Her Eyes For His Rupee, For Snack of An Afternoon

I still remember waiting for mother when she was supposed to go to join her spouse – so little parental in his behaviour, one has more than averse feeling about saying father – and she had not arrived well past midnight, since her plane from Delhi to Mumbai had yet to leave on its flight from Lucknow for Delhi. Nearby also waiting was the famous family of a superstar, with more than one star right there, the superstar incidentally born a day before my mother. We left to return in the morning while they waited, their awaited father was only to be taken home, and my mother’s plane would not leave till later in the morning anyway. When we came to see her in the morning, she looked exhausted and harassed and I wished I could gather her up and comfort her and make her safe. But that was not to be, she was going to join her spouse, and nothing deterred her in this ever.

Couple of months or so later, two of the siblings were to join them, and I saw them and went to spend the day with them, at the hotel where they waited to catch the plane the next morning. That is when Sgk informed me she was going blind in one eye, and if the other eye behaved the same way she would be totally blind.

I was horrified at the casual way I was being informed of this, but this was the way life was in the parents’ family. Else no one could live under the roof with him hitting anyone he chose however much he chose, and we simply had to live in spite of it, and find what life and joy and peace we could. Mostly it was provided by mother, and her endurance and keeping cheer through it all had guided us through life into adulthood. But that day I was the only adult in that room, and the other two were still teenagers, as was the one left back at her hostel.

I went on to continue life as usual until Deepaawalie, when I went to visit them – secretly, since this was not supposed to be allowed under his rule, but he was out of the country for a couple of years and the three teenagers living at the house by themselves. Sgk was yet to return, and meanwhile I had talked to a colleague in Mumbai before going to Delhi; her mother was a doctor, and it so happened she was well placed and was able to discern the problem when I took Sgk to see her after her return. Sgk had come along with me patiently, she had already seen a couple of opticians via her father’s underlings and her friends, and they had advised her to eat eggs and almonds for her ocular health. She had little hope.

We were directed to AIIMS and we went one morning. Sgk was supposed to  have dilated pupils for examination and it took well over an hour for her, unlike expected ten minutes or so for most. Then she was taken in and it took them over an hour, after which we were asked to return in the afternoon. I was not letting my heart hope yet. They examined her extensively in the afternoon and towards evening is when I was called in and informed by a taciturn senior surgeon that she had to be admitted immediately.

For the first time I had hope, surging through.

I said we needed an evening home, and they arranged to have her admitted day after, informing me that she had to be allowed to do as little as possible, no movements.

We went home. The first thing was to inform various people, next, arrange for money, and then she was admitted. The surgery went through and her eye was saved, and I was at the hospital through the day every day for the next three weeks or so until she was allowed to return home with further instructions of as little movement as possible for few weeks.

A friend of hers meanwhile had been taking care of household and kitchen,  and she gave me a small clue to what could have caused the detachment of retina. She was very badly beaten up one day in full view of everyone, said the friend. So what else is new, I thought.

He, the father of the family, had written to her saying he had cursed her when she “misbehaved” and this is what had caused her to go through the blindness and the surgery, bu thad now withdrawn his curse. She was pathetic asking me over and over what could she have done so bad as to be cursed thus. I was furious, but this fraud was his usual behaviour, ever seeking to browbeat and dominate and using all sorts of lies and hypocrisy to pull everyone else down. I simply said you know him, ignore him. She knew him better, knew his occult powers to damage, perhaps more.

It was to be years, over a decade or so, before I began to know what had caused the injury to her eye, and while it was the humongous beating she received from her father, more than usual, it was more than that. She was beaten up well past her having been operated on for a detached retina due to his beating her, and this went on for years, with slaps and fists punching her in the eye operated on. The story of one such beating involved an aunt and a cousin, one that ought to have been a brother but was not.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Over a decade later I was visiting him, the father of the family, him having moved away from Delhi leaving his now battered almost to complete incapacity our mother and having battered the daughter with fists punching in the same eye that had to be treated surgically periodically, till he could no longer batter them with any fresh pleasure, and had to find his cheap thrills elsewhere. I was visiting, because I had given up not seeing him when my mother was incapacitated.

One evening as I returned after a walk, there were a few people in his living room, and I could see his “friend” with her husband; I assumed the young male sitting with them was one of their own. After a few minutes of my sitting in silence the young man asked me “ - ,don’t you recognise me?” I looked and said, now I do. He was a nephew of the father, son of the eldest of his four younger sisters, a few months older to me.

After they left he, the father, queried if I had really not recognised him, and I explained I had problem quite often when I saw people unexpectedly and out of place. This seemed to displease him, and he said the cousin knew me only because he expected me, with my being left to wonder what the problem was. I wouldn’t have a problem with him not acknowledging me.

Next day or so he informed me he had talked it over with his nephew who had informed me I had been good to him when he had come looking for a job and for guidance. I had forgotten about that, but again wondered why a father needs to know from a nephew about his own progeny being good.

………………………………………………………………………………………

When I returned to Delhi I mentioned the incident to Sgk, and wondered why the small incident had blown out of proportion. That is when she began to tell me about the visit from the second aunt, mgb, and the said cousin svo, who had visited for a month or so –and the story of how she was beaten up even after she had been blinded.

It took her several years of telling, possibly due to trauma she herself experienced in recalling it all, but just as much because this is how she usually recounts a tale – feather by feather until suddenly one sees the claws and more.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

The aunt and her nephew, both earning and both in need of a holiday, had come for a month long visit. During which they led the household through a dance catering to them, and complaining about what they missed. Since they were seen as poor, and the severely deprived members of the household of the supposedly well to do brother and uncle were seen as privileged, the household and particularly the women supposedly responsible were living on knife’s edge for the month.

Sgk had taken over the responsibility of the household after I left, my having refused it and being determined to go on with my academic life (at eighteen years of age) resulting in my being beaten for four months with “get out, leave my house” until I did leave, so persecuting me was his occupation then on in a different setting with the whole world as stage while he needed another victim in addition to the beautiful, intelligent, loving and patient wife he had victimised for the duration of his marriage. Sgk accepted his logic of leaving school and doing housework while preparing for a career in medicine, and became his next victim until he left over a decade later to live free from family and introduce himself to his wife’s hometown as her husband – she had been known for her beauty and her achievements and her virtues galore.

