10,000 Women is a 5 year initiative by Goldman Sachs, the leading global bank, to provide “business and management education to underserved female entrepreneurs in developing and emerging markets. The program is designed to drive greater shared economic growth, leading to stronger healthcare, education and greater prosperity in the communities where it operates.”

The program is being conducted in collaboration with various educational institutions. The much prestigious Indian School of Business and Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) are the academic partners for Cohort 17, which is the batch for which I got selected.

Cohort 17 the batch which commenced on 14th January 2012 at BIMTECH consists of 35 women entrepreneur mostly from Delhi / NCR selected out of 139 applications and as luck would have it, I happen to be one of them.

There are three chance events, events for which I never planned, those have completely changed my life and made me who I am and continues to do so - my picking up blogging one fine morning in 2004; The TED India Fellowship; and now this 10,000 women scholarship.

Words fall short as I try to explain how naive and careless I was about this scholarship. How I applied at the last minute with barely any understanding of what it was going to do for me. Words fall short as I try to explain how fortunate I am feeling today at the end of the first module.

The timing of this scholarship couldn’t have been any better.

Samyukta Media was launched in May 2010 and I have taken hundreds of thousands of steps forward and backward since then. It wasn’t until August 2011 that Samyukta Media finally started to make moves and things started to come to shape. A lot changed during this period – a fundamental shift in the market segmentation and two of my childhood friends joined hands as partners. As 2012 knocked on our doors, the three of us with our humble venture, had made wave and set sail but had the unknown waters and tides to be crossed. This training has come as a gush of motivation and confidence at this point of our journey.

To my great delight at the end of every session during these last 7 days I felt I was on the right path with my entrepreneurial journey. I had never felt more motivated and confident of my decisions of becoming a first generation entrepreneur. Many of my fellow entrepreneurs have already started to show interest in Samyukta Media services for their ventures and that makes me even more confident of our services.

And this is just the beginning; there are two more modules to go, each consisting of 7 days of classroom sessions in February and March 2012.  At the end of the 3rd module there would be a business plan competition and we would be given an opportunity to present our business plans in front of a panel of angel investors.

Meeting my fellow entrepreneurs has been inspiring and humbling. Each one of them is doing such interesting work and boy, so much of work. I mean I still wake up and wait for my mom to serve me breakfast and some of these women are managing all ends of their businesses and home single handedly.

There is Alpana, the entrepreneur behind the ‘Natural Herbs’ products you are likely to find at the Khadi Gramudyog. She used to be working woman who quit her job for motherhood. She started the present venture during her second innings. Today, her husband has quit his job to join her business. To me that is such an inspirational gender de-constructed family, the so called ‘bread winner’ of the family quitting job to do something where his wife was the show runner.

Then there is Charanjeet of ‘Pacific’ the manufacturer and supplier of travel bags to the top level brands. She used to be a chemistry professor but joined hands with her husband to save this business which was going through a bad time. Today ‘Pacific’ employs over 90 workers in its bag making factory.

Priyanka, the very bubbly yet amazingly strong headed has a passion for creating safe spaces, for her customers as well as her staff. Under her brand ‘One Tree Spaces’ she has freshly launched a real estate consultancy only for women. The urban working women who is either single or lives in a nuclear family, takes her personal decisions on her own and believes in investing  in property rather than gold is her target market. In almost all sessions through the module her business idea have been questioned by professors and by all 34 of us, “Why do you want to restrict your market by catering to only women clients?” Sometimes she struggled with the answer, sometimes she defended her ideas passionately and sometimes she went into deep thinking, but her conviction in her idea was never shaken. I personally think the idea is very relevant and that she should go ahead with the venture.

Then there was our own Carrie Bradshaw of Cohort 17, Dipika aka Cookie who is an Image Consultant. She has spent 7 years in styling and imaging models and wants to now do image consultancy for ordinary people men women alike.  She believes a model would look good at anything he/she wears but it’s us the people who don’t have a size zero who need a bit of style guidance to wear the right dress for the right occasion. So there comes Cookie with her consultancy. Now if she told you, for a certain interview with the angel investor you should carry a Louis Vuitton bag, would you buy a bag just for an interview? No! So she also rents these original bags to you. Check out www.bag4aday.com.

Don’t for a minute think that the women entrepreneurs are all in women-like business. No, we all don’t wear pink laces. There is Manjula who has a factory of hologram labels. Kalpana is the proprietor of a family business of batteries and inverters, now running into the third generation. She is the only women in whole of Uttar Pradesh in this business. Another women from UP was Geeta who supplies broadband connections to all of Moradabad. Ritu is into solar energy, Sangeeta is a female geek who makes software and have been running VR Virtual for 9 years.

Mansi, Priyanka, Geeta, Rashmi, Bela (L to R)

I can do this forever, there are so many of them but I have to stop. And I haven’t even started to talk about our faculty, some of them double Phd holders. More later on these.

The generosity and hospitality offered by the BIMTECH staff and faculty have been overwhelming. The food at the BIMTECH hostel is delicious to say the least and the hostel facilities are far superior than what I expected.

A great start to 2012 for me and Samyukta Media. Amidst all this, literally in the middle of the night a poem from the ‘Last night’ series knocked. Wrote it in both Hindi and English, doesn’t fit into anything I said so far but then that’s me. Allow me to share the English version.

—

Something suddenly woke me up last night
The wind had come to sweep life away
I asked, “what is it that you intend to take”
It said, “all that you have as yours”
Then, there was a new morning, and a changed life.
Everything that was mine was gone.
Except you, your memories.
You, who never were mine.

“Always bid strong goodbyes. Don’t stand and stare. Just say goodbye, give a hug and leave.” Prithvi would always say to Manoshi.

But this morning’s goodbye was rather long. They had spent the whole of yesterday’s evening, night and this morning with each other and the purpose of their meeting was to bid goodbye.

Finally, after saying bye to Prithvi, with a heavy heart but lighter mind Manoshi sat inside the car to take it out of the parking. She had just put the car on back gear and looked up at the rear view mirror when she saw Prithvi in the mirror, walking back towards her car. She shifted the gear to neutral and rolled down the window glass.

Prithvi had a sheepish smile on his face. He came close to the window, extended his hands inside and pulled Manoshi towards him and kissed her on the lips.

“He came back to kiss me goodbye one last time like it happens in movies!” She thought.

She kept looking at the window where Prithvi stood. He still had the sheepish smile. He was aware that the way he came back was a lot like the last scene of a romantic movie with a happy ending, where the hero finally realizes his love for the heroine and comes back to confess with a kiss.

But this wasn’t a movie. This was Manoshi once again slipping into a flash dream with her eyes open.

“My books” Prithvi said, breaking her flash dream.

Prithvi had kept his books in the dashboard of her car the previous night. He came back to take them. He never kissed her. She was imagining that with her eyes open. “Baby, my Books,” Prithvi asked again.

Manoshi blinked, gave an embarrassed smile and took out the books and handed them over to him.

Prithvi helped her take out the car from the parking. Gave her directions and watched her back. Once it was out of the parking, Manoshi didn’t spend anymore time there, she just drove away while a smiling Prithvi with a flying kiss towards her faded away on the rear view mirror.

For many days after this, every time Manoshi looked at the rear view mirror she saw Prithvi’s mesmerizing smile and the flying kiss.

Why don’t we have many such songs or poems? Why is there no female version of a love song like “Chaundvi ka Chaand” or “Chandan sa badan?”

In Abhigyaana Shankuntalam Kalidasa wrote verses after verses in praise of Shakuntala’s physical beauty, which included vivid description of her bossom, waist, bust and other body parts of male sexual gratification. But show me one piece of literature where a woman who is deeply in love praises the man’s body.

There aren’t any such literature because there is shame and taboo associated with a woman singing about lust and passion, a woman desiring the beauty of a man, the touch and warmth of his body.

Give me a song Kalliope, o goddess of music,
My man is so beautiful man and I love him so.
Give me a song of passion,
Give me a song of love.
Let a woman who sings for her man,
have no shame in her lust

“The heart is so not where my dick is.”

