Early weeks of motherhood

In the first few weeks after I delivered bub, I felt as though a truck had run over me but somehow left me with a very cute baby. I was dazed, sleepless, in pain, exhausted and with just about enough sense to recognise the joy of finally bringing bub into the world. Life was a blur of feeding and nappy changing with a background score of a lot of crying.

People often ask me what motherhood feels like but that’s in fact a very difficult question to answer. It’s a great joy of course but it’s also a whole lot of other things - anxiety, frustration, fun, responsibility, sacrifice, patience, fortitude, endless learning and much more - that makes motherhood something greater than the sum of all those things. So for me, motherhood is crystalised in those moments where many of these emotions just come together into something sublime and divine that words can’t fully capture.

It was probably Day 3 in bub’s life, at some late hour after the sun had gone down and bub was wailing with all the power his little lungs could muster. He was absolutely tiny - a little bundle of stick limbs, all of 3 kilos hidden in oversized clothes. The only thing that seemed to console him was staying skin to skin with mummy. That night, before pulling him close, I held him on my lap for a few seconds to look into his face, into his beautiful eyes and tell him to calm down. Bub has always had very alert eyes and a clear gaze from the time he was born and he suddenly stopped crying and looked back at me with an expression of desperate neediness and bewilderment at the bright lights of the world he had just entered. His big eyes were saying “HELP”.

It was a moment that words can’t quite capture. My heart broke at the fragility of the life in my arms but soared with joy at the fact that being in mummy’s embrace was going to make everything better for him. I was anxious and frustrated about his crying, but trying to be patient with this helpless little thing, sacrificing much needed rest to soothe him.

The joy of motherhood is crystalised in such moments. The early weeks are just plain hard and it’s very difficult to marvel at the life-changing experience you’ve just had. But a lot of mums had told me to consciously enjoy this miracle through all the pain and sleep deprivation and I’m so glad to have received that advice.

Bub is now nearly 17 weeks old and motherhood is so, so much more fun, now that he is cooing and gurgling back at my silly faces and baby talk.

I don’t want the difficulty of those early weeks back but they were such a special part of the bond that mum and bub establish, where every last drop of your energy goes into comforting and loving the new life you’ve just created.

The pleasures of being out and about with bub

“How old is he?” asked the old lady next to me on the bus. She was expecting a grandchild any day and was excited by the sight of bub who was in his buggy fast asleep in his thick woolly bunny outfit. Since I’ve had bub, I’ve had conversations on public transport with all kinds of women - young, middle-aged, old, Asian, black and white and after four years of living here, its helped me discover a warmer, friendlier London.

Unlike earlier when I used to get on the tube or the bus and bury my head in a book, I now have time to notice people around me. I’m also much more garrulous, passing up few opportunities to have a chat with an adult given how much time I spend babbling to bub. A child is an instant, shared experience across generations of women - everyone either has had one of their own or knows someone who does and there’s always a little anecdote to share.

But its not just conversations. I’m often able to navigate the tube network with ease because of the kindness of strangers.

The first time I went into central London on my own to attend my office Christmas party, I spent the previous day planning each leg of the journey with the buggy. It was as carefully planned as an expedition to the North Pole. I had budgeted lots of time to get into town, given all the stairs I would have to encounter at different stations. But I made it to central London long before my scheduled time because even without my asking, people just came up to me and offered to help me carry the baby buggy. One young man actually waited for me near the stairs although he was far ahead of me and we grumbled amicably about how major stations in London don’t have ramps. On the rare occasion that I did have to ask someone, he actually apologised to me for not having offered first himself!

Navigating public transport is no longer traumatic like it was in bub’s early weeks, where he would start crying at the top of his voice and start sucking noisily on his fist in-between long, red-faced wailing. Now that he mostly just stays asleep, being on public transport in non-peak hours is almost fun because of the possibility of the friendly chats I can have with a range of people.

London is full of helpful strangers, now that I finally have the time to give them a chance to help me. It’s just one of the many, many, many things bub has helped me discover in his 3 months in the world.

Pack a 'State of Wonder' for your holidays

I recently read this book for a book club meeting and thought I'd post this short summary here as suggested reading while you lie on a beach somewhere on your December break.

The women of the Lakashi tribe living deep in the Amazon forests are having babies even in their 70’s. If this miracle of science can be cracked and marketed in a little pill, the pharmaceutical company bankrolling the research could make windfall profits. Standing in the way, however, is the very person appointed to do the research - a sinister Dr. Swenson - who refuses to report back on what progress she has made. When Dr. Anders Eckman is sent into the forests by the pharmaceutical company to investigate, the only thing that emerges is a terse letter from Dr. Swenson saying he is dead. What’s really going on down there in the jungle? Ann Patchett’s ‘State of Wonder’ is the story of Dr. Marina Singh, the next person to go into the forest and the shocking discovery she makes. It’s a great holiday read and a good Christmas gift as well.