So the visit that year went on with the aunt ruling the roost and demanding services, the real hostess my mother being treated by the sister in law as an interloper with no rights, and Sgk treated like a personal servant paid by the brother explicitly for the purpose of catering to the visitors that were his premarital relatives. Sgk attempted to do her best and maintain peace even as she managed her academic life – she was in college – with housecleaning, cooking and practically all other housework along with catering to visitors’ demands and needs.

But the visitors gave no quarter to the fact of what she could afford on what little household management amount was doled out to her, or to the fact that we had routines very different from what they were used to, or claimed they were used to. One such difference was eating habits – we ate lunch if we were at home, those in school or college ate only if they had been given money by him for the purpose, and dinner was quite often bread and milk, householder women being far too exhausted at the end of the day. Sgk was managing to cook for them to feed them lunch and dinner, along with breakfast for the father – none of us ate that meal as a rule – but this was not enough for the visitors. They were used to snacks after lunch, within a couple of hours or so. This simply was not a routine of our life and she was severely tried.

So the father of the house came home one day to hear his nephew complain about lack of snacks while he was hungry after a lunch – that the lunch was sumptuous beyond what they were used to was of no account to either of them – and finished the complaining session with “I had to spend a rupee from my own earnings to buy bread”.

Sgk, held to account for this lapse as a major sin, boiled over and asked who was dying without a snack. After all the father had never ever asked, much less cared, if anyone he was responsible for had eaten or starved. As long as he got his own food the rest of the family could starve or beg, or bleed hand and foot in winter for lack of warm clothes and proper footwear.

So this concern of his for his nephew and his sister seemed rather extraordinary. And it was, at that. It wasn’t that he cared for any of his parents’ descendents, after all he had never sent them any money much less shown any concern for this nephew’s mother when she burned, instead stating flatly that her husband was responsible now she was married. His whole focus in this argument about the nephew’s one rupee was about nailing a beautiful daughter into guilt and permanent submission of soul and spirit.

He blew up at her answering instead rather than offering the apology and promise to behave according to the demands of his relatives, and thrashed her, as they watched. She screamed, and this went on for a while, with her attempting to shield her face. That was not to be – her hands were held so she could only be hit, and the father hit her on and on and on. None of the visiting relatives stepped in the midst or stopped him, much as they would like to claim it was not their intention this should happen – but while it was happening they had every possibility of stopping it, and certainly made no move to do so.  Perhaps they had forgotten she had been blinded by his beating her previously, and had to have had serious surgery to be able to see at all, instead of being blind. Or, worse, and quite likely at that for them, they were subconsciously bent on her being blind and beaten until she was blind and pathetic instead of a beauty like her mother whom they hated so very much.

The younger sister took her away to her own hostel when it was over, telling the aunt to feel satisfied with taking over the household. She stayed away for a few days and returned, traumatised more by our mother crying piteously as she was being taken away, saying “don’t leave me alone, not you, at least” – having been by now beaten by her husband into a brain damaged state that we were yet to discover the full horror of.

So Sgk returned and resumed her load of housework, academics, and more. And her eyes suffered as her supposedly responsible father ignored, and felt no compunction about having slapped her in spite of her being in danger of becoming blind again.  And this was not the last time he did it, either. 

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

He died recently and it was her husband who cared for him, while she catered to the same aunts and cousins and more with their never ending demands even through the funeral – before he died, they asked her to visit with her brother but not bring her father, the link of the relations, with her; so it really had never been about caring for him, as far as they were concerned, but making demands on his resources that he allowed only as far as nothing was taken from him.

Sgk was catering to the aunts and the cousin who had caused her to be mercilessly beaten in spite of risk of becoming blind again, for the one rupee he had to spend on his own food for a snack a couple of hours after lunch, and through the funeral she had been ill with fever even as she cooked for them and served them, each with separate demands.

Why does she do it? Is it because she is all too aware of how powerful they are as small time sources of occult power that can hit and destroy with no positive power ever? Why had she chosen to keep in touch with them, even as I finally gave up post their never acknowledging my mother’s death as a matter of grief for me, even as a matter of common courtesy on a minimum level? They who had always penalised my mother for her lack of social propriety in not giving that small gift to a visitor.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

What we have never turned around to ask is – in all this, where and what was the role of the cousin that was responsible for his uncle beating a young helpless woman into certainty rather than mere risk of permanent damage to her eyes, well past his having beaten her into blindness in the first place? He, the young male who was himself earning unlike the cousin whose eyes he caused a further damage to for sake of a rupee of his earning he spent on a snacking need, he was in position of a brother as far as social norms go, he was and is supposed to be a protector for his sister.

Why did he not stop his uncle from hitting the young helpless overburdened girl? Why did he not get between them, protect the sister, hold the beating hands away?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Such males in nominally human forms do NOT qualify for the epithet “man”.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Human, Lumpen, Bullies, and Politics of Envy

Human, Lumpen, Bullies, and Politics of Envy

When we were students aspiring to be academic scholars, life wasn't a rose petals world - we lived on hope and for the glory that is discovery of truth, of expanding horizons of knowledge and more. For this privilege we were thankful enough to do half a teaching load (compared to full faculty members) for an annual stipend less than salary per month of what a babysitter today is supposed to be paid, on an average, and we paid whatever exorbitant rent locally decided by the markets unlike the said babysitter today whose rent and food and other bills are expected to be paid by the employer. We paid our bills, our taxes, our social security, and had but little protection of health insurance generally, unlike the privileged babysitter.

Our work, real work, however, was not teaching; teaching was merely how we were allowed to survive. Our work was the never-ending search for the rainbow, the science and the discovery, our research, our thesis. This had no timetable but our life, no schedule but twenty four hours a day all days of year, and more, while we were expected and measured on other aspects of life as well – awareness of fine arts, social skills, expertise with cuisines of the world – informally. And we attempted to measure up, if only because it was all for a dream we had all dreamt for ourselves.  

