars and business tycoons, the poor cadres are relegated to the level of mere audience, if not agitators in the streets.

(Red Volunteers- CPM activists marching)

Speaking on the pragmatic front, the CPM followers are no longer led by any egalitarian political ideology. They are led by one single agenda; getting into power. This craving for power is different from the demand that Edassery, the poet had forwarded in his poem. When the Communist party was struggling for the rights of the downtrodden, the poet said that before we reaped the harvest of rice, let us harvest power. Political power was the need of the time to change the life of the downtrodden and bring about social changes. But for the last few decades, the CPM was engaged in power politics right there within the party itself. The bottom to top approach was thwarted for top to bottom approach. In due course of time, the CPM itself started estranging those ultra left wing forces that demanded equal rights and justice. By becoming a bourgeoisie party, the CPM lost the sympathy of the middle class. Religion was another sensitive point where the CPM failed pathetically. While the party spoke of equi-distance (even today it talks about it) two decades back, it did not tell its cadres how it was going to tackle the growing right wing fundamentalism in the country. Religion remains to be a sensitive issue as far as India is concerned and unless and until the CPM leadership tells its cadres what to do with it, it is not going to grow it base. The cadres are confused as they see the CPM leaders sharing platforms with religious leaders to appease the voters from those religious categories. They are really confused about their own religious identities and it is evident in Kerala streets where you cannot distinguish between a RSS agitator and a DYFI or CPM agitator. They almost wear the same uniform, saffron lungis and chequered shirts. This sartorial confusion also translates into both ideological and pragmatic confusion.

(Route March of RSS Volunteers)

Sitaram Yechuri has a major task in his hands if he really wants to revive the dying left parties in India. I am not a political pundit to elaborate upon the available data and also I find it tedious and boring as far as my purpose is concerned. My aim of writing this is to tell Mr.Yechuri how he could turn the party around and create mass base by slowing erasing the fear about communism and communists and also by slowly erasing the lethargy and cynicism that have crept into the very core of the CPM cadres. The only face saving group that still holds the CPM ideology or the communist ideals is the intellectual class of this country to which I also have a virtual membership. As a humanitarian and one who believes in the socialist theory of unto the last, I adhere to the left political theories than those of any other political outfit in this country. AAP is a possibility and it is still a possibility for so many people like me. The intelligentsia however is an oscillating class. They like to be with the cream and the sublime things and people and at the same time they want to be with the milling and toiling masses. They cannot do it on the ground because they have other avenues of consolidating their ideas. They need a platform, a political outfit that would give them confidence to express their ideas. The CPM should become that platform. It cannot be elitist when it comes to the centre or in the business avenues, and later go and preach social revolution to the public in street corners. People have lost belief and interest in that. People would trust Arnab Goswami and Rajdeep Sardesai than Pinarayi Vijayan or Prakash Karat.

 (The Architects of CPM's failure in Kerala, V.S.Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan)

Ideological and pragmatic clarity is what the CPM cadres expect from Sitaram Yechury as the new general secretary. One cannot mechanically quote from classical Marxist text books and play vote politics. It will not work for long. If Tripura is the last bastion and Kerala is a possible come back platform, both are not going to be lasting for ever if this is the working style of the CPM. One has to ask this question: Are people really interested in Pinarayi Vijayan or V.S.Achuthanandan? Have both these leaders helped change the course of political or cultural discourse in Kerala or in India other than creating factionalism within the party? Have they ever thought what the working class or middle class in Kerala want? Do they think that star studded television programs would sedate and keep the masses forever? Do they think that those who prefer Kairali Channel or Jaihind or Manorama Channel eventually vote for the CPM? The CPM leadership should urgently look at this crucial issue; what the people want? What kind of governance they expect? In a country where the youth population is exceeding the older generation, what would be the CPM’s programs for attracting them to the party? Remember, this is a cafe coffee day crowd sipping coffee, talking romance and yet concerned about the country’s future. This is not the crowd that would come to the streets to get beaten up by the police. May be there are young people who still do it, but they are growing less in number. Nobody is interested in the politics of killing. If you kill a RSS activist, you are not back patted, seriously. Rather, a youngster would feel utter disgust.

 (The sophisticated Indian youth may be stylish and coffee sipping but they are aware of political ideologies)

Another important thing is removing the cloak of hypocrisy. By virtue of being the Communist party, nobody anymore believes that the CPM is Pro-Dalit, Pro-Women, Pro-Queer, Pro-Lesbian, Pro-Gay, Pro-New Work Force, Pro-Youth, Pro-intellectual, Pro-ultra Social activist, Pro-environment and so on. The CPM under the leadership of Sitaram Yechury should take a clear stand on this thing and let the whole of Indian population know about it. It should also make its stance clear on religions, censorship, freedom of speech, land reformation, land regulation, global investment, industrial growth and so on. Nobody will say that the CPM should oppose economic growth. It should make its policy clear and it should be pro-growth and at the same time pro-people. Creating a strong opposition is the most important thing and the need of the time. Sitaram Yechury wants the left parties unite but I would say this unity should not be aimed at sharing power using the old equi-distance theory with the political clowns. This unity should be for creating an opposition in Indian politics. We need to accept the fact that we lack in opposition in Indian parliamentary politics today. Check and balance provisions are created only when there is a strong opposition in place otherwise it will lead to fascism. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) could provide that opposition. And it should also accept the fact that opposition is just about having seats in parliament. Opposition is also about understanding the forces of opposition in the country, politically, intellectually and militantly. It should not join hands with the government to hunt down political dissenters who fight for justice on behalf of the downtrodden in India. Parliamentary politics does not mean that conceding of all its power to dissent and identify with dissent. The Indian youth will follow the CPM and the AAP for sure, if their aim is to create an opposition primarily than capturing power. Once they prove they could ideate on behalf of people and prevent the incumbent government from doing wrong things to its own people, automatically the same people will vote them to power. It needs patience and diligent work, and above all a change of mindset. 

