A Certain Light

I will be travelling again to India soon. Just as I had done on the trip in November, I will be going through Dubai. Mentioning the Middle East, of course, brings up anxiety and unease - the tense downward relationship spiral with Iran, the possibility of a surprise strike on that country, the bloodshed in Syria, and so on. But, today, I want to focus on something else - women's dress.

Dubai is a Mecca for the fashion forward. At Dubai Airport in November, M. and I wandered in a happy daze, absorbing all the upscale consumer goodies available for ogling in the luxury high-end airport stores. Finally, tiring of this spectator sport, we sat and waited at our gate for our connecting flight. Besides the usual clutch of impatient international travelers in their de rigueur sweat pants and/or business attire, Arab families strolled by, men in their traditional garb and women in the black abayas (cloaks) and shaylas (head scarves). Far from looking primitive and barbaric, the dresses struck me as graceful and fluid, both the men's clothing and the women's. I was surprised at my own reactions - the black covering for women always strike me as rather ugly and unbecoming when I see them in India or in New York or other cities. So how did they suddenly look rather attractive now?

Was I becoming an Orientalist in my early middle age? The natives must be dressed suitably native, and all that? On reflection, I decided that it was in fact about aesthetics and visual impressions. My impressions about Middle Eastern clothing have, in fact, much to do with the setting in which I see the garb. In the strong desert light (albeit filtered through airport glass windows) there is a pleasing visual contrast between the black, the white and natural illumination against a predominantly sandy background. The abaya, the shaylas and the men's galabiyyas look attractive in this sort of light. In the sub-tropical light of India, the white galabiyyas are acceptable but the women's black abayas,however, look stifling and funereal. In the muted light of the Northern hemisphere, the abayas, shaylas and niqabs just look jarring and ugly.

So much of beauty in costume, then, has to do with geography and the angle of the sun's rays. I, for one, rarely wear the saturated colors of India that look so beautiful in the South Asian light. I stick to pastels and soft shades here, when I need color and brightness. Occasionally, I'll break out an acid pink or gemstone green to celebrate summer flowers, but then it's back to the somber browns, blacks and greys for winter with whispery pinks, blues, and purples to liven up harsh days. And silver and gold glitter to reflect the sparkling snow - the sparkling snow that has given us the go-by so far this season, for the most part.

A Drop in an Ocean

This post is one among several hundreds of thousands of blogposts worldwide about New Year, and resolutions and 2012. Well, to add to the abundance of expression, here are my thoughts on the coming year - this year, I will set aside an hour a day for walking. I am fortunate to live in a part of the country where the winters are relatively mild and really there isn't much excuse for procrastrinating about exercise. On blog matters, I will write a post at least once a month, preferably on a weekend morning when the house is still quiet and I have the time to both savor my first cup of Darjeeling tea and to begin stringing my thoughts into words. 2012 I know will be a big year for me - I have completed a second novel, have submitted it to my overworked editor and am awaiting the verdict on its publishing fate. 'No' means that I pitch it to another publishing house, it might also mean looking seriously at self-publishing on Amazon. 'Yes' means I collect my weary thoughts and begin for the second time the process of reviewing and editing. It is a tedious process that drives both writer and editor nuts but is vital to the manuscript's transformation into limpid prose and handsome, bound copy. Whatever may be the editorial response, the completion of two book-length manuscripts means that I am a writer. I need to start thinking about a separate blog focused on the book/s. Or I may just go to Facebook.

That doesn't mean that this blog will head into any further neglect than necessary. I like having a space that is semi-anonymous and reserved for observations that are not strictly literary. After all, writers have lives outside books too. So, I intend to use this space for matters not directly related to my literary life, matters that I find take up a much larger area of my life than I had thought. Matters that this blog made evident to me over the last few years of its existence.

Aashi

Ashi, Kolkata. M. and I leave today after our brief visit. The afternoon sounds filter in through open windows - a crow cawing insistently, a car's engine turning, sparrows and mynahs chirping. Somewhere in the distance, a politician rides around in a cycle rickshaw with a megaphone, declaiming to his constituency. I've always loved this time of the day in Kolkata when the bright sunlight gets trapped in the mellow filters of my mother's curtains to make everything glow, even the grime of the city looks less obnoxious when viewed through this lens. The Kolkata light was captured best (albeit romantically) by Pradeep Sarkar in Parineeta (I've linked to the video, and if that video is removed, there's always Wikipedia).

So until next time, Kolkata. We enjoyed the weather this time - warm but not uncomfortably so, like late spring in Fairfield County, and the occasional need for a ceiling fan during the mandatory afternoon siesta. Next time we visit, the city will be in a different mood altogether, when the blazing heat and unsparing humidity of summer drives everyone indoors. And then we will lie gasping, breathless, reeling from the hard blows of a Kolkata summer, but lured back again, inevitably, to the City of Joy.

The Way We Walk

I'm back in Kolkata after a substantial amount of time. A short break, mainly family business that takes its own time and has its own dimensions. On the sidelines, I observe the changed contours of the old hometown.

