Daughters of Shame; By Jasvinder Sanghera.

I have only just begun after finishing the first one - Shame - in two days, and this one naturally takes off with a flying start. Every one goes to heart. One wishes one could do something, even if it is only to hold the hurt little ones and reassure them.
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It took a couple of days longer to finish this one, since it gets rather oppressing to realise it is all quite so ubiquitous - a systematic physical and emotional and in fact every other form of abuse of daughters geared towards using them as currency to keeping up one's own social prestige. Young girls somewhere around their teens, from as early as preteen to as late as early twenties, are held hostage to the concepts of honour that involve a slavery or worse for the women concerned, with no concern for their mental or emotional or often even physical well being and the only concern being to hand them over and to make them docile and servile to the men who own them in a farce of a marriage.

These forced relationships are really not marriages, they are a male bound (in his ownership of her) to a woman, often as young as fourteen and expected to be a robot in her compliance with the expectations of her from everyone including in offering no resistance to rape by the husband (he has often no concept of any other form of a relationship with a wife), with both cheated of any possible joy or love in the relationship and in fact in life. There are frequent enough instances of the young wife's father offering to murder her if she is unwilling to allow a consummation of a forced marriage. And all this in a community that claims to give rights to women what with a formality of a consent asked in public at the wedding, which often is given on threat of murder ensuing non compliance from her of course.

These girls, even when they grow up in UK going to schools there with the local population, are not really familiar with any other world than the one the community forces on them what with rules of behaviour pertaining to all spheres of life, and they have a window in the schooling years to a better world with more freedom - albeit with dangers too, but then freedom with dangers is better than dangers guaranteed at home! But even when they have a courage and spirit to try to take a flight to a better life, often what cripples them is this very inability to connect to any other life when the old life steeped in the community is cut off from them.

And why should the community be cut off if they do attempt a better life? It is because in the communities - not all Asians, but those from a particular region in Asia, and of some but not all religions in those parts - the possibility of a daughter or a woman with any choice, any possible better life is simply unthinkable. Not that men of the community benefit in this, and one has to question who does. After all a family with a mother and wife unhappy and daughters disallowed to blossom cannot possibly be happy, they just don't know any different. And people who are not happy at home are easier to control.

So the mores imposed like a poisonous weed flourish to the extent that when a girl, a young woman leaves a home in fear for her life and in protest against a forced marriage, often with as honourable a wish as an aspiration to education, she is hunted out again and again until she gives in - and the whole community is a part of it until she is unable to find any solace in familiarity of the world she has known by meeting any people of her own community even when they are strangers. Even a person working for governmental institutions in UK who are supposed to help her and protect her might find his (or her) loyalty to the community override the work ethic, and inform on her, resulting in her being hunted out by those intent on kidnapping and - or - murdering her. Emotional blackmail is used successfully too, and some women do cave in after a while.

All this if the young one escapes in the first place. Until Jasvinder Sanghera started educating the police and schools and other institutions of UK that could and should help and protect the young in the immigrant communities of the nation about the issues involved, and pointed out that being sensitive to culture difference was resulting in murder and kidnapping and rapes and general abuse of the young British Asian girls, there was really no way for them to escape, no route as such. Often they did go to teachers and police, but with no help forthcoming.

Now, there is a growing lot of institutional help what with a growing awareness about the issues, and hopefully there will be a growth in the enlightenment of the general community too, resulting in more education and benefit for everyone, with a better quality of life.

Marriages can be arranged without being forced, Queen Victoria was key in arranging her children's and grandchildren's marriages with holidays arranged so the young could meet and be familiar - just an example.

In the world wide expatriate community rooted in India the "arranging" merely amounts to the young ones being free of concern for hunting out and wooing their partners until their education and career concerns are at a stage satisfactory enough to find a partner, and the family along with the various other routes used by dating agencies in the world - advertisements, marriage agencies, websites now - help to locate possible choices.

Often a young person looks at the data selected for him or her with a few candidates shortlisted from the few hundred or so responses, there are meetings arranged where the young have a conversation with some privacy and might judge how they feel, and each has a possibility of saying if they wish to proceed to be engaged (which is when they get to meet more, but still on relative privacy, chaperoned by a member or few of either family or both).

In effect, this amounts to either person being as well educated and able to pursue his or her career as the family and the circumstances afford, all things considered. Hence the wide spread progress in the majority of people with roots in India, with excellence in education and career being a foundation considered important.

And it does help when one is not supposed to deviate from those aims while still young, not worry about being popular or learning to use cosmetics or being with fashion. One might do it a bit but it is far from a stigma to be plain, simple and good at academic and other achievements - on the contrary. In addition, often someone who finds love is able to deal with it, since such a concept is not considered evil but merely something the family has to deal with on par with any other way of finding a partner.

The key difference of the two pictures, of course, is - education, career, choices, and a help with finding a partner rather than the family forcing one at a young age out of a good life into a bed with an unwanted stranger against one's protests and in fear for life.