Stop War with Menstruation, Make Love

(Rupi Caur, the poet who brought menstruation into social networking)

Rupi Caur, the Canadian Sikh poet is famous because of Instagram’s in-house censoring of offensive images and the post-Rupi Caur protest withdrawal of the censorship it employed on her menstruating pictures. Before this furore over the pictures of her menstruation, she was one amongst many who aspired become future poets. Menstruation has given her a new cult status because she fought her way through the flimsy walls of social networking censorship; today she has become a world icon for feminists though many of us know her not by her face but by her soiled pants, toilet floor and commode. During the debates that followed the act of instagram censorship, she has said something to the effect that she menstruated as a creative act. I am not convinced. My lack of conviction on her act in fact does not make any difference to her reputation or the women’s struggle for being accepted as menstruating beings. Still I would say that her photographs are revolting and they do not have any aesthetic or creative value. If her photographs have any creative value, then the photographs showing the protestors of Jharkhand shitting on the central government’s Land Acquisition Bill also should be aesthetically elevating.

Almost three months back, in the South Indian state of Kerala, feminists and public intellectuals and activists had come forward to create a protest around the women’s right to menstruate and remain socially acceptable human beings during those seven days of ‘you-know-what-I-mean-shame’. Unlike Rupi Caur’s call for the right to menstruate, however justifiable that is, the Kerala women’s protest to menstruate was more historical and relevant than that of Rupi Caur. In fact, the struggle for human rights (irrespective of gender) does not work on the levels of comparison because one struggle is not better than other as each struggle has its own value to add to the general cause of gender equality. Yet, I would say the Kerala strike of Menstruation was much more relevant than that of Rupi Caur because the Kerala women were asking their right to travel in public transports during those days. There was a blanket ban on women in Kerala, preventing them from travelling in the state owned buses that ferried the male devotees to Sabarimala, the seat of Lord Ayyappa where women who could and would menstruate are not allowed. The reason for this is cited that Lord Ayyappa is a Brahmachari, chronic bachelor therefore only pre-puberty and post-menopause women are allowed. In terms of tradition and ritual we could accept this restriction but restricting women from the public transports plying to the pilgrim centre is something really chauvinistic.

(one of the controversial pictures by Rupi Caur)

Kerala women protested against it and Kerala as a cynical society with moral policing as a new trend for preserving conservatism, this protest was seen with much scorn and contempt, once again showing the real chauvinistic mettle of this total literate state’s cultural shortcomings. Sabarimala had also become the eye of a storm as the authorities performed a cleansing ritual in the temple premises as the priest’s young daughter had visited the holy shrine without the permission of the authorities. It was a public humiliating of that girl who had visited the temple without intending to pollute it. Somehow the whole argument of allowing pre-puberty and post-menopausal women in Sabarimala is so skewed that the new age authorities, even from their personal experiences do not acknowledge the fact that it is not puberty or the end of menstruation that makes a woman averse to sexual intercourse. Young children are aware sex these days. Sexual drive of women need not necessarily diminish with the setting in of menopause. As Shobha De says, sixty is the new forty. In that case, the authorities either should think of imposing a blanket ban on women of all ages from visiting Sabarimala or they should let all women to visit the place irrespective of their fixation on menstrual blood. In my opinion the latter would be a feasible and democratic move provided the women want to go there at all. My suggestion to women of all age is this that just avoid Sabarimala because the devotees need not be well behaved even when they are on their way to see a bachelor god.

In fact, menstruation is a biological process that happens in the body of a woman, as it comes to know that the person in question is not ready for conceiving a child. My school biology tells me that a woman’s body prepares an egg for fertilization every month and prepares the whole body for receiving a sperm. When that does not happen, to save the body from complications, the preparatory arrangements are ejected from the female body. These preparations for making a life come out in the form of blood and cleanse the woman’s body, once again rendering it clean and healthy for future conceptions. It is a biological fact. It is not polluting but it is a cleaning process. How can we keep women out of our lives during those days when they are really going through the process of cleaning their own system? To see it in more philosophical and scientific terms, a woman’s body is gender neuter during these days of menstruation (a scientifically learned beautiful mind informs me). She is neither a male nor a female in those days. She could be a male or a female depending on the overt presence of testosterone or estrogens during those days. Once she finishes her menstrual cycle she once again becomes a complete woman and her body is now ready for another cycle of producing another egg. It is an absolutely divine process and one could say the most pure processes in the world. Somehow our chauvinistic thinking tells us that women are polluted during those six or seven days.

