A Confession of Love: Saying Goodbye to India, 2011

I can't imagine it any other way really. Difficult and relieving. Difficult to leave it all behind. But relieving as soon as I sat in another airport that resembled a shopping mall. Now that I am comfortably at home, I reflect on my time in India and think about the intensity of it all. It was terrible at times. But more, it was wonderful. And I think that is the most important part to remember. I will analyze and breakdown the pain later.

Let me try my hand at one of those stream of consciousness pieces and say it in one fail swoop. An unrealistic expectation considering all of the magic I experienced in India.

I slipped on a monsoon season and fell in love in that place.

I love the silhouettes of drunken Bombay tourists posing for cameras in front of Curlie's sunsets. I love political conversations across cultures and between friends. I love the way curry smells, especially when it's partnered with raw red onions and lime juice. I love an optimist with self-depreciating humor and the uncanny ability to make me feel better. I love a damaged dog with a limp leg, cloudy eyes and flies swarming about her head like Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown. I love a woman with brilliantly dry humor who knows how to use her eyebrows.

I love oxen pulling old farmers on rickety wooden carts. I love chattering bangles stacked up my arm. I love markets brimming with bargains. I love a French woman who talks about how much she loves food. I love a ridiculously long bike ride to say goodbye. I love silly conversations about sex that make some people feel uncomfortable. I love lavish parties in old, beautifully renovated Portuguese houses. I love candles burning during power outages. I love clotheslines in odd places. I love people on the "margins" exposing injustices. I love working for a good cause. I love Indian sweet shops.

I love the cows who lay in the road and the friends who broadside them doing 45 on a scooter in the pitch black of Indian night. I love the sound of cheesy hip hop bouncing off of cheesier pick up lines against the backdrop of supportive laughter. I love sipping Sangria with just the right amount of nutmeg and cinnamon, sitting on a balcony above an empty village. I love tattoos and polished silver on dark skin and black eyeliner on big brown eyes. I love houses and store fronts painted the day-glo shades of socks I wore when I was a kid and was in love with Cindy Lauper and Boy George. I love the sea.

I love having a maid who is my friend and my confidant; a woman who has forever marked my life with a mischievous brand of thoughtfulness. I love the children who yell up to my window from the street only to giggle and scatter when I appear. I love a good film connoisseur with a click in his speech and a vocabulary to contend with. I love rice patty fields protected by sad scarecrows that wake from the rain and shine emerald in the sun. I love a green omelette sandwich. I love a great haircut by an old Goan man who knows a hell of a lot about the Rolling Stones. I love red dirt. I love unique lampshades.

I love a long motorcycle ride on a cloudless night for a cold beer on a hilltop overlooking the sea. I love always wearing flip flops and always having filthy feet. I love learning about this country of 28 countries; each distinct in so many ways. I love smelling like citronella and making it an entire day without a single mosquito bite. I love ordering food off a menu and having no idea what will be served. I love the sweat after intense yoga that won't dry in the humidity. I love working in an office in the jungle. I love the tension between tradition and modernity; new and old colliding. I love crowded round-abouts.

I love eccentric theatre actors. I love churches at the top of crumbling staircases overgrown with vines. I love fresh mango juice. I love a troop of mangy dogs with protective tendencies, especially when the are looking out for me. I love zipping around on a cheap scooter on roads freckled with potholes and puddles. I love my Poncho. I love dark bars on dirty streets. I love the smell of incense dancing with folklore in Hindu temples. I love fearless and frolicking walks on the beach in the middle of the night. I love smiles and headwags.

I love waking at dawn to a thundering rain storm and drifting back to sleep. I love dancing as hard as I can. I love okra and onion pakora with Touborg. I love a dingy room filled with hard working activists. I love a film about Goan history. I love a riverside city bustling with shops and traffic; especially at night. I love patterns on damp and moldy clothing in roadside shops. I love papaya with chili powder. I love getting lost in the middle of the day. I love dark features juxtaposed to yellow cloth in orange doorways. I love snakes.

I loved so much; too much to mention here. But in parting, as I finally empty the last of my bags and remember, I can say this: I love that those who loved me in India gifted me scarves and books and T-shirts to bid me farewell; it means I was myself and they know me well.

