O is for ..... One

This is a work of fiction and forms a part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. I will attempt to write a new story based on the word for the day every day during the month of April.

“I agree with your Cause, but I really don’t have time to attend protest meetings”, Olga insisted.

“Come for some time at least.”

“If there are really so many of you, why do you need me?”

“Because if everyone thought like you, there would be no one” her friend explained. “If you just can’t make it, that’s okay. But do your best will you?”

Her work got over early that day, and Olga decided to join the protest meeting. She was glad she did. Yes, she was just one individual. But together they were One, and they would be heard.

______  

A Drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Courage is....

The eye-surgeon with a flourishing practice, who returned to his village and set up an eye-hospital for the poor. The retired bureaucrat who runs a school exclusively for boys from a community that has been shunned for generations. The articulate woman who’s dedicated her life to rescuing and rehabilitating victims of the sex trade.

They could have led comfortable lives, but chose to do something meaningful. They may not flaunt the material trappings of success, but they are the richest people I know.

Gandhi said it best. “Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.”_____

Flashback 2011- June 

When it rains, the dry bed turns into a gurgling stream. In the dry months, it could be mistaken for a trail. Water comes and goes, but the rocks stay on forever. This photograph, taken during a trek in June forms a part of my Pictoral Flashback of 2011.

Pink is just a Colour*

I was reading a bunch of profiles of 'real' girls from 'real' families today. All the girls come from impoverished backgrounds. Many are first generation literates. Most of them lack positive role models in their communities.


All of them were in school and doing well. All wanted careers- doctor, teacher, engineer, police officer- they were all willing to dream and dream big.

They all realised that it was the generosity of strangers that enabled them to get a good education, and they all had plans on how to pay it forward.
 
They are the future. And they all love pink!
_____

A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

* Inspired by Lady Fi's comment on Facebook - "Pink is a colour, not a gender".

Change Happens

The running track in the park I use is always full of discarded wrappers. For the last couple of days, after finishing my daily run, I have been walking an extra round to collect the wrappers and throw them in the dustbin.


"Why are you doing that?", an old lady asked yesterday.
"So nobody slips on them and gets hurt", I replied.
"But you didn't throw them."
"No, but I can always pick them up."

Today, there were no wrappers on the track. The old lady had been making sure people used the dustbin.

Change happens even if only slowly.

_____

A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

What's your colour?

First thing in the morning yesterday, my phone pinged with a message from the Tart. It was a variation of this-

Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls, no men …. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.

Pass it on & be sure to do your breast self-exams!

Mine was white, a colour I was almost ashamed to admit to after seeing the exotic 'shocking pinks', 'deep purples', 'leopard prints' and 'purple plaids' others had on. Three friends didn't have a colour to report and said as much. The most popular colour among my friends was the colour of the current season - purple - never knew my friends were that fashion conscious! Another made me feel good by admitting that her's 'used to be white - but alas the Chennai water. Now its sandy beach.'
Left no one guessing - the men caught on pretty fast. One 'decided to stay from facebook today. Too much colour to handle in a day', and another was 'amused to note the sudden colour-sensitivity on status updates'.

It was fun. It did tell me that I should go lingere shopping.

BUT, it also reminded me to do my breast self exam.

In October, the sister-in-law of a dear friend had to undergo a masectomy. The same month, a friend lost his wife to breast cancer. Any of us could get it. But so confident are we of our own immortality, we choose not to think about it till something reminds us of it. This fun campaign did.

Whether we love them or hate them, we are lucky to have our breasts, and not two scars where they ought to be. And even more we are lucky to be alive.

And if an irreverant campaign like this one makes us do what needs to be done, let there be many more of them.


And it is white again today- a granny white. But I am picking up a more glamourous piece on the way home today.

Painting by Simon Claridge

What Change ?

Did I vote last Thursday?
Short answer - No.
Real answer – I did not, because I could not. I had filled up the forms to get myself registered as a voter in Bombay, but my name never found its way into the voter’s list and I just did not have the bandwidth to run around the offices to get it inserted.
Will I vote next time round?
Definitely. My country deserves much more than sheer apathy.

I still think my vote is precious. Going by the number of fingers sporting the India Ink tattoos, almost all my colleagues think that way too. Why then did only slightly over 40% of the population of my city exercise their franchise?

Sure, many of the migratory workers would have gone on their annual pilgrimage to their respective ‘gaons’; a large chunk of the middle class would be taking advantage of the long summer holidays to avail their LTAs- none of them would be willing or able to air-dash to Bombay for a day to cast their vote.

