A New Year, a New Chapter

Today I finally finished reading Alain de Botton's 'The Consolations of Philosophy.' I say 'finally' because it feels like it takes me an inordinate amount of time to read a whole book lately, as likely as I am to have three on the go at once, and often to be too busy 'meditating' on the morning subway ride to read much at all. So a book feels a bit like a conquest, particularly if it is non-fiction; I get two-thirds through the climb and think I might as well turn back, it is getting dark.
'The Consolations of Philosophy' has rewarded me for my persistence, though. I didn't find it as completely riviting as 'the Art of Travel,' one of my favourite books, but I did laugh a lot, and mangle the corners of many pages as a declaration of my delight with one idea or another. Often I go back to the pages I've marked and can't imagine what pleased me so as I passed it the first time.
There are many chesnuts to hoard from this book; my present favourite is the lines de Botton ends off with, from Nietzsche:

"To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the [supreme idiocy], in a general sense a real disaster in its consequences... almost as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather."

Consolation indeed. It is in the spirit of not denying one's difficulties, but rather 'gardening' them, that I begin a new chapter here. Hello 2010.

4 Days in Delhi

The temperature in Delhi is round about 46 degrees, which is borderline mad. I say borderline because we all seem to be getting on with our days, and though folks frequently comment on the heat -- not just foreigners, either -- nobody appears to actually be melting yet. That comes in May and June, apparently, when conditions go from Really Very Hot to Fatally Hot. There is still power now, and water, which I say is positive.
I arrived in Delhi a couple of days ago, prepared for an onslaught of 'giant Indian city'-ness, the criticisms and horror stories of others' time spent in Delhi playing in the back of my mind. I was pleasantly surprised, actually, not because Delhi isn't a dirty, loud, crowded city full of people trying aggressively to get you to do things, but because it seems to not only be that. It is surprisingly spacious, and well-planned, with broad streets and green space in many areas. The cheapo tourist neighbourhood I'm staying in is predictably seedy and notably dirty, but my room is clean and quiet. I'm trying out different restaurants in search of a combination of (Indian) food I like, can afford (financially) , and can afford physically; at the same time I'm doing an informal census (head count, ha) of stoned Westerners with dreads. I think there's a dread convention in town.
My perceptions of Delhi in a few days are undoubtedly shaped by my experiences in other Indian cities, and all over India for that matter. The dirt, the people, the traffic, even the heat -- none of it is a surprise. So far I have experienced the worst touts of my life in Fatehpur Sikri, a ruined town near Agra, built by Akbar as an ideal capital but abandoned because of constant water shortage. (Build your ideal capitals near water sources people, let's all learn from this). At the mosque there I was followed by young man after young man all using the same persistent, aggressive approach of pointing out features and information to me while insisting that they didn't want any money but refusing to go away when I asked them to. Each time I managed to shake one -- not wanting the nattering, repetitive company, and knowing that there is ALWAYS a catch in the end -- another would approach me with the same 'Where you from? Nice country! French part or English part? I just want to practice my English...' spiel. One would require the patience of a saint not to get tired, and I definitely don't have that, though I do have a healthy amount of respect for the fact that people are just trying to get by and make a living, allbeit sometimes in incredibly annoying ways. I only rid myself of 'friend' number 6 by leaving the mosque (thinking to myself, 'bloody hell, this isn't worth it.')