Dr. Binayak Sen and the Tigers of Chhattisgarh

My literary state of mind often feels like a sweat lodge; a dear but distant friend calls this "the duende." The words pour from me and take their own path and meaning. Time is abstract. Poetics are more important than pretension. A biased perspective is the only one. Progressions are built on foresight and history. Analogies and parallels stand out like brail on the page. It is emotional. It is conception. But not everyone can see it. And that's perfectly alright.

Yet, in the wise words of Erykah Badu,"Keep in mind I'm an artist... and I'm sensitive about my shit."

Although this piece has been politically corrected for publication, it was originally written this way. And because this is my blog, I can share it however I like.

Tigers are beautiful. War is violent. Exploitation is wrong. The state is cannibalistic. And I sympathize with young people and public servants. I want to share it, as I felt it when I originally wrote it. Without fear of reprisal.

~Tonia

Dr. Binayak Sen and the Tigers of Chhattisgarh

It is not the jungle of West Bengal, although many would claim that is where it started. Nonetheless, they are like the tigers lurking in those jungles, moving dangerously in the shadows and bearing red salutes. They face extinction at the hands of the state. They suffer from illnesses wrought by industry that is destroying their native lands. Many fear them; especially those who seek to exploit them. They have many enemies and they have many comrades. Their instincts and their allegiances afford them survival. But unlike the Tigers of Bengal, it is their politics, not their nature, which drives them to kill.

They are the Naxalites of Chhattisgarh. They number in the thousands. They are not animals, but they oppose captivity with their life. They fight for their vision of a people’s movement, situated in a long history of communist belief systems rooted far beyond the forests that they call home. Yet they have ascribed this war – and a war it is indeed – to the unique circumstances in this heartland of India. Most are tribal people, many are young and too few have access to basic needs; but it is not their insurgency that has denied them their rights. It is the evolution of neoliberal development programs and a history of state neglect that have stripped these native people of their well-being and their land rich with resources. Chhattisgarh is a land marred with natural wealth; and state policies aimed at exploiting them. The state defends its paradigm as an endeavor to end poverty and suffering, to bring employment and economy. Violent resistance has ensued.

In Chhattisgarh, a war rages on. State supported globalization and industrialization have collided with ideals of communalism and indigenous agriculture. Trees and communities are uprooted in the name of progress and economic advancement. Poverty reins in rural areas. Resistance and conspiracy to resist are banned by force and law. Desperate circumstances are a breeding ground for police recruitment. A touted military school is built and maintained with the aim of training tribal youth to fight tribal youth, on battlefields spanning dense forests and unarmed villages. There are no medics wearing crosses on their backs and tending to the wounded. Hospitals are miles away and generally inaccessible.

Since 1981, Dr. Binayak Sen has been working with the people of Chhattisgarh. The doctor does not encourage violence. He has publicly condemned it on more than one occasion. In fact, as an elected official in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), he has urged dialogue and negotiations as methods for conflict resolution between the Government and the Maoists of Chhattisgarh. His vocation is committed to welfare. He has dedicated his life to building peaceful conditions that emulate from communities of healthful people; citizens who are honored with civil liberties. He is a medical doctor who has benefitted public health in countless ways. His models for treatment have been adopted by the state and he has directly served and advised the state for decades. Still, he is an activist who stands steadfast for action to end the violation of rights by the same state and the corporations who depend on it. He has acted as a visionary in the greater discussion about the social determinants of health. The accomplishments and contributions of the modest Dr. Binayak Sen are endless. He is many things, but he is not a criminal.

Dr. Binayak Sen was arrested on May 14, 2007 in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. The details of his arrest are confused and debated; yet the charges brought against him are clear. Dr. Sen, after decades of service to the people and the state of Chhattisgarh, stood accused of being a terrorist engaged with sedition and acts of war against the state. The case against him revealed little meaningful evidence and much of it was questionably permissible. Yet, for more than two years, the doctor was held in captivity, including periods of solitary confinement, in a prison in Raipur. All the while, across the globe, activists, laureates, human rights organizations and concerned citizen’s groups agitated for his release. Blogs began. Letters were drafted. Public outcries were heard. Petitions were signed. Networks took hold. Media coverage resulted. As a result of his arrest, not only in India, but throughout the world, public education about the situation in Chhattisgarh was spreading.