If I were a man, I would have said that about my current situation. So change the ‘vital instrument’ to something more befitting my gender, but you get my point right? I don’t know what else to call this but love and I just feel so ridiculous and helpless about it. I mean what is one supposed to do with this stupid feeling. All said and done, this longing has no future, this is a doomed love. I so don’t want to be in it.

I always had a lot of theories about love. “Love can’t happen one sided” said I. You need two people to ‘be in love’ otherwise you just love someone or is loved by someone. Not that the theory makes a lot of sense, but I at least had my ways to get around. I have never been in love and I was quite proud of that and never intended to change it. Even now I absolutely hate to call it love. Like Captain Sparrow said, “not quite all the way to feelings, more like stirrings.”

So its the weekend and my folks are gonna be out of town. From most perspectives its the perfect time to pick up a date and do what mature people do. But in all probability my heart would be somewhere else, a place where I would never be.

But of late I have started to notice that the readership of this blog is again impersonal, the audience is made up of faceless strangers like it was when I first started blogging 6 years back. Once again, like old times, when I come to this blog at the end of each day to share my thoughts and feelings, I feel there’s no one else around, at least no one that I personally know, its just me and my blog here. I feel alone again, safe and alive.

So here it goes. Reporting live from my heart…

Earlier this year, I fell in something like love. I still don’t know what love is, so I wouldn’t say “I fell in love”. But it felt a lot like love. I think there is a movie by that name, right?

Anyway, so this time believe you me, it was the whole deal. Birds were singing, bells were ringing in my head, heart beats were faster than before and knees felt weak.  And this time for a change the feelings were mutual too, or so I thought.

Oh, how wrong was I. The feelings were mutual just as much the swan was a crow. And so here it is the final chapter of my book of romance. I shall not love again.

The back story to the sad and lonely future ahead is funny and entertaining and would make a wonderful book some day. You are not a publisher by any chance are you? What! A heart broken woman gotta eat!

My writings be my greatest take away from all my relationships or should I say non-relationships or failed-attempt-at-a-relationship to be very precise. They say, “too many sad words make a sad sad song.” ‘They’ as in the Irish rock band The Frames. I love them by the way. And him Shelly says, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.”

Indeed. And I have a lot of sad thoughts. I must have fallen in somewhat like love some 10-15 times so far and all them damn men broke my heart so what else do you expect. So you see, I have collected enough sad words to write at least 3-4 wonderful books of tragic love stories. My one small challenge however is that I can’t get rid of a terrible sense of humor.

I am sorry, I digress often.

Back to that relationship I was talking about. Would you believe, for the first 3 months of this failed-attempt-at-a-relationship, I religiously kept conspicuous note of all the developments of this plot. Noted every small thing he did or say, every small and big emotion I felt, I even copy pasted all our Gtalk and FB chat conversations for the keeps.

I titled the daily updates something like this – The day we met; I am in love; Days of Love-1, 2, 3 and so on. Then one day when I realized, actually he told me, that he doesn’t love me back, I decided to un-love myself. Like you know you can un-friend someone on Facebook, or un-like a status update, so my updates were then titled as ‘Days of unlove-1, 2, 3 and so on. Then there were ‘Days of Love / Unlove / I don’t know anymore love; The break up; The post break up. Finally, the last update which I wrote last month was titled ‘The final chapter of the book of romance is still to be continued’

Quite frankly the whole thing sort of went out of control. You see it was stupid to fall in love in the first place.

Well, love is always stupid, nothing new about that. But the damn trouble this time was that initially it seemed so right. I mean the first time I saw him I was immediately into him. In no time, I started catching vibes and signals and all sorts of other non oratory functions by his body and everything started making sense, a romantic sense.

But it was all so wrong. My love was tacky, unrealistic, ill fitted. Perhaps desperate, immoral and unethical too.

First, he was not into me. None of them ever are, its just me who keeps getting these wrong signals all the time. If you have seen the movie, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You‘, here’s a lesson you must have learned. He is NOT into you if he is NOT saying he is into you. It doesn’t matter how many times he says, “you smell nice baby” or “You look pretty.”

You see men do things that are beyond us. They tease you, please you, smile at you and give you compliments. We don’t know what they mean, and we will not assume what they mean. Don’t assume that you know what he meant when he came close to you and looked deep into your eyes and said something nice. That kind of gesture might not mean a thing to him.

So it doesn’t matter how may times he does poetry on your eyes and your smile. It doesn’t matter if he hugs you and kisses you in the middle of a crowd. Doesn’t matter if all your girl friends around you think he is into you. Your only true test is when he says the damned words confirming he is into you.

Until then, he is not into you.

I have seen that movie but I haven’t learnt my lessons. I made my fair share of mistakes. I thought he was into me. Or at least something Definitely May Be. Turned out there was nothing and that I had made an ass of myself.

Now, that one is easy, making an ass of yourself.

First, you go ahead fall in love with someone who is NOT into you. Then you tell that person that you have fallen in love and swallow your pride and sink your heart when he says, “Oh but I was never into you, I don’t know if I did anything to make you feel that way, but trust me baby, nothing can ever happen between us.” And then finally, to complete the process of making yourself into an ass you write a blog post about it for the whole world to read.

My love was tacky and ill fitted because I fell in love with a guy a decade younger than me. I mean that is just obnoxious. Don’t you agree?

I remember in my younger days I have sat with my little circles of friends in our little wells and gossiped and giggled and judged women who were in relationships with younger men. We never judged the older men though for being in love with much younger women, as a matter of fact it has been one of my fantasies to have a discreet affair with someone old and powerful.

So there I was in love (not) and with the irony of it all coming back to my posterior.

My love was unrealistic because, really what was I thinking? He is going to be with a woman who was old and not so pretty? He is in the prime of his youth, these are the days when a man could have, if he wanted, flings with every pretty girl to cross his way. I mean get real.

Finally, my love was desperate, immoral and unethical because I was sexually attracted to him. I desired his body, I enjoyed his beauty. They tell me that sort of thing is totally sinful.

My love was dispensable. My love was trash. I am a trash.

Now hold it right there, don’t shed that very obvious drop of tear that has gathered at the corner of your right eye…left eye…whatever. Don’t Cry for Argentina the truth is I never left you…

Aye? What? Ah! Right!

So, don’t cry for me, am not yet heart broken. Its been 8 months and I still have him around and close. We’ve come a long way without me drifting away. I give that to him for he held on.

I repeat, the last chapter of book of romance continues and I think that’s him calling for a long time. I should take that call.

[To be continued]

“Are you over and out of love?” He asked Manoshi!

Manoshi wasn’t expecting such a deep question at such an arbitrary time, I mean she had lost the parking ticket and the car papers all in the same evening, her friends were currently busy arguing with the security guards of the hostel gate and he thought that was the best time for some soul searching.

“I don’t know, how can you ask that question just like that. You should’ve given me time to prepare for an answer.” She said it calmly but was restless inside.

He remained silent. She quickly spoke again. She does that a lot, can’t handle silence. “How does it matter? Does it matter?”

“Well we are spending so much time together. I mean…I am a part of this…”

Manoshi’s friends came back to the car and he couldn’t finish what he was saying. I am pretty sure he didn’t know what he was saying. And I think Manoshi knows that too. The conversation on this topic thus interrupted was eventually drowned in rum and smoked away with hash for the night.

I asked her in the morning at our place, “So really, are you over him?”

“No! I am not.” She said. “I love him! To the extent that I can do anything for him. Well, anything that is pragmatically doable for me, I mean I wouldn’t give my life or any thing of that sort. I guess I wouldn’t give him my money either, that sort of love is beyond me. And then I don’t have a lot of money to give anyways. But apart from not being able to give him the only life or the small amount of money I have, I can do anything to make him happy. Ya, I love him to the extent that I feel happy seeing him happy and  I love him for the person he is and the person he wants to be.”

“You stole that line from Jerry Maguire.” I couldn’t help pointing that out.

“I know. Its a good line.” She said with a smile.