Yesterday, on a bus here in Delhi, I was groped for the first time in my travels. Groped for the first time, that is, without my request or consent. I hopped on a city bus after visiting the Qutb Minar, aiming to take the bus back to an area where I could get some good food and some shade. People waved me onto the bus and I walked to the middle, where there was free space, the 'ladies seats' at the front all being full. I'd been on the bus for about 30 seconds before a couple more people hopped on from the back, and as they pushed past me one of them squeezed my bum. Squeezed it mind you -- not a brush, or a bump (sisters, you're all familiar with these tactics), but a squeeze. I reacted immediately with a yell, and I spun around and smacked the guy behind me across his back as he continued to walk past. He reacted with a 'surprised' face as I shouted 'Hey! Watch your hands! You just grabbed me, don't do that!' He made a face like he didn't know what I was talking about as I continued to announce to everyone and no one that he had just grabbed me, yes him (pointing), that guy grabbed my bum. I gestured my way into an empty seat at the back, with all the men looking at me, my heart pounding with a burst of adrenaline. Turns out it was the wrong bus, ha, which the conductor seemed sorry to tell me a moment later when he came to the back. I laughed and hopped off, realizing as I hit the ground at the crowded bus stop that I was really mad. Not about being on the wrong bus.
I reacted to the bum-squeeze assault for what it was, an assault, and without thinking at all my nervous system was up and revving, ready to pound someone or take off. I'm basically confident of my instincts and my reflexes, which is one reason I can travel alone mostly fear-free. I reacted quickly just the way I would have liked had I thought about it (except that, in the following moments I did think about Swami Sivananda's advice always to 'speak softly, speak sweetly, speak lovingly...' Is that supposed to include in reaction to surprise attack on one's space? Siiiiigh, probably.) In fact, in Agra a few days ago I had a conversation with Claire from Chicago (another woman traveling alone) on exactly this topic. We talked about the process that one goes through of learning what is normal and acceptable and tolerable in terms of talk and treatment from Indian men; 'I've taken to responding to groping with physical assault,' she told me. 'Fair enough,' I said, 'I think that's a reasonable reaction. ' We discussed the importance of yelling and drawing attention to the person, and also getting them away from you; early on in her travels she learned, from an elderly Indian woman, the excellent technique of hitting pests with your shoe. On a bench in a railway station she was being followed from one side to the other, she getting up to avoid sitting next to the man, and him getting up and following her to the other side until the lady took her sandal off and started yelling and whacking. Awesome.
The hard part is not to cultivate an unhealthy dislike and distrust of men here. It is very tempting. Understood in context, the attention one gets from Indian men as a woman alone is rarely appropriate and therefore rarely positive. Certainly I've met many kind, friendly, helpful men who have meant and done me no harm, quite the opposite. But so many want something from you that they shouldn't be asking for -- attention, 'friendship,' money, to talk to you (alone) about how Westerners are oversexed, to squeeze your bum. And this comes up not only from shifty looking strangers, but from passersby and salesmen of various classes. There is a challenge in maintaining a healthy skepticism and a healthy distance without selling people, and yourself short. But at the end of the day I think YES fearlessness, but no, not forgetting that the plight of Indian women is one in which gang rape and burnings are a daily reality. This sounds extreme, but it is the truth of being a woman in this country: vulnerability to violence, poverty, hunger, all manner of ill-treatment. I read it every day in the paper and I think about it when I am protecting myself and when I am pacing at the bus stop after being grabbed. This is the context of my bum-grabbing, this is the context of my everyday adventures in India, as a woman.

Blogging from Bombay

Hellooooooo readers! It has been a long while since I've posted: busy busy busy, moving moving moving, poor internet access poor internet access poor... you get the picture.

Just to 'whet your whistle' (ugh, clearly I'm rusty, I hate that phrase), here are a couple of photos from my adventures in India, which I'm about 7 weeks into now. I've been moving fairly quickly, there's so much of the country I want to see -- I've been from Kolkata to Chennai to Madurai to Mysore to Goa to Bombay and lots of places in between... It isn't terribly satisfying traveling quickly from one place to another, but it is much better than nothing.

More soon.

Ok, here's only ONE photo from my travels: on the street in Panjim, Goa, a city I like very much. It takes soooooo long to upload photos.