And the most major key difference is the concept of family and woman, with a forced marriage being based on no recognition of individual, considering everyone as a property of the family, and any individual choices being threatening to the honour of the family. This idea of the honour being so fragile as to be threatened by a blossoming of the family is the root of all the evil described here.

In the wider Asian community rooted in India, honour is neither so fragile nor dependent on the living death of the family and women - on the contrary. It is the growth and blossoming of the family - including the women - with education and achievements and careers and progress that is key in the wider community, these essentials replacing the killingly misplaced concept of honour that are used in forced marriages.

There can be no honour in forcing a woman to marry, (or even a man unless he has played with a woman or raped her - and even then it is no good for her - ) - much less in abusing and kidnapping and having her raped by the officially designated person in the name of one's own prestige in the community. Such a concept makes one a slave owner and one's family robots, no more.
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At one point there is a further analysis of the situation of immigrants, with some commonalities to the general migrants around the world (including the various colonial rulers through the ages in lands far away from their roots) but with some frightening consequences in this case.

The immigrants in UK, even those of Asian origin and even those that speak a particular language or two that are related to one another really, are further divided by one important difference - that of religion. And while two out of the various different religions in this context have a concept of "honour" about ownership of daughters to such an extent they would rather hunt out a woman and murder her, there is one that allows, indeed takes pride in its tradition of, easy divorces. This usually does not in practice result in a freedom for a woman although in theory that is the idea - in practice it results in the woman being cast aside as soon as her forced husband has achieved his aim of getting a legal status his own to settle in UK. Then he is free to bring another bride from back home, one unable to speak English, with no ties and no support for her in UK. And thus the community grows - grows as immigrants growing further apart from the ambient society even as they grow in number. And in this lie the roots of much of the disturbance plaguing the world today.

These immigrants have no ties to the land they live in, have little or no intention of being connected much less absorbed or even a part of a salad bowl. All the pain and travails of being far away from one's emotional roots are translated thus into a hatred of the very society they clamour so much to be legally a part of, with marriages paving a way as a ladder to climb from being an Asian to a UK citizen.
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Other parts of the community, those without easy divorces, have had ties to other just as horrible ways to take their pain and hatred out on another part of the world - back home, in fact, with much pain inflicted in attempt to carve out pieces of a land they left behind; they do not and never did intend to return, of course, merely to attempt a show of what they could do. The talk of a separate homeland goes on still amongst these migrants to faraway lands while back home it has gone away, it never was a real possibility there with the community so very widespread as to make it another farce.

Those immigrants, with no easy divorces allowed in their faith, instead resort to killing the daughters that do not comply with being objects traded for prestige.
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Again, majority of the world wide population with roots in India have not so much fear or aversion to being integrated into the ambient society where they live, however gently - most migrants do not easily give way to losing their own culture, and indeed flourishing of such cultural gardens is a key to growth of nations that are not xenophobic. But they do accept the children growing up abroad with them as part of the nations they have migrated to and while they might impart their cultural values and attempt to keep in touch with relatives back home or fellow immigrants around, marriages are not forced and education a matter of pride as is any other achievement, and of course careers.

Marriages of children with local population or other immigrants (not of one's own culture but those of roots far away) do happen and are accepted, and attempts are made sincerely to make things work. In fact often enough a first generation immigrant ends up marrying a person from the place he or she has been living in, and such marriages are accepted too, and often work quite well.

Which is not to say things are all perfect in one community or another - only, that the practices of one or two of the communities of the general "Asian" immigrants in UK are far from ubiquitous of the region of their origin as a whole.
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In fact, the people mentioned in this book, with forced marriages and abuse and rapes and killings and kidnappings in name of prestige (I don't, really don't think it is honour in any way for anyone, it is only prestige and status!) - they remind me of another set of migrants, those of Asians in US (which there means orientals, that is, mostly with roots in China and related lands).

Chinatowns in US have long had the notoriety of being difficult for the local or state or any other agencies in the country to deal with, and there is generally little protection for the people being smuggled in and trafficked as labour or white slaves.

The difference is, in UK they do it to their own daughters and wives and family members. Not just fellow community members, as in Chinatowns of US, but actually their own blood - daughters and sisters and nieces - and life partners.

And often sons too.
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Shame; by Jasvinder Sangheera.

I am not sure if this was the book published under the name Bezti, meaning dishonour, with death threats for the writer subsequently from males of various Asian communities in UK including - especially - the one she belonged to.

There have been various books and films about the travails of the children growing up in Asian immigrant communities, with a mixed heritage including a contrast of home and surroundings - East Is East being a very popular and famous one amongst them. That one has a mixed ancestry at home to begin with, and the travails of a brood mostly male, while this one gives the real dire version of immigrants (sans mixed race) living in localities where the populations are mostly people like themselves, so the version here is the starker one.

Both are about the insularity of the first generation immigrant parents to the ambient society and its values and opportunities, which often has children caught between the world of parents that they are trying to recreate half a world away, and the ambient society the children live in and also belong to, far more than the parents do. The recent very well received Bend It Like Beckham is another milder version of the reality, where the edges have been trimmed to show a community mostly doing well. This one goes into the travails, the horrors, the swept-under-the-rug realities.