Pakistan must seize the day and educate its children

15-year old Malala Yousafzai is recovering in a UK hospital.

When a Taliban fanatic’s bullet wounded 15-year old Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan was forced to make a choice. It could continue it’s dangerous drift towards the bigotry and ignorance of her attackers or decide to invest in a future where education can dispel them. Thankfully, this last week, Pakistan has shown that it is ready to reach for Malala’s dream.

A little over a month after the Taliban attack on Malala, the government announced a massive stipend programme for nearly 1.4 million poor children. And shortly after that the National Assembly voted unanimously to pass a Bill to make education free and compulsory for all kids between 5 - 16 years in the Islamabad capital area. But since 2010, education in Pakistan has been devolved entirely to the provinces and therefore it is crucial that all provincial leaders start fixing the education sector, not just with fine words but with hard action. Indeed, Pakistan can afford nothing less right now.

The overall literacy rate in Pakistan is as low as 57% while the country is projected to face a continuing youth bulge till 2050. This is not automatically a recipe for social unrest but certainly Pakistan will continue to punch below its weight if it fails to educate these young people. Failure to educate girls especially will keep fertility rates high, contributing to a growing population with declining access to education and healthcare.

Pakistan’s all-powerful and myopic Army has had a pernicious influence even over the education sector. Military dictators like Zia-ul-Haq were notoriously contemptuous of “poets and professors” seeing university campuses as hostile territory that needed to be cleansed. But even democratically elected leaders feared investing in human capital as that money competed directly with the military budget. The result today is that over 7 million children are out of school, a majority of whom are girls.

When Pakistan was born in 1947, it set out an ambitious vision of achieving universal primary education in 20 years. 1967 has long gone and the country is still shifting that goal post. But with the international outrage that followed Malala’s shooting and the hope that her recovery has inspired within Pakistan, the country can turn a corner. This is aided by a much needed recognition in the international community that Pakistan must urgently address reform in this sector.

Brave Malala has opened up the opportunity. Now Pakistan’s leaders must do the job of seizing the day and educating all it’s children.

In Mamata Banerjee's Bengal - don't ask, don't yell

Shiladitya Chowdhury, arrested for asking questions.

Tilak Chowdhury has just had his worst Indian Independence Day. 

His brother Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested last week for asking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee a few uncomfortable questions about the rise in fertiliser prices at a public rally. In Mamata’s version of democracy that is unacceptable and the poor man is now in jail. But it looks bad to imprison someone over a few questions and perhaps even Mamata knows that, so the “Maoist” label was quickly dusted off and pinned on him. Without the words “Maoist” and “terrorist” what would our police force do?

Tilak watched his brother being led away by the police bizarrely on live television. He and his family have been Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress supporters for years but he said that this is not what he signed up for. “Is this our democracy where we’re not even allowed to speak? We didn’t want this” he said on the phone before bursting into tears.

“How can my brother be a “Maoist” when he has attended a CRPF masonry training? How would he have received a place if he was a “Maoist”? The CRPF or Central Reserve Police Force is primarily responsible for fighting insurgency in India. “They’ve said that my brother was screaming. There were 20,000 people in the crowd. He probably had to, to be heard!”

Tilak desperately needs solidarity in this struggle. When I asked him if other Trinamool workers in his village had come to offer moral support he despondently said that no one had said a thing. “I’m not asking anyone to lie. Just tell people the truth about my brother.”

The police bungling and manipulation in all this is evident again. They arrested him from the public rally but finding nothing, released him. When Shiladitya gave an interview to a TV channel that evening they probably realised he could cause them and Mamata a PR disaster so they promptly came back and re-arrested him the next day, dragging him from his field without a shirt on his back.

What is really dangerous is the way in which the state machinery, the police and the courts have lined up to carry out every one of Mamata Banerjee’s dictatorial whims. From purging libraries of critical newspapers to arresting professors for forwarding cartoons to now jailing farmers for inquiring about rising prices - the only positive element in all this is that she could be digging her own grave and faster the better.

Meanwhile Tilak wants his brother released and is hoping that people will join him in this struggle for his brother’s freedom. You can sign his petition here.

Women’s boxing makes its breakthrough at London 2012

India's M. C. Mary Kom in action at the Olympics

Another all-male bastion was broken into today with the start of the first ever women’s boxing competition at the Olympics and it was a lucky last-minute internet search that revealed two tickets for a place at this historic ringside. My interest in women’s boxing was really due to the belated discovery that an Indian woman from Manipur, Mary Kom, was a five-time world champion in the fly-weight category and a gold medal prospect for the nation.

Mary Kom is from a conflict-ridden and economically depressed part of India that barely registers on the national consciousness. I am embarrassed to admit, I hadn’t heard of her till this wonderful cover story in the Intelligent Life magazine. That’s why when she stepped into the ring and a chant of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” went up amongst her hundreds of Indian supporters, I felt some immediate irritation. Bharat has been screwing around with the 7 eastern states of which Manipur is a part and official Bharat has given Magnificent Mary all but half-hearted support over the years.