Srimangal: On the road again

It is amazing how a few weeks living in one of the richest parts of Dhaka managed to disconnect me from the astonishing poverty of the country. In Gulshan one is constantly asked for money, true – there are a huge number of children, women, and people with disabilities begging in the area. But today I arrived in Srimangal, in the northeast part of the country, and immediately I encountered a group of street kids dirtier and poorer than any I’ve seen for a while. Any Westerner who has lived in South Asia can tell you that their thinking on the logic and ethics of giving versus not giving, to whom, and when, develops over time and has high points and low points. I had a low point yesterday when I showed anger to a group of young girls – in the early afternoon I bought them a small loaf of bread to share between the three of them. In late afternoon I passed by again and some of them attached themselves to me with even greater determination, whining, grabbing my hands, faking tears, until I lashed out with the best (“best”) of my Bangla to say “What did I tell you!? I said no! If you keep asking and asking I won’t give anything again!”
The exasperation that one sometimes feels at being almost constantly followed and asked for money is real and seems natural. There’s a kind of stress in always being pressured that can’t be denied. But why? Is it that I’m never quite giving according to my means? Or is it frustration at the sheer number of people who could use your help, too many even to give a few taka to each day? One’s ethics are challenged even within the giving one does – I know some folks who will give only to children, for example, and others that never do. ‘Children should be in school’ is their philosophy, and every time you make it worth their guardian’s while to send them out to work on the streets instead, you decrease any motivation they might have to demand an education for the child. But there are so many kids! So many that I doubt have ever seen the inside of a classroom or ever will. Not that I necessarily think that the classroom is always the best place for a kid, but better than working, surely. You often even see young boys working in shops and tea stalls; I’m trying to be more aware of this and avoid the places that employ children, but the sight is so ubiquitous it’s difficult to draw my attention to it at times.
So now I’m in Srimangal, in a part of the country covered in rolling hills and tea plantations. I’m laying low for day one, having already achieved my goals of securing a place to stay for the next few days, a bicycle to use, and a ticket back to Dhaka. It is hot and sunny at midday, so I’m basking in the novelty of a hotel room, though it is a grubby and chilly one. Tomorrow I will head out into the hills and see what I can see, and hopefully put my new digital camera to good use. My first digital camera! It hurt to part with the money when I went shopping yesterday, but nice to have been given some cash, by ‘Santa Claus,’ specifically for that purpose. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Well. I burst into tears at the tea stall yesterday afternoon out of exhaustion and frustration at not being able to join in lunchtime conversations. Then today I feel like I’m cracking up with irritation – at BRCT, at my coworkers, at the stupid way that everything runs. Not at the city, though I think that all the stress of pollution, constant attention, traffic, isolation are all bearing down on me at the moment. Actually, I think they’ve been bearing down on me for 6 months and I’ve been mostly ok... or at least getting by with a smile on my face, but now – what is it? The holidays? Coming to the end of the internship? Just a saturation point? I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel good. When I’m under stress I’m often keenly aware of not being a person who controls her emotions easily. Now here I am tearing up at the tea stall. Sigh.
Well, there’s not much more of this placement and I’m under pressure to tie up some loose ends before I take off. I’ll do my best. Since I’m approaching the end I’m taking stock a little and feeling like it has been a pretty unsatisfying professional experience. Certainly it has been frustrating. But I think I will give it some more time to sink in before I put a seal of approval or disapproval on it. The Dalai Lama tells me that opinions can also be attachments anyways. At least I think it was him.
Oh Bangladesh, I like you and I hate you. I haven’t yet found the passion for the country that some people I’ve met have communicated. Maybe this isn’t my country. It is perhaps unfair to judge that from only 6 months, but so far all physical signs blaze ‘NO!’ Emotional signs are mixed – I see some arrows pointing ‘GO’ and some in neon pleading ‘STAY.’ I’m just surveying them all with suspicious eyes hoping for divine inspiration to descend when I have time to pay attention to it.

Thank God for stockings from Santa (Mom) -- or as Shohel calls mine, "Santa's leg," which is funny but creepy. He sometimes uses incorrect English only to amuse and irritate me.