If I were not exhausted when I began reading this it would have been finished in one go, and as it is it was in two days - never read anything that fast for a long time now, and generally I take time to savour reading. But this one cannot put down, not easily. Moreover, when I began and was only about halfway there was some question about if it was a work based on the general stereotype albeit there was no doubt about the authenticity of the whole life depicted herein, of a community living half a world away from their roots and trying to preserve ties to home by the worst route possible, by keeping to the dark ages practices that are now only in poor or rural or generally unenlightened communities back "home", but are far gone into oblivion, especially in urban or middle class and above or educated and enlightened parts of the society (especially in India).

At a few pages more, however. there was no doubt as to the reality, the absolute authenticity of the story being completely autobiographical. One pities the poor rural folk that go to distant lands half a world away and live there in urban settings but dare not open their hearts and eyes and minds to the whole new world of opportunities open to them through education and other freedoms, and work hard and menial labour to preserve and create another copy of their social setting back home where they came from. But this pity can only go so far, while the brunt of their burden is carried willy nilly by the hapless women - indeed little girls - of the emigrants and at the pain of death too, not merely physical abuse and worse.

In a poor society, when the social setting makes it imperative to balance the reality with aspirations, one can understand a lot about marrying children while still young - especially when both the groom and bride are of a compatible age.

There is a twofold reason for this, the urgent one being a security for a girl found early in form of a home and clan that claims her and would at the very least be likely to strike back at anyone harming her, so a girl thereafter can grow up with relative safety from male adults around. A girl in her teens in a poor locality, either rural setting or an urban slum, and without parents strong and rich enough to protect her in the former, might be prey to unsavoury male adults around; but a knowledge of a husband somewhere generally deters such attention from being at a level where the husband and his clan might be obliged to defend or avenge her honour with death of anyone offending.

The other reason of course is that people do wish to secure a marriage for a daughter and if the social custom is to do it early then waiting might leave no good possibilities of a match for her around in the society. So the family tries to find the best possible match for her by doing it early enough so the best possible match is not lost (with another family getting it instead) due to waiting. If the society one lives in has a norm of children being married by the age of eight, one benefits by looking as early as childbirth for a match, and begins to lose by the time the child - especially a daughter - is near ten. Such might be, in fact is, the reality in many parts of the world.

This is far from saying it is desirable much less universally so, and as a matter of fact even in Panjaab (usually spelt Pubjab) where most of immigrants termed "Asian" hail from, there is no dearth of families with better practices and women who not only are not forced into an unwanted marriage (goes without saying men are forced into marriages quite often too, although women suffer more either way), but in fact very often women are exemplary in their careers and they in fact have set universally shining examples too.

Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi and many many more such women hail from smaller towns of Panjaab, and for that matter even Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Provoked is her autobiography) is from a small village - she had had a college education before her relatives looked for a match and she was very central to the process (unlike the daughters of the immigrants in UK who are forced with no voice in the matter) of finding a suitable person, as is usual in an "arranged marriage", a key difference from a forced marriage. Kiranjit Ahluwalia had not known trouble much less pain or abuse until she married a man living in - born and brought up in - UK; and this too is common, daughters in India finding pain and abuse only after they are married.

But when people emigrate to a free country such as UK from rural parts of poorer countries, and then do not see much less allow themselves or their children to take advantage of all the possible opportunities, education and career and development of mind and self, much evil results - and it is all here in this little account of a life and surroundings. And this includes not only beatings and locking up the daughters, but rapes too, by brothers and uncles - since the males bear no burden of keeping virtue by any norm while the women bear it in every way possible.

In a sense one might say such immigrants live in a time warp, where they hang on to a culture they think is theirs but are in fact contributing to the creation of one that is changing rapidly back home for far better, even as they are creating a draconian version of it in a far more liberal and progressive society, wasting all opportunities in their blind quest to hold on to what they left behind.

It is all the more pathetic and horrible therefore to find that those you might think - and they do in fact think - are in a better position in the world are not only harking back to but rather creating all on their own a version of dark ages far worse than one can imagine, what with daughters not allowed to wear clothes worn in society around or possess mobile phones or not being allowed to speak to their local peers (plenty of racism and other forms of discrimination involved, with only those from one's own original roots being termed one's community). Or of course finally being forced into marriages before they are eighteen, with deception of a holiday visiting relatives used to force them to marry and then leave them before they come back (so they can work in low paying jobs to sponsor the new unwanted husbands to arrive in UK) - and in all this suffering physical abuse and other forms of abuse plenty. The descriptions here, all factual, are horrific.