“So what now? You want him, you don’t want him? And how come you are sleeping other men…man…either?” I asked her.

“I think I have learnt to not desire him anymore. I have him in my heart, I don’t have to claim him or anything. I have learnt to love him but be detached from him at the same time.”

Manoshi said those lines in a manner as if the thought behind them were still in the oven, she was baking them but they were not quite prepared, she was not so certain if she was saying exactly what she was feeling.

Of course, she can’t hide that sort of ambiguity from me. I know it well enough that she is still confused. And then she said it.

“Here’s the thing. He keeps saying that there is nothing, yet every time he stands a bit too close to me, I feel something. Every time his breathe falls upon my cheek, like the times when we both try to fetch something from the back seat of my car or when we try to whisper in each others ears in the movie hall, every time he touches my fingers while exchanging the cigaret, my heart skips a beat and tells me that touch was different, that he is someone else. Every time he looks into my eyes, my heart tells me there is something about that look. It happened today, it has happened before. What is it? Please help me understand!”

She asked quite helplessly.

I saw his pouted lips and wondered
How would it feel to kiss them?
But I didn’t have a song for his lips.

On our nights I watched him sleep,
Counting the number of moles on his buttery skin,
Marking them as mine, with my kisses.
I ran my fingers through his hair,
Caressed his ears, his neck, his chin,
His throat and chest and stomach.

But a few lines of poetry didn’t come out
For that thing of beauty, that joy forever.

He didn’t love me.
On our days we walked under the sun
We talked about things and places
We got drunk and silly
We drove around the town
Never were we away from each other
Never even for a moment.

But he never held me.
Didn’t love my body, the way I loved his,
Didn’t look into my eyes and bit my lip,
He didn’t desire me.

And so it was easy to say goodbye.

I never loved him,
Now I don’t desire him,
In my heart I already have him.

She became a tree

But 2009 onwards owing to the Delhi High Court judgment date many groups within the Indian queer community decided to celebrate 2nd July as the pride day. 2009 was also the first year when 5 major cities celebrated the queer pride together with only exception being Mumbai which shifted its celebration to Jan 2010. Currently different city based queer community is divided on dates and months with each city celebrating it at a different time. While it would be strengthening for any rights based community to collaborate across regions and have a single united day for their activism and celebrations, it has to be noted that there is no such formal body or group in India for the queer community. And everybody whether single or group is just as free to celebrate their pride in their own way.

Below are some of the events:

Keralam

Chennai

New Delhi

Kolkata

Bangalore

—

Last year there were celebrations in Orissa and Pondicherry too but this year we haven’t heard anything yet.

Reports from 2009:

Queer Pride India: Celebrations in all major cities

Bengaluru Queer Pride: A report

Time to stand up and stand tall (This Is My Mind 2008)

I have written an opinion column for In.com on the Slut Walk Delhi, titled ‘Slut Walk? We need a Tawaif Walk‘

I also recently joined The Global Voices as a writer. And the post on Slut Walk is my first post for GV.

—

I was quoted on today’s Mid-Day Mumbai Edition talking about the relevance of the word slut in the latest campaign ‘Slut Walk Delhi.’ You can read the online version of the article written by Sowmya Rajaram here.

I had already made my discomfort with the word slut clear in my previous post. While giving my opinion to Mid-day I reiterated the fact that this word alone makes a huge difference. That it will create class conflict within the feminist movement, if at all we consider this campaign as a part of the Indian feminist movement. I also predicted that if you replace the word slut with a Hindi word, there will be very few takers for the campaign.  These very girls who are now so happy to walk down the lane wearing the label slut wouldn’t want to come out if asked to wear a desi label like Randi. Slut is a slang alright but a western slang and we love everything about the white people.

To quote myself from the article,

“This campaign will create a class divide within the feminist movement, because it is not inclusive. It is meant for a niche group of urban, English speaking upper class girls. Call this same campaign a Randi Morcha and very few girls would join it. If it’s about reclaiming a word, let’s reclaim the more common words”

“You take a message to the streets so that the common people get it. If you carry posters about something they don’t understand, they simply will not get any message.”

And this prediction just came true when I got a glimpse of the ongoing conversations on the Slut Walk Delhi’s Facebook Page. They asked their fans:

Is Besharmi Morcha the right word to use on behalf of Slut Walk Delhi?

And here are some of the answers:

• “Besharmi Morcha is for ‘illiterate’ people who don’t know the meaning of slut. Slut walk is appropriate and sophisticated”
• “Not at all. It is absolutely inappropriate…Don’t degrade the level of the parade”
• “This punch line is not appropriate this will actually lower down the standards…”
• “Slut walk is so ‘cool,’ besharmi whatever sounds gay!”

The responses clearly tell that this is a campaign initiated and embraced by a bunch of naive misguided youth. They don’t have a proper understanding of either feminism or violence against woman or activism. They don’t know the ground realities, they don’t care about making a real change. They just jumped the wagon because Slut Walk sounded like the next cool import from the west after MTV. 

You see my point?

This is not how you bring serious change. Change makers do not bring in class divide, literacy level, high or low standards of the people they are supposed to fight for. They do no care if the campaign is cool or not. They do not care if its sophisticated or not. They know that bringing change is not always going to be about having fun.

This campaign is simply about coolness and awesomeness. Had it been for a real cause these immature kids would have welcomed the contextualizing of the name for better suiting the average Delhiwalas vocabulary, because it is him who has to get the message. He who has to know that even if we are ‘besharam’ we are NOT asking for rape.

In my previous post I wrote how in no time these flash campaigns become larger than the cause itself. What becomes more important is how quickly can we spread the word, gather crowd, gain popularity, how many people Liked the campaign’s Facebook page, how many followers on Twitter, the poster, the logo, the t-shirt and the ‘awesomeness.’ Here’s to prove this point, the other day they announced they will be making a promotional video soon, and requested people of all sexes to send in their videos to be included in the final edit. What did I say? It becomes a field day for photographers, film makers, fun day out for participants and a street tamasha for the onlookers. In the end the campaign fades out leaving the public often unmoved and sometimes confused.

I am following the campaign closely and will keep updating this space with more information. Meanwhile, please give your opinion on what do you think of the new name?

The walk had postponed, and was scheduled to happen today. I have so far not recieved any confirmation whether it did happen or not, also didn’t see any photos or any reports online. I will keep updating this space with more info.

—

Twitter is my central portal for information related to the city, country and world and Facebook is the place for updates on real life friends. Couple of days back I noticed a certain hashtag #slutwalk was trending on Twitter. In no time my Facebook friends started sending me invitations to a certain event Slut Walk Delhi. And then IBN Live reported that on 25th June 2011 Delhi will see its ‘first ever’ slut walk.

When you hear the words ‘first ever’ you perhaps assume that it is something that has been there for a long time and only now Delhi will see its ‘first ever’. But that’s not the case. Slut Walk is a brand new movement that started in Toronto, Canada in April 2011 and have since then spread to various other western cities like, London, Melbourne, Brisbane, Montreal, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Hamilton, San Diego and Vancouver to name a few. Delhi is the first Asian city to follow suit.

Now what does a slut walk in Delhi mean?

‘Slut’ – the word entered Indian people’s vocabulary through international movies and TV series as part of the cultural change that took place post the cable TV. The exact dictionary meaning of the word is unknown and irrelevant to most Indians but the most common meaning is ‘a woman who is ‘easy.’ While there is no doubt that the word is an abuse the ‘abuse quotient’ is not clear. For one, it was rather surprising for me to see the characters of the popular TV series FRIENDS using the word quite frequently in their conversations, although the series had a clean language policy and had never used the F word or middle finger.

Every word has a different meaning in different culture. So I am curious what does the word slut mean in the Indian context? Consequently what does a slut walk mean?To begin with the word is not in common use. Surely we have a parallel Hindi abuse word, Randi  and the other commonly used abuses are C word, MC/BC words, DK Bose word but through my growing days till now I have rarely heard the word slut in any context. I believe ‘slut’ as an abuse is a recent entry and is mostly in use amongst the upper class English speaking urban youth.