This male chauvinistic perception on menstruating women should be having something to do with our ancient life practices and myths. A menstruating woman with minimum clothes (during the pre-civilization years) must have been a fearful sight for the otherwise masculine men. They thought during those days women possessed some extra powers and they were gifted with some divine capacities. The pre-menstrual symptoms (PMS) such as irritation, anger, impatience, aggression, moodiness, depression and so on were taken for divine or evil attributes of women during those days. As there were not any sanitary napkins or pads available, women preferred to sit away from the groups. This might have been later got translated into forced isolation during those seven days. It took so many years for women to have access to proper sanitary pads. They were using traditional cotton pads and out of shame and embarrassment, women preferred to stay away from public gaze. As they were carrying blood smeared clothes with them, they were not allowed to go to kitchen or places of worship, perhaps to avoid inconvenience caused to themselves. It slowly became a taboo; exactly the way endangered species thanks to over killing become taboos. Menstruating women became a taboo because it caused inconvenience to themselves. But the male chauvinist world made this inconvenience of women a virtue. In order to subjugate them, they made menstruating women to be polluting creatures.

In my childhood I have seen my mother and other women relatives using backdoors to enter home. We did not know why they did so. They also stopped entering the family temple. They were restricted to move around or they chose to maintain some sort of shame in those days. Rectangular shaped cotton clothes drying in the backyard used to be a monthly sight and the hieroglyphics of it we children were not able to decipher. Threads and rectangular clothes vanished to nowhere after five or six days till they reappeared after a month or so. It took so many years that something happened to women during seven days in a month. First it was when my sister was made to behave differently on a fine morning. My parents were shedding tears and I was happy to get a share of sweets that the relatives brought for her. Soon, as if triggered by the good fortune my sister got, a few of my cousins went through the same days of euphoria and I ate a lot of sweets in those days. Slowly, I too understood what was happening to my sister and to my cousins. They started behaving different suddenly. With their unnatural behaviour came the television advertisements. Beautiful hands poured ink on cotton pads, while one absorbed it well and the other did not. Beautiful girls spoke of those ‘you-know-what-I-mean-seven days’ in those advertisements. My mother started bringing a black polythene cover every month. It looked like bread and like the black cover, it was a huge white silence inside. It came with different names, Stay Free, Carefree and so on. In North India, I saw it was beef other than sanitary pads and condoms that got the special treatment with black polythene covers.

Today, television beauties do not speak like ‘you –know-what –I –mean’ kind of hush-hush dialogues. They talk about confidence that they exude during those seven days. We have moved from the days of silence about menstruation to women boldly speaking about it and even spreading awareness by giving message written on sanitary pads. The menstrual-phobic men are like primitive creatures who were afraid of blood oozing vaginas in particular and vaginas in general. They thought vaginas would bite. A blood dripping vagina, for them was/is something really bites. They cannot stand it. So they employ censorship. Those who have not kissed their wives without drinking become moral police. Those who have not once held their wives’ hands in public become moral police. Those who have not once dared to have intercourse with their menstruating wives become moral police. Let me tell you, stupid men, menstruating woman is the most pure woman in her elements. With the blood she tells you that she waited for you but you did not come. With that blood she tells you, you come or not I will be prepared because I am the creator. With that blood she enriches the world and with that blood she purifies herself. A menstruating woman should be treated as the most pure being in the world. And as a man, I love to make love to my woman, when she is menstruating. 

Know Your Hanuman before you Attack

Hanuman is a chiranjeevi. That means he lives eternally. If someone has just thought that I have referred to google.com, he/she is mistaken. My knowledge of Indian mythology comes from books ranging from Mathew M.Kuzhiveli’s Balan Books to Vettam Mani MA’s ‘Puranik Encyclopaedia’, from Ezhuthacchan’s poetry to the stories from mythologies retold my various writers in Malayalam and English. So when I say Hanuman is a chiranjeevi, I cannot forget Aswathama, the cursed son of Dronacharya, the Guru of Pandavas and Kauravas. In Kuttikrishna Marary’s words, Aswathama is a chiranjeevi who is supposed to live for eons with his curse emblazoned on his forehead. In us, chiranjeevis manifest in various ways. Hanuman manifests in us when we are too loyal to a cause, ready to rip open our chests to show our loyalty to the master. And when we deliberately take a position at the feet of the lord, we become Hanumans. There is no wonder why the extremists amongst Hindus like Hanuman so much.

When I read the news of some Hindu extremists thrashing up four Dalit men for entering a temple in order to worship the idol of Hanuman, I think about the ways in which Hanuman is incorporated into the mainstream Hindutva ideology. In fact Hanuman belongs to a backward caste, if he is not a Dalit. Hanuman is Vayuputra, the son of Air God. He is also the son of Anjana. Hanuman is called Maruti from his father’s side and Anjaneya from mother’s side. Hanuman got the name Hanuman from the shape of his jaw bones and upper lips. Hanu manav should be the original word. Hanuman had a pronounced jaw bone and a cleft lips; that means he was not like Ram or Lakshmana or like any other Hindu God. He was dark, hairy and different looking. Ram and Lakshman meet him when they are in search of Sita abducted by Ravana. Before Hanuman becomes the devoted servant of Ram, in the tussle between Bali and Sugreev, two ‘monkey’ chieftains, Ram has taken the side of Sugreev and has done away with a self respecting Bali. That means, the tribe that was represented by Bali was subjugated by Ram. Hanuman could not have been a rebel. He joined the force like Sugreev. Later in Lanka we see Vibheeshan, the brother of Ravan, deserting his brother and joining forces with Ram.