One relatively recent Indo-Canadian documentary film (Canada is the other country where a major population of immigrants from rural Panjaab and neighbourhoods to the north and west of Panjaab flock to) showed a mother living in Canada hiring killers and ordering them to murder her daughter and son-in-law, for the sin of having married someone in India having fallen in love on a visit, against her - the mother's - will. The killers had the daughter speak to the mother on the cell phone, the daughter pleaded for her life and asked forgiveness for having married and assured her she was happy in the marriage; the mother listened and then asked the daughter to give the phone to the assailants. Then she asked her to kill the daughter. The son-in-law was beaten up badly, left unconscious unable to save his much beloved bride, and has been in hiding until the time of the film; the poor and much grieved, bereaved mother-in-law of the dead girl, filmed in the poor rural house she lives in where the loving daughter in law had "adjusted very well" in spite of being a well to do woman from a rich nation, had her body brought home and cremated as per tradition with all the ceremony involved, since the mother couldn't care less apparently, and the body had been thrown in a ditch along the road where she was murdered.

Read Provoked, read this one, and then there is the recent film (Heaven On Earth) too, by Mehta. And then ask yourself if you have been closing your eyes to such gross injustice, nay, crimes and sins, around your home. Chances are, it might be so. School teachers and other authorities in UK have been aware of it all for a few decades, what with students from certain background regularly going missing and their marriages no secret. When they die, just as often it is termed accident or suicide, conveniently. The community knows the truth of honour killings, has always done and has condoned it too.

What is truly wonderful is how this young spirit struggles again and again overcoming various deprivations and abuses, and more than coping finds paths out of the locked situation that others like her are staying in; and what is more goes all out to help others like herself, after getting a degree from a university while caring for her small children and helping other women, and yet dealing with the abusive males (not by passive acceptance, but attempting to have a good marriage until it is clear it won't happen) - and is forging ahead too.

I am already beginning the sequel, Daughters of Shame.

Jane Austen - Sense And Sensibility, Pride And Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma

Every time one reads Austen, it is a different experience.

Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.

One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.

A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all its soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.

And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.

A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.

A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.

The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.

One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.

On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.

Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.

Provoked; by Kiranjit Ahluwalia, Rahila Gupta.

Rarely does one come across a true life story lived so courageously and the account told so simply - most people prefer to brush things under rug for sake of social pretensions and economic considerations. Few care about a life or a million wasted as long as it is lives of women, in the process forgetting that women are mothers and home carers who bring up choldren, and sacrificing them and their lives and their health and conerns is not exactly healthy for the children in any way whatsoever, whatever the gender of the children.

How could anyone forget Provoked - the book I read quite recently, this year that is, but the film came perhaps earlier and I am unsure if it was this year or last.

The film is a good make from the book and it is amazing how well a city born well educated Aishwarya Rai - she had a couple of years, perhaps three, of architecture before her Miss World crown - played a girl from a small village in way far Punjaab.

There are some factors kept out, though not quite hidden and changed, from the book to the film.

For one thing Kiranjit was not uneducated, she had been to college in Gujarat where her brothers were well to do, and then had visited her other siblings in UK and Canada to find a husband, while the guy who persued her through the usual channels did it against his parents' wishes in not worrying about their consent to begin with.

Subsequently she did work in UK and was appreciated in her workplace too.

All this was kept out perhaps because people have a simple - and false - equation in their minds, that any woman abused by a husband must be an illiterate simpleton. Disabusing this notion in this story, a difficult one already where one has to understand an abused woman murdering her husband, would have been a formidable task, and perhaps it was wisdom to leave that to another time.

But fact of the matter is simple solutions such as education and economic independence and financial security are just that - simple, but not quite solutions. None of those prevent women from being abused by a husband, a lover, or any other male willing to try. The change required is civilisation of males of human species.

What Women Want; by Patricia Ireland.

Dignity, Justice, Security, Humanity, and a civilised society. Being able to live without fear of the fellow men or afraid of being perceived as objects, and finding love without fear of being treated as those that are rightfully duped or fearlessly attacked - that would be roughly the agenda.

Equal pay for equal work and rewards for ability would be the goal every human aspires to and women are denied generally without men and frequently women seeing any injustice in this unequal view, since most peoples' perception is blinded by the overwhelming attention they pay to gender.

Think how famous a Bobbit or a Kiranjit Ahluwalia is, and then think of how many men you personally know to have brutalised their wives and children, and justified it.

Think of your own response to the sexual harrassment of an employee by an employer - when the former is a female you think, why does she not leave such a job, she deserves it or maybe she wants it, after all she is putting herself out there for money and risking her goodness as a woman by going amongst men. But when the latter is a woman, and the former is a male, he gets to throw the whole shebang at her of course, no one would say he ought to leave and find another job.

Or think Fatal Attraction - what if the tables were turned, what if the erring partner in the marriage was a woman and the lover came after her because they were expecting a baby together? Would he die, murdered by her, encouraged by her husband?

Most cases it is not that drastic, it is about seeing things for what they are, without prior prejudice along what institutions insist on gender roles. Fairness is what women want, and love - or the possibility of growing it; a life for all of humanity without fear of half the humanity.

Ganga Descends; by Ruskin Bond.

We had returned from a journey along the river to two of her sources and very pervaded with the essence of the river and the memory of the whole experience, and so when we saw the book, that too by RB, it was inevitable to buy it even in those days of counting pennies, and it was with a hope of recapturing some of our memories and experiences forever.