Kolkata was not a place I ever lived in, properly. It was the city of my ancestors, to which I returned periodically, the mention of whose name evoked memories of a creepy, narrow, three-storeyed house in a very congested part of the city. Childhood routines involved travelling from farflung places in India - mainly border towns - to Kolkata for the inevitable summer holiday pilgrimage to visit elderly relatives and distant cousins. In those days, the city was a place of overwhelming sensation - people spilling out of crowded buses, walking on the broken streets, cars honking madly while belching dark petrol and diesel fumes. What saved these memories from becoming one of many cliched tales of Kolkata impressions was the sudden movement of detail in these mass frescoes of humanity - a man who found the time (and the energy) to wink at me despite hanging on for dear life to the outside of a lopsided bus, a fruitseller at New Market, so old that my mother stopped deliberately to buy his wares, despite not needing (or subsequently eating) his wilting jamuns. I still remember the faded checked bush shirt of the former man, and the grizzled white stubble of the latter.

Aeons later, I notice how the urban spaces here have shifted, as have their uses. First, the positives. There is no question that people in general look better-fed and are better-dressed Maybe they don't appear so to untrained foreign eyes, but those of us who grew up here know the extent of the changes for the better that have taken place. The absolutely destitute who crowded around our childish elbows in the 1970s and 1980s, have receded into the occasional beggar at the Topsia traffic light. And all of this is a good thing, despite its incompleteness and unevenness as a process.

The spaces between the haves and the have-nots have increased, however, quite literally. As M. and I look over the balcony each morning, I notice that the street in front of my parents' house is walked most often by the people who service the homes of this middle class residential neighborhood - maids, fruitsellers, fishmongers, lock-repairmen - and by stray dogs and crows who fight for territory. The Kolkata middle classes who made up such a large chunk of the flaneurs of the preceding era are less visible. Their preferred stroll now is within the more sanitized territory of the shopping malls where the unpredictabilities of the street are well-controlled. Women stroll, window shop, eat pastries and drink cold coffee in relative calm. Part of me sympathizes - the unruly streets outside are particularly hard for the female pedestrian. Who wants to deal not only with stray dogs but with other menacing predators who also hunt in pack - eve teasers? Still, the other part of me laments the separation and segregation of the classes. A middle class teenager now might not learn from her mother to stop out of compassion for a geriatric fruitseller. For such a girl these days, that fruitseller is not only invisible, he is a fellow citizen with whom she will never learn to interact. A pity, really.

The Outsider

Like many other viewers, I tuned in to CBS's 60 Minutes program to watch President Obama describe the most stressful 40 minutes of his presidency. I listened to him explain his decisions to CBS's Steve Kroft in the Roosevelt Room. There were many interesting things the President mentioned (carrying on with routine things like the White House Correspondents' Dinner and so on), but one thing stuck in my mind. It was this exchange, where President Obama explained witholding information about the operation from the Pakistani establishment.

KROFT: You didn't trust 'em?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: If I'm not revealing to some of my closest aides what we're doin', then I sure as heck am not gonna be revealing it to folks who I don't know.

And that summed up to me why it took an Obama to nail Osama. No, not because Obama is a superhuman or a saint or a god**mn tactical genius. Nor is it because he likes to shoot from the hip. Rather, it's because Barack Obama is an outsider. He has nothing invested in maintaining networks of spy contacts in Pakistan, he has no relationships built up over decades with the Pakistani military and intelligence outfits. Donald Rumsfeld (who still calls for the US-Pakistan relationship to be safeguarded), and Dick Cheney spent the 1970s cultivating the Pakistani establishment, and were reluctant to throw away all that history by breaking with those relationships. Instead, they hoped that coaxing and cajoling the Pakistani establishment with aid and armaments would both deliver Osama bin Laden and safeguard a relationship that had been fathered by the ideological necessities of the Cold War, i.e. anticommunism. This led predictably to the (greedy and corrupt) Pakistani establishment milking the relationship for all it was worth, while never delivering the top symbol of the War on Terror. If the Pakistani security outfits had delivered OBL rightaway, they would have lost their golden goose. So the War on Terror continued for years, while terror alerts in the US changed colors with the season, and bin Laden continued to remain a hidden force, emerging occasionally to lecture and harangue the world via videotapes.

Obama , when he took charge, was least concerned about hurting the feelings of the Pakistani High Command. He had not toured Pakistan as a government official but as a backpacking student. He had no links to the inner, twisted corridors of Pakistani power. In turn, the Pakistani High Command probably dismissed Obama as a lightweight, did not see the point in currying favor with him or his administration of political novices, and were keeping bin Laden safe, waiting out the four years until a Republican administration with familiar faces returned and picked up the threads of an old and familiar relationship.

Neither the Pakistanis or the American Old Guard (in which I include Democrats of a certain vintage) reckoned with the fact that Obama was an outsider who would break with the past in foreign policy. Unlike other outsiders like Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee who are combative about domestic politics but quite unsure about foreign policy (and therefore dependent on the old guard for guidance), Obama is willing to think independently. Because a seriously-cheesed-off Pakistani military means absolutely nothing to him. He is an outsider.

On Gloating

I'm very satisfied with the outcome of the events that played out over last weekend. I have expressed this satisfaction numerous times to family, friends, and acquaintances, and even on my limited social media circle. As an Indian army brat, I am also having my "Told you so" moment now that OBL was found "hiding" in luxury 800 yards from the elite Pakistan Military Academy (that country's equivalent of West Point). I (like millions of others) am also impressed at the measured calm of President Obama's actions and pronouncements, so refreshingly different from the screeching high decibel noise that some other incumbent would have brought to the occasion.

