On why she doesn't write.

Do you find you don't rhyme because you're scared?

When you read as much as I do, it's a wonder one ever winds up putting pen to paper at all, because the 'anxiety of authorship' (and the fact that I know what it is in the first place) rests heavy on what feel like increasingly fragile shoulders.

I'm scared that nothing I ever write will be a fraction as fine as some of the things I've read. And since I'm afraid of laying bare my soul, for I can't do it as eloquently as I'd like, I write very little verse. And when I do, most times, it is in French. To make it even less accessible than any poetry, by virtue of being a window into your own personal semiosphere, already is.

I'm just a scared little girl, me.

But I like Warhol's golden heels.

I will wear them diamond dust shoes.

Colonial Hangovers

I've come to a conclusion. It mightn't be radical, but appears sufficiently *true* even as I play with it in my head, coming at it from as many angles as I can think of. You know how students out West, especially in England, take a 'gap-year' between high-school and university? It's a trend that's fast catching on, so I'm going to assume you know what I'm on about. Well, the amazing alacrity with which they wander the world, thinking that it IS, in very deed (I love 'New Grub Street' for this phrase alone) their ruddy insert-shell-fish-of-choice-here:compute- oyster, has a distinct forebear.

These are the children of Empire. The sons and daughters of ethnographers, historians, naturalists, adventurers, buccaneers, mercenaries, merchants and administrators past. The number of them who show up in India every year is pretty damn high - heck, it used to be the starting point of most conversations, when people used to try and chat up your 'umble writer in her student/bar-maid-at-a-pub-in-ye-olde-Blighty avatar: "Where are you from, love? India? Really? I LOVE INDIA! I spent most of my gap-year there, smoking some really good shit in Goa before moving on to Kerala, Delhi and Bombay!"all the while playing Indiana Jones, looking to 'rediscover' the jewel in the crown that once was. Just like the scores who came out before them, during the high-noon of the Raj.

These are the kids to the colonial hangover born. Consider the *authority* which informs most social history/travel writing from the 19th century onwards. See the writings of even a Liberal like Gladstone, for example. Or CA Kincaid. Or Colonel Todd; en bref, my point is this: These were people for whom the world was laid out, on the great A'Tuin's gigantic back if you like, to explore and make sense of as they would. They constructed their own realities, and in so doing, their histories, historiographies, geographies, sociologies, anthropologies and nations.

Our present-day breed of 'gap-year' backpackers haven't the same advantage of Empire that their ancestors did. They *do*, however, still have the same maverick spirit of exploration and the money (I'm tempted to add 'pilfered from the East over centuries', but I won't. Oh wait. I just did) to feed this yen to 'travel'. There are differences too, mind you. Unlike the Orientalists of yore, who came here to see/hear/experience/feel India in their bones, a lot of the newcomers are content to visit hackneyed places on the tourist map, where they can kick up their feet, smoke good weed for very little money, meet and spend time *exclusively* with other tourists (White-Caucasian-uninterested-in-immersing-themselves-in-the-sounds-colours-and-lives-here) bitch about how "awful these Indians are" and what harrowing trials they've had to undergo in that crowded bazaar in Pushkar, go back home in a few months, and chat up another (not so) hapless Indian chick in a student pub near Uni.

Oh well.

On truth(s); momentary and otherwise

I saw something on TV the other day which sickened me to the gut. Much that is sordid-lurid-despicable is on air currently, purporting to reflect who we are as a people and what it is those benign assholes who pass off for channel ideators/producers *think* (that's me showcasing my much vaunted 'generosity of spirit') we want to see. This wasn't just that. This was horrendously hurtful, not to mention more than a little harmful to one's general well-being. Notice how I slipped in the 3-point alliteration without diluting/distorting the import of what I was trying to say. Nicely done, H. Smooth. Yes, I *write* to myself. Someone has to.

The travesty I'm on about is 'The Moment of Truth', where people are paid money - and a hell of a lot of it too - to answer painfully personal questions 'truthfully'. On national television. A lie-detector determines whether they're being honest or not. Each of the relatively simple questions in the beginning of the show give the contestant increments of 5000$, then jumping on to 10s of thousands of dollars, before doubling and trebling the amounts in question, ending at something like 5,00,000$ for, what is it, 20 questions? If this sounds too good to be true, it is. Like most things.