Beautiful pictures, of course, and writing as benefic as the river - and why not, he lives in the neighbourhood, has done for a long time now - but of course the book had both more and less than what we had lived for a short period. Every life, every journey after all is different.

I think we have both the copies, one reading and other coffee table small for the pictures. Those are after all the memory keys.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers; by Maria Augusta Trapp.

I remember reading this long ago, and several years later when driving about in Vermont I managed to find the place where the Trapp family has managed to make a second home after leaving Austria. They told us Maria Von Trapp usually came down early to dinner, but we could not wait too long, driving in dark in rather unfamiliar hills would be risky. We waited as long as we could and then went away.

Another decade and more, and now we were in Salzburg, the hometown of Maria and her family where in fact they have special Sound Of Music tours. We took the comprehensive which included a couple of the important sights anyway. It was funny to discover that the house shown in the film, the Von Trapp home, is in fact two different houses, one with a lake front and another where there is the driveway. The chapel is very popular for weddings.

None of that compares with the delightful writing of Maria Von Trapp - the anecdotes, the simplicity, the spirited young woman who grew into a loving and still spirited mother of ten - she lost two of her own and had seven from her husband's previous marriage.

Some that stick in memory are the episode about the sandwiches, the camera, the baby that did not stop crying and embarrassed the mother (and runs the place now), the horse and the house and the singing camps, the woman who told the greengrocer indignantly "ten cents? I can become a cabbage myself around the corner for five cents" - perhaps my memory is incorrect about the cents number, but other than that it is as fresh as the film based on the story.

In Great Waters 1939-45: The Epic Story of the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-45; by Spencer Dunmore.

The subject is sort of a side facet of the whole history of the war, with main stage being the continent of Europe and the second, perhaps more important, being the resolute holding on by British, and the later tough fight by Russians.

But all along, the battle of Atlantic was a key factor, and Allies could not afford to lose it or give way any more than the world could afford to make treaty and stop fighting in name of wistful dreaming of Peace, which sometimes one has to win when endangered by forces against it.

Britain could then fight openly, but however convinced Roosevelt was that the forces of darkness had to be defeated, he was bound by the various facets of his nation that he had to herd along before he could join his nation in the battle on the side of right.

The battle of Atlantic is here told in some detail, with descriptions of U-boats attacking convoys ferrying hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and in turn the British giving a tough fight back. There is the Enigma and its having been broken and yet the necessity of keeping the fact secret - and hence sacrifice of unsuspecting sailors. There is the various instances of British treating the pow Germans well, to their surprise, since they had been doing the opposite and expected the worst treatment in return.

There is the background of U-boat, the so named wolf pack that was officially and otherwise much celebrated in Germany, since they were perceived as the front and the dangers of their lives very well understood. However, they succeeded for long enough to forget about the last part and then had surprises.

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany; by Hans J. Massaquoi

There is generally little heard about how "other" people fared in pre-war Germany, in the darkness that enveloped the nation. Here is one window, with an astonishing tale of a boy who was born and raised German, with his father a member of the diplomatic core of an African nation with a distinct class structure of its own.

This boy grew up taking the difference of skin colour as casually as that of colours of clothes, and his mates as well as his teachers did nothing to break that either, until such time as the distiction was no longer invisible so to speak. He gives a moving description of how he was a sudden hero himself by association when an African American won the gold medal at an Olympic event in Munich, and he felt proud of his other race, and his classmates asked him questions about the Olympic hero as distant from him as from them.

Survived through the war he went in serach of his other roots in Africa, and tried to find a life - and eventually migrated to US. He compares the two nations, his first and his last, and no surprises there, the last does not come off much better than the first.

His mother staunchly tells him to not allow anyone to tell him he is less than anyone, ever - and not on the basis of his being half German, either. He is a child born in love, and that is a strength never lost. This keeps him from sinking in a morass that many cannot help drowning in.

Contact; by Carl Sagan.

From attempted discovery of aliens to space travel through worm holes across light years to questions of what is conveniently termed paranormal, fear of which makes mobs of normal rational people willing to discredit the respected and persecute the fellow humans, even colleagues and other well known professionals.

It is a bit like watching someone painstakingly constucting a pendulum clock in the atomic wristwatch and gps and blackberry age. Or a tall building without a steel skeleton structure in the landing on Mars age.

While he does mention wormholes, actually using them for travel seems to have been a slate of hand sort of trick, what with the observers never seeing the vehicle leave the spot much less earth. Leaving on a plane other than physical needs no vehicle much less one constructed with instructions arriving from space.

There is the laborious effort to keep everyone happy, with meticulously portioned out considerations.

And then the scary pendulum to stand under. It could crush you and standing under it requires a great deal of faith in science, the people who constructed it, and more.

Dahan (The Burning); by Suchitra Bhattacharya.

The original was published a few decades ago, and I remember reading it long back, it made a vivid impression. There is much horror, depicted through a young woman that went through much including being gang-raped in the middle of a street, and another one that attempted to help and th horror it brought to her own life.

