Short Stuff

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The other day, on my walk, I went past a school. The bell had just rung and there were children running out of the gate like a wildebeest migration. I suddenly noticed that almost all of them were taller than I was. This was amusing because I am, after all, a senior citizen with two strands of grey hair to my credit. I said, "Excuse me, excuse me" meekly and dodged past them like a young-at-heart nimble aunty.

I then started thinking about my school days and how I was always the first person in the line during assembly. This unfair height order rule meant that I could never mumble my way through the million bhajans we had to sing every morning. I had to sing with utmost devotion, closed eyes and all. It also meant that I could only stand next to short boys in other classes. I have nothing against short boys but I'm not very interested in them. I'm sure they have good hearts and all that, but unless the rest of them is like Surya, it's very unlikely that I'd be interested. I'm only five feet tall though.

During Games class, the PT Sir would yell 'HEIGHT ORDER!' and everyone would immediately look at me. I'd hunch up my shoulders and pretend that I was taller than the second shortest in class, but I wasn't fooling anyone. The second shortest would have a smug expression on her face, bordering on a sneer. (Her name was Srividhya, by the way. Hey, Steevidhya, if you are reading this, I hope you feel ashamed of your insensitive, appalling behaviour. ) This meant that I was first in the line once again and I had to get my LEFT-RIGHT-ABOUT TURN coordination correctly.

Which I never managed to do. I didn't have the advantage of following the person in front of me, so I was extremely stressed out by this whole process of turning left and turning right and turning about like a top with a screw loose.

Here's some embarrassing trivia: when Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai won their respective crowns, my cousin and I were convinced that the only worthwhile ambition to have in life was to become beauty queens ourselves. We used to collect their pictures and eat carrots every day for glowing skin. Okay, stop smirking, I was in Class IV and yet to develop into the formidable intellectual that I am now. Okay? Okay. Sadly, I had to give up on this dream because I just didn't grow beyond five feet. Oh, the cruel jokes of fate!

Like a good Mallu girl, I only drank tea throughout my childhood. I was thus deprived of Complan, my last shot at adding some inches, by my mother's theory that anything bottled is bad for you. Except disgusting arishtams from vaidyashalas. I stopped growing after seventh standard and from Facebook, I understand that some of my classmates are still growing. So you can imagine. There I was, a shrimp in a sea of sharks. Despite the high-heels that I tried wearing during my teen years.

College was marginally better. I met more short people but I was invariably the shortest. The hand-rest for the tall beings. I was endearingly referred to as 'Short Stuff'. We had aerobics in college and I was, once again, first in line. Now, if I can't turn left or right or about turn correctly, I can't dance either. So I'd mostly stand there like an octopus, waving my limbs about in a friendly fashion. The aerobics instructor, who was Kala Master's less-famous sister, by the way, would shake her head at my abysmal performance but I at least managed to fix a charming smile on my face. You see, by then, I'd come to terms with what I looked like and everything. Not that I was convinced I was a trilokasundari, but I realized that this was what I was going to look like and no amount of angst was going to change that. Gone were my high heel days. I only wore chappals and adopted the JNU-look. You know, kurta, jolna, kajal types.

But it's only when I started working that I realized what a great advantage my height (or lack of it) was. At five feet, you don't threaten people with your physical appearance. Most people tend to look at you as some sort of overgrown child. This might sound like a disadvantage, but I've found that one can actually get away with making the most in-your-face statements because your colleagues will have a somewhat-indulgent attitude towards you. If you are intelligent and articulate, you will win additional points for being so because you are also short. Murthy sirisu naalum kirti perusu types. Tall people, on the other hand, just end up sounding like boring coat-suit types giving gyaan.

You can also give orders and have them executed without sounding like a beeyatch. All you have to do is make yourself look extra short and at the same time, very serious indeed. Being short, I'd say, has been a key factor so far in my rapport building with bosses. I could joke around and write tongue-in-cheek emails without putting myself in danger. It's all very Tenali Rama-like, you know. The jester tells the king home-truths and gets covered in gold coins for being rude.