Yet, I cannot bring myself to condone the street celebrations outside the White House or in New York City. I grant that these two places that were hit the hardest by the Sept 11 attacks, have the most to celebrate, but still....call it my middle class upbringing or whatever, but pouring into the streets to celebrate the death of someone, even a monster? I don't know...candlelight vigils would do, public meetings, too. Even as I was expressing my happiness that the monster was gone, I couldn't imagine rushing out or lighting firecrackers or anything like that. In my opinion, there was something unseemly and inappropriate about those images. Maybe it was the jarring contrast of so many young people celebrating something that they, hopefully, are far from - death.
Is there any appropriate way to gloat other than in private? I wonder.

News of the World - Or How Paywalls Can't Stop Me Getting the News

These days the New York Times has gone behind a paywall. I stop by every morning, with my nose pressed against the cyberglass, gazing at the tempting treats in the form of headlines and first lines. Surprisingly, I don't ache for the days when I could read the content for free. Or, perhaps, not so surprisingly, since the same news is available everywhere else and not just on American websites.

In fact, what has changed thoroughly is the automatic association of certain organizations with news. There was a time when news meant the BBC, and later CNN, for electronic news and the New York Times and the Washington Post for printed news. In India, it meant such creaky oldtimers such as The Times of India and The Statesman and The Hindustan Times. My first few years in the U.S. there were no other options and if I wanted news about India, I had to rely on snippets here and there. There were of course the now defunct soc.culture groups in the days before the Internet became the World Wide Web. My biggest grouse against the western media in those days was that I hungered for news from India and couldn't find any, except silly pieces here and there. And certainly none in an Indian voice. Even further back in the day, way, way way back in the day, I had an opposite grouse with the Indian news media. There was no coverage of the world outside. My connection to world news was BBC World Service on shortwave frequencies. The BBC may or may not have been objective. I realize now, that it was then and remains now the British Broadcasting Corporation, so yes, it was the broadcast arm of the British government. But it was also often the only radio act in town, the behemoth with a presence worldwide, with reporters and cameramen on the ground. So if I wanted to know what was going on in the Middle East, South Africa, Australia and Europe, I would tune in to the fuzzy, scratchy reception of the BBC World Service and listen to what was going on in the rest of the world. When we finally acquired a television in the late 1980s, it was CNN that brought home the vicarious experience of war via its 24-hour coverage of and reporting from Iraq in 1991. Even when the World Wide Web made news more available, I would go to the Indian websites such as rediff, for news about India only, rarely for foreign news.

How the times have changed! For the recent developments in the Middle East, I don't even miss the New York Times. In fact I turn not even to the standard chatter of the talking heads on CNN or MSNBC. Both their reporting and their analyis is at least 24 hours late and often just surface impressions. I find more timely reporting and more accurate analysis on Indian websites and television stations such as NDTV , Headlines Today, and on international news websites like Al-Jazeera English. Thanks to the Internet, they all stream live. I also found interesting and relevant analysis by Indian bloggers, one of whom is a defence journalist working for the TV channel Headlines Today. Shiv Aroor recently spent time in eastern Libya, in Ben-Ghazi, and both tweeted and blogged about the situation on the ground there.

When I stepped back to consider, I found this amazing: for perhaps the first time in my life, I was reading an Indian correspondent's reporting on a foreign war. This would have been unthinkable in the 1980s not because Indian reporters were not good enough but because back then, most Indian news organizations simply did not have the resources to send out reporters to cover foreign wars. So we had no other sources of information except the BBC and CNN. Now there is a variety of sources from which to get news, and in comparison with the competition, western news organizations are coming up short, both in quality and in terms of boots on the ground (or microphones on the ground).

This is because first, there is the undeniable fact that western news organizations are unable to staff bureaus worldwide. Funds are tight, western journalists represent a burden on expenditures, they have to be housed and fed expensively, unlike resourceful Indian and Qatari reporters who are willing to live more modestly in exchange for the excitement of reporting live from international troublespots. In light of this, western news organizations are simply cutting back operations and there are fewer reporters on the ground (with the notable exception of NPR).

However, there also still remains the problem of voice. Caught up in trying to keep in place the shredded lens of a world order that is irrefutably over, western news organizations simply cannot comprehend the sheer mindboggling changes that have taken place in the world. I find it embarrassing to read or watch western analysts struggle to make sense of the situation in Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They try to fit it into a narrative that is fast unravelling - that of western political and economic dominance. As a result, many western journalists are perceived to be tied to western foreign policy, so much so that their stated objectiveness no longer carries weight, and they are often treated as agents of their countries' governments. It's particularly sad that really good journalists like Anthony Shadid have to bear the consequences of the deteriorating analytical standards of their colleagues. The recent brutal treatment of the four New York Times journalists who were roughed-up and molested by their captors before being, thankfully, released into safety, would not have happened in the heyday of Christiane Amanpour when western journalists were treated as protected celebrities covering important world affairs for the only news channels then available.