The city where it all happened witnessed much in terms of a horror in public several times, majorly during what is known as the Naxal (extreme left terror groups) era of sixties and seventies, which was to overshadow even the horrendous massacres of '46 and dim the memory of the so called Bengal famine which reallly was - like the famine of Ireland before that - an appropriation of harvests of the lands by the ruling for the soldiers, resulting in several hundred thousand dead of starvation in Bengal.

This story belongs to the Naxal era if I am not mistaken, when the supposed ideals of left - equality, fraternity - often took a back seat to the goons that ruled the roost and neither women nor middle class were entirely safe as they normally are or at least perceived to be more so under better circumstances.

For that matter the "party" generally followed either of the two major communist nation's diktat, depending on the faction, and several "intellectuals" proudly declared themselves convinced of superiority of Mao over the way their own nation took, of consent and freedom rather than enforced ideology.

It was quite obvious even then that it was an attempt by a neighbour country to take over the nation if possible without sending anything more than pamphlets that would turn young heads. The about turn by the nation they then aspired to emulate has left the movement, the party, the young and the now not so young a bit confused, a bit embarrassed, and turned the naxals into mostly highway robbers with a few ideologues fighting feudal remnants in the few states where history has not washed away the feudal system so firmly established by the various colonial rulers.

The terror of the general times compounds with a goon-dominated street terror atmosphere and further adds to a general pervasive culture where normal middle class families, including men, are afraid for their lives and those of their own near and dear. And hence the whole street being unable to testify to the goons burning a young woman alive after rape, while the sole witness woman is turtured deeply within even as her own family attempts to dissuade her from making her witnessing the horror known.

While it is tempting to sum up this work as another example of a male dominated society, that would be belittling the work apart from a critique that is incorrect at the very least, showing a lack of perception and judgement; or possibly much worse, hypocrisy or dishonesty at a grave level.

Because a society that is old fashioned or conservative or male dominated - or as usually is all of the above - does not easily tolerate a violation of a woman by strangers. Such a toleration generally shows a lack of virility of males of the neighbourhood, the clan, the social setting the said woman belonged to. This is a direct result of the idea that a woman is a possession, not a person in her own right.

So a society that does tolerate this, or fails to protect or even avenge the woman, it in fact might be a modern society where people are in fact alienated and selfish in that they would rather not risk their own security; and when it is - as it is this story - worse, fails even to seek justice for fear, it amounts to a society paralysed by fear of the goons, the internal terrorist elements within the society. It could be fascist, or it could be terror by another self proclaimed label. Labels are less important when your lives are at stake, and goons are free to do as they please.

When terror reigns at street level, and acid along with other weapons are used freely, the prudent keep their own counsel until better times prevail. Then again, someone - or more than one - has to step forth and strike a determined blow at the terror or it would never go away.
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Aesop's Fables

I read the two - this one and the other very similar, but not at the plot level, old book from another old culture - Panchatantra, around the same time, give or take a few years, many decades ago. Both teach lessons of dealing with the world, how people play games, and so forth.

Every child should read them.

Especially those that need the skills to defend themselves socially, from those that would play various games to cheat or attack or worse. It might help, for some that can grow out of naivete to defend themselves.

Then again there might be those that never lose hope that the world is good and noble principles of justice are not to be given up, only to be taken a bite out of by someone who came pretending to be young and innocent and in need, and then bit the hand proffered to feed and help.

But of course, one should not lose hope, and perhaps other children might learn to be less naive and better able to defend themselves by learning to understand social games, by reading this book.

Srikanta; by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya.

Over the years when I read it, and reread it, baffled about the mystique surrounding it and the sparse nature of the book, it took some reflection about the time and space this came from and depicts and belongs to, to realise its height compared to the ground it rose from. Although that time was not short of people of great stature in the world and in the nation this came from, still, this was a shocking read for the age for the common reader, all the more so since here was a male writer depicting women of his own culture as all too human, deserving of the same consideration and respect as given men under similar circumstances. And he was perhaps saying they were greater in many ways, without saying it in so many words.

What sticks in memory when other details are forgotten is the small side story of the Burmese wife of the man from Bengal who not only leaves her with no intentions of returning to her, every intention of going back to his family and accepting the arranged marriage (with dowry, no doubt) and the society that would then embrace him - but cheats her, the Burmese wife he is leaving behind without informing her of this intention, of the money and jewellery, openly, declaring all this in his language so his compatriots comprehend and hers do not, and he has made of his wife of many years a public spectacle just so his own people might forgive him of his betrayal in taking a wife not of their own circle.

Such behaviour has been engaged in by others, of many other nations and of course few other continents, and certainly many of other faiths.

In fact one city has been known in decades past for selling its own little daughters with the traffic very very thinly veiled with a marriage contract which usually favours the rich - foreign - buyers.

It takes a writer of courage, however, to expose one of his own social circle, to subject the whole culture to a shame that they may not have wished to own or admit.