In December of 2010, the doctor was found guilty of the charges against him, his bail was revoked and he was sentenced to the astonishing punishment of life imprisonment. Cries of “prisoner of conscience” were heard near and far. The Acts cited to charge the doctor and the creation of paramilitary groups to fight the insurgency in Chhattisgarh garnered international attention as unlawful and abusive. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of India faced global accusations of supporting undemocratic rule of law; a branding with severe consequences in arguably the world’s most burgeoning democracy.

In a recent statement Dr. Binayak Sen humbly remarked, “We must not personalize my arrest but focus on the wider issues for which I was arrested.” And these issues of undemocratic punishment, unlawful military organization and denial of civil liberties are not unique to Chhattisgarh. They are echoed in the Latin American states of Colombia and Guatemala as well as numerous states across Africa, among many others. These are locations where the dangerous nexus of development, corruption, neglect and force have bred movements of insurgent resistance and state paramilitary responses. It is a gross and dangerous oversimplification to ascribe these conflicts to binaries of left and right politics.

Against the backdrop of rising international pressure, on April 15, 2011, the Supreme Court of India granted bail and retracted crimes of sedition against Dr. Binayak Sen, setting him free. Further, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has ordered the cessation of Special Police Officers (SPO) in Chhattisgarh; those counterinsurgency militias made up of poor rural youth who hail from the same villages as young Naxalite forces. Citing liberal concepts such as dehumanization and culture of greed, as well as the literary work “Heart of Darkness” by Jospeh Conrad, the court ruled that the government of Chhattisgarh, regarding SPO employment, is in violation of two Articles of the Indian Constitution.

In the spiraling and ferocious violence of insurgent-state conflicts that turn schoolhouses into police bunkers and children into killing machines, there are complexities deeply related to bids for power and resources; all couched in complicated socio-political and economic histories. And it is civilian life, stranded between insurgency and state militia, that suffers most; displacement, starvation, rape, injury and death. It is the innocent victims of both sides of war who need Dr. Binayak Sen, and those like him, urgently. To imprison desperately needed public servants in the name of repressing non-violent resistance to state policies is a crime against humanity, in and of itself. In the words written by Joseph Conrad and quoted by the Supreme Court of India, “The horror! The horror!”

R.E.D.

R.E.D.

War.

Umbrellas at bus stands.

Cars. Toys. Brands. Roses.

Fire.

A landmark before a bend in the road.

Plastic chair with tattered cushion.

A cell phone advertisement.

Scarf hanging in the window.

Fear.

Fabric.

Doors.

Love.

A flag bearing a sickle and a star.

Port wine and pomegranate.

A cross that symbolizes resources.

The soles on the feet of a child; gravel and dreams.

The best kind of onions.

Busses with loud horns like ice creams trucks.

Candy wrappers in empty wastebaskets.

Spices spilled on the counter.

Asia.

My favorite T-shirt that she wears.

Meat under flies.

The Devil.

Beads swinging from slender collars.

British Broadcasting Corporation.

They mix it with bulls and vodka.

Sashes draped on teenagers armed with guns and smiles.

The flowers growing on garbage veiled with dirt.

Romance.

Carpets.

Bricks.

Anger.

Soil torn from mountains by mining machines.

A seething mosquito caught mid-crime.

Bundles of chilies tied off with twine.

Eyeballs striped with irritated arteries; thinking and drinking.

Yesterday.

Hearts of fathers who are unable to save them.

Lipstick. Nail Polish. Pumps. Panties.

Blood.

Things aren't what they seem.

July 22, 2011

Things aren’t what they seem.

Today was intense. I suppose yesterday was as well.

I’m immersed in a feature piece that is important; I’m colliding with the lives of others. Odd paths are crossing and something more than meaningful is happening, I can feel it. History. Politics. Well-being. Complicated. Things aren’t what they seem.

Anyway, that’s not the point of my story. This story is about Pushpa.

Like I said. Intense couple of days. And anyone who knows me well knows that my favorite way to manage anxiety – good and bad – is to sweat. So I make a playlist: Raconteurs, Billy Idol, Aesop Rock, Morphine. Tonia Style Yoga.

I’m sweating worse than a whore in church – what kind of feminist says something like that? Strong, forceful workout, almost in the dark.

I don’t know how long she was standing there, she moves quietly unless she’s moving furniture. I should write more about her. Her name is Pushpa, she’s my caretaker – and that’s an understatement. She may certainly be the most influential and endearing person I have met in India.