But what about educated, newly enlightened upper middle class people who took to the streets with their hand crafted candles post 26/11? Could they not have left for their weekend break in Lonavala or Goa after exercising their franchise? When so many ‘people like them’ took the plunge this time round, could they not have supported their candidature by casting their vote?

“Be the change you want to see”, said the Father of the Nation. After our fantastic showing last Thursday, do we even have the right to call for change?

Women on the run

Seeing these two ladies in their traditional nine-yards sarees leading a procession on Gudi Padwa reminded me of how progressive India has been in terms of women's rights. We never had to fight for the right to vote, we took it as our due when the nation became a Republic. While English queens held onto their thrones through intregue and back-room maneuvers, we had warrior queens and queen mothers who took their rightful place as rulers.

Where then did so much of it get lost? When were our sisters reduced to playing second fiddle? Will it ever change?

The Pink Chaddi Brigade

India!
Where you can defecate in public in peace, but are harassed if you as much as hold hands. Where public displays of affection are forbidden, but a favourite god is worshipped alongside his girlfriend, not his wife. A nation of over a billion conceived by bees buzzing around flowers.

India!
Where giving flowers to your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day is anti-cultural, but harassing unknown women during Holi is perfectly acceptable. Where a lady cannot go into a pub and order a drink, but a drunk man can drive even with a suspended license.

India Yesterday.
India Today!

India Tomorrow?

Jana Gana Mana....

While in school, it was mandatory to sing the national anthem at the school assembly at least once a week, but the song and I became virtual strangers after I started college. I must have heard the anthem about half a dozen times, and sung it not at all till my son started attending school a couple of years back. Now, I definitely hear it twice a year – on Independence Day and Republic Day – and since I insist on my children standing to attention whenever it si played on TV, I end up hearing it a lot more than I did previously.
And somewhere along the line, while mechanically going through the words, I discovered that the national anthem had the power to move me to tears. I am definitely not one of those people who wears their patriotism on their sleeves, but there is something in the song that resonates inside me, and makes me proud of the nation that I am a citizen of.
It was, however, a purely emotional reaction till yesterday. While singing the song yesterday at my son’s school, I was acutely aware of how much has changed since Independence Day when the same song was sung at the same venue by the same set of people. This time round, I was reveling not in what my country has accomplished, but dreaming about what she can do once people like me start taking ownership for steering her destiny.
There is nothing tangible that I can put my finger on, but I sense the coming change. I can see people thinking about India as a nation, and about what we can do to make a difference. Small things make me optimistic – last year, at the Standard Chartered marathon, people were shouting ‘Run Mumbai Run’. They did so this year too, but much more than that, people yelled ‘Go India Go’.
A cynic may dub it as token symbolism, but I think it goes beyond that. People are willing to invest time and effort in determining the destiny of India, and while change may be late in coming, I know it will.
Maybe the next time I sing the national anthem, the hope for a better tomorrow will be seasoned with the beginnings of concrete changes.
Who said I was not an optimist?

One month and one day later

And I purposely did not blog about 26/11 yesterday, because I knew that to do so would have been a purely symbolic gesture, and we have had enough of symbolic gestures to last us more than a couple of months.
As expected, nothing has happened in the past one month. A few ministers have tended in their resignations and been replaced, some token sound bytes have been provided by assorted people who do not matter, various agencies are questioning the sole surviving terrorist and everyone is getting on with their lives.
Nobody is asking what steps the government is taking to ensure such incidents do not recur, and if they are, they are not being heard. Pakistani journalists have located the family of the terrorist and got them to admit that he is their son, but still the posturing on both sides of the border continues. Had we been serious about wiping out terror camps, we would have taken the Pakistani government into confidence and done what needed to be done jointly. True, the Pakistani government has not done much in the past to inspire confidence, but could we not have taken a chance on the new government – a government headed by a man who lost his own wife to terrorist attacks less than a year ago. Too much water has now flown down the bridge, too much time has elapsed since the Terror Attacks. There is no way we are now going to nail down the culprits.
Closer home, our borders have still not been secured. Our fishermen can act as our eyes and ears, and are willing to do so, but nobody chooses to listen to them. A fisherlady saw the terrorists arrive and even questioned them, but the police is yet to record her statement. The various police departments seem more interested in trying to take credit for injuring the sole surviving terrorist than with doing anything concrete. Does it really matter whether it was Savalkar, Kamte or Date that put a bullet into the terrorist? If the departments are really that segregated, why is nobody telling us why three such senior police officers, from three different departments, rode in the same vehicle to take on the terrorists? Did they think it was a lathi charge that they were supervising – did they not know that they could have been a lot more effective if they used three different vehicles and tried to surround the terrorists.
And what about us? Are we doing our bit towards ensuring that the probability of such incidents happening in future is averted. I think not – after a few days of having security being beefed up, even malls belonging to the Tata group have gone back to the old days of perfunctory checking of vehicles coming into their car parks. My handbag continues to be opened, but only the main compartment – I could smuggle anything in the side pockets and nobody would be the wiser.
Bombay, and India, is as vulnerable to Terror Attacks today as it was a month back. The only thing that seems to be proliferating is the number of Facebook groups that want to ‘do something concrete’. If only even one of them had a real plan, instead of empty phases that even I can dish out.
The time is ripe for a Leader. Will anyone (other than Rahul Gandhi) step forward, please?