In my opinion, the far greater problem is that western foreign journalists are just too...foreign. So they neither seek out nor are they given access to places and people whose sights and voices need to be seen and heard in order for a truer picture to emerge (again with the notable exception of the exceptional Anthony Shadid of the New York Times). Often, it's locally-hired minions who do the bulk of the hard work and the actual reporting. And so the interesting perspectives these days are mostly non-western. Also, the non-western perspective does not, yet, present itself to the world as the voice of power and/or domination. Even though India is rising, it has not yet risen to the point where its journalists can head out into the world with the self-assurance of power, either military, economic or political. Their voices come through, therefore, as the voices of genuine observers and reporters, not as interlocutors or players in international politics. It's a new and very interesting development in the history of foreign correspondence.

And that's why I can live without access to the New York Times on the Internet.Sorry, NYT, whether or not you like it, content can no longer be hoarded or guarded. I suggest you hike your advertising rates to compensate for the free content and to pay your reporters and cover operational costs.

Writer's Block

Sitting down every morning in front of the computer, I move the mouse and the cursor clicks almost involuntarily on the Internet Explorer icon, rather than the Windows Explorer icon. Almost involuntarily, because it is, in fact, quite deliberate. I don't want to write, I'll read anything instead. Whether it's some starlet's new wardrobe malfunction, or the current revolutionary upheaval in the Middle East, or a new recipe that I tell myself I will try out soon - all this reading is just an excuse for me to avoid writing.

Having completed and submitted one manuscript, and now a hundred pages into the second, writer's block has struck in a terrible and paralysing blow. In its grip, I read about the commercial success of the Mommy blogger brigade, and tell myself that that's what I need to do. To break out of my current state I have to offer up more of my inner life. Maybe the thought of being able to single-handedly fund my children's college accounts will spur me onto writing more and completing this second manuscript. But, I already don't like this option. Although a creature of the era of mass communication, and completely embracing its technology, I am at best a cautious participant in the culture it has spawned, except in unavoidable ways through the cookies that websites install on my computer and through the terms I leave behind on search engines. I want to use the tools of my times, not be shaped by them (although that is not wholly possible, I understand).

I am not a confessional sort of person. I realized that neither is my son. In his elementary school, the local police department offers a prize for the best essay on alcohol and drugs and the harm they cause. Awareness-raising, early education and all that. S. wrote a great essay on the dangers of tobacco and alcohol advertising. When the best essays were read out, I discovered a common theme: all of them touched on either a family member or a close friend whose early death or substance-abuse had deeply affected the young essay-writer. Not that the essays were not good or powerful, but the judges went for the ones where the writers had offered themselves and their families up for evaluation. Perhaps this is a sign of the times? We like to read blogs where people write about themselves, watch TV shows where people reveal themselves (literally and metaphorically), and love to hear other people discuss their personal lives in agony aunt columns (I do, anyway, but that's the subject of another novel). When it comes to expression though, my son, like me, tends to draw on other sources of ideas, write about everything else except his family, unless he is asked specific questions.

So there remains the question of the writer's block. What to do, what to do? Well, they do say that writing through it, like working one's way through pain, is the way to go. And that's what this post has been about.

Inquilab Zindabad!

Need more be said - right now? Let the people who thronged Tahrir Square in Cairo celebrate themselves, let them enjoy their hardwon victory, let them savor the freedom they wrested from the old dictator. Allow them to congratulate themselves heartily. When the dust settles, we can analyze and add all the qualifiers. But for now, joy to you, Misris!

Walk Like An Egyptian

Yes, yes, the title's corny and it's been done to death this week, but the protests in the Middle East, all those walking Egyptians, Tunisians and Yemenis (and now Sudanese too, apparently), are worthy of commentary and analysis. So here is my two cents' worth, adding to the general cacophony of voices on the issue.

First, what strikes me is that all three countries where dissent has outstripped the state's ability to contain it, are not oil-rich ones. The lack of oil is an important factor, because it means that in tough economic times the state is not able to buy peace and time for itself. Over two years ago, protesters came out on the streets of Egypt to protest rising prices. That should have been a warning sign. Commodity prices have continued to rise over the past few years and for governments with no financial wiggle room, it means that their authoritarian character can now no longer be sugar-coated with dollops of subsidies.

How did these countries manage to limp along for so many years? I mean, Hosni Mubarak has been around for 30 years. His erstwhile counterpart in Tunisia, Zin el-Abedine Ben Ali, ruled for 23 years. And our man in Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has also been in power for more than 30 years. If one examines their finances, I wouldn't be surprised to find that American and Saudi subsidies probably kept these regimes going for the longest time as they were seen as pragmatic allies in a difficult region. Economics has again become crucial in 2011. The patrons of these client regimes are themselves undergoing a prolonged economic crisis and are cutting subsidies or are being stricter with how the money is spent. So, there is less money to trickle down to the public, as the corrupt elites in these countries are certainly not going to reduce their take from the coffers. And so protest, revolution, and change.

I think, though, that while all these protests have similar inspirations - a yearning for political change and a striking out against crippling corruption - how they will end depends upon the specific regional combination of domestic politics and foreign relations. Will Israel intervene to prop up a trusted partner, Mubarak? Will Saudi Arabia do the same for its Yemeni client? I don't think the United States has any leverage in this situation and should wait for the dust to settle before making any plans. But the folks at Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon and in the administration should take note - this truly marks the end of the Cold War in the Middle East, and the end of the useful idiots one appointed as allies to contain the Reds. And no, the Islamists are not just an extension of the Soviets. So back to the foreign policy drawing board for all of you in D.C.