When I turn and see her there, me sweating like a pig, breathing like a bull and obviously working on something more than asanas, she turns and walks right back out the door.

I continue pushing through my insanity.

About 15 minutes later she returns with one of those flimsy plastic handle bags from the market. She gives me that grin, the one that I have grown so fond of.

In the bag? One cold Touborg can, 1 baggie thick flour mix, two shiny red onions, 1 thin spicy red chili and a handful of green fuzzy okra.

What comes next? Spicy okra and onion pakora, a cold beer, a tousle of drenched hair from a wise friend and Tonia feeling much more able.

Things aren’t what they seem. Because people like Pushpa, change them.

Bombs are...in Bombay

July 15th, 2011

Bombs are...in Bombay

Over the week, as emails and messages have poured in from loved ones and concerned advisors about the bombings in Bombay, the feeling has been a strange but familiar one. It could be described as a hybrid I suppose; ribbons of fortune tied to strands of guilt and frustration. I tend feel this way when a “newsworthy” tragedy rears its unpleasant head, wherever I may be. This is no different. I’m privileged enough to have remarkable experiences in far away lands but a home that registers pretty damn safe in relative terms. Lucky enough to avoid tripping my way into the wrong place at the wrong time – most of the time. And aware enough to know that the majority of suffering is rarely covered on the nightly news or in the morning Post.

In the days after 3 bombs exploded in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai killing dozens and injuring scores, news reports abound. The Wall Street Journal asks, “Will the Mumbai attacks be politicized?” Really WSJ, is that your headline? I’m disappointed. Could these attacks be viewed any other way? Would the mainstream media be calling them “terrorist” attacks if there was not a political agenda – by attackers, politicians and media conglomerates alike? Is there even a question that bombs detonated in any global neighborhood be attached to politics? Bombs are politics.

BBC asks a more appropriate question, “Why does Bombay bleed again and again?” I might argue that Bombay is not bleeding, people are. But I digress into semantics and it is certainly a catchy headline. And more, this well written article intrigues my propensity for debate. Anchored in the history of deadly attacks in Bombay since 1993, the article cites 700 corpses and questions the capacity of the Indian government to protect its citizenry. My thoughts wander to a recent story reported by a community journalist covering the city in Maharashtra. A heart-wrenching story about the destruction of thousands of homes in Bombay slums with hundreds of communities still on the docket for demolition in upcoming months. Potentially hundreds of thousands of people have no recourse in a government sponsored “slum-free” scheme that will leave them homeless and starving. A government unable – or perhaps unwilling - to protect its citizenry indeed. If Bombay is bleeding, slums are festering wounds. And they need treatment with care, not dirty Band-Aids. But I’m hard pressed to find a recent and comprehensive story about the prolonged death of so many slum dwellers in Bombay. But, do we find anything quite as newsworthy as deadly explosions? Bombs are entertainment.

Indian newspapers are running the editorials that we would expect. Essentially asking the question that is shocking to no one: Has the dreaded Pakistan struck again? I find this sentiment alarming at best. Why is it that we – governments and humans – go to such great lengths to find the enemy in other governments and humans but rarely blame systems, structures and institutions that create them? Is it because we need the ability to watch the demise of the enemy on the nightly news or read it with our morning coffee, as if it is proof somehow? We can be fairly certain that whomever ignited those bombs in Bombay this week had a keen eye on the media coverage. All the blood and guts and rubble in the street are a battle won for the culprits. And something tells me that the Indian government will respond with some good old-fashioned broadcasted battle winning of its own. But in the end, no one will win the “war.” Not the “terrorists” nor the “state.” It only takes a peek across the pond or the tracks at Iraq and Afghanistan to see the truth in that. But as long as economy and ideology are propped up by detonations, what more can we expect? Bombs are excuses.

So, as U.S. media and the Obama administration encourage India to strengthen its counter-terrorism and intelligence efforts, I can’t help but sigh. What a waste of time. What a waste of money. What a waste of airwaves. What a waste of human rights. What a waste of manpower. What a waste of better ideas. What a waste of life.

Bombs are a waste of resources.

boys like fish

July 8, 2011

I have emerged from my first stint of tropical illness in India - and I say first because let's be honest, there will be others. Thus, the explanation for my lack of posting. Although I was keeping some interesting scribbles during my illness, there is nothing for the imagination like the delirium of a fever during the monsoon rains. All part of the experience, I say.

