Group Identity

I have just stepped out of an academic presentation of some serious research on the link between memory and self-identity. When I saw the notice for this presentation, I felt that it would not interest me at all, couched as it was in social science jargon. I gave in to a gentle nudge to 'waste my time' over it only to realise that it gave me well-researched answers to questions that have been plaguing me for over a week now.

Before all of you who have no interest in academia or academic debates stop reading, let me clarify, this is not a blog championing the cause of academia or an appeal to intelligent young people to consider academic careers. This is one more post adding to my corpus of such posts, on the need for young people to spend some time thinking: thinking about issues around them, issues that affect their lives and their choices. It is easy to take the "beaten path" and reach one's goal within the time-frame set by oneself but can one live with that kind of success if it involves trampling upon family and friends? Old question, I know. Most Indians would immediately think of Arjuna, Krishna and the Bhagvad Gita and various interpretations of Krishna's legendary advice to Arjuna. So, here is my version of that famous dialogue, it went somewhat like this:

Arjuna: How can I wage a war with my elders for a kingdom?

Krishna: Kingdom, you are not fighting for something as paltry as a bit of land, I created a kingdom for you, remember, that can always be taken care of; you are fighting for your right.

Arjuna: But is my right greater than peace?

Krishna: Well, your right might not be greater than peace but your duty of fighting the evil in the world is. These people you see in front of you are perpetrators and / or supporters of evil. Fighting them equals fighting evil. Now that, as you very well know, is a good thing. So, while you seem to be doing an evil thing you are actually doing a good thing. Go ahead, fight your family, teachers, cousins, nephews, childhood mates for this will lead to ushering a better world.

I know many of you will tell me that is an extremely simplistic interpretation of an important part of the great song. Yes, I know that. It was deliberate. Simplistic never means incorrect. Let us start with simple stuff first. Anyway, this is not an exposition on the Gita; I am using my interpretation of this famous conversation to illustrate my point.

In this famous instance, the warrior was convinced by his political advisor that he should identify the group he belongs to and act accordingly. The legendary warrior is not the only one who learnt his lesson well enough to lead his group to a Pyrrhic victory, most Indians learn this lesson rather well. We pick the groups we belong to and live by the rules of the group. Sooner than later, we learn to identify with some social groups and accept its rules. We then internalise those rules and develop our persona. People we interact with regularly can usually predict our behaviour and our reactions to social situations. That is possible because they learn to recognise the groups we belong to. The problems and discomfort begin when we shift allegiances from one group to another. Say, Arjuna decided that his allegiance lay with peace and not with helping in destroying some people identified as evil. What could Krishna have done then? What advice would he have given to Arjuna? That would have changed the Mahabharata significantly. It would probably have changed the Indian mindset also quite a bit, for we are a nation that takes our legends very seriously. Unfortunately, asking such questions borders on blasphemy. My intention, though, is to ask such questions and ask them of people whose behaviour affects the lives of millions in this nation.

Watch this space for on how group identities killed Nirupama Pathak and many more young girls in the recent past.

Hollow People

Two very dissimilar incidents in the recent past pointed out people's hollowness to me and made me react enough to post about them. I'll talk very briefly about the first incident and go on to the second one that affected me more deeply.

The first one was noteworthy because it stirred the most laid-back guy I know into action when a hundred others were sitting and cursing their luck. We happened to get stuck in a not very uncommon Mumbai phenomenon -- a traffic jam. The uncommon things about this jam were that it occurred in one of the least happening suburbs of Mumbai, on a weekday, in one of the arterial roads, in a direction that is opposite to the usual flow of traffic and at around half past eleven in the night. We drove into a long queue of stalled vehicles on our way back home from a rare outing to get some much-needed ice-cream post a particularly bland dinner rustled up by our household help. After waiting patiently for about 10 mins my husband decided to check out the reason for the jam. He apparently walked half a kilometre before he ran out of steam and gave up the quest to sit out the jam in the car. I was in my PJs and refused to step out of the car. My bored brother decided he should grab this opportunity to pollute the air and spoil his lungs one more time. On his quest for a smoke, he walked around a kilometre and half and reached the spot the jam originated. He realised that all of us were in quite a pickle. An ambitious truck driver had broken the axle of his truck in an attempt to manouver his way onto the main road from a bylane via a narrow path through one of the cordoned off Monorail construction sites. There was no way we could move unless the truck was towed away. There were about hundred vehicles behind the truck and not one of the occupants had the energy to think of a solution. Appalled at the passivity, the most laid-back person I know, i.e my brother, donned the leadership mantle and made the appropriate noises to stir some people into action. He called the fire-station who directed him to traffic-control. The somnolent person on the line at the traffic-control centre noted the location of the jam and said that action will be taken in due course. Meawhile, the lately charged up drivers realised the traffic could clear, despite the unfortunate postion of the truck, if one car driver does a slighty difficult manoeuver. The risk in this option was a couple of scratches to the car. The owner refused to expose his car to that kind of risk and declared that he will stay put till the truck moves, while his aged mother and pretty partner were watching his performance from the passenger seats. Finally, the home-guard on duty awoke to his duties and suggested that all the vehicles lined up for about 2 kms behind this car should carefully drive reverse till they reach the diversion that would lead them onto a parallel road. This suggestion was readily taken up by drivers with all levels of skills and all kinds of vehicles. They shifted their gears to gently drive reverse and the traffic jam was cleared in about half an hour. This was choreoraphed by my brother and a bunch of people lead by an energetic middle-aged man. So, nearly 50 drivers risked hurting others and crashing their vehicles because one driver refused to risk a few scratches on his car!