A Suitable Reader

Now that the book is under contract and is awaiting its turn in the editorial queue to be tweaked, turned, printed and marketed, I think about the readers out there. I think of my book as a person and the future readers as future partners for my book with whom its life will be intermingled. I know, I know, such anthromorphism, tsk, tsk. And such possessiveness. I wouldn’t have thought it possible of myself either.

But the book is my baby, my third, silent baby. And who is its future partner, the reader of my book? The more partners, the more successful my offspring (such a wrong thought for a person, but so true for a book). I ask myself this in various settings.

This week, I was at a small lunch with other around-town moms. All of us were Indians from different states, speaking different languages, conversing in English and Hindi, discussing things. We sat around a well-lit suburban dining table, eating delicious food, and chit-chatting, and I was suddenly very aware that these women were not the readers of my book. Well, maybe two of them were, including the hostess. OK, three.

I judged them out of my own insecurity – would X be able to empathize with the dilemmas of I., an important character in my novel? Would Y be able to overcome her antipathy to people of a certain community? She would have to at least suspend it in order to respond sympathetically with some situations in the novel. Why is it that I disapprove of prejudice, but when it comes up in a drawing room situation, I am unable to do more than smile and change the subject? Would any of these beautiful women in their lovely clothes and styled hair really be able to imagine situations and lifestyles such as the one I describe in my book? Could such lives as I talk about even be believable to them? Perhaps not.

But perhaps, yes. After all, I am a suburban mom too, aren’t I? What right do I have to believe that these well-educated women could not reach out to another world and time? Ashamed of my own thoughts, I teetered between remorse and criticism. I talked too much, was too witty and too loud, too giggly, trying to find a balance between sociable and withdrawn. And I noticed that one of the other potential readers at the gathering was like me – somewhat insecure, trying too hard. I was awkward and out of place in this setting, even though I fit in so well, in terms of class and ethnicity. And even though all of those present, without exception, were thoroughly nice people. Thoroughly nice people, but not the readers of my book.

I’ll write more about other potential readers in the future. Or other potential non-readers.

In the meantime, as more snow heads our way here, stay dry.

Learning to Exhale

Christmas Eve! I picked up some things I need for my salad tomorrow – beets, pea shoots, extra virgin olive oil, Tuscan bread. The stores today were busy but not crazy, impatient busy. Or maybe it felt that way to me because I was more focused in my purchases this time and was not dashing about madly. While I’m not an overly last-minute kind of person, I have felt that my gift-purchasing technique leaves much to be desired. I make a list and then add things to it as I'm browsing the stores. I always wonder if I have enough for such-and-such person and then I buy another thing or two. Not only is this technique guaranteed to raise your anxiety levels sky-high, it also means that you will end up with bags of gifts in your closet from years past that were not given to the intended recipient, as it seemed like overkill when the time came to wrap it all up (pun intended). Some of the toys that I had bought for my kids are now past their age-appropriateness and will have to be given away as birthday presents.

To combat this unfortunate tendency, I made a list this year. And, although it was very hard, I stuck to it. It meant that I had to force myself to leave cosmetics stores having bought exactly one perfume and without the added brush and hair accessories that I would have thrown into my basket in previous years. When it came to buying a gift for X, I bought the sweater that I had noted down and regretfully left behind the cute little leather wristlet that I spied in the corner and that I thought went so well with it. When I had the Sticky Mosaics wrapped up, (the one that M. loves and the one that is not out till April but that my local toy store owner had managed to order), I stopped with that. No little dolls or stuffed candy cane shaped toys. Sticking to this strategy means that, for the first time in years, I have time to relax and read a book on Christmas Eve. The presents are ready, the cookies for Santa are baked (done by K. and the kids), the outstation gifts have been sent. So, this year it’s just me and my book – and my computer. And I can actually go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. Merry Christmas!

The End of American Freedom?

Freedom to travel abroad without too much red tape, that is. Ever since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, when a bunch of murderous thugs assaulted a bunch of innocent civilians for no reason at all, ever since the masterminds of that attack were traced back to Pakistan, ever since one of the star players turned out to be a man of American origin, looking of European descent, polygamous, a triple agent, drug runner, carrying an American passport, that unstated right of Americans to travel freely is under threat. Jihad Jane didn't help, either, the American case for unhindered international travel for American citizens. And, what was once whispered, is now being spoken loudly. The British for example are now questioning American security checks for incoming flights. And while most of this article focuses on the threat to the United States by American-born, or American-raised terrorists, it was this passage that caught my eye:

With their innate knowledge of the country's psyche and the ease with which they can travel the country without being detected, the U.S. passport-carrying terrorists have become a nightmare for counter-intelligence agents (emphases mine)

So, now we have global unease directed at that heretofore unlikely candidate - the American international traveller. Since the end of the nineteenth century, but definitely since the end of the Cold War, the American traveller has been a pampered, fussed-over specimen, roaming freely like the bison of the Great Plains, or like the deer or the antelope of said Plain. Whether outrageously wealthy or just comfortably middle class (poor Americans tend to staycation), the arrival of the American wanderer on foreign shores was greeted with cries of joy by peddlers of counterfeit and luxury brands alike. His or her presence drove up the local prices of taxicabs, household help wages, and brought about the global availability of ketchup. Visa rules were changed or bent for the convenience of this usually genial (although somewhat sartorially challenged) traveller and the non-reciprocity of entry rules for people wishing to enter the United States was seen as understandable (after all, everyone wants to go to the land of milk and honey, right?). American travellers swanned through entry points, checkpoints and sometimes, customs bureaus.