What really can be done, and who does it?

Like a friend put it, it is now ‘time to put down the pointing finger, cork the backseat driving, and deliver constructive suggestions only..’

We have expressed solidarity with the victims of the terror attack, we have sent the message out that at least for the moment we are concerned about the need for things to get done. What next?

The fear psychosis that had gripped us over the weekend is now receding, life is slowly getting back to normal. Do we put the events of the past week behind us and get on with life as we have always done in the past, or do we do something more. And if so, what?

In the short term, there is very little that we can do. We are stuck with the politicians that we have through action or inaction elected to high office. We have a political system which never seems to have heard the words accountability or apology. We seem more interested in playing the blame game than in ensuring that there is no further need for casting blame. And to deflect attention elsewhere, we play school-bully with our nearest neighbour when we could achieve much more by just appealing to the good sense that we choose to believe they do not possess. All we can do is to keep asking questions, in the hope that politicians eventually feel compelled to provide a few answers.

But there is much we can do in the medium and long term. Each of us can do our best to ensure that better candidates contest elections and get elected.

For starters, we can register to vote in the constituencies of which we are residents and encourage others to do so too. Once the educated professionals make it clear that they are going to cast their vote in the elections, parties may be forced to field candidates who appeal to the intellect rather than to petty divisions of creed, caste, region or religion

We can scrutinize documents and mandates of candidates, we can use RTI to find out how many electoral promises our politicians have kept, and we can dissipate such information to ensure that voters do not vote in a vacuum. The events of the past few days have convinced a number of people to enter politics so they can work towards a better society – we can and need to support such candidates. After all, if we want change, we need to provide an alternative, and that alternative is present among ourselves.

But the one thing each of us can do, and should do is to change ourselves. Everytime we talk into a mobile phone while driving, or jump a traffic light, or pay a bribe, we are breaking the law, and if we break the law, we do not have the right to question others. To quote the Father of the Nation, ‘we need to be the change we want to see’.

____

Incidentally, I logged onto www.jaagore.com and registered to vote in the constituency of which I am a resident. You can do so too.

The Right to Not Vote

We have had it ingrained in our conscience that every citizen of India has the Right to Vote. Few among exercise that Right, and even when we do, we almost always either vote for the candidate most likely to defeat a candidate we do not want elected or for a candidate who is the best of the lot, even if not good in an absolute.

What practically none of us knew is that, in addition to the Right to Vote, we also have the Right Not to Vote. Under section 49-O of the Constitution, a voter can go to a polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked and inform the presiding officer that he does not want to vote for any of the candidates in the fray. If the number of “49-O” votes cast in a particular constituency exceeds the margin of victory, polling is cancelled and there would be a re-poll in that particular constituency. Also, the candidates who had contested that particular election would be ineligible from contesting in the re-poll because the electorate has already voted against them.

The power that this Right confers on us is immense. Over the last few days, we have all been talking about the need to bring about change in politics. We’ve been getting ourselves registered to vote in the constituency where we live in, and convincing others to do the same too. But, even while doing so, most of us must have wondered if there was any point in it at all – after all, unless decent candidates come forward, we would merely be casting our votes in favour of the candidate we feel would do the least damage. A situation much better than not voting at all, but only just.

But with the Right to Not Vote, we can vote AGAINST candidates that we do not think deserve to be elected. And if enough number of people do so, we could perhaps make a difference.