So I was much happier just to chant her name “Mary Kom, Mary Kom, Mary Kom.” She had hundreds of supporters in the crowd and the atmosphere was electric. Why the IOC took so long to deny spectators good, solid sporting action in women’s boxing is a mystery.

Mary was shorter than her Polish opponent Karolina Michalczuk, and although she slipped a few times she appeared more agile around the ring. The pair drew equal on the first round, but after that Mary started landing the punches and at the end of round four she won with a final score at 19 - 14 and is now through to the next stage.

The other really exciting match of the day was between the US and UK in the middle-weight category.  

The guitar riffs of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Are you gonna go my way’ blasted through giant speakers inside the boxing arena accompanying the entry of Quanitta Underwood of the USA. Like the thousands in the crowd, she was pumped up by the music and punched the air with her red gloves.

Then the camera panned to Britain’s Natasha Jonas in blue coming out of the vomitory with the crazy guitar riffs continuing to electrify the crowd. But she was cooler than ice, seeming to embody the “Keep calm and carry on” approach.

Underwood won the first round 4 - 3 and the crowd realised they needed to get their vocal chords behind Jonas. The “Team GB” chants through the next two-minute round, along with some confident jabs from Jonas, produced a win with 7 points to her and Underwood, one short. The momentum continued and the match ended with the referee holding up Jonas’s hand at the final score of 21 - 13.

Day 9, was just yet another fabulous day at the London Olympics. 

London boys, keep your hands to yourself

Courtesy: The Guardian

At the Charing Cross station last night, a tall gangly teenager had the audacity to squeeze my bum on a crowded platform and walk on calmly. He probably looked like a hero to his friends because the girl in the group was giggling. I glowered at her and she quickly said, “It wasn’t me, it was him.”

Since she confirmed that and since a police officer descended the steps to the platform at that fortuitous moment I complained to him about the incident.

I had just finished telling him what happened when another young woman approached the officer to ask, “Was she telling you about that group?”, and proceeded to make a complaint of her own.

The police officer asked me, “Do you want me to give him a stiff warning or arrest him?”

An arrest seemed too harsh (although I had second thoughts about it during the entire train ride back home) so I just said that I just wanted him given a very severe warning. The other woman concurred.

Ironically on the same morning the Guardian carried a report on the findings of a YouGov survey in London commissioned by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW). In the last year 43% of women in London between the ages of 18 – 34 have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public spaces.

That sounds like an epidemic of harassment ranging from staring to more severe forms of violence. I was very happy to see that cop last night and he was also quite sensitive. London needs that kind of policing at night at a massive scale along with a huge public awareness campaign.

I’ve blogged about street sexual harassment in Southall, London before. You can read it here. 

TIME magazine should pull Narendra Modi off the list

Reuters' Arko Dutta's iconic image of Qutubuddin Ansari begging for mercy during the riots.

TIME magazine has shown extremely poor editorial judgement by including Narendra Modi in a voting list of 2012’s “influential” people who are “leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes.”

As Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is an elected leader - a sad outcome of India’s flawed democracy without law and order - but he is no innovator, no artist, no icon and certainly no hero. India and the world must be rescued from people like him.

If you don’t know much about him, here’s one really good reason he should be off that TIME list. Once you’ve read it, remember to vote against his inclusion.

In 2002, over 1,000 people were butchered on the streets of Gujarat by frenzied Hindu mobs while Narendra Modi was at the helm. An investigative magazine carried out a sting operation interviewing Hindu fundamentalists who all revealed Modi’s complicity in the riots.

According to the magazine Tehelka, “Several rioters, senior Sangh Parivar functionaries and the state government’s special prosecutor were caught on camera revealing in detail the role played by Modi in the carnage.” You can read more here.

Sadly, Narendra Modi has not yet been prosecuted for his role in the murderous violence and he has used his time since 2002 to destroy evidence against him, silence his critics and set up an aggressive PR machinery to whitewash his image.

How nicely TIME has fallen into the trap.

The magazine cops out by saying that Modi is “associated” with the ugly legacy of the 2002 Gujarat riots while featuring him under a list looking to short-list heroes, icons and others.

So heres what you can do about it.

Join this campaign to vote against his inclusion in the list. Click ‘No Way.’ Please do it now because there are only 3 days left and his legions of blind supporters are also at it.

You can also send @TIME a tweet to tell them that his inclusion was a dumb choice to begin with.

(I have voted and now I’m going to brace for the hate-filled comments to this post.)

Book Review: 'The Snow People' by Marie Herbert

I suppose we will all promise anything in the first flush of romance. So it was with British Polar explorer Wally Herbert, who offered to take his newly wedded wife, Marie Herbert and their 10-month old daughter to live 800 miles within the Arctic Circle with one of the most isolated people on Earth – the Inughuit or ‘real people’.