Now, though, international terrorism is changing all that. In the days before 9/11, the bad guys looked, well, brown and Middle Eastern (or Slavic), they couldn't possibly be American, right? And blond-haired, blue-eyed men and women must be on the side of the angels, right? These days, though, innocence no longer looks exclusively European and villainy no longer comes only in darker shades of skin tone. An American passport and a gleaming set of well-tended American teeth are not anymore an automatic guarantee of welcome all over the world. Already, India has put into place stringent new rules about the entry and exit of foreign nationals, global investment opportunities be damned. I mean, when it's a choice between the lives of your own citizens and the ease of entrance for some unknown American, which would you choose? Add to this a suspicion about the real motives of American citizens abroad (for example, are they really taking innocent tourist shots with their expensive cameras, or are they doing a recce of potential targets for terrorist strikes?), throw in a growing perception that the United States is flat broke, deep in debt and in general global decline and then I think, at least in the medium term future, distrust of the American traveller will be a scenario throughout the globe. American globetrotters, don't say you weren't warned: be ready to wait in line at immigration and customs, and prepare to be scrutinized much more closely

Things I Like About My Life

As fall seeps into our lives again, all crusty condensation and crunchy colors, I look back on my life over the last ten years here in southwestern Connecticut. Yes, it's been ten years for us here - a period of change and transformation. A big move from the midwest, pregnancy, motherhood, renovation, writing, reading, worrying about the economy...But overall, I would say that despite all the changes, life here is pleasant in more ways than one can count. "Here are a few of my favorite things":

First, there is the unquestionable prettiness of the place. Despite the McMansions, the overdevelopment, the terrifying roar of I-95 and the shock and awe of consumer prices, the land and its beauty still break through - in the sweep of a tree branch over the Merrit Parkway, all burnt red and orange in October, in the quietness of the little lanes that meander their way around neighborhoods, in the curve of a slope on Redding Road, in the whiteness of a church perched on a hillside, shining against a clear blue sky.

Second, I actually like the reserve of people here. Many revile the coldness and the stiffness of the Connecticut WASP. But a) it's actually far more diverse here than people think, at least in Fairfield County and b) I actually don't mind the famous northeastern reserve. In fact, I am relieved. When I lived in the lower midwest, way back, I felt at times that I would burst with vexation at people's fervent opinionatedness especially on matters that I consider intensely personal - religion. Not that in-your-face intolerance is totally unknown in the northeast but there's a reason why that blasted, hatemongering church is located "there" and not in Fairfield County.

Third, it's just close enough to the big city. I love, love, love city life. But I have accepted that we will be suburban parents and a suburban family. Still, it is so nice to able to pop into New York whenever I really get the urge to pep up my life, dress up a little, and eat something different and well-prepared (and well-presented). And even nicer to know that I can take the train in and out in relative safety and comfort and only have to worry about bringing home a bedbug or three on my person.

Fourth, my family is happy here. And in the final analysis, is there any other reason that matters?

Rebellion is a Lonely Road

I recently read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad. I had already read her Infidel, a book that left me curiously untouched. And I was prepared for yet more agente provocateuse type of staccato gunfire at the Somali culture into which she was born and at the broader Islamic culture of which she was forced to be a part for many years. Written as an insight into how religious fundamentalism exacerbates familial and social dislocation, there is some needless taunting in this book too. What also struck me was Hirsi Ali's lack of knowledge about some things, and the employment of ignorance as a building block for her own narrative. For example, Hirsi Ali dismisses anticolonialsim. Colonialism in her view is a good thing because it brought western style feminism to the colonies (p. 132). Even though she confines this observation to the Muslim world, it still struck me as rather silly, given that so many of the ills of the present-day Muslim world stem from the colonial support to pliant conservative traditionalists and from the wholesale suppression of liberal voices as "disobedient dissidence." I mean, if all the left-liberal-secular people have been either killed or expelled, who else is left but the die hard orthodox? And in comparison to them, of course the colonial authorities would appear sane. And as I come from a country whose founding fathers and mothers were nothing if not wholeheartedly committed to social reform and the rights of women, that part of Hirsi Ali's argument just sank without any resonance.



Having got that out of the way, let me say that I found much in Nomad that was deeply moving and that resonated with me in many ways. For one thing, there is the sheer enormity of the distance that this woman has travelled. Ayaan Hirsi Ali does not belong to the group of women who began their lives in airconditioned rooms and ended their careers in the luxurious confines of well-funded think tanks. Her life was a hard one that most of us can only imagine - refugee camps, tents, household duties as a child, etc. Many of her observations might well have been my own. For example, when she described the Quran school in Mogadishu and how the lessons there were enforced through terrible corporal punishment (p. 186), my memory took me straight back to the little school I attended in rural Punjab in the 1970s, where the principal beat the boys (and, less often, the girls) quite terribly for all sorts of infractions, from not doing homework to not having a clean enough uniform. Although I never got beaten, I remember the silent terror such scenes induced in all of us.