The original Slut Walk aims at reclaiming the word ‘slut.’ A reclaimed word is a word which has been historically used as an abuse but is brought back into acceptable usage by the same group who were abused by that word. For example, historically homosexuals were abusively referred to as ‘queer’ which literally means ‘strange’ but the gay rights activist started using the word to describe themselves in their political conversations and have since then taken pride in that word. They reclaimed the word as their own stripping it off the abusive connotations.

The original posting (now removed) on the info section of the Delhi slut walk mentioned “SlutWalk Delhi 2011 is an attempt to reclaim the word Slut, to remove the shame, to replace it with pride!“

This reclamation of the word ‘slut’ is important in the context where women are constantly shamed, judged and attacked by this word. But it is irrelevant in a city where woman get raped and killed with or without the label of slut or even randi for that matter. To quote a few lines from the slut walk Toronto website which speaks of how and why the slut walk started

On January 24th, 2011, a representative of the Toronto Police gave shocking insight into the Force’s view of sexual assault by stating: “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

Historically, the term ‘slut’ has carried a predominantly negative connotation. Aimed at those who are sexually promiscuous, be it for work or pleasure, it has primarily been women who have suffered under the burden of this label. And whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word is always to wound, so we’re taking it back. “Slut” is being re-appropriated.

Clearly, the word slut does not have the same historical presence as above in the Indian vocabulary. We never used the word ‘slut’ in the same way, so what are we reclaiming? Who are we reclaiming it from? Why do we have to reclaim it when most people in Delhi do not even know what it means? And if the point of the event is only to say that we never asked for it, then you don’t have to call it Slut Walk just because that phrase sparked interests in other countries.

The idea of a ‘slut walk’ has good intentions behind it but sadly it is a flash campaign without a context.

When these flash campaigns are floated or adopted nobody thinks through the entire process of executing the campaign. Questions like, who are we addressing through the campaign, what is it that we are trying to change, who are the change partners, what language do they speak are seldom considered. What becomes more important is how quickly can we spread the word, gather crowd, gain popularity, how many people Liked the campaign’s Facebook page, how many followers on Twitter, the poster, the logo, the t-shirt and the ‘awesomeness.’ The campaign becomes bigger than the cause itself.  It becomes a fun day out for the participants who would come in their loudest dresses, makeups and fancy props; becomes a field day for the photographers and film makers and a street spectacle for the public. In the end the campaign fades out leaving the public often unmoved and sometimes confused.

I am afraid that is the exact fate of the ‘slut walk’ in Delhi. With the noise around it on social media and with mainstream media picking it up as the next cool youth led campaign since ‘Pink Chaddi,’ an average Delhi man, who is the habitual ogler and groper on the DTC buses and have never heard of ‘slut walk’ before, would in his curiosity, look it up on Google. This is what he is likely to find:

And If he, in his even more curiosity, looks it up in Google Image Search he would find jaw dropping images such as these:

The man would then be excited with the idea and would look forward to the event. On the specified date if he happens to be at the spot where the slut walk is being held he would ogle some more at the participants and once the show would be over he would go back home in a DTC bus rubbing his erected dick onto the shoulders of some girl sitting on the ladies seat in front of him and pushing it against the butt of another girl standing in front of him at the exit door.

These girls would not be participants of the slut walk and they would not be able to save themselves from the harassment. These girls by all means would also not want to ‘reclaim’ the word ‘slut.’ Women of my mother’s age are routinely harassed, ogled at and groped by men in public spaces. These women neither know the word nor do they want to reclaim it.

I have all my empathy for the young people who presumed that just because a new movement is gaining popularity in the US, UK and Australia, the same is required to be adopted in India in exactly the same fashion, but I have to say that it is a misplaced campaign with a good intention.

Sometimes we become victims of euro-centrism, we assume that whatever the west does is good for us and we must adopt it. The wikipedia entry for Slut Walk says its an ‘international movement.’ So far it has been held in just a handful of cities and is already claimed to be an international movement. And we must adopt it in order to be part of something ‘international.’ It is not wrong to adopt a movement that started in a different country but sometimes there is a need to contextualize it.

The Slut Walk happened in Canada because  a cop there made a speech in which he justified sexual violence against women by calling them slut. In India, few months back a movie was released which had a line,

“tawaaif ki loot ti izzat bachana aur tees maar khan to kaid karna dono bekaar hai”

Attempts to save the modesty of a prostitute being raped and to try to arrest tees maar khan, both are useless. [see video]

Perhaps we needed a ‘tawaaif walk’ back then. We still need one. But a ‘slut walk’ we just don’t need.

Comparison with other campaigns

Since its announcement some people have compared ‘slut walk’ with another campaign also addressing the issues of street harassment and sexual violence against women, the Blank Noise Project. In my opinion the two are not the same and in fact cannot even be compared. Blank Noise Project is a more meaningful campaign that started out by some girls and women sharing their real life stories of how they have faced street harassment at one time or the other. It inspired women to lose their inhibitions and speak up against street harassment or eve-teasing and many women who shared their stories felt empowered. The project then organized a walk where they asked girls and women to show up in a dress in which they had faced eve teasing. Several turned up in ‘decent’ clothing such as salwar suit or saree. The idea was that no matter what the dress was every woman had faced eve-teasing at one point or the other.

Blank Noise Project started with a blog and gradually became a national movement

Another comparison is being drawn between the slut walk and the annual gay pride parade that takes place in Delhi and other cities. Again, the two are not same.

Gay parades are about celebrating identities. The LGBT community come together in bright colors and march to the beats of peppy music carrying amusing banners and posters to celebrate their sexuality in which they take pride. Indian women on the other hand have never identified with the word ‘slut’ and they certainly don’t want to celebrate being one. Because the word is always used, albeit in a niche group, as a form of abuse even by women themselves.

On the question of usage of the word ‘slut’ Dr. Jyotsna Chatterji founder of Joint Women’s Programme, a National Women’s Rights_Organization based in Delhi  said, “the words that have the most significance in the Indian context are Randi, Dayen (witch)  The English word ‘slut’ might have less significance as use of abuses such as Randi and Dayen are rampant and are a part of the language conditioning.” On being asked to share her opinion on the Slut Walk Delhi she seemed to agree with the basic cause of the event. “A woman’s dress can in no way decide a man’s behaviour. It is his  mind and attitude towards women.  If a woman’s dress is criticized for being the cause of a man’s behaviour, and a  dress code is prescribed for women, that is wrong. It is a different matter if a certain dress code is decided for a particular occasion, in which case women should adhere, provided no such dress code is  imposed on women alone. Every woman has the right to dress according to her choice without being subjected to violence and criticism,” she explained. She further opined that even though such an event is less likely to make much of difference there is no harm in organizing the event. “At least public will know girls and women are protesting against inequality,” she said.

When Bangalore based flim maker, Madan Ramvenkatesh was asked if has heard the word slut he said, “it’s a rare word and one only comes across it in Movies.” Regarding the slut walk in Delhi he said, he wasn’t aware of any such thing. But so far as the word slut is concerned he mentioned, “it’s an unhealthy word not much in use in India and so a movement to reclaim it doesn’t make much sense.”

Delhi based photographer Udit Kulshrestha is of the opinion that the word ‘slut’ is often used in India by both men and women and that a movement like Slut Walk Delhi is important to make people aware of the gender equality and dignity. “That we are all equal human beings and not toys for somebody’s sexual appetite,” he exclaimed when asked about his support for the Slut Walk.

Documentary film maker Tarini Manchanda believes the movement has a lot of significance in spirit in so far as the practice of blaming the victim of sexual harassment goes and is curious to see how the movement is contextualized  in Delhi. She said, “The issue of branding women as slut and further victimizing them is the same all across the globe but I wonder how will a slut walk go down with the Indians, will it give the right message or a distorted one?” On the question of whether the word slut is in use in India she said, “only in a small section of young people who are used to watching American Television”

To conclude, Slut Walk is an important event for some cities, in some other cities it has to be introduced after putting it in the right context. The cause behind it is very genuine, but a genuine cause with a misplaced campaign is even worse. I only wish this amount of zeal and enthusiasm were used to strengthen and sustain an already existing campaign rather than floating a new one.