The young family came to live on Herbert Island, just off the mainland of Greenland, and took up residence in the middle of an Inughuit village in a small wooden hut where they remained for nearly two years. What follows in Marie Herbert’s account ‘The Snow People’ is nothing short of a magical adventure full of danger, excitement and uncertainty. At the same time, it is also a warm and illuminating portrait of the domestic life of an inscrutable people living in the furthest reaches of our planet. As the walrus meat bubbles in a pot on the stove, as the women get together to stretch and clean polar bear skin, as the children skip dangerously on ice floes near the shore and sadly as the villagers get punch drunk at the beginning of every month (the introduction of alcohol being the ‘white man’s curse’), a picture emerges of how this Inughuit community lived 40 years ago.  

Marie Herbert describes them as a very proud people, as well they should be. They are a testament to the incredible survival instinct of man. But the most beautiful thing about the book is how the central character always remains the grand Arctic itself. It is the protagonist, anti-hero, stage and backdrop; a ferocious presence at all times, central to everything.

The villagers are very welcoming of the young British family and as is customary adults, and children especially, tumble in and out of each other’s houses at any hour. The hands of the clock did not dictate what the Inughuit did. People ate when they felt hungry and slept when they were tired. Besides, with the sun in the sky throughout summer and a long, dark polar night for half the year, it seemed pointless to regiment life into 24 hours.

As they settle in to Arctic life on Herbert Island, they make an important investment in a dog team that will help them travel in the winter months when the sea freezes over. The dog-sledding journeys made in the darkness over the unforgiving, frozen landscapes are some of the most thrilling parts of the book. The dogs are so hyper-active that they are like ferocious tigers on psychedelic drugs. The only way to rule a dog team is through fear and the only thing the dogs fear is the cracking of the whip.

Some of the challenges of such travel in the Arctic winter are impossible to fathom. On one such journey of 90 miles, when they are returning to Herbert Island from Dundas they are forced by bad weather to break journey and hunker down in a tent. Around them the harshest forces of nature are being unleashed as Arctic winds whip past at 207 miles per hour, some of the fastest recorded wind speeds on Earth! Fortunately, they leave their daughter with a local family onthat trip.

When they return, there is much rejoicing in the village as the Inughuits had assumed that they would never have survived such weather.

As winter forces people indoors, the writer describes some fascinating aspects of Inughuit life, especially their diet. On one evening, she stumbles upon a rather scruffy scene at a dinner table with birds’ feathers, bones and sticky juices running down people’s faces. A special winter feast of kiviak is being devoured. During the summer months, when birds are plentiful in the Arctic, the Inughuit catch hundreds of tiny birds called Auks and stuff them, feathers and all inside the body of a seal. Prior to the stuffing, the seal’s entrains are carefully removed from its mouth so that no other cuts to its outer sack need to be made, keeping it as air tight as possible. This seal stuffed with birds is then buried underground with a big stone placed over it and it is allowed to ferment over time with the blubber in the seal skin seeping through to the birds. The writer is forced to discreetly discard her portion in a rubbish heap.

The Inughuits in the village had converted to Christianity and as Christmas approaches the women in the village get really busy creating new clothes and kamiks for everyone. People exchange presents and that year the writer’s gift is a dead frozen fox fresh from its trap! There is an endearing depth and warmth to the friendships that the family forges with some Inughuit families, especially the one with Maria and Avatak. Avatak especially loves their 10-month old daughter Kari, to tears.

As the long winter months make way for a brief burst of animal and plant life in the spring and summer, the Inughuits really come into their element. They move out of their homes into summer camps and use the abundance of sunlight to do some frenzied hunting. During these months there is an interesting, even if slight, divergence in sensibilities towards killing animals. The Britishers take a fancy towards an eider duck that has just laid some eggs and hope that their Inughuit friends don’t discover it, lest they eat it. Sure enough a few days later, the children have made a lip-smacking meal of it.

After all those months spent in the village, the friendships have become so deep and emotional that the family’s friends feel depressed at the thought of them leaving; as they surely will one day. That day arrives the following winter when they receive news that Wally’s father has died.

To return to England, they first need to make the dangerous 90-mile journey once again in the darkness from Hertbert Island to Dundas, except this time they have to take their daughter along. Even as they wonder how they will ever manage a dangerous journey with a baby on board, Avatak says to Wally, “I will take you to Dundas because you are my greatest friend.”

After months of communal life with the Inughuits, they leave quite suddenly, leaving behind friendships that blossomed in a beautifully bleak bit of the earth. 

Jill by Philip Larkin

'Jill' by Philip Larkin is an insight into the stratified world of 1940s Oxford University. A young man, John Kemp from the north of England ends up sharing a room at the University with a brash, uber-confident Londoner, Christopher Warner. Kemp's desperation in trying to get with the in crowd even as they mock and denigrate him at every turn reveals some incredible class differences. The reader feels constantly embarassed for John Kemp as the more he gets mocked, the more it seems to sharpen his desire to be part of their circle.