I never lived in fear of my life (except for one long trip on a night train in Punjab during the 1980s) but I identify with her descriptions of the hardships of life in other countries. I keep quiet often during conversations with my friends here because it is impossible to explain to people who have grown up here what it means when one has to store water in buckets (because of severe water shortages) and how in my hostel (dorm) in JNU, I have seen grown women fighting over water, over who stole whose bucket of the precious fluid. There is simply no common experience that would enable my suburban friends to understand these things. But I have a feeling that Ayaan Hirsi Ali would recognize that scene and would smile and nod along with me. And when she writes about how poor, non-western immigrants to the west are often flummoxed about how to handle money, sex, and violence, I nod in agreement with her. The difference is, I think, in degrees. Most rural (and some urban) Indians would sympathize with the values she describes as prevailing among Muslim migrants to the west - control your women lest they become "wayward", beat them if they dissent, kill them if they break too audaciously with the prevailing culture. What keeps most of them in line (at least as immigrants) is a sixty-year tradition of at least lip service to the might of the law. That, and the fact that most of them understand that education is the key to getting ahead in the modern world. It is respect for the law that seems to be lacking among the people Hirsi Ali describes. But I wonder if it has less to do with the religion and more to do with the fact that most of the people she describes come from lands where there has been little law and order for decades. Of course, the pat answer would be that the lack of law and order is due to the religion. But then, I don't see how Hirsi Ali would categorize the lawlessness of that very non-Muslim country, Mexico.

Overall, despite my reservations about some of her analysis, I did sympathize with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's life story. My heart ached for her loneliness, trapped in a polygamous, dysfunctional family. Polygamy - how does that even work? Hirsi Ali's answer: it doesn't. Her anger is understandable, if not always justified, given that dysfunctional families are not something that Somalis or Muslims have a copyright on. And while her prescriptions sometimes seem strange (a Christian leadership against the "onslaught of Islam"?) and while she downplays emerging fascist trends in the west (the Koran burning pastors, the cabby-stabbing ideologues), I felt that I, too, could understand the enormous significance of her nomadic life. You've come a long way, baby.

Come September

It's September, time for things like apples and grapes, cooler temperatures and, above all, and thank God, time for school! Oh, I was sad when my little M. boarded the bus for the first time. But oh, how I danced a jig when I could sit down with my second cup of tea in delicious, uninterrupted - silence! Well, I danced a mental jig, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to drink that tea.

My book contract has been signed, my manuscript is almost all ready, and now I have to face up to my blog dilemma. Once the book is out, my identity will no longer be hidden. So should I continue the semi-anonymity of this blog - this semi-private log which only a few friends and family know about? Or should I just put my name to it and direct more traffic here? I am tempted to go with the first option as I really enjoy writing without the burden of a known audience. And after all, I can always start a new blog for the book.

I have to say though that I have become the caricature of the writer-type. As the deadline approaches and I am writing frantically, I am always skulking around my home - in my faded t-shirt and yoga pants, running my fingers through my messy hair as I think through an idea, consuming hot tea by the gallon. And, generally, looking a sight. Ah well, what did they say about making sausages? It's the same way with writing. Readers should be very glad they don't see the author during the writing process. It ain't a pretty sight.

Closer and closer

We recently returned from a road trip that took us, among other places, to Michigan. The first thing that struck me was just how much shabbier the highways are in the midwest. The recession looms large there. En route to Michigan, we drove through the other struggling state of Ohio. Here too, there was seeming calmness, except that the big fat debris of tyre bits left by big eighteen-wheelers had not been picked up. Judging by the amount of debris on the roads in Michigan and Ohio, nobody had cleaned in several days or maybe weeks. Despite all the grumbling we engage in here, in southwestern Connecticut, our infrastructure is still intact, if seriously creaky. There was a normality too, the houses didn't seem any better or worse than ones I have seen here. But inside those houses, who knows what the people were going through?

And, inexorably, like a bad dream, like the proverbial freight train, the recession has come closer to home. An acquaintance here is moving out to a western state, unable to withstand anymore the double whammy of losing her job and expensive repairs to a storm-damaged house. Another friend in the midwest is on the verge of declaring personal bankruptcy. Thirty years of a successful business all lost to the tsunami of an economic crisis of historic proportions. Elsewhere, friends in the corporate world are complaining of enormous stresses at jobs that no longer seem either secure or particularly fulfilling. I also have friends who have had to take paycuts but are thankful to at least have a job at all. And some of these people I know are immigrants like me, so they feel the tenuousness of their position particularly keenly. Where do you go when your nearest support system is thousands of miles away?

It all makes me very nervous. I have never felt that money came to me very easily. The line of work I am in is not renowned for making millionaires of its practitioners. I have made my peace with this enforced frugality, in return for a measure of job satisfaction. But job satisfaction does not pay bills, especially not the kind of bills that we see here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. So, now I think it is time for me to reconsider my financial attitudes, to search for a way in which I can contribute better and more meaningfully to the household economy. Poor K., the main provider for us, might need from me a less head-in-the-clouds attitude. But then again, the question is how?....Where are the jobs? And, just as importantly, what are the jobs? And finally, do I really want to do anything other than write?....