A few went off their sanity, some committed suicides, and no one – least of all us, most of us anyway – would penalise any part of the chain in our survival, any employers direct or otherwise, anyone who sent bills that we had to manage to pay – unlike the privileged babysitter in NY whose bills, food and rent and all else but what she sent her family back halfway around the world, were paid by her employers, on her salary well over ten times what we were paid. We cooked, kept our homes clean, paid for our heating and hot water (if you think that is a joke you have not lived in colder parts of the world, colder than NY), and electricity and phone and transport. Unlike the privileged babysitter of Devayani whose bills were paid by her employer, along with the ten times our salary that she was paid.

Yes, prices have gone up – but not that far, and if she is expected to be paid a stipend well over three times what we got after adjusting for inflation and years since, apart from all her expenses as well, there is something wrong with a country that expects uneducated labour to be paid better than would be faculty of universities of their own, and the envy of India so rampant in US for India’s intellectual and scientific cadre in spite of much pulicised poverty – and tolerance or prevalence of faiths other than approved by Rome – seems a clear fraud.

We did not go about incriminating our employer even in our thoughts, much less in action – as this maid did, hiring (or being used by) a firm that specializes in accusing employers of human trafficking with a conspiracy that went from NYPD to US embassy in India to perhaps Rome, who knows where! If an odd doctoral candidate shot his advisor for making him work for twenty years and still was not satisfied enough, we had merely a silent sympathy, and never spoke of it. We had a dream and toiled hard to climb towards the summit of our beginning of a life we had chosen – scientific research.

And when we arrived there at the end of our rainbow to take a place on a faculty somewhere (if we were lucky enough), we still got less than half the said babysitter of today whose employer is penalised in a shameful way for paying her – the employee – what her compatriots back home would consider a salary enough for ten such workers, for the same work, and with no other bills paid (food, rent, or anything else) along with the salary either.

Other colleagues were less happily placed – my housemate was in music and was paid only half what we were, so she worked a bank job half a day as well, apart from all other grueling work. Not that it was music to blame. IT employees today get one tenth of their coworkers depending on which part of earth they happen to work in, for the same work. And if someone is working in a richer nation with higher bills to pay but hails from a poor nation, the poor sap is paid a pittance in addition to his salary back home for the duration of his stay – could be weeks, months, years, indefinite – unless he cuts loose and gets himself a local employee with a different contract, and a legal status changed from worker imported to worker local.

What does not, ever, happen is hauling any of the huge IT firms into court for human trafficking, much less handcuffing them on crowded roads before their children at their schools, or strip searching them in jail and locking them up with drug abusers and sex workers. The IT firms are doing nicely, thank you.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Or is it so simple, as glory to menial jobs and workers doing them while down with education and those that aspire to life of intellect and more? Not that anyone can deny racism in paying pittance to workers from poor countries even when they are brought to rich lands to pay hefty bills, or paying exhorbitant salaries (including huge rents for their living arrangements – one European brought to work on an airline in a third world country was arranged to live in a five star hotel for over a year, and he was not a CEO or anything comparable, only a man who dealt with keeping the planes in their nuts and bolts; granted this is important, but is it less so when done in a first world country, and if so is he kept in the same luxury of a five star hotel when he works in one of those places? NO!!!). Is it simple racism?

NO, as a matter of fact. It is also misogyny, and it takes only a moment to look at the whole picture. The real sin, crime et al that Devayani Khobragade committed was to be a woman, and compounded it then by being educated, highly placed official with authority of her position in a first world nation that does not really approve of it no matter what lip service it gives, and then of course there are her other sins – being not only non-“white” but also of a different “faith”.

Of course she had to be handcuffed in street before her children and their school, and strip searched in jail before being locked up with streetwalkers and drug addicts of New York. She is a Hindu from India and was not a slumdog, was a deputy counsel for her consulate.

How dare she!

………………………………………………………………………………..

For fact is, she is neither alone nor singled out, as a woman from another faith, another country – one they prefer to see not as an emerging IT savvy or even one with a rich culture intellectually and spiritually, and in the latter far more so then their own roots could aspire to go, but as “slumdog” that must be shamed in a culture of a rich nation that worships bullies in school and jocks in general, demeans women into sex objects and worse, and more. Intellectuals are abused at school as geeks or nerds, persecuted, and expected to not survive youth unless protected by a bully jock; when they do so survive, they are roundly abused for not being more busy with hundreds of women than with their intellectual concerns, unless they use those concerns to make tons of money in law or medicine. Elsewhere these professions are seen as noble in helping humanity, not in the new world. There, law and medicine are only short of running a chain of supermarkets in terms of making money.

Devayani is not singled out or alone in being punished for being a woman who does not choose between family and career, much less between family and education. Any woman who tried to have both would be punished, and socially before law takes over as in case of Devayani. You only have to look at the social structure, the right wing screaming against women for expecting to be counted as humans on par with their male lords and masters – lords and masters as a caste, mind you, due to gender and not due to any particular reason of a relationship even.

A male (of course!) colleague once chastised me for attempting to care for a very sick mother, while I carried out any duties necessitated by the position of being on faculty in a university – I did not skip lectures or appointments, but his logic was faculty ought to be present nine to five like any clerical or menial staff, although it was obvious to everyone they were spending the whole time between reading newspaper, gossiping, or shouting at office boys to fetch coffee (this last was only affordable to someone known to be politically well connected).

I asked him what he would do in a similar position; he very arrogantly proclaimed “I would never be in such a position” – I am not joking. I refrained from asking specific questions, such as how he could control his own self or family to the extent he could guarantee no one would ever be ill, bedridden or paralysed. But the answer was obvious really – his gender was the root of his arrogant and stupid proclamation. Yes, people including his children could be bedridden, paralysed, whatever – it was never going to be his problem. He would simply demand his wife does needful and if she was bedridden he would marry another one to solve that problem.

But since I was, am, the “wrong” gender, he felt entitled to be rude, and demand and dictate terms in ways that would be unreasonable on any other count. What is more a female colleague too remarked much later that she had thought I should have waited for a tenured position before indulging in caring for a dying parent, and she only knew better when in a few months it was over, realizing death waits for no one. Then she said, perhaps I had known better all along, after all.