A turning point in the story comes when John feels he may have discovered a possible chink in Christopher's seemingly impenetrable armour. Could it be that Christopher may envy him his warm family ties?  This discovery thrills John so much that he ends up inventing a whole fictional narrative around a loving younger sister named 'Jill' he doesn't actually have.

This harmless pursuit initially involves leaving invented letters from Jill lying around their shared room in the hope that Christopher will secretly read them. John diligent creation of this world of make-believe turns him into something of a writer of fiction. Through this he is hoping all the time that Christopher will take a real interest in his life and start noticing him more, unlike his current interest levels where John may as well be part of the furniture in their room.

For John this is all innocuous stuff till one day his 'character' Jill actually materialises in Oxford in the form of a teenage girl coincidentally called Gillian. John becomes instantly infatuated with the real Gillian, fuelled no less by his own creation of her. He pursues her madly; following her on buses, waiting for her in cafes and showing up at parties where she is likely to be.

Read the book to find out how John Kemp's pursuit eventually ends.

PS: Philip Larkin is considered by some to be the greatest modern English poet. That high stature notwithstanding, there has been increasing attention paid to the personality of the writer, with some accusing him of being a bit of a racist and misogynist. I personally find it very hard to enjoy a writer's work if I know about some of their odious views (although I still enjoyed this book). But if you're interested in reading more about Philip Larkin try this Guardian article here.

'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi'

At the height of the Ayodhya movement, with tension spreading in large ripples across north India, political and social psychologist Ashis Nandy interviewed an RSS pracharak (worker). Despite being very familiar with the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that was leading to those dramatic shifts in Indian political and social life, Nandy emerged from that interview completely shaken.

He wrote about this interaction more than a decade later saying, “It was a long rambling interview, but it left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only ones ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology…..”



The then RSS pracharak he had interviewed had been Narendra Modi, current Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Modi presides over a state that is well-known today as the laboratory of Hindutva where dangerous experiments such as the mass killings of 2002 have taken place. But despite this recent history of obscene bloodshed, Indian businessmen are lining up to praise the state for removing the red tape and inefficiency that they encounter in most other states in India.

Such contradictions and complexities and Gujarat’s swing towards the ideology of the killers of Mahatma Gandhi are the subject of a scholarly new book ‘Gujarat beyond Gandhi – Identify, Conflict and Society. Edited by Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta, it is a collection of essays on different facets of Gujarat and where the seeds of its major communal conflict lie, examined through different lens’ of anthropology, media studies, sociology etc.

If the Gujarat model of ‘developmental authoritarianism’ takes hold in other parts of India where there is an equal middle-class yearning for greater wealth and civic order, will the freedoms of speech and dissent be threatened in the same way as they are in Gujarat? And what will become of the idea of India itself ? These are some of the important questions raised in this book. But the reason I read this book with great interest was to seek explanations for the polarisation between the religious majority and minority that led to the organised violence in 2002 in which Muslims were killed with a brutality not seen since Partition.

There are some very interesting essays in there on vegetarianism and the politics of disgust, the segregation in urban geography and the one that I read with most interest - the legal battle between Ashis Nandy and the state of Gujarat.

Anyone interested in Gujarat and the communal faultline in India will find this a useful read.

States love their secrets but we want the facts

All governments say they want to stop the flow of illicit arms, but listening to many of them at the UN today, it became clear that not many are willing to do anything about it.

This is because it will involve much greater transparency on how they report on arms transfers and this immediately makes governments uncomfortable.

Amnesty International’s findings show that the biggest source of illegal arms is through diversions from legal stockpiles and authorised trade. However, because current reporting by governments on imports, exports and arms transfers is so poor, it is near impossible to establish where and how deadly weapons are getting diverted.

So if States want to be able to find out how this is happening and put a stop to it, then they have to commit to greater overall transparency by reporting publicly. States can’t claim “confidentiality” due to security needs on the one hand and miraculously expect illegal arms transfers to stop on the other. It’s not a one way street.

But another reason Amnesty International wants to see public reporting on arms transfers in the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is so that people like us can actually see what our governments are doing – who are they giving arms to and are they taking enough care to ensure these arms don’t end up in the hands of human rights violators?

Read the rest of my piece on the Amnesty International USA website.

Urban houses for an ancient tribe destroys a way of life in Nicobar

One of the new houses built by the government for the Nicobari tribals. Courtesy: Prince Rasheed.

The force of the 2004 undersea Indian Ocean earthquake was so intense that the island of Trinket split in three. Trinket is part of the Nicobar archipelago of 22 islands that belong to India. The government moved all the local Nicobari tribals to a neighbouring island but Gopinath Jeem and a few others came back because they couldn’t bear the temporary tin shelters made by the government. He says, “All the families want to come back but we were the first because we could not tolerate it there.”