I'm sure a lot of us think of ourselves as being *good* or *honest* people, no less righteous than the next person. While this is all very well, we often discount the fact that being honest does not equate exactly with telling someone every gory detail about what we feel for them at any given time. Consider this: we love our families, for the most part. But how many of you can honestly say you haven't had an uncharitable thought about how this cousin can be a real retard, or that aunt a bitch who could put Hitler to shame? Does this, however, affect your ability to carry on living life as best you can, or *being* a family? Consider now what would happen if you went onto national television and told each of these people what you really thought about them. Sure, you could walk away up to 5,00,000 $ richer, but at what cost? Does anyone know what new families are going for on the market these days?

Our lives are meticulously constructed, based as they are on how we function and build relationships - personal, social, professional and otherwise. It is poignant omissions and occasional white lies which allow this edifice to keep from crumbling; crashing and burning everything in its wake. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating lying. Far from it. I *am*, however, suggesting that telling someone you're about to marry that you still fantasise about your ex is not something you ought to get paid for. It's also not the best idea in the world to do it on national TV. Give them a cuppa tea spiked with brandy, sit them down and have this chat if you must. It's kinder. Really.

I guess this rant is about recognising fallacy for what it is. A convenient, important part of the glue that holds societies-extended families-lives together. Denigrate it another day. Today, sing paeans to it instead.

Oh, the horror of it all

I saw 'Khatta Meetha' last night - by accident, as it happens. For those of you familiar with my hemming-and-hawing style, you've got to have picked up on the fact that something is very wrong. H does *not* cut to the chase like this. Unless she's spending it all on the title - remember that Delhi piece? It remains my favourite one to-date. Anyhow, it was the only movie we could get tickets for on a Tuesday night which saw 89.56% of the population of Ahmedabad struggle to fit into 3 cinema halls. True story.

I didn't want to see it, but we were already there, it was beginning to rain; let's just say we thought we could do worse than to sit in a movie hall and watch what we naively presumed would be just another mindless flick.

It wasn't. It was the head-fuck from hell. I can *do* mindless - I don't have a chip on my elegant Parsi shoulder about that; but this was just wrong. The moral axis of the movie's semiosphere was so skewed, it was bloody horizontal. A flat-line; no heartbeat. Whether it's the hero's "lovable hooligan" of a side-kick staring in on an unsuspecting woman bathing, or the hero slapping the love of his life because she ignored his diktat to boycott their college exam, this movie affords innumerable examples of everything that we know to be wrong, even as it holds up the mirror to a society which winks, nudges, and condones these 'slights'. I could barely breathe in there; that is how angry this movie made me.

What exacerbated things, of course, was seeing the full-to-capacity theatre wet itself laughing at inanities so over-the-top/phy-sic(k)al-slap-sticky/done-to-death/racist-sexist-classist, that even my pet toad, had I one, would have sickened at the sight/sound of it. I despair (it *can* be used as a verb. Shut up). And fear.

To echo my-10-minute-ago-self, Oh, the horror of it all.

And...

No longer paranoid about proliferation (nuclear, literary or otherwise),
Consumed as always by the anxiety of authorship, she writes.
Again.

Yes, it's been a while. I still read too much to write often; no, I won't let that always stop me, and yes, these might indeed be (in)famous last words.

It isn't like I've had nothing to say - there've been thingspeopleplaces I've donebeenwithseen. But. Such is the life of a procrastinator who puts off indefinitely that which she doesn't, absolutely, have to *do* right this instant. It is, therefore, now or pretty certainly never. The strange thing is, this hasn't been one of those days when to write was not an option. It's just another gray (the only spelling the Americans ever got right - so much prettier than grey, IMHO) afternoon, and there is much that is beautiful about my lush environs. I'm in town, at work, whiling away my time instead of reading (what is admittedly a darn fine history book) 'The Flaws in the Jewel', which divides the British Raj into four rather audaciously labelled phases: "Greed, Scorn, Fear, Indifference". Dismiss these terms as facile at your own risk - they're rather handy and contain more than a grain of truth.