And this was not the place where I was the first woman on faculty, either – that was before this, in a place where I was alone, living alone and knew no one. So the jocks complained for getting lesser grade than their girlfriends (didn’t occur to them to check if the girlfriend did do better in fact, and deserved it, which in this case she did) and “white” students were unhappy about others doing better (again, for the same reason). Female students told me of the relief they found in being treated as a student to be considered in respect of their intellectual performance, and not as a girl to be never allowed to answer no matter they know better than the guys called on to do so, like others on faculty did to them.

And then one of them – a bright one at that – went on to question an objective rather than subjective grading by hinting copiously at a loner life, and directly gossiping to say publicly that her low grade was due to my being alone (in case this is unclear, it did not refer to friends or family, only to her living with a man while I was not even meeting one). And the brightest of them fell to the beehive and took the bait offered, to go against and switch classes, and I am sure far worse (she is doing well partly as a reward, while word going around kept me from possible offers next).

Was I the first or the only person on the faculty ever to grade objectively? No, there had been someone before me who did that, but he was not only a male, he was also “white”, albeit from halfway around the world as I was. So he had to leave but was able to find another place, and was probably free of gossip of the vicious sort about his social or personal life. His departure was definite when he had decided to teach from a standard text rather than an awful one written by a member of the faculty, and subsequently I had made the same decision, resulting in losing the class and the job after being promised a continuance.

A woman colleague once explained that she chose to live an academic life and therefore sacrificed any thought of a life that would include a family. This would be incomprehensible to anyone in India. Women routinely do both in India, not because they are superwomen compared to those from the “first world” but because they are not penalized for this. Some for necessity of supporting a family, giving one’s children just that much more; some because they are well qualified and can do more, and are not seen as villains or vamps for employing a worker or half a dozen for taking over the menial tasks and paying them what the neighbours do to their workers. Market determines the deal.

And some do, yes, have aspirations beyond the usual concern for making a bit to pay for one’s children’s future. Some aspire to academics, others to music or medicine or even being founders or CEOs of inventive scientific corporations – they all manage home and family as well, with help from everyone around. Family is defined in more extensive sense and grandparents are on hand to be part of grandchildren’s life everyday as a matter of course, unlike US where they might have to sue for visitation rights. Family, relatives, neighbours, employees, every possible venue of help is available to women who would rather not limit themselves to housework.

And they are not penalised for this, unless a member of the family is envious – even then, it is nothing to speak of out of ordinary, certainly nothing comparable to what Devayani was made to go through in NY, only because she was a woman from India who had not only education and a career and a high position of authority, but dared to do so in spite of having children, and worse – for not keeping those children away from her back home. Or in a residential school in Switzerland, like a more sensible parent would, instead of in US, much less in New York. How dare she wish to keep them and have demanding career too!

……………………………………………………………………………

Most embassies, consulates and so forth around the world are populated with men in positions other than typists, or glorified (or not so much) secretaries – and some use men for those positions too. Most therefore have families with them only if they have wives, and most have a network of male bonding that prevents them from being arrested for employing a chauffeur, a cook, a housecleaner, or any other home worker. The wife is their primary unpaid employee, like any other man in any position anywhere in the world. They are not arrested in the street before their children in front of their schools and thrown in jails with drug addicts and strip searched for sin of employing someone at home for a salary ten times that of any such worker back home, much less expected to pay salaries comparable to IT professionals to house workers. Most wives around the world do far more than babysitting and get paid nothing, although the argument about doing it for herself applies not at all when it comes to ownership which rests solely with the male parent.

Oh, never mind consulates and embassies and third world and different faiths and question of whether it was a powerful institution other than law that pushed for punishing Devayani for not being of the same faith as her maid. Just look at the accusation, “human trafficking”, and think over how many rich US male citizens are punished in any way – much less hand cuffed, paraded, strip searched et al – for employing house workers from central or southern part of the continent, illegal or underpaid or whatever.

The real salvation of those men that do so regularly are guilty of “human trafficking” far more than Devayani – because after all she employed someone from her own country, never dreaming this woman would turn on her for being of another faith and blackmail, extort and more, using her own faith and power tools thereof available to her but not to the employer – no, the central and south “American” employees of the rich US citizens have little in common with their own employers in terms of language, life experience, country of origin or level of economy back home.

The real clue? The wives of these men are, as a rule, not comparable to Devayani in education, career, personal achievement or position – on the contrary, they are likely to be trophy wives trying to keep their husbands’ attention by using every trick sold by cosmetics and fashion industry that has now medical and surgical factors as well, and doing little but partying and gossip besides.

Devayani paid for being not one of them. She is educated, managed a grueling set of examinations and more for her career, rose higher up and still had a family, in spite of being not only from India but a Hindu as well. She had to be punished. After all, she did not have a wife do it all for free for her, unlike all the others – all men in this world, to begin with – that do not get so punished. 

In another culture she would be stoned to death by public in public, and then it would be considered shocking in US and first world. But handcuffed, dragged by police in front of her children in front of their school, strip searched, locked up with NY streetwalkers and drug abusers, with no apology and criminal persecution hanging over her head – why, she got of practically scot free!

Get thee to a nunnery, or draw a veil over yourself, literally or in lipstick, because you are not approved of in “faiths” that rule the world outside India. 

……………………………………………………………………………………….

Devayani is far from the only person to employ a maid for housework, or for babysitting, even in US. For this, mainly, and for paying her maid from India an Indian salary (which is precisely what humongous IT firms including those originating from US and not owned by India expats do, for weeks and minths and years, to people they bring to work in IT from India into US or Europe). NY has defined this as human trafficking, and US is backing them. Out of embarrassment at their own behavior, likely – which is still unpunished and without any reparations to speak of, all told.

US was settled by Europeans that pushed and massacred the people who lived in that land, and called it “new world” and discovery, rather than invasion; the original occupiers are given a false name, “Indian”, never mind they had nothing to do with India; this falsehood is an embarrassment stoutly imposed on all world, and for the sin of existence India must pay, since the falsehood of original people of what is now called US being misnamed Indians is obvious until India is not obliterated or silenced for good about existence of India.