This is how rebellion is appropriated into the mainstream mythologies to naturalize the rebels into the fold of the dominant. Hanuman’s distorted look was a problem and there needed a justification for calling him a monkey. Hence, we are told that Hanuman (Maruti, Anjaneya) was a very bold child and once he saw the rising sun. Thinking that it was a ripe fruit the kid Maruti flew up to the sun in order to eat it. Seeing that the world will be in trouble without sun, Indra, the lord of Gods used his mighty sword called Vajra to strike the kid down. The sword hit the child at his lips and jaw bones and he fell fainted. Father Air (Vayu) was so angry that he decided to stop all the movements. The world was frozen at that moment. Once again there was a divine intervention through appeasing. The boy was given eternal life and also was given a new name, Hanuman. He became so devoted to the cause of serving Lord Ram that he remained a bachelor, Brahmachari, till date. That’s why we see in most of the akharas and gyms, they worship Hanuman. He does not waste his semen, which is considered to be the seat of all powers and also he does proper exercises to keep his body fit. Remember he could lift the Martva Mala (Hill Marutva). When Ravna used poisonous arrows against Ram and Lakshman, they fell fainted. Hanuman was asked to get the herb ‘mruthasanjeevani’ from Marutva Mala. Hanuman flew to the spot where the hill stood and as he could not find the particular herb, he brought the whole hill back to the war field. Muscles work where intelligence fails. It was almost like brining a medical store home for the simple reason that one lost the prescription. Most of the people who vouch by Hanuman have taken this story very seriously.

The appropriation of dissent or difference into the mainstream Hindutva has been an ongoing process even during the period of mythological formulations. There was another Bali during the fifth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. He ruled over the south of India (today’s Kerala) and was a very just king. Lord Vishnu took the form of Vamana (a dwarf) and pushed him to the nether world through an act of deception and treachery. If Bali was a just king, why did Lord Vishnu kill him at all? Doesn’t the story reek with the smell of North subjecting the south or rather the Vaishnava cult overpowering the Shaiva cult. In his eighth incarnation too, as Ram, Lord Vishnu kills Bali. Here the Bali is a self respecting monkey king. A south Indian must have been referred as monkey in those days. The tail was an addition of imagination. Now look at the word Bali (which is pronounced as Bali and Baali in respective contexts). Bali means sacrifice in Sanskrit. Baali also could mean the same but Baali later becomes Vaali and then the same word is also used for notifying a person with criminal tendencies. In a way, these just kings were made into sacrificial lambs or scapegoats for the proliferation of Vaishnavism. If so, who could be originally these monkey gods? They must be the South Indian musclemen, who were the rulers of the natural world, delivering justice to their subjects. Then comes the subjection by the North Indian kings. And they are forced to live in permanent menial status, indisputably and unquestioningly.

When I see, South Indian boys thrashing up their Dalit brothers, they are just playing the roles of renegades from within a community. There is a difference between a Kashmiri Hindu, a Manipuri Hindu, a Bengali Hindu, a Maratha Hindu and a Karnataka Hindu or a Kerala Hindu or a Tamil Hindu. When a Karnataka Hindu thrashes up another Karnataka Hindu only because the latter is born into a ‘lower’ caste, he is not in fact serving the causes of a Kashmiri Hindu or a Punjabi Hindu. They in fact do not want a Kannadiga Hindu’s endorsement for their kind of Hinduism. When the whole of South India is seen in an imaginary Dalit-hood within the mythological perspective of Hindutva, what is the point in beating up some Dalit men for entering in a temple? That too, a Hanuman temple. Hanuman is a originally a monkey god, therefore a Dalit/South Indian God. So how can one South Indian bash up another South Indian for entering their own god’s temple? If they think that the thrashers are automatically included in the larger fold of Brahminical Hinduism, they are not. Mr.Modi’s OBC-ness is not discussed because he has made that into a virtue and made votes, business boost and political gain out of it. What would these thrashers gain by upholding their ‘Hindutva’? Open your eyes and listen carefully, Hanuman is a Chiranjeevi. He has crossed the Dwapara Yuga in the form of a very old monkey (and shamed another muscle man, Bheem) and must be somewhere around like a Ninja Master, wise in knowledge and might. He will not justify your acts. As I said earlier, Aswathama carries his curse on his forehead and he is a chiranjeevi. Hanuman wears his age and wisdom and roams around in our streets, eternally. He knows that there is no master and no disciple, there is master and no servant, when master and servant are one and the same, there occurs Ram because Ram is the way to reverse ‘MAR’ (death). A chiranjeevi only can tell you this. Stop killing your brother for entering my temple, walking my path, leading their rightful life...stop killing because the more you kill the more you invert your RAM. Ram is here with me, in the street, with Kabir and all those who have burnt their homes called ego and fanaticism. 