...And of Language

B. stayed with me about two weeks. She was on her first visit from India to the US. I was about to write “maiden visit” and then realized how easily I had slipped back into Indian/British English which would be incomprehensible to readers here. During B.’s stay, I uttered words that I had not used in a long time, like “passed out” from college. And most of all, I became bi-lingual again. B. and I chatted in Hindi and English, sentences beginning in one language and ending in the other, and also slipped in words from our respective languages, Bengali (mine) and Tamil (hers).

Growing up, being bilingual was no extra-ordinary thing for us, middle-class children of socialist India. English was the language the British left behind, English was the language of the working world, of incomprehensible bureaucratese, English was the language of the music on our cassette and record players and was the words coming out of improbable-looking (to us) men and women in American movies.

But, our mother tongues were the languages of our sly humor, of our landscapes, of our identity. At home, my mother would break into Rabindrasangeet and would recite verses of Tagore’s poems, for reasons ranging from the weather to her moods. There were no words in English adequate to describe the beauty of the monsoon rain or the golden harvest of Baisakhi. Only Hindi or Bengali or Tamil or another Indian language could yield satisfactory images of our world – rain clouds as thick and dark as a woman’s long hair, an aanchal, “kelenkari” (social stigma). And then, of course, there were movie scenes that were utterly hilarious only if you were bilingual or had some idea of the interplay of English and Indian languages.

But equally importantly, bi-lingualism made us mentally flexible, cognitively agile. My linguistic nimbleness is fading now after years of monolingual English, but it comes back now and then. Such as when confronted by Indians of a certain age in shopping malls who hesitate and ask me in broken English for “the lift”. Unlike many monolingual others who gape at them, dumbfounded, I know that they are asking for “the elevator”. I require an approximation to comprehend, not absolutely exact words in a language. In another life, back in India, that’s exactly what I used to say: “Where’s the lift?” On the other hand, I still need more elaboration when one of my kids demands, on an almost daily basis, “Where’s the thing for that thing?”

Of Visitors...

Recently, an old friend from India came to visit. I was able to see my home of ten years, my country of residence for nineteen years, through new eyes and to revisit the time when I was a newcomer to the land. To her, America was a nice break from her usual routine. She felt cold in May, for it was much cooler here than in India where the parched land was sweltering, still waiting for the monsoon rains to break. We spent much of the time, chatting, chatting, chatting, making up for time not spent together in the last thirteen years.

Through B.'s appearance and actions, I recalled my slow adjustments in the early years. My friend looked good in her hand-sewn handloom cottons and her big bindi. Her dresses glowed in the luminous spring light at this time of year. But I had looked so out of place nineteen years ago, wearing clothes that looked odd in 1990s Chicago. A lot of handloom cotton whose colors and patterns didn’t look right in the grey fall and winter of the Midwest. A hairstyle that wasn’t quite right either. Like an exuberant peacock in a grim Arctic land. It’s something to do with the way the light falls on the colors in the autumn and winter. I quickly moved to dull plaids and knits, merging my body into the winter landscape.

B.’s little moves also reminded me of my earlier self. The conversion of rupees into dollars and the horrified realization that one had spent so many rupees! The rushing steps to the buses and trains in New York City, only to realize that there was no enormous rush of people all fighting to squeeze in (well, maybe during rush hour, but we went into the city at off-peak times). Her intake of breath and lit-up eyes at the glowing, beautiful buildings on Fifth Avenue, especially the Met, made me remember with affection my similar response to the grandeur and beauty of Chicago’s skyline and Lake Shore Drive. By the end of the trip, I saw B. relax gradually, like I had years earlier, and enjoy the abundance of resources that I now take for granted. What a wonderful visit for both of us!

The Flotilla

So many political posts in a row. I guess I'm a very political person. And yes, although I have not dedicated a long post to the current crisis about the aid flotilla sailing to Gaza, I do have strong opinions about it. I believe Israel is completely wrong to have attacked the flotilla with such overwhelming force. I do not believe that the Turkish volunteers were completely peaceful either as the video shows quite clearly.

I believe in the right of Israel to exist and I also believe that the Palestinians deserve their own, absolutely viable state. Which means no open-air prisons and Bantustans like Gaza. The more I think about it, the more I think that the first post-independence Indian leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru got it right. Opposing the partition of Palestine, they hoped for the establishment of a bi-national secular state. This was radical in its day and is still radical today. I doubt whether the votaries of either a Jewish state or a Palestinian state will go in for a wholly secular single state. In the end, though, this is the only lasting solution to the problem. It may be a pipe dream right now, but the alternative is either a Lebanon-like disaster (which is what happens when you try to create a multi-ethnic state based on religious hedging of bets rather than outright secularism) or else a continuous state of war. And Israel will only continue to win that war while her chief patron, the United States, remains strong. Unfortunately, the chief patron is going through a severe economic recession. There may not be much money left to protect clients in the near-term future. And I don't think China is going to step in anytime soon to fill the budget gap. Besides, as the state of Pakistan should make clear to Israel, one shouldn't base one's existence on one's indispensability as a client state.