Human trafficking as in slavery was rampant from China to Judea to Africa to US until the civil war of 1861-1865 in US, which is when a dim idea that slavery is bad began to spread (India never had it, according to surprised visitors from China since antiquity). US still does have racism and has made no reparations to the descendents of erstwhile slaves albeit talks of that sort happen from time to time, chiefly because they simply cannot afford it. Could they make a partial gesture, yes; they don’t want to, because it will set a precedent and demands for full payment for work rendered might come forth, not to mention punitive damages for torture, inhuman treatment, separation of families, and of course rapes of slave women by masters and their “white” sons et al. So there is merely a silence as a policy.

And Devayani is strip searched for having brought a maid from india to US with and Indian rather than a US salary. Who is kidding whom? Has anyone paid a dime of US salary to any descendent of a slave trussed and shipped like a potato, brought to US and sold like an animal in a market in Virginia, used in US and babies of slaves sold off as per will of the masters?

For that matter – what about the Chinese workers brought with a contract and treated just as bad in all but name of slavery, expected to live in subhuman conditions and build the railroads and go back? US might have forgotten, and the “white” population might be ignorant of it all, but Chinese have not. Chinatowns across US are practically forbidden territory to local PDs, for the ferocity with which they guard their domains. Human trafficking rampant, but is unchecked for most part.

Devayani’s sin and crime was being an easy target, like her nation, India – unlike China, or mafia from various known other nations. Devayani’s maid had connections to US embassy in India, and to a firm in NY that uses blackmail and extortion to get green cards for people who will otherwise never qualify to get a visa to US much less a resident status. And the said ambassador and his compatriots could pronounce the name of the maid’s husband, unlike Devayani or anyone of her “faith”. So go ahead and skew fairness and justice.

………………………………………………………………………….

It is hard to think of a nation that did not use human trafficking as a policy during colonial era – in any part of the world where they needed workers who would not stay home, go away or complain. Workers from India were carried by shiploads to every part of British Empire to work in factories or fields or plantations or worse, to work as soldiers against locals to protect British rulers or traders. Other European nations with any overseas possessions to speak of were no better.

But hey, let us punish an educated woman of nonwhite race, wrong gender and faith, poor nation attempting to do well, and we can all go home feeling good about a strict and strong policy on “human trafficking”. To meals prepared by Mexican or Guatemalan aid for a pittance, likely as not. As long as the master of the house is “white”, and of not the wrong “faith”, never fear being caught for the crime Devayani is strip searched for.

Incidentally, did NYPD think she had humans hidden in crevices of her body, for trafficking or any other purposes? Or is it obvious to everyone else in the world that it was deliberate torture and humiliation for sin of being a woman of education in a position of authority in spite of being of the wrong race, colour, nation et al?

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Devayani is not the only person from India to suffer humiliation or worse in a first world nation. Murders of young science and engineering students in various first world nations from US to Australia have been rising, mostly due to the victims being from India and doing well academically nevertheless, unlike the lumpen entitled “white” who prefer to hone their skills of bullying and murder rather than “math”, preferring to be not geeks but terrors with guns or knives or simply fists and boots that can take care of any brilliant student from a nation lacking in bully culture.

But that simple solution – shot in head, knife in torso, punching and kicking and throwing them on train tracks with moments for a fast train to pass – is only for the aspiring young males from India. For a woman, and especially for one in a position of authority, a far more intricate web of conspiracy from NYPD to us embassy in India has to be designed, and a far worse humiliation for the poor woman and her nation, by strip searching her so she is naked forever in imagination of the world.

Then the perpetrator nation browbeats India about Vienna convention, never mind which clause of the said convention is supposed to justify the treatment imposed on a deputy consul from a poor country in US, in spite of her diplomatic status and the immunity it ought to have guaranteed from just such behavior from law.

No, they won’t back down, for it is serious they say. No, they won’t pay descendents of slaves of US, for it is out of question they say. No, they won’t give back land stolen post agreement after agreement from natives of their land, and they WILL take water and land from them if they so deem necessary, they say.

Bully and lumpen, envy cultured intellectuals much?

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Hidden agendas - Health, fashion industry, media.

A six feet tall and extremely thin young man is asked by a young woman if he was deliberately losing weight to look sexy and attractive. I look disbelievingly - his present state can only invite parents of capable young women to offer him meals and daughters with a certainty that his state of health is due to being unable to feed himself, being single. What makes them think this level of bone-and-skin is attractive? The said young woman is thin, but talks non stop about how she needs to lose weight, and has loose hanging flesh. She looks like another candidate to be fed by someone with maternal or paternal instincts, at her level of thinness, unless one believes women ought to starve to a level of weak physical state so they would work for very little for others on demand, with no strength to think or resist, so society can function as it did for millennia. Yet I am unsure these people are speaking thus with sheer agenda of hidden message to tell someone else (well over twice their age) to begin starving, as various others with assumptions of right to do so would; these youngsters genuinely think they are overweight, when in fact in US they would be taken for new arrivals from a starving nation.



Then I see some photographs, and while I do not contest mine, theirs look healthy in comparison to themselves, and the photos are hardly a moment old. That explains it - the young and especially many around have substituted not only media propaganda for thinking but photographs for a look in the mirror or around.



Anyone with a little thought and looking realistically at people who might not be dressed in designer absurdly priced rags would see how real people look and what impression they create in one's heart. There is much starvation in the world, and Vogue et al cannot be confused with photographs from news or National Geographic, however similar the body sizes. If those starving saw their own images in the latter and the expensive models in the former and saw how identical the body shapes were, would the pain of starvation go away, would health miraculously be restored by a mere thought of being a fashionable shape and size zero?



Do the ill effects of starvation on the young women in US or any women in any poor nation disappear merely by being able to wear the slightest size clothes on sale in stores? Do their brains receive enough blood? Their hearts, their wombs even, the one part they are identified with by those telling them to eat less forever and look pretty?



If anyone thinks it is not a misogynous agenda - when was the last time a sport jock was told to eat less, be size zero, try fitting into clothes half his size for sake of peer pressure? When does a male covered reasonable thouroughly get taken  automaticallyfor fat rather than for well built, working out, strong et al?



Once it was understood women needed to work to contribute physically to society, not merely as baby ovens (which assumes their genetic contributions are unimportant, as are their will or any other factors granted by right to males); there was housework, and possibly farmwork, quite possibly work for others to support their own family by the wherewithal earned with physical labour. This is now true of much of the world but not of those middle class and above in societies not desperately poor. So poor starve from necessity, and middle class aspires to rich society fashions and calls their own women to starve in name of "looking good".