33% Reservation for Women in Police Force a Farce

(A Delhi Police Woman)

Recently I saw a news item explaining how the Delhi Police was going to ensure 33% reservation for women in the job. It is good news on two counts; first of all, more women in the force, means more job opportunities for women. Secondly, Delhi being dubbed as the rape capital of India, presence of more women in the force would ensure the presence of security women in public spaces, which would in turn ensure the enhancement of the confidence level of the women folk in general and also would work as a deterrent for many miscreants. However, a second thought on the subject makes me feel that even if more women are included in the police force, it is not necessary that the nature of it changes for good. Well meaning graduates join different work forces and turn out to be deadwood in due course of time. They let the system grow into them and soon there would be no difference between the work force that they had detested once and the one that they have become over a period of time. Police force is not different from this. Men or women, well meaning people join the force and majority of them comes out as a different species of beings that would show the worst side of the human nature.

 (Where is the women police?)

Cultural shock came to me when I went to study in London twelve years back, primarily in the form of flashy mobile phones held so dear by the Black road workers with dreadlocks. Then it visited me in the form of police couple uniformed in black and white. These community police force members are sent out to the streets in man-woman pairs so that they could act as human surveillance agencies. They looked more friendly and social than the ones that I had seen in the English movies. Another thing that attracted my attention was the criminal’s right to demand witnesses during his arrest and the police’s benevolence to oblige. In India I had not seen this sophistication but had seen women police constables very rudely behaving. There are tough cops amongst women and also benevolent cops amongst them. Tough and benevolent ones are a rarity. Those who become tough and rude find the reason in the context in which they work. They work in the most vulnerable, ruthless, dangerous and explosive contexts therefore they have to be tough. Or they grow tough gradually. But is it necessary to be rude to all only because you are a policeman or a police woman?

(Waiting for what?)

Systemic aberrations and the loyalty to the force/state that is taught during the training days make young male and female recruits tough cops. First of all they are made to believe that the system is faulty; as the system is faulty, one is permitted to take certain liberties that include negation of instance justice that includes avoiding the filing of FIR. Secondly, their loyalty is primarily to the regiment/force, which in turn is an arm of the state. But the state is not an abstract value here; it is coloured by the ideology and policy of the ruling party. In this reality, the police force becomes a force of rogues who work for the ruling party and its definition of the state. In India we hardly see policemen and women trying to diffuse the anger or a group of protestors. There is nothing called negotiation in their dictionary. There is an order by a senior police official through the loudspeaker asking the protestors to disperse. The governments and the police force then confront their own people with rubber bullets, batons, water cannons and tear gas shells. Caning which is fondly called Lathi Charge in India, is the crudest form of dispersing people who come for protest march or protest meetings.

 (Police protecting India's integrity. But show one police woman)

Police force needs to be tough and pro-active. But in our country Police force is tough and pro-active mostly for self serving businesses. Recently in Kerala, when an old person who was caught in the mayhem got severely caned by the Rural Superintend of Police. When asked for an explanation, he said, if someone touches one of us, I will not leave him alone. Here, police behave like a criminal groups rather than modern forces that maintain law and order through persuasive and mild punitive methods. Hence, whether it is not sure whether the police force would become more benevolent if more women are included in it or not. Mostly women in police force are depicted as masculine women, who overtly show some lesbian torture techniques. In the public imagination a police woman is a prop that accompanies her male counterparts. If at all she is portrayed as a leading figure, she is an IPS officer, who ‘(wo)man handles’ thugs and politicians suing the real ‘man force’. This stereotyping of police women is more or less adopted in the real situation also. We do not see police women patrolling the streets in order to ensure the safety and security of women folk and girls. We see police women sitting in groups thoroughly bored. Difference between the bored women work force of any other government department and these police women is only in their war fatigue. They unnecessarily carry heavy weapons, shields, helmets, batons and other weapons.

 (A Cosmetic force?)

Indian police women should be trained in combative methods and there is no problem in presenting them in full combat gear in armed forces. But they are under used or used just as props. Nowhere in the Indian protest videos we see women constables caning women protestors. We see them carrying the stubborn and adamant women protestors to the waiting police vehicles. Their job is a bit ‘domestic’ in this sense. They are supposed to clear out the spoils of their male counterparts’ aggression. This situation should change. Mere inclusion of women into the police force does not ensure equality or justice to women or men. It is a cosmetic move than a fundamental change. In order to change the fundamentals, there should be a thorough change in the basic idea of policing. Good teachers becoming bad teachers, good clerks becoming bad clerks, good engineers becoming bad engineers and so on are attributed to the unavoidable corruptions within the system. Similarly, good police force becoming a bad police force has become a norm. This attitude of becoming bad should be changed and the policy makers should try for it. 

At Forty Six I am Music

(JohnyML at 46)

Today I turned forty six years old. This is not a worth remembering number like forty or forty five or even fifty. Unglamorous and un-cool a number as it is, I tend to think of becoming fifty in another four years time. I cannot be forty six or fifty alone anymore. Each year that I advance in age or each year that takes advantage of me tells me that I am not alone. I am connected to a few people directly or indirectly who also advance in age, become mature, become older and turn themselves into mellowed down and wise people. Habit has made me think of my birthdays in comparison with the age of my kids. One year added to my lived past is one year added to the living present of their lives. I have been away from them for the last one year. I have become one year older and they too have undergone the same test of time. I think of my mother; she has also become one year older, a little bit wiser and calmer. I think more of my late father. He had left me when he was fifty five years old. I am just nine years from that cut off mark. I now know how my father had felt when he was forty six years old.