Back in devastated Trinkat they have found their own fresh water source and using trees from the forest, they have built their own traditional Nicobari huts called machans. 

The Nicobar archipelago is one of India’s furthest outposts. The 2004 earthquake pulverised the islands and the tsunami killed nearly a fifth of the Nicobari tribal population. Prior to the disaster the Nicobarese were primarily a hunter-gatherer tribe living in large joint families in a close-knit societal structure called a tuhet. But after the tsunami there has been such a massive injection of money and new housing that their ancient way of life has changed drastically.

The Nicobar islands are closed to outsiders so the government 3000 kms away in New Delhi along with the local administration in Port Blair felt the need to step in to provide food and shelter. Samir Acharya who represented the Central Tribal Council of Nicobar in negotiations with the government on housing says, “The new houses are bad news for the Nicobarese and bad news for the islands.”

Problems began shortly after the tsunami when Nicobarese demanded tools to be able to build their own houses as they had done for decades. But the government didn’t give them the opportunity. Dr. Simronjit Singh, a senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Social Ecology in Austria wrote a paper titled, “Complex Disasters: The Nicobar Islands in the grip of Humanitarian Aid.” In it he criticizes the sometimes well-meaning but generally insensitive forced help given to a people who were in fact keen to help themselves. He says, “The anxiety to begin a new life and fend for themselves, despite a trauma not so long ago, reflects the resilience of the Nicobarese in the face of tragedy along with the ideology that life must go on, and singularly so, aid or no aid!”

And yet the “help” kept coming. First it was in the form of temporary shelters that the Indian Army built for the Nicobarese. They were built in haste to beat the monsoon but were made of tin and were like hot ovens during the day in the tropical heat. The Nicobarese suffered these houses for nearly four years. The National People’s Tribunal on Post-tsunami Rehabilitation declared that the government had failed in its “legal and moral responsibility of upholding the human rights and ensuring the welfare of all those affected by the tsunami.”

The Nicobarese detested the tin shelters and wanted to build their own permanent shelters but again this was thwarted. The negotiating process was bewildering for the tribals who were not used to such a heavy influence of government in their lives. However, Shakti Sinha the Chief Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar islands says, “Maybe the process was not perfect, but it was definitely consultative.”

Prince Rasheed, a Nicobari who studied on the Indian mainland and is a spokesperson for the Tribal Council however feels that the negotiating power was so unequal, the tribals simply gave in. He said, “In the end we thought we would take the houses since the government was giving them to us for free but we are now realising that we made a bad choice. The government has built colonies.” 

The house designs are creating a less personal culture. Replacing the large, wooden machans where a joint family would live, the government has built small concrete two-room houses meant for nuclear families. These new houses have also increased the community’s cost of living. For example, earlier Nicobarese did not use electricity in their machans but now many have TVs and fans in their home for which they have to pay. They have also lost the ability to fix things in their homes themselves because all the material used on the homes is exotic. Samir Acharya says, “The way these new houses are built will do very long-term damage to the social fabric of the Nicobarese.” 

The Nicobarese used to be a cash poor but resource rich society unused to hoarding and saving money. After the tsunami many spent their government compensation money in a burst of consumerism buying whiskey, TVs and motorbikes. Now much of that money is spent and they are stuck without even their primary source of income from their coconut plantations which were destroyed during the tsunami. They are realising that the lifestyle imposed by the new houses is unsustainable. Prince Rasheed says, “The government’s food rations have stopped and 95% of the people are finding it hard to survive. Some people are just eating papayas and living.”

Free-spirited Gopinath Jeem would rather live in Trinkat than suffer the government shelters. He knows perfectly well how to survive on his own island without outside help. As night falls over Trinkat mosquitoes descend in droves as though the air were filled with needles but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. He says, “We have a love for this island and we can never leave it.”

Eleven families have returned to Trinkat and built their own homes. But for the many others adapting their lives to the new houses, the government’s costly housing intervention will continue to impact their lives.

How I got my water bottle afterall

I was almost halfway to the tube station this morning when I suddenly remembered that I had left my water bottle at home. Since I was running a few minutes late I didn’t bother going back to get it.

Reaching the tube station I went straight into the WH Smith, as always, to pick up the day’s Guardian newspaper. I placed a £1 coin in the hands of the beautiful South Asian woman at the counter and was about to leave when another customer just behind me enquired, “Do you want a bottle of water?”

“Eh?” I thought to myself.

“Not really”, I replied, but only because I was confused.

However it occurred to me to ask the crucial question, “Is the water free?”

“Yes, I get a bottle free with my Daily Telegraph and I don’t want it.”

“Perfect.” I replied and reached out to pick up a bottle of Buxton still water with English cricketer Alastair Cook beaming back from the packaging.

Of all the days in the world for someone to offer me a free water bottle they chose this one!

“You just made my day. Thank you,” I said and walked away marvelling at the coincidence.