What is worse, sometimes it is given name of health.



Yes, there are problems of various sort - cholesterol, diabetes, ... - associated by most people, by media and by medical profession, with overweight; and a large size woman is naturally taken as unhealthy, fat, because women cannot possibly have muscle can they?!!!! Out of question, since the starving skin and bone women don't.



Yet - the strange part is, most people I have personally seen suffering from cholesterol and diabetes and so forth, have never been large or well endowed, on the contrary - they have on the whole been not only very thin as far as looks go, but genetically so, since early age.



Obviously it isn't the fat one sits on but the fat flowing in one's veins that is the dangerous part, and the ability or inability to convert food into health that ought to begin early with nutrition rather than fried treats to make up for an otherwise insufficient and unhealthy diet.



Wait a moment though - what about the problems of ill health associated with low weight or worse, loss of weight? No concern funnily enough, and a joke if brought up in conversation supposedly about health. Why is that?



Because health is not what it is about in the social fabric where peer pressure substitutes for hard work of one's own thought and perception, and media can easily, successfully tell everyone what to think, manipulating facts by hiding health and highlighting needs of fashion industry to make more profits.



Once, you bought cloth by the yard and your tailor made it to fit your body. Now, you go to a store and try on for size and pay the same for a particular style, whatever your size. Obviously the industry can only make more profit if all women are pencil thin with almost no figure. And women are easy to manipulate, just tell them to ill treat any women who won't starve herself, never mind health. They will starve themselves, feel guilt, never complain about fashion industry leaving reasonable figures of wrong gender with no fashionable clothes to wear.



Males of human species won't be manipulated so easily into starving themselves, but then males are less of a problem after all, with washboard shapes diversified only by size, and willing to pay for clothes fitted better. If they see women starving to fit into small clothes, not their problem; if they see healthy women dressed not in the latest fashion, they couldn't care less. Women are lucky if their men notice any part of the pains to dress taken for a special occasion - and rare if a man notices more than merely an occasion or so. Fashion industry has no problems with making profits in dressing males, as long as it is appropriately subservient, and it is.



And so the young women in US go on with anorexia, bulimia, et al - while those in poor nations, poor societies, poor communities eat less than their great grandmothers and never mind nutrition or health, as long as they fit in clothes off racks in stores as well as the hangars in the stores do.



After all no one told the women they could try defending themselves against physical assault, abuse, or more - they are not only the weaker half but ought to be so, else how do they get controlled and paid pittance for work that society couldn't survive without? If assaulted, abused, or worse, well it is their own bad luck or worse, their own fashion and improper deportment (as is their being abandoned their own fate and their own lack of being attractive or taking trouble to make themselves attractive with all the help fashion and cosmetics offer), and they cannot expect to be defended, police can't be everywhere and watchers are not legally allowed to interfere in most civilised societies!



As for a woman being strong enough to defend herself, how horrible, tell her no man would every marry her, hurry and starve! Eat an expensive treat from a store occasionally, but not milk or fruit or vegetables or any other nutritional food that might actually give strength, no, that might change your figure from a zero pencil to a womanly shape, and then what would fashion industry do if every woman ate and became healthy and they all had various shapes as their great grandmothers did once?

........................................................................................................



No, let the women starve and be weak, so they obey as silently as possible. And if starvation or abuse damages their health, dump them and go for a luxury cruise, after all society will only have sympathy for a bereaved male who bravely goes on with his cruise and does not spoil fun for others with tears for a dead wife.

.........................................................................................................

Exceptions understood to equality professed

Equality is held up as an attractive concept - usually by those that have not achieved it - to equalise those above; needless to say it rarely applies to themselves being equal to others on lower rungs of ladders they are not willing to discard. "One should not be so proud of (quality x)" is usually the pious statement expressed in private whispers by those that either do not possess it or are on the lower rung from those they would equalise - and usually it applies not to those in power that could vanquish those that profess this.

Thus those that profess equality between members of a faith usually assume that their own superior quality due to race is understood and won't be overlooked by those they are attempting to convert or have converted, just as the women who complain about other women assuming superiority of beauty don't go about embracing those obviously far less - and if they do, generally it is due to a confidence of a contrast showing them in better light. As for equality between categories where they might lose superiority, forget it.

No woman who is seen as owner of a house (due to living rent free until death of the owners makes her de facto owner) would admit to equality with one who happened to work away and pay rent life long, and lose on the ownership of the family property. No woman who either is popular or happens to have a clout due to some position would stoop to admitting equality with one who is without.

Not that different, this "equality", from the "all women are equal" stance used often merely to pull down some achievers who happen to be women, while no such equality is presumed by those professing this equality between all women to exist between either all males (no woman would admit to her husband or father or brother being only as good as the poorest man on street), or even between females that possess old fashioned tools of power and those that don't for the moment, whatever the said tools - a house, a husband, a son, a car ...

"Now that we all have (degree x) aren't we all equal?" asks one - and uses a logical reply to malign one that negates this with good reason. Perplexed about this malicious usage of a truth I turn to S finally after years, and he clears it up with a "that would make you equal to Einstein" - the ridiculous extension of a false proposition that is clear only when taken to this level.

But of course, those that need a cross to hang someone they hate don't deal in facts, reason, logic - theirs is to gossip and shoot arrows, dodge if you can.

And so an ugly relative blames a beautiful one for pride of beauty while a less literate one blames the same person for achievements academics. A glimmer of the true reason comes through only with the "a fly won't fly off her nose" comment by one, which the placid one in privacy of her family makes light of with a "they of course have flies fly off their noses all the while", but not in confrontation with one who makes the first comment.
................................................................

Heart and rectitude

Everyone in the g clan held Kg as a loving, caring member of the extended family, when I was able to interact with them, on a general if not an everyday level. I had put aside the memories of when I had in fact interacted with her on an everyday level, giving her every possible benefit of doubt quite intentionally - a legacy of my other lineage, the D clan inheritance of nobility of spirit and persona.

So I never compared those earlier memories, never compared the contrasting images, put aside everything that went against her and let fresh experiences take root, to see if they did in fact prove her clan right. She was a blood relative after all, for all her hatred of my other half of lineage, and I was more willing to give her this benefit of doubt than she had been for all the two decades odd difference of age.