You have got to hit the right nail at the right time and you’ve got to keep hitting it.

I have recently started taking a deep interest in film making and have made a lot of new film maker friends through BYOFF. Strangely, very few of these film makers are aware on Twitter though they are quite active on Facebook.

WordPress introduced two new features related to Twitter. First, you can embed a live tweet from your twitter feed to your blog post. Second, you can now add a Follow button at the bottom of the Twitter feed on your side bar widget area. With these new features it has become even more convenient to use Twitter for the promotion of your films or other creative pursuits. Call Samyukta Media to find out how.

Below are some of my recent tweets, embedding them as an example post. If you like them, please do Favorite or Retweet. And of course, don’t forget to follow me.

Those who still don’t know what exactly Twitter is, read my previous posts, ‘Do you Twitter’ written in July’07, the time I joined Twitter, describing the first reactions. And then 2 years later I wrote another article ‘An Ode to Twitter’ describing my journey till then.

You know who is the greatest sinner on earth. That paapi pet. The bugger needs to be fed 3x24x7x365xlife. Never stops asking for food.—
Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta) April 12, 2011

Always better to call a spade a spade and a date a date.—
Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta) May 06, 2011

On a given morning you wake up with lovey dovey feelings, batting eye lashes. And suddenly social media & nonprofits hijack your day :|—
Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta) April 30, 2011

So on Facebook, you can UnLike, UnFriend, am thinking in life, can you not UnLove someone? And will it be same as falling out of love?—
Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta) April 16, 2011

I envy people who not only are able to find their soul mates, but also have guts to put the name on their Facebook 'in relationship with'—
Sanjukta Basu (@sanjukta) April 28, 2011

1) Why Anna Hazaare did you sell out?

2) India vs Pakistan that memorable win and Cricket vs Hockey that old debate

Please do read and comment. Thanks.

I am lucky to have lived this day, lucky to be a part of this euphoria, and also lucky to have lived the experience of watching it with people who didn’t judge you when you yelled at the top of your lung, jumped on the bed, broke a bottle and made stupid cynical comments. Yes I did all of that on this fateful night.

Let’s go back to the start.

After going through several broken plans of watching the finals with close friends, distant friends, crazy friends, calm friends, strangers, many strangers, few strangers, watching it on small screen, medium screen, big screen, I finally started to watch the match with the usual suspects, dad, sis and mom.

Sigh, it just didn’t feel right.

I mean there I was all excited even before they could toss the coin. And there was my sis, too tired after holding her weekly early morning lectures, to even watch it with any enthusiasm. You see she is the type of person who takes rest when she is tired, unlike me.  Dad is never too excited for anything, specially if being excited means a lot of yelling and jumping. Mom is a non believer, she doesn’t quite believe Sachin is God. Unable to find any company for outdoor activities before it could turn evening, I had no choice but to stay at home.

The match started and by the end of first over I realized, I couldn’t do this to myself. I couldn’t watch this match with people who didn’t go yelling ‘Aamir!!!’ every time they panned camera  on him, who didn’t go jumping every time camera panned on team India, who didn’t hurl socially accepted abuses every time team Sri Lanka managed to hit a boundary.

I decided to go out to find crazy people for company. It was quite a plan considering, moments before leaving I had tweeted this to the world:

Ok am no Poonam Pandey but if India wins, am gonna kiss a random stranger tonight.

Oh I was very serious about the promise. And don’t tell me this was crazy, you don’t know what my friend promised. She pledged her daughter’s wedding to Dhoni’s son. Beat that.

Once outside, I called a friend to tell him that I was coming over to his place. 3 seconds later I called another to find out what was he doing and whether he had space for one more person in his party. He said he did, and I ditched the first friend. Hey don’t ask me why I did that, India won the world cup. The friend ditched by me eventually joined us by evening.

I don’t understand Cricket. At 6th over when Sachin walked out, I declared, “its over. Lets go home the game is just over, we are doomed.” My friends got pissed, they were optimistic, and said I was a bad company to watch the game with. I went silent. Friends thought I was hurt because of their comment, but it was actually because I thought I had lost the opportunity to do the RDB Salute at India Gate.

Ever since Aamir did it, that famous Rang De Basanti salute with his feet controlling the car steering taking rounds of India Gate, our dear India Gate has become even more glorified. As shallow as it may sound, before RDB, India Gate didn’t have this mass appeal or this euphoric aura. So no prizes for guessing where were the Delhites going tonight. Wherever people watched the game, all roads in Delhi led to India Gate even before Dhoni had hit that final sixer.

Ours did too. After the presentation ceremony five of us started for India Gate from Saket. All roads were already jammed. There were already over thousands of people and hundreds of cars at the crossing of Katwaria Sarai and Qutab Institutional Area. Traffic congestion started from there but no body cared. Random strangers yelled and shouted ‘India India’ or ‘Sachin Sachin’ at each other every time their eyes met. Some even walked to each others car and hugged or shook hands. Some got off the car and started to dance.

There were not just all kinds of cars and bikes on the road but trucks, tempo travelers, three wheelers, people got into pretty much any kind of vehicle they found and started towards India Gate.

Traffic got worse and the euphoria got massive at Lodi Road. From there onwards the more the traffic was the crazier were the celebrations. Almost all of us had stranded  our cars on the middle of the road and walked out to join the semi naked dancers with crazy head gears and body paints. Amidst all of that celebrations suddenly one bare chested guy ran about yelling, “Oye b&#%^ saddi gaddi kitthe gayi?” (Oh F*&^ where my car is?) A while later he ran past my car and I asked him,

“gaddi mil gayi?”

He said with a wide smile, No.

And I yelled, “Oye koi baat nahi, India jeet gayi yaar India jeet gayi, (Never mind dude, we won we won).” He happily agreed shook hands and went about his search.

At Prithviraj Road a khakee wearing cop with an incredible blush on his face shook his head and told me that there is no further movement of the cars towards India Gate, “Madam, subah tak nahi pahanch paaoge India Gate gaadi mein. Agar jaana hai to park karke paidal jaao.” He politely said knowing how much he broke our heart by saying that.

We then parked the car on the entry towards Khan Market and joined the sea of human all rejoicing and celebrating. None of us had ever seen something like this before. Never seen so many people celebrating together. Men, women, young, old – we had fanatics in all shapes and sizes chanting ‘Sachin Sachin, India India’ continuously. Many cars played the Official ICC Cricket WC 2011 anthem by Shankar Ehsaan Loy (SEL), “De Ghumake.” Some of the other popular songs that were blaring out of the cars were, ‘apni toh paathshala’ from Rang De Basanti for obvious reasons; ‘Sunoh gaur se duniya walo’ also by SEL;

But mostly we didn’t need a song. People grooved to the heady-mesmerizing-nirvana-attaining chants of Sachin and India.

Sales men by the traffic light had gathered all of sudden selling all kinds of props. We bought an  amazing piece of innovation which made the noise of both a whistle and a dholak. It was the craziest thing I’ve seen and the guy was selling each for 50. During day time, before the match began, he must have sold it at 10 or 20. We finally bought 3 for 50.

After a long walk at 3.30 am we reached the India Gate circle.

Alas, it doesn’t work that way in real life. The car circling around India Gate, your chest full of pride and head held high in respect for the nation, your one hand is in salute, a bottle of beer in another, feet controlling the steering, happens only in movies.

In real life we live in too much of state control. In real life that’s 2 chalaans for you, one for that drunken driving, another for that rash driving. And you could be booked for trespassing as well.

Turns out, the traffic movement at India Gate were closed by 10.30 pm. The cars reaching India Gate circle weren’t allowed to enter Raj path and were asked to take  reverse. But no body wanted to move so they stopped wherever they were and started the celebration. This added to the jam. Not just cars, people weren’t even allowed to walk up to the gate. I thought that was really unfair. I can understand if you put a restrictions on cars and vehicles but why not allow us to walk. I was really really disappointed.