The Naked Ape ; by Desmond Morris

I remember reading this long ago and a few things stuck during the fast skimming while on a visit to a relative - unlike years before, one was no longer excused from conversation any more when in company - and one of the various things that did stick in memory was recently brought back to the surface of memory by some recent events - the terror attacks, the subsequent reactions, and the furious debates in media.

A member of glitterati was brought on camera to counter a minority leader of a party that normally gets all sorts of attacks without a second thought, except this leader was not offendable by the media due to his status and so the member of glitterati went obliquely to comment and counter the original comment by the leader.

The original comment by the leader was about people of the upper class aping western ways and to go on a candle lighting vigil at the historic site of recent terror attacks, and specifically he was dismissive of people who wear lipstick and have fashionable hair and show themselves at this site to be perceived as concerned about the nation while none of them have paid attention to the far worse attacks that have been going on during last decade and a half when it was not the rich and their lairs but the middle class on streets and in buses and in trains being killed by far greater numbers.

So the glitterati member went obliquely at the "people who do not like educated women", without thinking about what he was saying, let alone bothering to explain, or really stopping to consider implications of his words, about what - if anything - education had to do with lipstick.

It was not clear if he thought buying a lipstick or indeed a whole complete makeover had to be a matter of passing a tough examination on intellectual and generally knowledge plane, rather than handing over money; whether an education automatically implies a lipstick application and generally fashion consciousness, and whether the converse is true according to him.

Coming from someone from the country he belongs to, if he thought one thing implied the other in either direction, or if he thought that only those with some sort of western oriented schooling with much money forked over and aping of western fashions as the prime value taught was the only education he could perceive as education, it would certqainly imply he has had little contact with the earth he lives on, and his mind is in another world - I am not sure if that is a real one either.

Most well educated women - by which I do not mean those that have had an expensive high school level but little else other than consciousness of appearing like a Seventeen cover model - whether doctors, engineers, physicists or whatever other particular subject they chose to qualify for a higher degree, have little or no time to think of a personal grooming over and above a basic hygiene - bathing and wearing fresh clothes to start the day, and getting hair settled firmly out of the way - because they are far too busy with their responsibilities, in the world of their work and their own homes as well. They are far too busy to bother looking like a Seventeen cover.

At work their responsibilities are not reduced compared to male colleagues on par, and at home they do not have a wife to take over the need of attention and care they must pay the home and children, making them more than twice as busy as their male colleagues, and also their housewife neighbours. Not that the latter have it easy, for all that.

As a matter of fact all of that is all too true for a "working mother" in the west, and come to think of it for all mothers as well, since there are really no mothers that are non-working - and education whatever level, most women are far too busy taking care of the world to worry about a makeover every time they step out. That they manage to be well groomed and clean is one of the miracles they regularly perform without thinking.

No, the glitterati member was thinking of his own circle - those in professions where appearance is what chiefly matters, and other glitterati and "society" people who can delegate most responsibilities and in fact do, to hired "help".

It is not clear, when he equated education of women with a lipstick and a professional expensive hairdo, if he thinks no schools other than those imparting a western orientation - by virtue of their own origins or any other reason - are good enough, and if he thought that all middle class or poor are by definition stupid and ignorant, and if he thought he knew more of everything than every person taught in a non expensive school where lipsticks are not perceived as a hallmark of civilisation, or education.

Perhaps he could learn much by a journey to familiarise himself with his nation, but one does not know if he can benefit thereby.

Why is this relevant here is amusingly because amongst other things of similar sort Morris explains quite explicitly why humans have certain features, and if people read this on a wide scale - and comprehended it properly - lipstick and perhaps most cosmetics industry bubble would burst completely. That bursting of the bubble only needs a pin, and this is more like a stampede by a determined bull on intent on a duty to do farmwork.

For that matter a similar effect on many industries would be the result of people reading Subliminal Seduction and comprehending it.

The Red Carpet; by Lavanya Sankaran.

Very true to life portrayal of a town the writer probably knew well long before it became the "IT" place to be, and expanded at exponential rates. Lavanya Shankaran gives a little piece of the life of the town in old times changing to new with whiffs of arrivals of new people and of expat generation returning or sojourning from abroad for visits or more. It is a gentle change in the old establishments of old colonies, where people have lived in cetain traditional ways for long, through colonial times carrying out the older ways and adapting to new colonial ones, until now it is yet another change, like a whiff of something else carried on a breeze through the muslin curtains of an old bungalow.

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson.

Bryson comes into his own when writing about the British Empire, it seems - his work on UK the most entertaining and the one about Australia the most informative. In US he gets ponderous, seems a bit afraid to joke, and in Europe he is a bit lost.

The wit is in place but he is not, in this work. He begins in Hammerfest, which is nice to know of, but he then goes on that way with much small and unimportant details about strange places and then nothing about the most attractive - it is one thing to avoid a tourist route, but then why the details of going unplanned into yet another strange town and troubles of hotels and beer and food? Makes no sense at all. And, he neither drives nor plans the trip, so there is much travail on that account that is easily avoidable.