She was an aunt, and on those occasions when we had interacted on everyday basis I was a helpless young child in her power, although neither she nor I had thought of me as a child. Else she ought to have been dead of shame when she persecuted me deliberately and viciously at ten, if not before, that is.

Nearly forty seven years have passed, but the memory of her extreme inappropriate behaviour is still quite fresh - as is my then instant reaction. She had then asked me my opinion about something an adult ought to never mention to a child, but she had done so deliberately to persecute a ten year old, with a view to making public whatever answer I would give, at the very least, and possibly worse, but primarily drown me in terror at her power over me - my parents having left her in charge, of two of us, in effect - and shame at the question being asked at all.

"Do you think your dad has a filthy relationship with (Mrs. A--e)?" She had asked. My instant reaction then, of heart and mind and whole being, was that to speak this at all was extremely inappropriate of her, to speak of it to a ten year old, any ten year old, much less a relative of her own bloodline. I was horrified cold, with all emotions frozen and a mere logic of the situation flooding my mind - that she had asked this only to get a reaction, to report it to whoever could hit me for whatever reaction I had as reported by her, and her sole objective was a vicious persecution of me carried out deliberately. This was worse than when she made me sweep dust from under her feet, literally.

Now a few years ago it occurred to me I had never, would never, be so heartless, much less ignoble, to any cousin (including daughter of Kg) or niece or nephew, even a distant relative only through marriage or a stranger child, and however much reason if any to be disapproving of their parent or parents one had, I had always believed an adult must let a child grow in blissful sunshine as one would any plant. Then after all these years I was able to finally deal with judging the behaviour of this person with dispassionate impersonal reason, being finally able to see the ten year old that I then was as a child rather than as myself and an interested party in the horror of the event who could not judge and waited for someone else to do it.

Never happened though - and she was able to carry on the persecution she intended by reporting on my lack of an emotional reaction and a no comment stance by imputing a guilt of an adverse opinion on it, and persecuting to the hilt by the stamped and addressed letters they were supposed to fill in and mail fortnightly - or possibly theirs were weekly, ours fortnightly. The person they reported to beat up someone within an inch of her life for repeating an abusive word he used everyday to address everyone in family, from infants to the old woman who cared for his home and children only so she could protect them, her descendents, from his wrath. This beating up of a mother of four driving her into arms of death was then publicly justified by him as a madness that came over him due to the inappropriateness of the repeating of the abusive word, however often he used it in the same company.

And I was punished to be treated on par with any unrelated orphan with poor clothes and shoes - office cleaners' children had shoes often better in school, and they knew it - and bleeding limbs through winters, with manual labour to serve the despot justifying expense of food (school expenses were paid for by the many scholarships fortunately), and going to school held as a benefit for me rather than a right, to be withdrawn at any given moment. This went on until I was eighteen, when I was told to leave, with repeated beating of my head on walls until one day throwing me on bed and climbing on me was enacted out to convince us I had to leave.

So Kg did triumph, and her brother carried out her vendetta against a sister-in-law as per her desire, by hacking the firstborn of the beautiful intelligent educated wife his sister hated for the rectitude Kg lacked.

I had put it all aside when a young adult and made attempts to the best of the ability with a blank covering all this and earlier bad taste of any memories left in mind or heart. It would have all remained submerged but for the vendetta she carried out further, and her wishes he attempted to make me bend to much later, for no foreseeable reason. When he tried devious means to make me go meet her, it was inexplicable, and after several years it occurred to me that the point was she was still going on against me and my mother.

She went further and gossiped about it to some neighbours of ours she had known when living with us, and told a niece - one forever fooled by her, never mind how she had terrorised her as an infant, but then again perhaps this subconscious terror is what drives this niece into accepting this aunt as one in good faith - about how it was inappropriate for a woman to speak of a husband's bad temper to her children. This coming from the niece remained a question, it did not fit - the niece had not reported the whole conversation, merely a snippet, waiting for a reaction that couldn't then be given in absence of the whole picture.

Now after years of the question on the back burner it is clear what conversation took place, and again, this ugly vendetta of a malicious vicious person is only comparable to a nazi illiterate lout maligning Einstein to justify burning his works.

Children are neither blind nor deaf nor idiots that can be fooled by falsehood fed in face of facts seen and heard everyday, and those that are thus fed are damaged into accepting a twisted mindset and ignoble behaviour as reality and an ideal to be followed.

Men who return home to their children and give them of their love and heart and beings are as obvious as those that don't because they call a neighbour to inform their family every weekend to the effect that they shall be spending the weekend with a girlfriend's family, and no one has to inform the children that this is unusual to say the least - the neighbours are all home after all. Children who accept horrible beatings of themselves and their mother from the breadwinner as a routine normalcy subsequently go on to repeat it in their own lives, and daughters choose to marry those that will make it happen so their own fathers seem normal, but all the while it is more than obvious to everyone involved that this is neither necessary nor normal, and is in fact as horrible as it gets.

One cannot expect justice from so ignoble a clan, so vicious, so malicious; and yet they demand mercy and forgiveness pleading their years, and cry about lack of heart for one not melting and saying it is all ok. This is on par with nazis demanding friendliness from such inmates of the camps as managed to survive and complaining to the world about injustice of the not forthcoming matey acceptance.

But often hearts work subterraenean despite logic, and a child expects a father to protect the child and punish the attacker - and this child might survive in adulthood, as long as the person supposedly father lives, never mind he never did carry out any of the functions of a father other than allowing the child to live in the house (demanding service in exchange for the food) and beatings, beratings, galore, so his ghouls might be satisfied.

Fact is, a ten year old has no idea what a filthy relationship is, however unusually the two people concerned have behaved through their lives - no matter how much her husband prohibits it and no matter how categorically his wife disapproves, they have not only continued to meet but to carry on trips out of town together, with some thin cover (thin, because not only they returned to the homes kept by the wedded partners for all the benefits thereof, but never actually went into a nunnery no matter how loudly they proclaimed their relationship as based in quest of something other worldly) - and the forcing of this awareness by mentioning any related concepts or words to a child so small amounts to sexual harrassment.