More importantly, being aware of this Right and letting people know that we are aware of this Right and that we are willing to exercise this Right would put a certain amount of pressure on parties to field better candidates.

We each need each to spread the message about this Right that we have, so that we can start making a difference.

More than twenty thousand people turned up at the Gateway of India yesterday, brought there solely through messages spread using SMSes, e-mails and social networking channels. If the same channels can be used to create awareness about section 49-O, we may be just be able to bring about a real change.

Each doing our bit...

Somehow, this sudden outpouring of solidarity and protest we have been witnessing over the last few days scares me- wear white on Monday, light a candle at 7:30 pm, assemble at the Gateway on December 3rd, change your facebook profile to an Indian flag on December 10th, sign an online petition, wear a black armband, display the word E.N.O.U.G.H. on your person for an entire day, forward SMSes lampooning politicians in general or one particular politician in particular- the list is seemingly endless . .
.

On Saturday, I was so angry at myself for allowing politicians to take me for granted, that I would have cheerfully done all of them, but on saner reflection, I realise none of it is going to make any difference at all. Today people are angry, they are scared, they are disgusted, and they are asking questions. The questions they ask are all sensible ones. The partial solutions they are coming up with are good ones that can be acted upon.

But nobody seems to be taking them seriously, nobody seems to be taking us seriously. Nobody feels obliged to provide answers, or even to aplogise for mistakes made in the past. Why?

Because the people in power know how short public memory really is. Today, the images of the fires in the heritage wing of the Taj Mahal Hotel are fresh in our eyes, we can almost hear gunshots when we shut our ears to extraneous noise, we can smell the fear we felt for those 60 hours. We do not want to relive an experience similar to that ever again, and we are willing to take time off to express our fears and our hopes.

But how long will we continue to feel that way? How long before real life catches up with us, and we find these memories being pushed to the back of our mind?

Two weeks down the line, would we continue to ask questions? One month down the line, would we demand to know what has been done in the previous weeks? Three months down the line, would we want to see concrete steps put in place to ensure that such attacks do not repeat themselves? Six months down the line, would we expect to see gradual changes in the way the political system functions? On the first anniversary of the attack, would we expect to see greater transparency and accountability?

Most unlikely!!!

We would like to deny it. We would like to believe that this time, the anger is for real. We would like to think of this as a watershed event in our nation’s collective fight against terror. But, our elected leaders know that national security is unlikely to remain one of our prime concerns for more than a couple of weeks. They know that by Republic Day, we would return to being the apathetic citizens we have been for the past six decades. And since they know it, the politicians do not see any point in taking us seriously.

Which is why I would rather all these symbolic protests be deferred by a few weeks. If two weeks later, we wear black armbands in protest, the impact would be much greater than if we do so today. If, one month after the blast, we take out a candle-light procession and hand over a list of questions to the Prime Minister, he would be forced to read them. If on the eve of Republic Day, we demand that the President dedicate her entire Address to the Nation to telling us the plan that is being implemented to ensure such incidents do not recur, she may devote a couple of minutes to the issue.

We do have the power to catalyse change, but we need to convince the people who would actually be implementing the change that we really mean business.

And till then, we can each register to vote in the constituencies we are actually residing in, we can join the civil defense army if we are able to commit that kind of time, and most important, we can try teaching our kids that just because we do not agree with a person that person doesn’t become an enemy.

That is quite a bit in itself!!!!

Bombay is my home

Bombay was the city I knew from summer holidays spent at my grandparents’ house, but it was to Mumbai that I came as a newly-married executive to set up home.

Mumbaikar or Bombayite- it didn’t matter what you called me. After all, the reason I fell in love with the city was because it did not have time to waste on inessentials. If politicians thought they could change history by changing signboards, so be it.

But no more.

I pay their salary. They are answerable to me. Politicians cannot take advantage of my apathy any more.

Bombay is my home.

Drabble (n) - an extremely short work exactly one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.

When will this end?

Was glued to the TV the third day in a row, when my son asked me, “Mamma, when will your programme end?”
The answer he wanted was, “in a few minutes, and after that, you can watch Power Rangers.”
But what really was the answer?
“In a few hours”, the TV channels had been assuring us for the past 36 hours.
“By the end of the day”, was a fairly realistic answer.
“Never!”, though, is the most appropriate answer.
Because none of this will ever end till every single one of us takes responsibility for bringing about change. Will we?

Drabble (n) - an extremely short work exactly one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.