This little gem was filmed for the most part last weekend and finished the night my internal lights got dim. Enjoy.

boys like fish

Sluts Unite

June 30, 2011

Breaking News: the “SlutWalk” has made its way to India. In Delhi no less, where a reported 80% of women experience sexual violence in some form. And as I scour the tubes for press and commentary, I find myself shocked, but not surprised, at the continued – and historically familiar – arguments against validity and the dismal awareness of purpose regarding women’s movements of resistance. A global paradigm shift is imperative; and I am relieved to say that the sluts are on the mission. This is my response to a recent editorial in the Hindustan Times.

Sluts Unite

It does not take a linguistic genius – or a feminist – to recognize that the term “slut” in “SlutWalk” is symbolic, not stereotypical. Reducing this global movement to a singular word in an effort to delegitimize it is precisely the reason these women - and the men who support them - are marching in the first place, be it sporting Bustiers, Board Shorts or Burkas. And if the redefinition of the word slut to signify a woman empowered enough to walk around in whatever she wants without fear of being brutalized is a result, fantastic. But to assume that the international “SlutWalk” phenomenon is only about dressing scantily clad is, quite frankly, as ignorant as a comment made by a police officer that women should not dress like sluts to avoid rape.

Writing an entire article that articulates the prescribed meaning of the word slut is perpetuating the age-old practice of shifting the focus from the perpetrator to the victim. To say nothing of the lack of critical thinking. Further yet, devaluing the work that women are doing by claiming that they are “objectifying” themselves simply represents poor research. It only takes a few clicks of the mouse to find the mantra of the SlutWalk movement: “Because we’ve had enough.” But I suppose that hundreds of thousands of women across the globe have been invalidated by incompetent journalism before. Journalism powered by a patriarchal mindset acting as the beneficiary of the status quo.

As a white woman in India, I certainly recognize the risk in exposing my body. But then again, I am painfully aware of that threat anywhere. I am one of all the women in the world who are in danger on a regular basis simply because she has a vagina. And a vagina is a pre-requisite for being a slut, as well as being treated like one regardless of what you wear. The point here is not that women who “look” like sluts are standing up for themselves or reclaiming rhetoric. Rather, women who are treated like sluts - and judging from this movement there are a lot of us out there - are coming together to speak out about the abuses they endure.

SlutWalk is about speaking truth to power. Announcing to the world that women everywhere are finished with being blamed for the sexual violence that is perpetrated against them. And the term slut is perfectly placed branding. Even if it doesn’t always translate across languages, it is creating dialogue about the presumption that women who are victimized should be taking responsibility for deeply embedded patriarchal violence that most certainly translates across culture. And nationality. And class. And race. And religion. And age. And ability. Not to mention the institutionalized, militarized and state sponsored forms.

It’s true; this movement erupted in the "West." But to rely on the overused argument that white western feminists are imposing their ideals on developing world women and in turn devaluing their concerns is circumventing the issue. Anyone who is versed on the evolution of the feminist movement knows that today’s feminists are hyper-aware of the imposition of ideology. Let us be reminded that the women organizing the events in Mexico City were Mexican women. Just as the women organizing the protest in Delhi are Indian women. They are brave enough to mobilize because they identify with an issue that affects women globally, and this a “genuine problem” indeed.

This movement is about solidarity, not a hierarchy of victimization. Yes, women in India are experiencing a deplorable amount of violence and violation of rights. But the true solutions to those issues are related to a paradigm shift in freedom, not protection. Freedom of mobility. Freedom from fear. Freedom of choice. Freedom from hunger. Freedom from violence. Freedom from exploitation. And yes, that includes freedom to wear whatever the hell we want. The women marching in SlutWalks remind us that women have to fight for those freedoms because we are simply not being protected against losing them; assuming that we had them to begin with.

Let us not forget the painful experience of a woman that led to this global outrage. The condescending, misguided and unsympathetic statement that cheering on the SlutWalkers “because everyone needs a bit of fun, a break from the normal routine, some diversion to liven up their lives,” is frighteningly akin to the justification a man might use to harass a woman on a street corner. And worse, this type of commentary represents the reductionist additude that allows men to rape her.