At the age of forty six, I am worried about two things; my health and my wealth. Generally speaking, people start worrying about their health when they cross forty. It is then hormonal changes happen. It is when your children go to school or college. It is when they fall in love and fall out of love. It when your son comes back after a fight with friends. It is when an accident changes the course of life. It is when your partner loses interest in you. It is when you realize that you have managed a life so far and now it is the time to live. So many things happen. You either become a dry conservative or a radical non-conformist at this age. All these changes bring different kinds of illness to your life. You call it life style diseases. Some take pride in it and some get depressed by it. The more your stress level increases the more you become prone to diseases. Like any other ordinary human being I too have undergone high level of stress during the past few years which has resulted into blood sugar. Doctors say that I have diabetic conditions. Hence, I enter the threshold of my forty sixth year holding hands of a health condition called diabetes.

I underwent a period of depression once I came to know that I have this condition. I have been doing physical exercises for over twenty five years. I should not have any health conditions. All these years I have had only one prayer; let my children see me live and die a healthy life. I had seen my father suffering from all kinds of ‘life style’ diseases and closing the last chapter of his life in a very painful way. I never wanted to give my kids that experience. But the genetic passage cannot be closed down permanently. Diabetes, they say, comes because of two reasons; bad life style that includes stress and genetic transference of illness codes. If I have a health condition today, then I cannot look for any other external reasons. But I am not a meek person to go down without giving it a fight. At the age of forty six I say it with certainty that I could stop smoking and drinking without thinking twice. Almost forty days back, when I came to know that I have blood sugar, I stopped drinking and smoking on the same day. Till date I have not touched liquor or cigarette. I have intensified my work out regime and I do not feel the legendary fatigue and other symptoms that generally the diabetes patients undergo. When I look at the mirror, I feel good about myself. Sometimes, I feel that abstaining from social drinking is some kind of fanaticism or foolishness. But as I have tremendous control over my body and mind, I could say no or yes to myself and stick to it to the T.

The second thing is wealth. Once people hit forty, they really worry about their wealth. But the smart and intelligence would have made their money by this time. The rest of their life is all about stabilizing the inflow of wealth, saving it for the future and enjoying a good life. If that is the case, I should really worry about my wealth. At the age of forty six, I do not have any wealth to claim for myself. I do not have a house, a car, a job or anything that comes with a married man. By the way, I have to tell you that I have filed for a divorce in a family court. Hence, for the time being, I do not have a family either. I do not own any land or property anywhere in the world. And a portion of land that is supposed to come to me from my ancestors would come only when mother decides to give it to me. If she decides against it, then I will be completely free of wealth in this world. But I am a happy man today. I live off a suitcase, living in different places, in different people’s homes, with different people cooking and serving food for me, with no baggage, with the books bought, read and kept for keepsake in those houses where I happened to spend a few days with an assurance that I would pick them back once I am settled somewhere at some point of time. May be this is the price that I have been paying for the TIME on this earth to spend the life of a writer. And I am happy about it.

Recently, one of my college friends from Trivandrum, who is settled in the US with her family, and doing well in life took an initiative to create a whatsapp group of the students from the Bachelors and Masters in English Literature of the University College, Trivandrum, from 1987 to 1992. I happened to be one of them and I joined the group. I found all of my college mates have progressed in life and have done good things so far with their lives. In their midst I look the odd one out because I do not have a job to talk about or anything else to flaunt. I have some writings but I do not know how many of them would be interested to read me at all. But it is a happy feeling that I am in the company of a few people who all might have turned forty five or forty six by this time or would turn soon.

I try to be positive and want to keep my calm though I blow my lid off at times. I live in other people’s houses. Though I create temporary routines for myself depending on the cities where I live, when I am forced to request for food or any other support system, a sense of humiliation comes over me. But I soon overcome this negative feeling by filling myself with a sense of gratitude towards all those people who have been appearing in my life from nowhere and helping me to wade through the waves of time. Sometimes I feel that I am a tamed animal. But as the poet said, I keep a forest in my mind and there I walk like a king and talk like a king. I write from my wilderness; I have winds, darkness, moonlight, stars, coldness, rocks and rivulets, trees, hills, rocks and loneliness for company. When I write I write their memories, when I live I live their present, when I sleep I sleep their remoteness, when I live I live their celebrations. At the age of forty six, one has to be an excellent actor. But in the forest of my mind, I am a naked man, devoid of costumes, roles and dialogues. I am mute like a day’s sun and I am vocal like a night’s silence. I am powerful like a mighty rock that loves a dark cloud and I am weak like a rain that showers on a hill top. From there I flow down, like a murmur and then like a roar. In between I am music. At forty six I am music. 