A place for philosophy in UK's immigration policy

The world famous Notting Hill Carnival. One reason for starting it, among others, was to respond to the race riots.

I was tempted to put an old college assignment in a Royal Mail post box a few weeks ago addressed to David Cameron, the British Prime Minister.



While pursuing a Master’s degree, I had written a prescriptive policy paper addressed to him, keeping in mind his personal and Conservative party politics, on the subject of immigration and its impact on UK’s race relations. When I read his entire April speech on immigration, I wanted him to answer a question I had raised then – What is the philosophical underpinning of UK’s immigration policy?

You might think this is flaky but it is not. And the reason this question is important is because immigration is generally discussed as a “problem” and as something to be “tackled” despite centuries of immigration to the UK (albeit largely White till the 20th century). So with a history of immigration that you could argue dates back to the Romans, I find it odd that Britain doesn’t have a more positive narrative and an underpinning for this superb diversity.


“Multicultural Britain” is tossed around all the time but having studied last century’s immigration policies and laws, it seems that Britain sort of ended up becoming multicultural rather than actively trying to be diverse. In the early 1920s and 30s when most nations were closing their borders during the economic depression, Britain promoted the free movement of people within the Commonwealth. But this was primarily a way of pursuing foreign policy goals by improving links with the colonies.


The process of decolonization did not result in an immediate change in policy either as Britain continued to see itself as a “mother country.” The open door brought the first big wave of post-war immigrants in the 1940s and 50s from places that Britain had once ruled over in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia and the first Nationality Act in 1948 expressed this expansive policy with no controls over entry from former colonies.


But in 1958 Britain witnessed its first widespread race riots in Notting Hill in London and immigration laws since then have been designed to ensure that it becomes harder and harder for Blacks and Asians in particular to settle in the UK. That’s the blunt truth of the matter… but I digress.


The question then is that since the end of the British empire, what has replaced ‘Civis Britannicus Sum’ (to be a British citizen)? Immigration cuts to the heart of national identity and citizenship but I can’t find any answers to what it means to be British. What is the equivalent of the American salad bowl?


New Labour attempted to tackle this issue in a 2002 white paper titled ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain’ saying “British citizenship encompasses a variety of different models of belonging to the political community. Common citizenship is not about cultural uniformity, nor is it born out of some narrow and out-dated view of what it means to be British.” Nice words but so much of New Labour’s actions and statements undercut this.


And now David Cameron pulled out the oldest trick in the book before the local elections in Britain by saying he wants “good” immigration and not “mass” immigration – whatever that means. Fine, go ahead and try to squeeze the immigration balloon from all sides. But to a recent immigrant like me it speaks of the same sort of pathetic lack of vision in finding a deeper, wider meaning for a rich immigrant history.


So much of what we think of as quintessentially British has immigrant roots – Marks & Spencers, Tesco, Dorris Lessing, T.S.Eliot etc. It is a great joy to live in a city where I can spend a Saturday evening eating at a Georgian restaurant with an American and Turkish friend who leave their child in the care of a Colombian nanny. Surely Britain can come up with a grander narrative rather than this seasonal bashing of immigrants.

Open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Dear UNSG,



I read the testimony of a survivor of the Sri Lankan war that ended in May 2009. She said many things that moved me but I was struck by the fact that even in the tiny northern strip of Sri Lanka, far, far away from your headquarters in New York, she remembered and hoped that the UN would intervene to rescue her and her children.

UNSG Ban Ki-moon

That was a long time ago. The armed conflict ended in May 2009 and was decisively won by the Sri Lankan government forces. But where is the justice for the survivors?


From everything we know, including the report (leaked over the weekend) submitted to you by the UN panel of experts, there were serious war crimes committed by both sides in this conflict and an independent, international investigation is required. The Sri Lankan government is clearly not interested in accountability as it has already rubbished this report and did not allow the UN panel to visit the country.


As part of a community of people fighting for justice in Sri Lanka, I urge you to firstly, officially make public the report submitted to you by the UN panel.


I then urge you to follow up on the findings of the report as well as Amnesty International’s findings and to ensure that there is an independent, impartial investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. For the survivors of this conflict and in the interests of justice nothing less will do.

Cricket made me nostalgic about India

I rarely get homesick. But today, on the eve of the Indo-Pak cricket world cup semi-final, I’m bummed that I’m not in India.



I love what cricket does to the country - how CEOs, housewives, students, peons, society types, slum dwellers and everyone in between is just Indian (or Indian origin, if you want to get technical) for a day.


I remember that feeling so well from a match between India and Pakistan from the 2003 world cup. I was watching it at home in Chennai when suddenly the electricity went out. A collective wail went up around the city but fortunately there were giant screens set up on the two main beaches in Chennai and everyone had the same idea to immediately rush out and continue watching the match there.


When I reached Besant Nagar beach, the atmosphere was surreal. I joined the hundreds, indeed thousands, sitting on the sand, under the stars watching a gripping match between the two iconic rivals of world cricket. An India-Pakistan match is always a zero sum game. For the losing country there is devastation and for the winner delirious joy.