Please see the tasteful photo of me with underwear on my head and a gingerbread man in my mouth. What else to do? I have so many memories of oohing and awing and laughing at people's underwear from 'Mrs. Santa' (Grandma), I felt I should do the gift justice even when flying solo. Actually, I realize I am not flying solo. Sometimes I have the illusion that I am, but at times like Christmas, when I go to get in touch with all the people who are important to me, to say 'hi,' to check in, I realize that my life is wonderfully full of people I care about. It just happens that only about, oh, five of them are here!

I'm so lucky, nonetheless, to have formed some lovely friendships here, ones that I'm reluctant to shift into the long distance realm. Damn travelling for that, I tell you. It seems nice in some ways to have friends flung across the globe, but many times I want them all in my pocket, or perhaps in a pantry that I can enter at any time. Isn't that what we do anyways, really, create little (or big) pantries stocked full of friends that we rely on for the various ingredients of our lives. That's a statement, not a question. I'm thinking of extending that metaphor to reflect the real pantries I've known over time -- the ones full of petit fours in the restaurants I've worked in; the one at our old house, where I once cut myself on a razor hidden on the top shelf...

What does that mean?

Hmm.

Rangamati, Chittagong Hill Tracts

In order to enter the Hill Tracts, foreigners require permission from the District Commissioner of the places they will visit; dominant discourse says that this is a dangerous place, in which the ‘tribals’ are terrorists likely to kidnap you at any moment. The indigenous peoples are considered by many to be exotic, backwards, and hostile in comparison to the majority Bengali community. Hostility, where it exists, is not well understood; the government has gone to great lengths to prevent the history and present situation of the Hill Tracts from becoming public knowledge. What I know is this – this area has traditionally been inhabited by a variety of indigenous peoples, the largest group being the Chakma. Since Bangladesh ‘Independence’ in 1971 there has been a systematic program of taking over the Hill Tracts from its inhabitants – land has been snatched and Bengalis settled by force. The Hill Tracts was militarized as Bengalis were given incentives to migrate to the fertile area – indigenous resistance was controlled and often suppressed by military violence including systematic rape and murder.

In this area where agriculture is the foundation of life, the practices and land rights of local people have been extremely degraded. The jhum (‘slash and burn’) agriculture practiced by many indigenous people was criticized as being backwards, though it is effective and sensitive in the context. This backwardness was used as an excuse for putting the land into the ‘more capable’ hands of Bengalis or the government. Land ‘ownership’, traditionally understood to stem from inhabitance and cultivation, was disrupted by government demands for registration and titles, which most people did not have or know to pursue when Bangladesh started demanding them. Since 1992 it has become impossible for indigenous people to register the land they live on and cultivate; according to Bangladesh, therefore, they live on government land from which they can be evicted at any time. In the 1990s there was an intense and prolonged uprising, about which I know only very little. Now you hear it talked about from time to time in the dominant Bangladeshi context, mostly as a situation of terrorism which was eventually resolved by the military and a 1997 Peace Accord (more on that later). I have read that the 1980s and 1990s were a period of escalating state terrorism – rape, murder, destruction of villages. When villages were razed, the people who did not flee elsewhere were put into government organized villages, in which they were extremely vulnerable and dislocated from their livelihoods. Many people fled over the border to India and into camps there; at times groups of those were forcibly ‘repatriated’ by the Indian government. Others came back on their own, or I’m sure worked out various things over the years – I have heard that some have become stateless, not recognized as citizens of Bangladesh, India, or any other country.