I want to Sit and I want to Pee: Demands of the Slave Girls in Kalyan Sarees

(Kalyan Silks Advertisement)

This ‘International Women’s Day’ be dedicated to the sisters of Kalyan Sarees (now onwards referred as Kalyan Silks, its parental group), a textile retail chain in Kerala, who have been continuing with their ‘right sit and right to pee’ for the last few months. For the beginners, in Kerala major textile and jewellery showrooms hire young girls as saleswomen for meagre salaries. Though the labour laws have stipulated eight hours of work that include lunch, tea time and washroom breaks, these girls work for twelve hours a day, with no breaks for washroom or any other form of relaxing. They are not even allowed to sit during the working ‘hours’ and if they do the floor managers would shout at them and even threaten them with dire consequences. Their demand for washroom breaks are met with sexist comments that include ‘attaching hose pipes’ or ‘plastic covers’ under their dress. A detailed report has been written by Malavika Narayanan, a research scholar in Delhi University and is posted in Kafil.org by the noted feminist theoretician and activist J.Devika. For detailed reading please visit: http://kafila.org/2015/03/07/bread-and-roses-in-kerala-today-the-kalyan-silks-women-workers-struggle-and-an-appeal-on-womens-day-eve/

Since 4^th January onwards these salesgirls are on strike and their strike is called ‘Sitting Strike’. It does not have a common connotation as in ‘a sit in’ or ‘dharna’. Though these girls demand the right to sit, it is not just about the right to sit. It is a demand for lawful working hours, healthy working atmosphere and above all right to sit and relieve themselves during the working hours. The name of the strike however comes from a historical strike initiated by the Tribal and Adivasi people in Kerala who demanded legal rights over the lands where they have been living and cultivating for many generations. From the hills and forests, from the fringes of Kerala society, the dark skinned and apparently remote looking people came down to the administrative capital of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, and ‘stood’ in front of the old Secretariat for almost a year till the conscience of the Kerala intellectuals, public and finally the political parties responded to their demands. The ‘Standing strike’ or ‘Nilppu Samaram’ was a success though it was a yearlong torture for the tribal and Adivasi people who came down to the planes to strike. They sang, danced and drummed the way black people all over the world did when they were in pains or in protest. They showed their empty buckets to pedestrians for contributions and distributed pamphlets. They stood like totems of patience questioning and challenging the complacency of the Kerala middle class and political leaders and won a battle which Gandhiji himself would have loved to emulate.

 (Sitting Strike by Kalyan Silks saleswomen )

‘Irippu Samaram’ or ‘Sitting Strike’ or ‘Right to Sit Strike’ of Kalyan Silk girls comes from this historical background. Kerala has always been in the forefront of strikes that demand rights of women for equal rights and justice. Though today in Kerala strikes have taken this comic turn of becoming a Hartal, by any political formation calling out for it and making the normal like of a state stand still for twenty four hours, gender related strikes have always been a part and parcel of the general strikes for establishing the rights of the downtrodden and subaltern. It started with the nascent nationalist movements that initially asked for the removal of untouchability in Kerala. This coincided with the reformative movements from within the upper and lower castes and communities, which eventually with the arrival of independence merged with the common stream of nationalism and national resurgence. Gender disparities where more or less brushed under the carpets of the discourses of nationalist struggle, by bifurcating the roles of women as a frontline fighter and as a sideline caregiver at once. Gandhiji showed this division of labour by submerging the difference under the lofty discourse of women’s role in nationalist struggle and nation building. However, in Kerala, from the rights on public paths to rights to enter the temples to widow marriages to women’s education, to right cover one’s breasts and so on more less interspersed with the mainstream struggle for national independence. In that sense, striking is not new to Kerala women.

Kalyan Silks strike of its salesgirls demanding the right to sit and use washroom is however pivotal not only in the central discourse of feminism but also in the general discourse on moral policing on women and their relationships. Seen in a larger context of ‘India’s Daughter’ documentary and its aftermath, this strike assumes a very important dimension. Unorganized job sectors are always the sites of labour as well as sexual exploitation. The feudal lord standing under the shade of an umbrella and seeing the hanging breasts of the lower caste women who work in the rice fields, sexually loaded comments directed at the coir workers, beedi workers, cashew nut workers and match box workers are the pictures that are still etched clearly in the minds of Kerala women. Though unionizing in each sector had/has helped women to escape from obvious and subtle forms of exploitation, the emerging job sectors are still not unionised; for example the part time teachers in private schools and colleges, call centre workers, salesgirls and boys, nurses in small hospitals, domestic helps and migrant labourers and so on. As these are floating job sectors where one is expected to gain experience against a small salary, unionising becomes the last concern for the workers. While many of these sectors do not entertain workers for a long time, workers too consider these sectors are temporary avenues. However, girls working in textile retail shops and jewellery shops do not consider these jobs as floating jobs. Yet, they do not unionise.