When my parents decided that holy matrimony was to descend upon me, they wondered if M was "too tall" for me. The thought never entered my head, though. I was convinced I was beyond splendid by then. I don't know if M thought I was "too short" for him and now is probably a dangerous time for him to make such confessions, so I shall leave it at that. The photographer for our wedding, however, was much amused by the disparity in our respective heights. He asked me if I could stand on a stool while doing the photos that he was going to paste inside sunflowers and hearts and what not. I was already pissed off because I was dressed-up and I flatly refused to do so. As a result, while you can see the whole of M in our romantic profile photos in the wedding album, I appear like a bodiless head. Ah well, at least, I have a fabulous face.

I hadn't thought about my height in a really long while and it was only when I was running amongst the school children that I remembered my angsty days. I saw one short child in the crowd and I wanted to tell her not to feel bad about it. Someday, these tall people will take orders from you and what's more, they will think you are an advanced-level funny genius. Trust me, it will happen.

19 Vayadhiniley

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What I used to be: My 19-year-old self.

Angsty and angry and so AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH at the world. I like how the internet keeps track of my growing old.

I haven't written poetry since...since I was 19, I guess. What a waste of blinga genius, no? I happened to find this page because of a conversation I had with N. It brought back all my poetry-days.

Here's one more I discovered buried somewhere in my inbox:

paradise lost

daughter of eve,
i bear in my blood
upside down worlds.

the prince i kissed
morphed into a frog.

he leapt into the
lilies
with my crystal ball.

angry, i swore, princes
were fake.

i disowned the stories
that flamed
my brains

in amber light.

i wound my hair into
a granite bun.
swearing
no witch hunter

would climb into my skull.

i’ve smashed my mirrors,
killed my eyes.

i find in my
pocket,
snow white’s
apple,

rich, red, wrong.

the dwarves wait for
me to take the plunge.

they hold my glass box
in eager joy.

daughter of eve,
i sink my fangs into

sin with ease.

exit paradise.


Amusing. I miss writing poetry but I can't bring myself to. Possibly because the intensity of my pissed-off state has reduced. Sigh. In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

Happy Birthday, Tulika!

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Tulika is now 15 years old. Why is that so important? Well, I don't know about you, but to me, the Tulika story is like one of those marvelous movies on sport where you watch the last match with a lump in your throat, knowing that the underdogs are going to win. Nobody expected them to win but they did. And inside your heart, a tiny voice says that it's okay to believe in corny things like dreams coming true.

For those who don't know yet, Tulika Publishers is a publishing house that brings out children's books. They are located in Chennai and no, they haven't hired me to be their PR person (though I wish they would hire me in some way....maybe a face-making tea girl). I've written for them, so this is going to be a terribly biased post. But then, I'm a terribly biased person in the most charming way in real life too. So I'm not going to insert any more disclaimers.

Tulika started off in 1996 at a time when Indian children's literature was synonymous with reams and reams of mythology. Not that there is anything wrong with mythology, but after a point, it becomes tiresome when the kings keep performing yagnas for sons and the sages keep cursing apsaras for disturbing them. Okay, I'm being unfair. Mythology is a great genre...but it's EVERYWHERE. As a child, I preferred reading Malory Towers and pretending that I was Darrell Rivers who played lacrosse though I had no idea what the hell that was. There was hardly any Indian children's literature that captured my imagination. I instinctively turned away from anything preachy and thankfully, my Marxist parents applauded my tastes.

When Tulika started off, I was in Class VI. I was already past the picture books stage and I never bumped into their books till I reached college. And met N (who is now a fancy Tulika publisher herself). She introduced me to their books and I was super envious of the under-5 population of the country. Why, they had such remarkable books to read, the snotty Pogo-watchers! I spent many a happy hour in Landmark reading Tulika books and I suddenly realized how much fun an Indian childhood actually is. Because I'd never read anything where children have fun in an Indian context without them painfully arriving at a Moral in the end, this moment of epiphany blew me away. I looked up their website and found many essays on children's literature and why Tulika was started. And the story of their struggle. I felt inspired in a very flag-hoisting way. Here was a bunch of people who dared to start off small with sound convictions and managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat!

By this time, N had joined Tulika as an intern and she suggested that I write for them. I wrote a small story called Aana and Chena and couriered it to them with a self-important cover letter and all. I didn't hear from them for a long, long time and I assumed that this meant they didn't like my story. But that's the thing about email. You can always appear cool and shoot off an enquiry without sounding desperate. And so, I did some bombarding while retaining my chilled out personality and everything.