And this was by a blood relative, an aunt who is supposed to be a loving person.

Her niece praises another aunt, one who refused to accept her share of the property of her father-in-law, while conveniently forgetting about Kg's financial morals or principles. Kg was about to divorce her child's father when he died even as the case was not yet finished, so she had her grip on the property that he had in his power which in fact belonged to her father in law, whom she had not seen in all probability until then much less lived with. Kg fought for the property in the name of the child and lost in court, and for all her assertions or gossips about rectitude against the unquestionably far superior relative she carried on vendetta against, Kg has not made any attempts to keep up any relationship between her child and her grandfather the owner of the property she fought to keep.

The niece who is informed about her mother's shortcomings has no clue as to the real vicious vendetta of Kg, terrorised as she is from the babyhood when she was thrown at the wall and fell on floor with no pulse and no breath, because his food was not yet ready after he had returned (from his girlfriend's place?) home; the baby had high fever, and the mother alone with two children had been anxious for the baby, holding her.

The niece is now blind due to several determined attempts by Kg's brother to make that happen - once was not enough, so she the daughter was punched by the father, the brother of Kg, in the eye that had sight returned after a horrendous operation of the detached retina, the operation that he informed them was needed only because he had cursed the daughter.


And so terrified as she is right since the babyhood throwing on the wall and subsequent slapping and punching her into blindness, she prefers to play and sing their tunes, with no thought given to who is blaring nazi propaganda. It is far more convenient to howl with the wolves rather than not.

That explains why my mother wrote to me calling me brave.
........................................................................




The reason my mother was unwilling to bring a poor niece home was not unwillingness to support a poor relative, but the abhorrence at the malicious watch that she fully expected to follow, always comparing and demanding why niece did not so well as her own children did, was she being a slave driver, was she discriminating ... and she had every reason to expect this from the year of horrifying persecution she had seen of her daughter only through letters of the persecutors, with the certain knowledge of all those letters being intended maliciously with a complete lack of fair treatment to her daughter, never mind any question of anyone with any heart towards a mere ten year old.


Now, the unwillingness of an aunt by marriage is held up as a fault to be punished - with a stepdaughterly treatment of his own child by the pawn of the g clan, the abandonment of the daughter post horrible beatings and starvings, and worse, far far worse, unimaginably worse.


It is always easier to persecute an innocent person with throwing muck, rather than support a niece one is using as an excuse for the persecution of another one. Any man who does wish to support a niece or a nephew or both can send wherewithal to suffice while there are relatives galore that would be physically present to support them in the milieu they are used to, rather than the poor school in a faraway metropolis where the supposedly privileged child goes to, a region where one has to use at least one other language if not two for all purposes and if one is unable to do so failure is guaranteed.


So the cheapest possible shot is, blame the sister in law, the wife, for the unwillingness of the man to support his relatives, and blame his children for the support they don't receive. And g clan was always in top form for cheap shots at that, cheaper the better.
........................................................................



"Just because there has been unfair treatment of you at my hand does not mean you will ever get any justice from me" - for once truthful assurance in full family surrounding, by msg, circa late sixties - early seventies.


"She doesn't have a good heart" comments using other people, possibly merely other names, over forty years later of persecution that never stopped short of total vanquishing of any chosen target - chosen for the fun of the hunt, a la deer in forest or rather in pet store.

Cowards don't hunt sharks, they stay away from danger to their persons, never mind the wife and daughter alone during '84 riots in Delhi, postpone the return until it is safer for the man of the house. So much so, the very persecution by such a person is evidence beyond par of one's lack of guilt.
...........................................................................



Kg blames a hated sister in law for the severed relationships between her brother and his child, possibly only one of them, possibly more than one - after all he did blind one he could not throw out successfully, and had even told his wife to strangle the baby son who wanted only to be with his father instead of the teenage son of the friend of the father.

Kg blames the sister in law for the strains in relationships her brother has had with his family. And yet this is the woman who filed for a divorce - due to physical abuse according to her relatives, whatever the reason she officially mentioned in the petition. And this was when she was a new mother of then an infant daughter.

What was she planning to inform her daughter one wonders as to her reasons for a divorce, if her husband had not died - all conveniently in more than one way for her - in midst of that case in court, one has to wonder. She couldn't possibly have said it was due to lack of whatever a man is supposed to provide a wife, home or wherewithal or private satisfaction in marital relations. Was she planning to disclose physical abuse as her reason, or something else, in explaining to her daughter why she was not living with two parents? And how was she going to prevent the daughter from getting the story from her father, for that matter?

Does the daughter, now in her forties, still have any idea the mother was in midst of a divorce when she was a baby and her father died before the divorce was final? Has the daughter ever even met her grandfather, uncles and aunts, cousins, who happen to be the mother's in-laws? How does the daughter explain the distance to herself - was she told her father was unwanted and they are all bad people, period?

Or is it merely convenient for Kg to blame the victims of her brother while simultaneously blaming her own relatives by marriage?

Not that different from her brother at that, who "was shocked" that his daughter would inform "non-family members" about "family matters" such as the abuse perpetrated by him, while conveniently forgetting having not only complained to his office "subordinates" about his "family matters" but dictated letters about "family matters" addressed to his relatives to his secretary at the office, carbon copies of which then were sent out to his relatives, making it clear he never had any intention of privacy.

So the "family matters" privacy applies only to anyone mentioning abuse at his hands, just as the principle of women conducting themselves in propriety re husbands and in-laws applies not to Kg but only to others, it would seem.

Not that different either, from the discrepancy of the expected high respect for a man when the said male is the brother of Kg, while a total disregard of the principle when it comes to husbands of his sisters including the friend; "I don't like the man" he conveniently explains, and goes about meeting the friend or using the sisters, as per his own convenience - never mind what the husband of the sister or the friend might have thought, or even explicitly expressed.

Not that different, this "equality", from the "all women are equal" stance used often merely to pull down some achievers who happen to be women, while no such equality is presumed by those professing this equality between all women to exist between either all males (no woman would admit to her husband or father or brother being only as good as the poorest man on street), or even between females that possess old fashioned tools of power and those that don't for the moment, whatever the said tools - a house, a husband, a son, a car ...

.................................................................