I thought the kind of hollowness displayed by the car owner needs to be written about when something more personal overshadowed the personality traits of a stranger.

Yesterday, I keyed in my name on a Google Images search to show a dorky old photograph of mine to a new friend. To my utter surprise a blast from the past stared back at me. Click here to know the details on this. I followed it to find that my name occurred in a response to a newspaper story about caste-based reservation in our country. The story was in itself quite pointless and was almost flippant in its treatment of a serious social issue. To worsen the harm done by that kind of an article, the first respondent's reaction to the article was tangential and rather unnecessary. In this unnecessary response, the respondent, who happens to be one of my oldest friends, mentioned me as one of the priveleged people in our country on account of my caste. She noted that people like me happen to be on the merit list of national universities due to the accident of our being born in families that belong to particular Hindu communities. To me, the most astonishing factor in her writing was that she and I happen to come from families that belong to the same community! Simple logic would show that if I were to be considered priveleged, by the same token, so should she. So why not own up to the 'privelege', if any, rather than 'discuss' the 'priveleges' others seem to have. Especially since she and the writer of the article had better ranks on the merit list she mentioned! Just goes to show that caste-based 'priveleges' are not the only deciding factors in merit lists. Things like access to good colleges also count. Having had access to better colleges than mine, I'm amazed they forgot the 'priveleges' they enjoyed.

And the most cutting bit of the incident for me was the fact that, she carelessly used my name knowing fully well that my views on caste-based reservations have been seriously misunderstood during a specific agitation on gender issues in our student days. So, here's to my first use of a new verb in the English language. I have decided to unfriend her.

PS: Taking this opportunity to set the record straight on caste-based reservation -- I completely support equal opportunities as I believe that it helps in bridging the gap that cultural capital brings about. In case, the main protagonists of the newspaper story incident happen to read this one, the phrase you were looking for is 'cultural capital', remember Raymond Williams?

Staging a Walk-Out

Hans Andersen “Emperor’s New Clothes” has been twirling in my brain for the past few days. An incident at a wedding in the family sparked recollections of this tale that I had last read more than a decade ago.
The details of Andersen’s tale are a bit fuzzy in my head but I seem to distinctly recollect that the child in the tale is mentioned just as a child – name, gender, accurate age was not specified – in one version and in another one the child is a five year old called Gloria. I also remember that I had then preferred the previous version to the latter one. As a researcher of childhood I needed a peg -- some cliché, stereotype or depiction that would give me a ‘quintessential’ dimension of childhood. And in the previous version of the tale, this child whom I chose to see as the Universal Child, in my naivety, represented the brutal honesty that grownups like to associate with childhood.
Many books, many libraries, many discussions and many observations later, I now know that ‘scholastic’ assumptions about childhood and children are just about as harmful to them as market driven ones are. I try my best to steer clear of generalizations about childhood and ecstatic reactions to children’s ‘unusual’ behavior. Some incidents, however, lead me to the brink of glorifying some dimension of childhood.
I was playing with a five year old niece, during a wedding in the family, when we were informed that we were missing out on witnessing an important ritual in the elaborate Hindu wedding. We were also told that we ought to postpone our game and watch the rituals because both of us had travelled quite a distance to be there; she had come from the US and I had gone from Mumbai. I was sufficiently admonished and she was equally curious. We made a dash for it. At the scene of action, I tried holding her aloft so that she gets a ringside view of the ritual. Soon I had to confess that I might break my back. Promptly she stepped down and we hunted out a corner from where we could see the proceedings in minute detail. The ritual we were witnessing involves the bridegroom walking out of the wedding, accessorized as a sanyasi, and declaring that he cannot turn into a householder while his calling is that of a monk. The bride’s brother is sent to coax the bridegroom back to the altar. The rituals deem that this mission ought to turn successful, in each case, by merely offering the groom some jaggery. Knowing that most guys of our generation don’t quite like eating raw jaggery, the bride’s party keeps some chocolate handy to help the proceedings along.
Now my little friend could not make head or tail of the proceedings. I clarified them as briefly as possible; that the bridegroom is scared to get married and the other chap in the scene will give him a chocolate to make him come back to the altar. She had two quick queries: “Does he get to eat the chocolate?” and was suitably impressed by the assertive from me and followed it with, “So, they are not putting up a show?”. Now, the second one was difficult to react to. “Of course, they are!” ought to have been my answer but sudden aid from the part of my brain that stores information made me hold my horses. I remembered the catastrophe that ensued the child’s declaration that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes in Andersen’s tale. To avoid the immediate catastrophe of my little Indian-American friend publicly calling an Indian ritual a show upon my confirming her hunch, I quietly took the cowardly grownup route out of the situation by telling her, “No, that was not a show; that is how one gets married”. My spirits sank at my cowardice but were instantly revived when the child turned to me and planted a kiss on my cheek and ran away to play with people nearer her age.