I still remember that night. I was feverishly checking my email and I saw Tulika Publishers in my inbox. I opened the mail. It was an acceptance letter. I was so joyous, I ran to my parents' bedroom, woke my mum up and told her the news. She sleepily said, "Oh! Good!" I grinned and ran back and read the mail a hundred times to make sure that I hadn't somehow misunderstood the three-line mail. Tulika was publishing me!

I cannot express enough the joy of holding a book you have written in your hands and looking at it, page by page. It's a lot like falling in love. The day the package with copies of my book came home, I was delirious. I showed the book to everyone I knew. I didn't care if they thought I was boasting. Heck, I was a Tulika author! Aana and Chena was also the book I gave M when we first met and he still has it (ok, it hasn't been ten years or something, but it's still special and all).

Why is the Tulika story important for writers like me? Writers who have no literary contacts, agents, awards, and age to come to their aid? It is important because if you have nothing but your craft to fall back on, the publishing industry can ignore you. It often does. It can make you believe that you are no good and convince you to give up. I was twenty two when Tulika accepted my first book. For every small edit that was made on my story, I was duly consulted and informed. With due respect. At no stage did they make me feel like an amateur who ought to feel grateful that they were giving me any attention at all. They were extremely approachable and I felt very comfortable agreeing and disagreeing with the suggestions and decisions made. The attention to detail, the painstaking efforts that go into the production of a book, the love with which it finally comes hot off the press...happiness is a warm picture book, to misquote Peanuts.

So far, I've published four picture books with Tulika. Each has been a delight to bring out. Each has put a smile on my face when I've felt down in life. It also feels darned good to sign your own book and give it to children who can't believe they know a real-life writer. Though I can only half-believe that myself.

Happy Birthday, Tulika people. Here's to many more.

@N- I hope you will lobby for that face-making tea girl job I want.

Gounder Brownie ka Baap

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*This is an advertisement*

So my father is now a blogger. Really. This is a moment to walk down memory lane and all that, but let's follow his policy of 'First Things First' and put down the link immediately. Here it is:

Baap re Baap

As you can see, it's a law blog and that's what he's going to write about since he's a lawyer and everything. He's even managed to upload a profile photo. Parents are so precocious these days. So if you have legal problems (and as a family, we hope you have lots), be sure to leave a comment, ok?

Since my father asked me to put up his link on my blog, I'm tempted to take a potshot at how he used to consistently inform me during my college days that I was wasting my time by writing things for which nobody was ever going to issue me a certificate. But parents make mistakes when we're growing up and as selfless children we ought to forgive them.

My eyes cloud over with memories as I remember how my father took his first, hesitant baby footsteps into the world of computers. The mouse scared him. My brother's temper scared him even more. He would copiously make notes and follow the step by step instructions written down by his antsy children. Ah, those were the days of Reality TV outside the television box.

(Since all this flashback is taking up too much time, I'm going to quickly play a song and move ahead several years. Here it is: *song beginning with chorus*)

And then, my father became a Facebooker and began Liking all my status messages. Even ones that said 'Jonathan Daddia is now following me on Twitter *drool*'.

Now, he's a blogger. Maybe he will tweet next. The future is wide open.

My daddy's all grown up.

Sleeping with the Enemy

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Reading Stieg Larsson's trilogy brought back many memories from my Gender Studies days. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the other two books in the series fall under the genre of crime fiction/thriller. But they are also books about violence against women, an issue that Larsson felt very strongly about throughout his life. When he was 15, Larsson witnessed the gang rape of a girl. The rapists were his friends and the girl was known to all of them. Larsson did nothing to stop it. Her name was Lisbeth.

Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Larsson's trilogy, is unlike any other I've encountered. True, certain parts of her characterization seem James Bond-like but again, this is a genre that accommodates and even demands that. What I like best about the books is that Lisbeth is not stuffed in a cat-suit with her breasts hanging out in an everyday manner of dressing. She is not blonde and neither is her hair untied and loose when she's engaged in a fist fight. Lisbeth is mysterious, but not in the slit-eyes, pouting mouth way. She's mysterious because she likes to handle her own business. Her sexual identity is queer and queer in a way that rings genuine- not the girl-on-girl action that caters to an obviously male, straight audience. When subjected to violence, Lisbeth responds and responds effectively. Even though her responses are violent, a part of me feels enthused and rewarded. It's just so good to see a woman giving it back in the balls for once, never mind if she's fictional.