The bit that interests me most is 'Indifference'. Remember we're not talking about boots you no longer use or a coat you no longer wear. We're talking about a realm. About millions of people. About a historical course which can never double back to that which it was before the *event* under discussion distorted it irretrievably. Indifference. What a loaded, destructive, beautiful word. A 'terrible beauty', to borrow from one of my favourite paradoxes.

I'd take this somewhere, I would, but I'm going to go watch Salt instead.

Hold this thought. Muse (Calliope, please) over it. Savour it like a swig of Cointreau which burns your innards on its way down, and revel in the oppressive heat it generates in you.

I'll probably be back.

Paranoid Proliferation?

Bajeezzus - some people I know are SO prolific, they've almost managed to scare me away from this, my first post in, well...I don't know - a while? Excuse the illiterate (it's an ellision of 'by' and 'Jesus', of course) and immodest outburst. It was brought on by this, my first "signing in" in a few weeks. The "Blogs I Follow" screen threw me a little off guard, what with showing me the million and five posts (by all of 6 people, mind you) I need to 'follow' up on.

Right, that out of the way, hello! My name is Harmony and - what the hell; we've done this bit already if you've found your way here, nein? Moving quickly on then, I thought I'd write today because a curious epidemic seems about ready to engorge a lot of musicians I know. I fear for their safety and well-being. It's a certain little thing called, popularly, I'm given to understand, megalomania. A certain Trent Reznor (the creative force behind Nine Inch Nails) suffers from it. Roger Waters fell prey to it too, aeons ago. What got me thinking about this was the mass exodus 'real' music seems to be facing today - scores of musicians I know (and ruddy good ones at that) are trouping and trekking en masse into the realms of electronica, leaving behind the virtuosity they brought to their guitars, their drums, their vocals. WHY, I've often wondered, is this happening? Learning how to play an instrument was, in some ways, akin to spinning, in terms of Gandhian symbolism - it is your own personal (and beautifully secular) prayer. Why take the 'easier' way out? Because it's there? I mean, is it the easy availability of sounds you can't generate from 'traditional' instruments; tonality which you can play with and tweak to create new soundscapes? The urge to move, therefore, beyond normative sound and structure? But then, do you use this IN something, or does this soundscape BECOME the 'thing'? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

Or is this a different problem altogether; one which raises wider socio-cultural questions and points to circulating and effective hegemonies which require a different kind of theorising? Is it easy access (by way of Fruity Loops, Garage Band and a host of other media) to what can be (and so often IS) musical megalomania? Does it stem out of the inability we seem to face, increasingly, to communicate that which is 'on the inside' to people (a band) on the outside, who haven't got access to our internal soundscapes? If you need everything to sound 'just so', and only YOU can translate what you hear in your head, (and since you can't play all the instruments there are - unless you're bloody talented and have a lot of time on your hands), it's obvious you're going to shun live musicians and find a friend in your computer instead...

Think about it - Reznor refuses to play with a steady line-up, lest anyone try and 'contribute' their own 'thing' to his sound. Waters became increasingly incorrigible too; near impossible to work with. These guys turned into musical dictators, stifling what cannot exist but for light, freedom and improvisation.
Whatever the reason/s may be, we're in a precarious position here. I don't want to sound like Yeats in 'Easter, 1914', but my litany is almost as long. How many more (as Crosby sings in 'Ohio')? How many will we lose, and for what dubious gain? "A terrible beauty is born, " the poet wrote. I hope he proves to be more poetic than prophetic.

‘GEZ’ing at a better future: A quest for alternative imaginaries

This is a piece I wrote for Tehelka recently. I wasn't thrilled with the way it was edited, so here's the 'original' version. The idea is a bloody brilliant one, mind you - GEZ away, say I...

The much-bandied and obscurantised term ‘development’ has never been an innocent one. In its wake has followed displacement and disinheritance, especially when it has come to be regarded as separate from and inorganic to the cultures of the lands it purports to ‘change’.

As a response to what they perceive as the brutality inherent to the highly popular ‘Special Economic Zone’ model, which has for its basis crass economic commercialisation, the Adivasi communities of Gujarat have formulated a novel counterpoint; an idea they call the ‘Green Economic Zone’, shortened to ‘GEZ’, which, since it sounds like ‘gaze’, is a play on the idea that they have a clear vision for the future.