There seems to be little or no government recognition of the atrocities perpetrated by them in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and no recognition of the injustices heaped upon the indigenous people and their lands, which precipitated uprisings over the years. If you remember Major Alam, who I wrote about a few posts ago (see me feeding his fish) – he told me that one of his postings was “combating the insurgency” in the CHT for three years. It made my skin crawl a little to sit with someone who had “combated the insurgency,” as I had some idea of what that meant. Seeing the world quite boldly in terms of justice and injustice, it is hard for me to wrap my head around the misguided thinking that allows people to purposefully and violently abuse and destroy others. I suppose the ‘other’-ness is part of the point in this case, what has made it possible for Bangladesh to direct military might in this way. But, really, my work at the Rehabilitation Centre for Trauma Victims basically shows that once people – military, police, whoever – are invested with the license to perpetrate violence, anybody can be fair game – indigenous people, Bengalis, non-Bengalis, who cares? Power and control is what matters.
What I find particularly sickening at this point in time is the contradiction between the rhetoric of a free, independent Bangladesh and the real history and present conditions of indigenous people in the Hill Tracts. Victory Day just passed, December 16th, and on this day Bengali Bangladeshis celebrate their liberation from the tyranny of West Pakistan, which tried to keep them down, not respecting their rights or their language, ultimately violently undermining their very existence. There are a number of reasons why I am amazed by Bangladeshis’ ability to celebrate this ‘victory’ with a straight face, not least the tyranny of its own state machinery since 1971. But the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts really gets me, because it is a bright and shining beacon of hypocrisy.

The rhetoric of ‘liberation’ is of freedom, self-determination, and pride in cultural and linguistic heritage. People in the CHT remain under the thumb of the government, their movement, gathering, and communication restricted. Many people lack access to clean water, electricity, and education in their mother tongue. The military is everywhere out here. People are allowed only two set market days per week – that is, two days per week on which to come from the hills into the towns to sell their produce. This seriously undermines peoples’ ability to support themselves – having to sell their produce on those days or not at all, they must take whatever low prices are offered by the mainly Bengali traders.
At the same time, no access to mobile phone communication is allowed in the CHT. In Rangamati there are shops that you can go to with your phone, to attach an antenna that allows you to access far off towers and talk for a few minutes, but those antennas are illegal. Even a large indigenous development NGO that we visited while we were here cannot use mobile phones or get adequate internet access. I found it nice not to be surrounded by people chattering on cell phones for a few days, but I’m on vacation – lack of mobile access restricts peoples’ ability to function in a national and international economy that otherwise heavily relies on this kind of communication. In most every other part of Bangladesh one can at least have the opportunity of access to a mobile network.

This afternoon we had a long, big lunch of noodles, shrimp, pakora, fish, vegetables, rice, rice wine, and rice beer, at the home of a Chakma woman who works at a local NGO that Mikey did some work for. Her family members told us of the fear of disappearance – as Bengalis continue to come and settle in Rangamati, they fear that it will not be much longer until the Chakma as a distinct group and culture dissolve and disappear. “I think of the next 10 years, and I am afraid of this,” said her nephew. What kind of fear is that to cope with, the disappearance – elimination – of your people?

Sidr

Some photos from the effects of the cyclone on Ramna Park in Dhaka. I would also take photos of my stack of soaked books, but I'm trying to get over it. They're just books after all. It is funny that the A/C that I never use is only good for 1) birds to nest in, and 2) channeling water into my room during storms. It was quite the storm, and what we got in Dhaka was not much compared to on the coast. You can read about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7099497.stm. We lead a cushy life here in Dhaka, some of us. Worrying about our books and our generators running out of fuel while there is a food crisis on the horizon for this country. I've already informally heard reports that people are beginning to starve in the north where the floods were worst a few months ago. The first harvest of rice is coming in and it sucks. Up there there is supposedly a certain plant that people only eat in times of famine, because it is disgusting but it grows everywhere. They say people are eating it now. They also say ('they'!) that media censorship is in evidence all over the place, with TV stations recently having been directed that they are forbidden to use the Bangla word for 'famine' in their broadcasts. It is confusing and strange to hear that, but everything here is strange and confusing. The situation here is worse than it looks to my naked, generator-lit eye...