That night, fortune favoured India and we beat Pakistan decisively, winning by 6 wickets. The crowd went berserk and the wild smiles and excitement were enough to light up India’s darkest villages and our own city.


There are very few moments like this in India when we are not so divided and listening to Hindi music this evening in distant London while thinking about the match in Mohali suddenly made me really wish I was there tomorrow.

 

Why your signature matters to the people on the street in Bahrain

On Friday morning the online team at Amnesty International was in for a pleasant surprise.


At work we have our Amnesty website open on our computers throughout the day and are very familiar with trends on the number of people who sign our web petitions.

That’s why when we posted a petition addressed to the King of Bahrain on Thursday afternoon we were amazed to see that in less than 24 hours nearly 13,000 people had signed on. Wow.


But how did that happen?


Read the rest of my piece on the Amnesty International blog - Livewire.

Book Review: Egypt's Road to Jerusalem.

At the height of the February uprising in Egypt I happened to come upon former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s book ‘Egypt’s road to Jerusalem’. I thought this was a good time to read his story and found a cautiously written tale about the inner workings of the negotiating teams of Egypt and Israel that led to the signing of the historic peace treaty between the two countries in March 1979.



The book starts with the rather sudden and unexpected appointment of Boutros-Ghali as a Minister of State in President Anwar al-Sadat’s cabinet before Sadat’s ground-breaking trip to Jerusalem in 1977. It details the various conferences and characters that populated the peace process after that visit till the time the peace treaty was eventually signed two years later.


The book’s strength is not so much the overall insider’s history as much as it is the countless anecdotes Boutros-Ghali provides about world leaders. It is surprisingly limited however in its portraiture of the main actors such as Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Jimmy Carter, and most importantly Anwar al-Sadat. Of the personalities of these men, there are only glimpses.


The impression of Sadat I was left with through the vignettes was not a visionary of peace but more a secretive, unpredictable military man bent on winning back territory (Sinai Peninsula) through peace since he hadn’t been able to achieve it through war. That’s why the Israeli lack of sincerity in engaging on the question of Palestinian autonomy (something the Egyptians wanted to club with the return of the Sinai) didn’t eventually derail the peace treaty. Of course I could be horribly wrong.


Sadat was also strangely impervious to Arab, African and non-aligned countries’ criticism. Boutros-Ghali observes, “Sadat seemed ready to do with Egypt what Kemal Ataturk had done with Turkey – cut it loose from its most important historical, religious and cultural roots and become an integral part of the West.”


The Israeli side comes across as hard and unyielding. The Camp David Accords which led to the peace treaty were signed even as Israel launched its first invasion into Lebanon. A year later, Israel reversed a 1967 decision and started allowing Israelis to buy land in the West Bank and Gaza. Negotiations on Palestinian self-rule didn’t go anywhere and Begin successfully put pressure on Sadat to stop Boutros-Ghali from constantly raising the Palestinian question.


The best bits of the book however are Boutros-Ghali’s descriptions of his swing through Africa drumming up support for Egypt and Latin America requesting troops for a multinational peace-keeping force in the Sinai.


There is a great anecdote of his bizarre meeting with Ugandan leader Idi Amin. Amin took him on a boat to a place called Paradise Island, where he insisted on having the meeting in his bedroom without any aides.

Boutros-Ghali noticed that there were three doors designed to give Amin several escape routes in case of an assassination. Idi Amin saw everyone as a potential assassin. As if all that wasn’t weird enough, Amin suggested that Boutros-Ghali lie down on the bed to rest next to him. Hardly what you expect to happen when diplomats and world leaders meet!


The book’s final chapter is gripping in its description of the events of sixth October. The annual military parade is held on this day to commemorate the breaking of Israel’s Bar-Lev Line on the Sinai front during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As a Minister, Boutros-Ghali was expected to attend and would probably have been seated close to Anwar al-Sadat except he and his wife broke with protocol and decided to visit friends in Alexandria instead.


What is utterly fascinating is how Boutros-Ghali got to know of the attempt on Sadat’s life, especially because it is inconceivable in today’s well-connected world. As he relaxed on the beach, an old lady, recognising him, walked up to Boutros-Ghali and told him that she had heard reports on a foreign radio station about some trouble at the parade in Cairo. Boutros-Ghali gently told her not to believe the foreign press which he said was always fomenting trouble.


But she returned shortly afterwards for a second and a third time to say she had heard it on the BBC so he must investigate. Sure enough, when Boutros-Ghali went back home, he already had officials waiting to take him back to Cairo by train in a specially reserved coach.

Boutros-Ghali broke down and cried for Anwar al-Sadat had not survived his assassin’s bullets after a brief battle in hospital. Sinai had not yet officially been returned to Egypt and the architect of the peace treaty would not live to see the completion of his dream.