Good thing though that we had lived enough of the euphoria by now. It was time to return, back to our lives, back to the future that we were holding as 2nd time Cricket champions of the world. A future in which at least for the next 4 years we wouldn’t lose at any other cricket match, even if technically we lost. We are and will remain the champions.

Poonam Pandey was a fake, I am not. I did keep my promise. I kissed a 5 year old boy off the street.

I was still disappointed that I couldn’t do my RDB Salute, I wanted to do something crazy. I saw an empty beer bottle on the pavement on our way back to the car. I nicely picked it up and smashed it on the road making a loud noise, startling my quietly walking friends. The celebrations were thus over for me.

This night is now permanently etched in my memory along with the people I spent it with.

Grafitti at bring your own film festival, BYOFF 2011

If you didn’t get the whole picture from the title of the post, then you should read the event announcement on Samyukta Media website. I prefer not to repeat all about it here.

I wanted to go to Puri, to attend the BYOFF for the last 5 years, ever since Swagat told me about it. Swagat was part of the first BYOFF which makes him one of the unofficial founding members of BYOFF. I say unofficial because essentially BYOFF is a participatory, volunteer driven film festival and no body in particular owns it.

Swagat have been always telling me that the BYOFF participants, independent film makers and artists across the country, are not so much into social media. So we always wanted to do a media convergence workshop here. Every year we would plan it but would not make it. This year I was finally able to make it to Puri but Swagat could not because he wasn’t keeping well.

So this happened to be my sole backpacking trip to Puri for BYOFF and Social Media Baithak.

Alphabets of the Bhadaas Dho Slogan being painted by volunteers

Almost all Bengalis have made a trip to Puri once in their life time. I too have been to Puri once in my childhood with my parents. The word panda is the first things that comes to mind from my experience even though I was merely a toddler when I gained that experience. Pandas are people who will escort you, guide you, extort you if you are a tourist in Puri. On the whole not someone you will be very pleased to meet.

And there I was, going to the land of pandas all alone with no plan. I mean I didn’t really know anyone here besides the unofficial-organizers of BYOFF with who I had exchanged few mails and phone calls. I didn’t advance book any hotel and instead decided to try out the budget hotels once I reach. I also didn’t book my return tickets. For my parents that sounded like a perfect attempt to elope with a boyfriend, except that they know I don’t have any, boyfriend that is, and they will really be glad if I did elope as long as I came back married.

I did not elope. I have now come back from BYOFF overwhelmed with feelings and emotions and I am not sure if I can do justice to them all. I have been loved enormously by the friends I met there, just when I had given up on it, laughter stayed on for all 5 days and I am still smiling every now and then remembering the fun times.

So much happened during these 5 days, so many films, artists, music, poetry, conversations, food, drinks, smokes, feelings, emotions. And lets face it, a thin stroke of hard-to-ignore sexual undercurrent. After all we were mostly a bunch of young and restless artists. Artists are romantics, its hard to escape that sensuality.

Art installation at BYOFF 2011

Not that I am here to give out scoops for the tabloids, but you know that giggling away of your friend at a lame joke you made, that accidental brush of somebody’s hair against your shoulder, they meant something, were leading somewhere. Each nights gushing with audio visual delights by the sea beach, sometimes on the screen, at other times a live smooth voice crooning while another playing a live drum, cold sands under your feet, a drink in your hand, even the stone sculpture on Konark temple would want to come alive and make love.

Ok, now hold your imagination right there, we were all very sober and nothing of that shame-shame stuff happened, we are the Indians. (of course pun is intended, huh)

I did meet someone though, well actually quite a few of them. I even wrote a poem for one of them (published here earlier). Alas, I still couldn’t properly answer the first question mom asked me when I came back, “Did you meet someone?” Mom always asks me this silly question whenever I am back from such trips.

“No, mom I didn’t meet someone, I met many and its hard to make a choice, too many options is what is ruining the new generation.”

On a rough estimate BYOFF was attended by around 300-400 film lovers. Over 100s of films were screened. Because of the overwhelming participation, they had to put up an additional screen on Day 2. The complete schedule of BYOFF is here. For me the highlights of BYOFF were the screening of the films Gandu, Videokaaran, all Pankaj Advani films; the screening of films made / associated by my friends, Shupriyo, Ankur, Tarini, Chetan; the Social Media Baithak which I conducted twice; the kind words and blessings I got from Mr and Mrs Singh (Gurpal’s parents) for it, the awesome Piyush Mishra song that Chetan and group sang, the staying awake on the sea beach all through the night, the super cool banana aunty, the graffiti, the bhadaas dho banners, and much more.

A lot of the above wouldn’t make sense to those who haven’t been to the BYOFF. So, keep following the next parts of this series to read more.

BYOFF is not just a place to showcase films, its a place where you can lose yourself and absorb others. On the first day I was tweeting about the films and related experience. Second day onwards I couldn’t do that anymore. I felt like the world outside the BYOFF venue and the Puri beach was slowly evaporating, I lost track of time and day, I begin to forget who I was outside, I didn’t remember my pending work, didn’t remember the emails to reply, missed calls to return. I lost a little bit of me, and became a little bit of what BYOFF was…free.

BYOFF runs on donation money, it has survived this long without any corporate/organizational sponsorship purely because of the undying love and dedication some people have for the concept. But for its sustainability it is important to figure out a structure. Perhaps the original team behind this great concept is already at work but meanwhile each one of us could contribute to this unique film festival.

If you want to put some money in the BYOFF piggy bank please find the details here.

I am officially a BYOFFian now. I already know I am going to be a regular, and who knows, may be someday I will take my own films to it.

Here are some pictures.

<End of part 1>

<Coming up – Day to day Travelogue of the trip>

She, saw him coming.
He, did not see her coming.
And, he hates surprises.

To be able to understand the context of my long comment below, please do read the article, for those who don’t want to visit the link, here’s a summary of what’s the article is about:

Its a first person narrative by one Vinod Sreedhar, a person who was once a music composer in the ad film industry in Bombay, co-founder of a social enterprise and now makes a living by conducting personality development workshops and couple of other things. The interesting fact about him is that he believes in ‘gift economy‘ which means he never asks for a particular fee for his work, he accepts whatever people offer him. He says, money makes him uncomfortable, it makes him do things he doesn’t want to do, so now he has stopped asking for money.

Now read below my comment to the article:

This is very inspiring, however somethings didn’t quite fall into the right places. Working as a music composer in the ad film industry in the entertainment capital of the country for over a decade sounds synonymous to money minting to me. Plus you also have a social enterprise, which I am sure have now crossed break even point and is a profit making enterprise. I find it hard to believe that your bank balance was ever in trouble. Its easy to get bored of money when you have had too much of it.

I had a moderately paying job and I was fine. I quit my job Last year and floated my own social enterprise and realized its so hard to make even 4 figures at the end of a month. Realized how people think twice, thrice to pay you even Rs. 500 for a workshop (talking about social media workshops, I run a company called Samyukta Media)

I have been struggling to ask for money myself. Been struggling to make my balance between profit making enterprise and nonprofit social media awareness initiatives and campaigns. Every day I make a promise to my company that we won’t work for free, but then I end up agreeing to do pro bono work again. Here’s what I learnt in my journey so far:

• Gift economy works only when your work involves people directly, not when you are working with organizations/companies where the decision making process involves various economical factors and are not dependent upon someone’s heart and soul.
• Gift economy will work only if you are already well known in the circle and continue to talk enough about it. When everybody around you will make it a big deal about the fact that OMG here is this great artist / resource person who doesn’t charge a penny. If nobody knew you, then you’ll be just some new guy trying to make your mark by working free.
• Gift economy will work only if you are an individual or a solopreneur, not if you have to run a company / team.
• In India people measure your worth depending upon the money you charge, the higher your fees are the more valuable you are “supposed to be.” Is true for all professionals, from doctors to lawyers to management consultants.
• It is in the Indian mentality to not value things they get for free, at the same time every body in India wants freebies. For gift economy to work you need to be doing a niche activity working with niche clients. It is not something that will work with the masses.