In my first Gender Studies class, I was convinced that of the bunch of women who were my classmates, I'd probably seen the most of gender-based discrimination. I was the only non-White in the room, after all. But the very first question that the professor asked us- What made you take up this course?- dispelled those assumptions. L, from Cyprus, said she'd been subjected to domestic violence. Her boyfriend had not only hit her, he'd even burnt down her car. She'd gone to the police station to file a complaint but her boyfriend told the cops that it was a lovers' quarrel. They chose to believe him and sent her home. L was angry and also afraid. There were women from Britain, the US, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and many other countries who were similarly pissed off.

If you take the statistics for violence per se, in any country, you will find that men die due to violence in substantially higher numbers than women. Then why is violence against women an issue? How is it different from violence in general? Violence against women is an issue not because women are innocent. Not because women are softer, defenceless, frail, delicate, or more deserving to live. Violence against women is an issue because women die because they are women. Same way Jews died because they were Jews and Blacks died because they were Black. However, today, you can be arrested for calling someone a monkey but it's perfectly fine to call someone a motherfucker.

Women and sex are inseparable in popular culture. In one of the gender workshops that I did, I asked the all-girls class how they knew that a particular scene in a movie was a sex scene. They seemed shy to respond, so I threw them some prompts: would they consider it a sex scene if a man and woman were shown together in an intimate act? They said yes. Would they consider it a sex scene if a man was shown undressing by himself? They said no. Would they consider it a sex scene if a woman was shown undressing by herself? They said yes. And this is how we behave in public life too. Go to any waterfall in India. You will see men stripped to their underwear jumping about, unmindful of what is showing and what is not. You will also see a bunch of women in the water, fully dressed, fully conscious of the fact that their clothes are wet and that they may look 'vulgar'. They will come out of the water and walk back in their wet clothes with a dupatta or towel draped around them. The men will change right there, doesn't matter who's watching. The idea that the female body is sexual everywhere while the male body is sexual only in context is imprinted in the heterosexual mind, be it male or female.

But why is sex associated with violence? Why is 'fuck you' in any language an abuse? Why is it that 'I'm so fucked' or 'I'm so screwed' mean that one is finished? Because in popular culture, sex is not an act of love. It is an act of power. And the one who loses is the one who is fucked. This is why rape is as much a weapon in warfare as a grenade. This is why rape is expected collateral damage in a riot. This is why it is okay to rape a dalit woman even if you won't let her touch the water in your well. This is why men who rape women are heterosexual and yet misogynistic. This is why they believe women who threaten their power need to be taught a lesson. The widespread availability of pornography, which is often violent and often debasing, has also contributed heavily to these ideas.

The etymology of the word 'pornography' itself is interesting. Though we know it now mostly through the internet, a recent invention, pornography comes from the Greek words 'porne' and 'graphos'. 'Porne' refers to the lowest class of prostitutes in ancient Greece i.e. the women available to all male citizens, not just the gentry. They were considered to be cheap, vile, and objects who could be mistreated without drawing censure from anyone. Not all classes of prostitutes in ancient Greece were viewed this way. The porneia was the lowest in the hierarchy and they had the least human value. The word 'graphos' means 'writing, etching, or drawing'. So pornography is essentially the representation of the lowest class of whores, the ones who can be humiliated because it's fun and nobody's asking any questions.

By this definition, women world-over, no matter what their qualification, job, race, culture, caste, religion and any such category, have slipped into the porneia. Today, it's okay for a man with half my IQ to rub against me in a bus. It is my fault for dressing like a whore. Today, we can all watch Barney on How I Met Your Mother and find his hump-and-dump strategies funny. Today, it's okay to call someone a cunt or a pussy and not offend anyone in the room, even if it has women. Today, nothing can guarantee your safety if you are a woman. Welcome to the porneia.

Stieg Larsson's trilogy goes right into the heart of the issue, though most readers of the books would probably find his plots more exciting than the sociological aspects of it. But me, I'm a Larsson fan because of Lisbeth. And the cold fact that his books are based on actual statistics.