 (Adivasi Standing Strike with leader C.K.Janu, college students show solidarity with touching the strikers' feet)

They do not unionise mainly because they are too dispersed and diversified in aims as workers and as human beings. A retail chain may be a district centric or it may have shops in a few districts. Depending on the demand of the locations of these shops, the girls are expected to report for work. Though there could be uniform timing for a particular retail chain, considering the footfall frequency, some shops may give some relaxation in their reporting time. Secondly, they are not inclined to unionise because the kind of harassment that they face on a daily basis automatically put them into a precarious position of losing the job if they complaint or try for opinion building. As most of these girls come from lower income group families, their salary seems to be so pivotal for the general aspirations of their families and they find it extremely difficult to jeopardise their job. Thirdly, many girls work towards collecting dowry for their own marriages! Their work and salary are so much a determining factor in their lives that having a job with a salary, and getting out of home daily become so important for their future. Though they dream future of their own, the working atmosphere literally kill their dreams as they are prevented from connecting with other people or friends of male or female gender, or even using the mobile phones.

However, one may ask why these girls are still attracted to such jobs. While the scare poverty looming large over their families could be cited as the primary reason, sociologically speaking, it is the respect that a uniformed job gives to the girls makes it so important for them. These girls are given a uniform, as per the aesthetic sensibility of the owner of the retail chain and this uniform gives them a temporary authority over the customers who come to purchase dresses, textiles, or gold and ornaments. Here the sales girls play a double role; first of all they are salesgirls so they need to be really pleasant and be capable enough to sell stuff to people. Serve with a smile is a motto. And, entice the customer by being friendly yet not over friendly, coaxing and yet not yielding, such games become natural to this job. As they are uniformed and play role in controlling, enhancing and at times killing the desire quotient of the customer, they feel a sense of authority at the cost of their own freedom and sense of self worth. In her article Malavika Narayanan writes that these girls also become sales props, a sort of living mannequins though they do not exactly wear (or ever wear) the kinds of dresses that they sell. Though this is true in certain dimensions, they are forced to live in a sort of perpetual incompetency because the kind of wares that they sell are always away from their own desires and are also ‘sold’ by glamorous super models from elsewhere. So they should be facing a sense of inadequacy also at the time of playing hot and cold with desire quotient of the customers.

(Additional work. Kalyan silks sales girls during the inaugural function of their Trivandrum showroom)

This sense of inadequacy is inclemently accentuated when a hieratic division is done amongst the work force of these girls by the floor managers or by the owners themselves, by categorising them into good looking to presentable to not so presentable types. Though a girl’s good looks do not assure her a fat salary packet as a salesgirl, she automatically gets the most precious sections in a large showroom where silk sarees, wedding garments, haute couture type of dresses are sold. Presentable girls are employed at other sections and not so good looking girls are sent to the places where not too many people visit. Their jobs are always to fold the things back or run up and down to get the materials. While good looking girls are promoted to stand at the welcoming area of the sections to entice the customers, not so good looking girls do not get much chance to hold that position. Though, I have not done on the ground research on this aspect, I have come across this division automatically put in place in many famous textile and jewellery shops. While this creates an ego clash amongst the working girls themselves, the regular frisking they are subjected to (especially in the jewellery shops) is quite demeaning.

The sales girls who are undergoing strike today for their right to sit and relieve themselves, not only face subtle sexual harassment at the workplaces but also they face it as they commute between their homes and work places. As their uniform tells the world that they are ‘mere’ sales girls, a section of the society also considers them as girls who could ‘sell’ their bodies for survival. While uniform in general command respect, the uniform of these girls (which are often heavily patterned sarees with one colour on the pleats and another on the rest of it) invite general disparage and condescension. While the morning commuting to the workplace is rather easy for these girls, going back home at night is really a difficult task for them. I have seen these uniformed girls with their plastic covers and cheap handbags standing like a flock of sheep waiting to be carted to the stables, at the bus stops and other pick up points. There too they are subjected to face cat calls, unwanted attention from pedestrians and unsolicited invitations from fringe elements from the male community that could any time turn into a social guards who wear their morality on their sleeves.

 (Noted actors Prithviraj and Dhanush together inaugurating Kalyan's Dubai showroom)

Is there a remedy to this deep rooted malice? Or unionising is the only remedy? Is sensitising possible in the workplaces? Can the employers be lenient and led by humanitarian values? How could the general society react to this menace and save the girls from this ongoing indignity? How long are they going to strike for their rights to sit and pee? How long the public intellectuals going to write about them and support their cause? Will theorising and vocalising their concerns in the elite platforms in anyway help in alleviating their plights? If not who could be the right forces to make these blind law makers and blind employers to have certain kind of operations on their own eyes and see the truth? How could we help them see sense? I think it is possible; it is possible if each family in Kerala decides to boycott the showrooms and textile and jewellery retailers that treat their sales girls like slaves. The boycott could start from the doors of Kalyan Silks itself. This company or any company like this flexes its muscles because they would get cheaper workforce. But what would they do with the cheaper workforce if none is there to buy stuff from their shops. Kerala women are shopaholics. They shop till they drop dead. Death and birth, marriage and divorce, anything and everything is celebrated with buying new clothes and jewellery in Kerala. If every family decides not to patronize those shops that mistreat our sisters, then things will change. And social boycotting would eventually make the law makers bend their knees and take stringent action against the slave drivers. Can our conscience keepers of the society, both our print and electronic media negate the revenue from the advertisement of these big retail chains? Can our film stars stop endorsing their products? Can our celebrities and politicians stop going for cutting ribbons of their expanding showrooms? If we all together decide, then our girls will be treated better. Any takers?