I am glad to know though that you have been lucky to find the right kind of people who did give generously, but I am skeptical about the idea of gift economy on the whole. In a country where most people are struggling hard to make ends meet, gift economy sounds like a cruel joke.

—

That was my comment, what do you think? Please do share your thoughts and opinions, they will help me a great deal in figuring out how to price the services Samyukta Media offers.

Take Our Poll

With sis and her friends

That is on 23rd of Jan. It was also the birthday of Netaji Subhash, Bal Thackeray and Lord Denning. I simply cannot stop obsessing over the coincidence of my birth date matching with these men, a fierce freedom fighter, the original Indian Godfather and one of the most popular Jurist who worked so much for individual liberty. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the mere coincidence of my birth date and my name has influenced me for most part of my life.

The brave, strong headed, just and hopelessly romantic Sanjukta still waiting for her Prithviraj who would come on a horse and sweep her off the floor.

It is customary for me to write on my birthday, from 2006 onwards I wrote on this blog, before that I used to write in my diaries. As I looked back at the last 5 posts on this blog, I realized that with every passing year my world have been shrinking,  I care about less things. This year as I blew the candles the only wish I made, besides the well being of my family was that  my little start up ‘Samyukta Media‘ would one day become one of the most important names in media consultancy for Nonprofits in India.  Nothing else matters. No other dream. Dad said, “This is also the birthday for Samyukta Media.”

I wouldn’t say I had lots of ‘fun’ this birthday. By fun we mostly mean a party, friends, laughter, dance, music etc. I didn’t do any of these. Yet there was no better way I would have wanted to celebrate my birthday this year, than the way it was.

I mostly stayed at home, reading, listening to music and enjoying the lavish gluttonous continental breakfast and Indian lunch prepared at home. Sis, had done all the shopping and mom did all the cooking. In the evening I decided to go out somewhere, it wasn’t decided where but somewhere. Then, at random I picked Gurgaon’s Ambience Mall as the destination. Sis and her friends also joined in as I went out. They got some lovely flowers for me and I still can’t stop staring at them. Right now there are these bright colour flowers – yellows, oranges, reds, whites, pinks – all over the house, each spreading a little bit of joy all around.

With sis

My sis has been the sweetest this year, she did so much to make it special. I have often heard that the cost of a gift has no relation to love and affection. May be that’s true for people who are ridiculously rich. They can buy you a fancy item from some gift shop without really caring about you. But for ordinary middle class people who usually turn blood to sweat to earn a living, spending it selflessly, completely for someone else and without a frown on their forehead means a lot. If your younger sister, who is all of 25 years of age can part away with 7-8k of her hard earned money for buying you a birthday gift, that just shows how much you mean to her and I am that lucky person to have that sister.

She gave me my first touch phone, Samsung Wave. That’s right, this is my first smart phone. There is a bit of history behind my phones.

Basically, I am not that much of a gadget person. Well that’s a lie, I am not that rich to be more precise. While most people around me are either getting or talking about getting IPads and Galaxy Tabs, I was still using my Nokia 6020 until this birthday, a total of 5 and half years since I bought it.

My first cell phone was a Motorola, I forgot the model name, which I got in 2002. In Nov’09 at TED India conference they gave us TED Fellows a Nokia E71 which I used for about 6 months. It was a good phone and quite a conversation starter amongst my circle. In my last workplace, amongst my closest friends and in my immediate or extended family my phone was the most costly phone. That naturally was quite a thing.

But it never got into my head because it never really belonged to me. And then one fine morning, just like that, without a warning it died. They said repair would cost me 4-5k. I decided to buy the cheapest phone available in town to replace my E71, bought an LG phone for INR 1200. I was happy with the old school phone, loud ring tone, big screen display, basic colors and no other features besides making and receiving calls and messages.

Few months later, however I humbly returned to my so far neglected Nokia and gave the LG to dad which he accepted after great persuasion and a standing instruction, “IT MUST NEVER RING.” “But dad, its a phone, what else would it do if not ring.” “No no, I don’t want my colleagues to find out I have a phone, put it on silent, it shouldn’t ring.”

While the good old loyal Nokia was still performing just fine, sis said, “It simply don’t make sense that you don’t have a smart phone and you are a social media consultant.”

So she gifted me one. Gifts are nice to look at, buy, present and receive, but few gifts play such an important role in the receiver’s life. Thank you sis!

—

This weekend was more like a birthday weekend.

And all the celebrations were around eating good food. Usually Bengalis are like that. Food is everything for them. I cooked pasta for everybody on Saturday which was really yum. Then for Sunday, the birthday morning, my sister had done loads of shopping for a continental breakfast spread. From cold cut platter to bread basket, salad, baked potato, fried mushroom, cheese, fruit juice. .

For lunch I had the Bengali pulao, mutton, the traditional 5 types of bhaja.

For dinner we had patties, quiche, bread, wine and cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce survived all of them in a day and still eating.

So much talk about food by a fat female is not usually accepted in the society. But this is my space and it was my birthday, so. Besides, I also think that the only two causes worth pursuing is food and fuck. All pursuits by most of the humankind had been either for better and more food or better or more fuck. Think about it, wouldn’t you agree?

—

Less people wished me over phone this time, more did on Social Media. Starting from midnight, tweets kept pouring in and the Facebook wall got loaded with wishes. People who are cynical about social networking would often say, “what is the big deal if so many people wished you on your birthday via FB or orkut. They get a notification, its not like they actually remember your birthday.”

But I am not cynical. I care about and appreciate every single wish I get on these social media platforms. Because reminders are perhaps sent to all 400+ on Facebook and 2100+ on Twitter but only around 40 of them actually spare a few minutes to type a message and that means a lot to me. It feels that somewhere in this cosmos somebody either near or far from your heart made a connection with you. These cosmic connections are of great value to me.

So here’s to everybody who wished, thanks a lot to each one of you. I have tried my best to send personal thanks to all of you, and I hope I didn’t miss anybody.

So that was it, my birthday celebrated with most simplicity but maximum self less love from people who genuinely care.

Last couple of weeks have been eventful. I traveled, attended two very different types of events and then there was the loss of my paternal grandmother. This is to capture some of the moments from the last few days.

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7th to 13th December, Bangalore:

As already mentioned I went to Bangalore to speak at the Jstor / Ithaka workshop on ‘Creating High Impact and Digital Initiatives in India.’ It was a 3 day workshop from 8th to 10th and on 7th evening there was a welcome dinner. Attending this workshop was a very different experience for me and I really had a good time with the team. The group largely consisted of academics, librarians and archivists from various parts of India. The profile and age group of these people were very different from what I am used to meet in any of the various blogging or social media related events and activities. You must have already read the live blogs here, do check them out if you haven’t already.

I was really looking forward to this event because I knew I would be able to make some really strong connections there in terms of my work with non profit sector and social media, and I did. What is even better is that I am now a bit closer to my goal of collecting smiles and hugs.

On the last day of the workshop when Dr. Kamalini Dutt, Director, Doordarshan Archives hugged me and said, “You are a very nice girl,” and blessed me like a mother; When Rahim S. Rajan, Content Development Manager at JSTOR and I shared fun moments about our co-presentation and how we prepared for it; When Subhash Rai, Web Editor of Economic and Political Weekly smiled at me and apologized for the very heated argument between us the previous day, about which I was visibly embarrassed and said sorry myself; And when Karma Khedup, Archivist of Tibetan Library and Archives shook hands with me for the fifth time before leaving, I knew I was going back to Delhi with a bag full of goodwill, hugs and smiles.

Many would say I am faking my benevolence here but this is all that has ever mattered to me, the professional connections and subsequent engagements being incidental.