“Any form of development which does not have for its foundation the concepts of sustainability, ecological sensitivity and an ingrained understanding of the cultural roots of a people is genocidal by definition,” says well-known tribal activist, author, literary critic and founder-director of the seminal Adivasi Academy at Tejgarh, Dr Ganesh Devy. It is to address these ‘wants’ in the SEZ model that the Adivasis are proposing GEZ in its stead.

It has been almost a decade now since Adivasis in 1200 villages across the south and south-eastern belt of Gujarat started working “quietly, but purposively”, as Dr Devy puts it, to create a massive network of micro-credit federations. “Similarly they have been setting up their own food-grain banks, water harvesting cooperatives, organic agriculture practices, and have set up and run informal centres of learning. All this work began when a group of young Adivasis met at Tejgarh in 2000 and resolved to make their villages free of hunger, indebtedness, exploitation arising out of illiteracy, and migration arising out of helplessness,” he explains.

This team of dedicated ‘karyakartas’ has now decided to create several Green Economic Zones, eventually covering some 2200 villages which fall between the Tapti river in the south and the Mahi in the north, with the Narmada flowing in between. What is striking about the GEZs is that, unlike their namesakes, they seek to court neither foreign investment nor exploit natural resources. “We have, over the years, collected the seed capital we need to launch this initiative, and since the idea is to respect and integrate local custom and resource at every step of the way and create 100% employment for the people who live and work in these GEZs, it would be against our credo to treat the issue of investment otherwise,” says Dr Devy.

This massive initiative was launched at the Academy in Tejgarh on June 5th, from where the assembled group of community workers, students and faculty of the Adivasi Academy, joined in their efforts by human rights activists, villagers, educationists, writers, theatre artists and other ‘green-development’ sympathisers from all walks of life started on a week long march over the course of which they covered some 175+ villages, spread over an area of 3000 sq. kms, spanning the region between Tejgarh and Vedchi, Rajpipla and Vankoda, Naroda and Rangpur. This march, lasting from June 5-12, was named the “Vivekshil Vikas Mate No Pravas” (A march for judicious or wise and ‘sound’ development). Including all those who joined the Pravas at various stages, the group numbered around 1800 people, a number culled from across the country and abroad.

At each stop along the route, the volunteer workers were split into teams which covered the given district on foot, engaging the villagers, Sarpanches and local Panchayats in discussion, every step of the way. After initiating them into the ideas behind the GEZ philosophy and how it would translate into employment and uplift for their communities, the teams would then rendezvous late in the evening and go over the day’s developments, sifting through the information gathered and enlisting people for the execution of the tasks ahead.

The atmosphere at the academy in Tejgarh on June 5, before the march began, was electric to say the least. The morning was spent going over the entire idea’s raison d’être – the whys wherefores and burgeoning necessity for GEZ to find room in the popular imagination. The day began on a high-note as the Sarpanch of Tejgarh came forward to pledge that the country’s first GEZ would be established in and around his village, quickly followed by news that Palia would follow suite; and this even before the Pravas had officially begun. At the end of this initiative, the number stands at 129 villages. They have each now signed a declaration saying that they would like to have Green Zones created in their villages.

Present as key-speakers on the occasion were, among others, Mahasweta Devi, the venerable doyenne of Indian letters and social activism, who said, “All my life I have searched for the ‘genuine’; that sentiment of selfless service which manifests itself in only a handful. In Ganesh and the people at the Adivasi Academy, I stand vindicated. We are at a crossroads in space and time – there is anticipation in the air; it is as if we know that something big is either about to pass or give way disastrously. This is history in the making. West Bengal needs the GEZ idea as much as, if not more than, Gujarat does – you are all familiar with what has happened in Singur and Nandigram. These are the outcomes of a world which has lost sight of what is truly important. Seize this moment and win the day.” With these rousing words, containing all the sonority of a battle-cry, Mahasweta Devi addressed the assembled karyakartas, just before they set forth on what could perhaps, given time, prove to be the veritable turning-point in the history of ‘development’. The moment when a people long dispossessed set out to reclaim their world, and in so doing gave it a new lease on life.