One reads Bryson for the fun, and this book gives that - from time to time. But then it is a chore to finish it most of the time. Worth reading since there is always something of a little smile unexpectedly or even an outright laugh at what he says, but all too often he plays to the gallery and uses unnecessary indecorous language.

Surprisingly he is unhappy with Switzerland, and too with Scandinavia, while he is happy with Italy and Germany - one can only conclude he did not know what one generally goes to Europe to look at, and while it is nice to know Sofia is beautiful or Hamburg is nice that is more useful for those who are likely to live there for a while or more. The rest of us are more interested in the normal nice things about places one is either likely to go or would wish to if only one knew about it.

Perhaps this was the first of the whole series he wrote, and he came into his own only with the land where he spent his growing adulthood years - Britain.

Rumpole of the Bailey; by John Clifford Mortimer.

A most unlikely hero as far as tv or films go, but all too likely when you think of real life - for the action is in sharp intelligence and wisdom gathered through years of experience, applied to life, specifically to legal questions and cases, with effect of helping humans that might not be picture perfect either but do need help with defence, and cannot afford much.

If Rumpole applied all that mind to getting ahead as the style is today, he would be the leader of the firm, and the QC, and more - but he manages to stay on back burner in spite of being the son in law of the boss, due to his deep seated reluctance about certain attitudes or actions or ways that one must adopt in order to get ahead. Rumpole sticks to his work and his honesty, and the smooth one gets ahead, and the disappointed wife is not too happy, can't blame her after all. Still, one has to like Rumpole.

The African episode is unforgettable - is it in this part or another, of the series? - About the basic principle of justice he is supposed to apply, to create a martyr, with a declaration of Innocent Until Proven Guilty. That is supposed to help spark the revolution - and instead he manages to actually prove the man was innocent, with - need one say it? - his sharp intelligence, his experience and observation and wisdom. He disappoints those only who had called him to perform and did not expect him to actually get to the bottom of the case and win. With honesty, too.

One is far more likely to appreciate it with reading first rather than seeing the tc series which I saw only accidentally once. Not because the series has any defects but because in a visual medium one does rather focus on looks. And this work is not about surface attractions.

Gracie: A Love Story; by George Burns.

I remember living alone, far away from anyone I knew, and being relatively free after a few years of stress, buying a television - my first, and a very good one for that time, with facilites that the company normally offered only in larger models - and discovering the Burns and Allen show one late night when looking for something to relieve stress.

Thereafter it was a routine, being awake every night until late to watch the reruns of the show, and what a blessing it was watching it, laughing, forgetting all stress and worry and so forth for just that short while.

When I discovered the book, it was a sort of combination of a memory of the show relived and a whole new delight as well, with the book adding a few details to the life of the couple one had come to love.

"My uncle bent steel rods with his teeth until they bent"

"He must have been very strong"

"Yes, but he looked funny with bent teeth"

- And unless one sees the incomparable, unique Gracie one would think this is not very funny. At least not as much as when she says it.

Fatherhood; by Bill Cosby.

Truly delightful - some of this was familiar, since it had been incorporated in the first episode of the Bill Cosby show, but a good deal was either new or familiar through everyone's life.

Favourites, many.

Children love to share, especially sharing the siblings's arms ...

Bill Cosby's father told him how he walked to school in snow, "uphill both ways" ..

"I brought you in this world and I can take you out" ....

"Dad, can I -" ....

And many more.

Karma, Cola; by Gita Mehta.

In some sense this was written when the meeting of east and west, especially of India and west (Europe and US) was in its third stage, second being of the colonial era and first that before.

At this stage there was much renewed charm in each for other, much that was new, and some truly interesting encounters. The value of this work is in writing up the very well chosen ones where something new came through such an encounter every time.

There is the old percussionist from India used only to classical music of India who went to a club in New York and had them play to his rhythm - and he spoke no English at all.

There is the westerner who learned to his surprise that the old bike of the Indian in Goa taunting him was in fact far more powerful than his own brand new shiny one - because it had an engine he could not have imagined existed, a royal Enfield, and that the Indian did know what he was talking about.

There is much along these lines, and some interesting information as well. The French official informed the author at a casual encounter that there were as of that date some twenty thousand French nationals "lost" in India, and the only way the officials would know is when they wished to return and contacted the French authorities.

It was a standard practice for those of the west that were not only charmed with a touristic view of India as strangers but moreover completely comfortable with living a life in India, to throw away the passports or sell them, or even simply vanish in the huge country. If they were into meditation, often they even were fed by the poor of the rural areas of India who would feed any such meditating person traditionally.

Ravishankar and Ray, Beatles and Maharshi Mahesh Yogi were the stars of these east west encounters - distant and shiny - as were Nehru and Kennedys in some sense, but that was only a very tiny part of the whole picture, which consisted of thousands and thousands of such people. By the time this was written hippies were not news in the west, but they were just turning from a trickle to a stream in India. So were probably the NRI in US and elsewhere.

A very interesting book, evocative of much more than it mentions explicitly.