Most participants had liked my presentation on social media and non profits. Judging by the audience reaction, it was the most interesting talk because the Q&A session ran for the longest. Rahim and I presented on the same topic in two parts. I started out by talking about what is social media, why and how is it significant for the nonprofit sector. I then gave a brief account of the last 6-7 years of history of social media in India. Even after 10 years of its existence in India, blogging, which is still one of the most important aspect of social media, has remained a niche online activity in terms of number of users, subjects blogged about, regions to which bloggers belong. And when significant people with access to information stay away from social media, it creates a serious adverse impact on digital content. Thus, it is now high time that each one of us working in sectors outside the niche start using social media tools like blogs, Facebook, twitter etc to create valuable and reliable content.

In the second part of the presentation, Rahim took the participants through some of the Global examples to show how various off beat entities like libraries and museums are using social media tools to engage with their existing members or attract new members and much more.

While I put focus on the importance of using social media by nonprofits, Rahim gave a demo on how exactly they can do so. Together we made a good team. We both hope more and more academics and Indian nonprofits take up social media.

More on my presentation in a separate post. Meanwhile you could look at the Power Point presentation that I have uploaded on Slideshare – Jstor presentation

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11th December, Snigdha’s place, Bangalore: Obituary for my Grandmother

Visiting Bangalore by default means that I would visit Snigdha, my childhood friend, my hypothetical platonic wife. I wanted to check out of the hotel I staying on 10th evening itself but the luxuries of Pride Hotel, Bangalore were too dear to me to give up. Really, I have never been to such a costly hotel before. Finally, I checked out on 11th morning and reached Snigdha’s place by 10.30

There was a lot of fun and frolic to share with Snigdha plus baby Mishkah is such a playful sweetheart, I was naturally in a joyous and elated mood when my sister called me to inform that grandma, we call her dida, had passed away. Strange coincidences, this was the second time I got the news of losing someone while I was at Snigdha’s place. The last time it was our dog Jango. Both time the pain was eased because of Snigdha’s presence. Last time it was eased in anticipation of Mishkah’s coming into this world, this time it was eased by playing with her.

I was not very close to dida, most of us grand children were not. She was not your typical grandmother with fairy tales who playfulness. In fact, I cannot remember her taking care of babies much. In all my memories she is always either reading or writing or having conversations, with men women alike, on matters of importance, from political to personal to films, art and culture. She was a prolific reader and writer.

She never missed writing her personal diaries until the last couple of months of her life. In the last one year we saw her reading the newspaper and writing her diary all the time standing, because her back ache made it difficult for her to sit on a chair. Her journals are filled with interesting information on various topics. To name a few, list of Indian baby names, list of films by Uttam Kumar along with date of release, important dates related to political changes in the country – she noted everything she thought was relevant for an intelligent person. In short, that woman who never went to school beyond 10th grade was a walking talking Wikipedia at her mid 80s. With that passion for writing, I wish she had lived with us in Delhi so I could teach her to blog which I am confident she would have picked up.

Dida had an extremely sharp memory and was always concerned about people she met in a very positive way. If she met someone today and engaged in a conversation, she would probably be able to pick up the same conversation from where she left even after 5 years. This October when I met her in Jalpaiguri she enquired about everybody she met in the neighbourhood when she visited Delhi over 10 years back. She asked about people I myself don’t remember exist. But these were not curious questions of an idle mind but that of a mind very active and awake, a mind that still wanted to ‘know’ so much and do so much even though her body had lost its strength.

I cannot remember dida ever saying a bad thing about anybody, never a gossip, never a complaint. I never saw her being judgmental, she never forced her daughter in laws to follow norms or tradition. She herself lived a strong and liberated life and gave the same to her daughter in laws.

Dida was born way ahead of our times. I think I owe my feminist blood to her and my mom. Every home have great examples of how grandmother’s are all about love care and affection, but how many have such examples where grandmothers are about intellect, confidence and power.

Sadly, I could never fully tell her any of the things I felt about her. I never had a conversation with her about who she was or why I admired her because I couldn’t articulate myself. I couldn’t have possibly told her how I think the role she played in our lives was very gender-deconstructed. She probably didn’t even know what is ‘gender.’ I believe she was special without realizing that it was a big deal to be special.

A few thoughts on death…

A large part of our memories are made of smells and sounds. This year when I visited Jalpaiguri to meet Dida, I was shockingly bumped out of my memories of that home. As far as I can remember in that home, I had always woken up to the loud and clear voice of Dida talking to some or the other breakfast time visitor or service guy. This time I could barely hear her. In her last few months, she spoke to people only when they entered her room. She was so silent that at times I almost forgot she was still living in that house. But her mind was still strong to hear, see and feel everything. She noticed the time when people left and returned home (her room is just next to our main door), when they did return she wanted to talk to them about the day but no body had time for her and that is understandable. I could afford to spend time with her because I was visiting Jalpaiguri on a vacation but other’s have more important things to run for.

On the Durgapuja days she used to notice that I was not going out much. So she used to ask me to go out for protima darshan. On Maha Saptami she even gave me tips as to which pandals to visit. She herself couldn’t go out though and that was really sad. We wanted to arrange for a wheelchair but she will never sit on it. Dida never accepted that she was old and weak. She would rather not go out than sit on a wheelchair.

I am actually glad dida didn’t have to live in that state for too long. I always believed that death never really kills the person deceased, it kills people who are left behind to mourn. If there is any life after death, if there is another life, I wish she comes back as a woman of the 21st or 22nd century.

And for this life I have, I will remember her as an extremely interesting woman I wish I could know more.

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17th December, Official Live Blogger at India Social Summit 2010

If it is something related to Social Media I have got to be there, but the ISS10 was a bit costly and unlike TEDxDelhi no body invited me for it either so I almost didn’t make it. But then I wrote a mail to Rajesh Lalwani and a few things worked out and I was there as the official live blogger for the event.

My posts are available on the India Social blog archived by my name here.

At the close of the day the India Social and Blogworks team gave an overwhelming note of thanks to me for taking up the role of live blogger. Rajesh Lalwani, founder of Blogworks, was particularly nice. Not only did he thank me when he was still on the stage which made the whole audience turn back at me sitting in the last row with the India Social team, he also personally handed me a nice gift from S.Oliver. I didn’t expect them to be so thankful after all it was no big deal that I was writing the live blog. I felt nice anyway and came back home very happy and totally kicked.

A few thoughts on Social Media Baithak…

At the summit I caught up with quite a few known faces from the Delhi social media scene and that brings me to Social Media Baithak. The thing is everybody been asking me when am I going organize the next Baithak and I don’t have a good answer to that. As much as I want to organize another, why another, a series of Baithaks but I just can’t seem to figure out a way to sustain it. In the long run, Social Media Baithak would have to be an event organised by me or some other entity and there would have to be a way to recover the organizer’s cost. At this point it is important for me to breakeven with my enterprise Samyukta Media and till then philanthropic activity would perhaps have to wait. Unless, I get someone to fund / sponsor the event.

A few thoughts on Samyukta Media and its role in Indian nonprofits sector…

The India Social Summit focused on Social Media and India and pretty much covered every aspect of social media, marketing and strategies. The only thing missing from the summit was the cognition of a world which exists outside the profit making corporate industry. After attending the summit I am once again convinced that social media is great, but just like most resources in the world, whether man made or natural, are mostly used for the benefit of the class sitting towards the upper section of the social pyramid, so is the case with social media. And really, I cannot let that happen. Perhaps I sound too presumptuous when I say I can make a difference, but I surely will try. It has not been easy so far for me to quit my job and plunge into entrepreneurship with zero idea of business but am learning. I know there is a great demand in the non-profit / unorganized / informal sectors for social media consultancy and these entities cannot afford the existing costly social media consultants who are not even that competent given that they only recently made a shift from marketing and PR to social media. I am the only one around with the original experience of being a social media user from as long as it has existed in India which is, say over 6 years, and who has the understanding of these sectors, particularly non-profits. I owe it to myself and to the sectors.

I think that’s a lot for today. Next posts are going to be on some parting thoughts for 2010, my presentations at the Jstor workshop and some thoughts on entereprenuership since I also attended the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit.