Mastram Mystery Lives On

While surfing through the views website 'Daily O' I came across a link for an article on the right quad titled 'How Mastram Saved Me and My Generation'. For anyone who grew up in the country’s cow belt during late 60s and in 70s Mastram would definitely ring a bell.

In those days of licence permit raj era, when everything was either rationed or in short supply, erotica and porn were no exception. For coming of age teens, the prevailing uptight society offered little to satiate their newly acquired hormonal surge.

Any mingling with opposite sex was frowned upon and any conversation with them beyond 2-3 sentences (and that too on any topic other than class work and home work) would invite the attention of prying eyes (often of friendly neighbourhood auntyjis) and tongues would wag about a ‘chakkar’ in offing.

Those were pre-television days and the word 'internet' was probably not even coined. Hence, as visual entertainment we had to make do with a monthly or fortnightly visit to the theatres to watch Hindi movies, which of course were laden with the social mores of the 70s (which would make Victorian era prudery appear Bohemian). Coy heroines used to snub their restless, lovelorn heroes, raring to get intimate, with a standard gag ‘Abhi nahin shaadi ke baad’. 

Amidst this yawning demand-supply gap functioned some Hindi erotica magazines printed at some underground press and among them novellas (not running to more that 50-60 pages) penned under the pseudonym Mastram enjoyed a best-seller status.

The print and paper quality was very basic. However the paperback size and soft cover proved convenient as they could be snugly rolled into pockets, or even tucked inside socks.

In our godforsaken PSU industrial township, almost 60 km away from nearest full fledged town, they were not available. They were shipped in by those touring cities like Delhi, Agra, Jaipur etc or those pursuing college education in distant towns and staying in hostels. These books were treated like contraband and moved around stealthily to avoid detection of teachers, parents, sisters and younger siblings. 

During school intervals or free periods we often used to sit huddled in the remote corners of play ground to have ‘reading sessions’. One guy would read discreetly and others would listen with amusement and suppressed giggles. The plots were contrived and trespass into all possible taboo relationships (mostly of devar-bhabi and jija-saali liaisons) in the society.

The erotica laden prose helped us improve our Hindi vocabulary (at least we got to know various synonyms of private parts in both Sanskritized and Urduized Hindi) and often functioned as a de facto sex educator, though of dubious authenticity.

During conversations with friends one of the topics used to be regarding the authorship and we used to wonder whether it was one person or more. Hence was surprised to hear that there was a movie in 2014 by the name Mastram, but even that was a ‘fictional biography’. So the mystery around the writer/writers lives on.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Just For Laughs: Shilpa Shetty in Blunderland

"They should include books like Little Women, as it encourages respect towards women at a young age. Even a book like Animal Farm can teach the little ones to love and care for animals,” thus spake Shilpa Shetty, the original leggy lass of Bollywood, until the likes of Deepika Padukone came along.

The winner of Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 was responding to the recent move by the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education students (ICSE) to include Harry Potter, Tintin and Amar Chitra Katha as part of the English syllabus. Lauding the ICSE for the 'great move' she said it would help cultivate imagination and creativity at a young age.

This foot in tonsils remark regarding George Orwell's Animal Farm may or may not have caused a few cracks in the grave of the famous British novelist and short story writer, but for Twitterati it was a mouth watering feast they couldn't resist and #ShilpaShettyReviews was among the top trending hashtags for hours.

Almost every other well known books ranging from classics like Three Musketeers (it's about three Malayalis from Muscat) to bestsellers like Fifty Shades of Grey (It is an amazing coloring book that children will love) were used to troll her. The other worthies were ‘The Hunger Games is a great series on Karwa Chauth’; 'The Fault In Our Stars is a book where two tragic lovers can't marry because of their kundlis' and Point Counter Point: Arnab Goswami makes a point. Then he counters himself. Then he makes another point. Then he pats himself on the back. The interviewee goes home, silently sobbing.

With the country going through a crippling cash crunch following demonetisation (another trending topic) of currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations, the Twitterati was quite mindful to bring in that too - "Invisible Man is a searing story about RBI Governor Urjit Patel during demonetisation".

Shilpa Shetty's Phir Milenge co-star Salman Khan too landed at the wrong end of some hastag jousts - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude is basically Salman Khan's life story'; 'Deer Zindagi is about lives of deer in times of Salman Khan' and "Salman Khan calls #ShilpaShetty to see if the black bucks in her Animal Farm are doing okay."

Any discussion on Bollywood airheads is incomplete without reference to Alia Bhatt, who has been portrayed as the ultimate diva of ignorance-is-bliss school of thought. Many now felt Shilpa could take up Alia's mantle. 

However, amid this entire Twitterati titter, not many realised that the above news clip actually appeared not in some nondescript newspaper, but in one of the leading English dailies in the country. It needs to be asked why for an issue related to academics and education the publication thought it fit to look for a quote from an actress. Of late quotes from actors and actresses are elicited for almost any topic under the sun to sex up the story.

Secondly the reporter, who recorded the quote and the editor who put it on the page, both sleepwalked through the gaffe and allowed it to appear in print. These two are equally culpable as Shilpa Shetty ... or was it deliberately overlooked to stir up a social media storm? In this era of post-truth we never know.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Macho Ado About Cow

BJP supporter turned detractor Arun Shourie recently described the current NDA government as UPA government plus cow. And to prove him right the cow vigilantes are burning gallons of midnight oil, lying in wait at unearthly hours in many highways to pounce upon those transporting cattle. Thanks to conniving police force and an apathetic (and sometimes even proactive) ruling class they have been having a free run in most parts of the cow belt.

Having got away with Dadri and many other such attacks, the impact is now being felt in cattle and leather trade. It has begun to falter, thanks to the fear factor generated by the gau rakshaks. Kolhapuri chappal industry is currently in doldrums and even the prices of cricket balls have shot up as cow hide is hard to come by and manufacturers have been forced to go on a 'leather hunt'.

Emboldened by these successes, the hubris of gau rakshaks got better of them when they posted a video of few Dalit people in the prime minister's home state Gujarat getting beaten up with iron rods for skinning a dead cattle. They thought the grisly spectacle, which happened on July 11, would send chills down the spines of people and quite literally 'cow them down'. 

As they wished the video did go viral, thanks to their social media propaganda machinery, but the subsequent events did not pan out as they would have thought of. They underestimated the penetration of the internet, especially the mobile internet in our society. They failed to realise the access it had among the Dalits, especially their opinion leaders, and the rest they say is history.

Even the government and its intelligence machinery, which had acted with alacrity in banning WhatsApp and internet during the Patel quota agitation, failed to read this smouldering discontent on the cyber space. The administration woke up only on July 18, when in Surendranagar district a group of Dalits dumped cow carcasses at the District Collector’s office.

This dramatic Boston Tea party type incident also knocked mainstream media out of its page 3 obsessed stupour, as it provided a good potential for a colourful copy and package! When the clubbing of Dalits happened on July 11, they had behaved as if it was happening in some other planet.  

According to a Scroll report the Surendranagar march was organised by two social workers Nathubhai Parmar and Maheshbhai Rathod and a businessman Hirabhai Chawda, who trades in the by-products of dead cows. They went from village to village showing the infamous video on a laptop. They also used WhatsApp, Facebook and file sharing apps to spread the video and exhorted the villagers to come out and fight.

To drive home their point the Dalits also decided not to pick up dead cows on the street. This was indeed a rude jolt to a society which pays scant regards to dignity of labour.

Having caught the imagination of the country, leaders of various political hues, many of them with dubious credentials, are trying to court the Dalits of Gujarat. One just hopes the movement sustains itself for a long time and does not fizzle out or even worse get co-opted by some opportunistic groups.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Two Deaths and Twitter Hashtag Jousts

The blood spattered platform of a Chennai suburban railway station and a grainy footage of a backpacker captured by a CCTV camera located outside the station made for a disturbing viewing on prime time television. It brought back the memories of a similarly spooky footage of a murderous attack on a woman in an ATM kiosk in Bangalore few years ago. And for the record that guy is still on the loose.

In case of Chennai killing, even before the police could pick up the pieces or one could say 'preliminary investigation', the Twitterati was out there with long knives tipped with hashtags and their 140-character barrage only reflected their prejudices, fears and anxieties, with not even an iota of truth. Looks like the rumour mills of yesteryears have logged on to information superhighway and overrun social media platforms such as Twitter and WhatsApp. 

Of the two schools of thought that enjoyed high bandwidth, the first one was that the killer was a Muslim and most likely of an ISIS kind. They reasoned that such cruelty can be done only by those brainwashed by Baghdadi and his minions. They maintained that police and media already knew it but were maintaining a criminal silence over the issue.

A different shade of the similar opinion was that it was the handiwork of love jihad guys. They opined that the victim had refused to fall for their guiles and hence the murder happened. The bottomline was that the killer was from 'other' community and all are preying on Hindu girls, especially the upper caste (higher genetics) ones.

Both the theories gained lots of traction in the social media with celebrities like singer Abhijeet and Tamil actor Y G Mahendran too joining the bandwagon. The former even got into a below the belt hashtag joust with a woman journalist and even has a police case against him. 

The other dominant school of thought has to do more with cultural conditioning than politics. The deeply rooted patriarchy and a haseena maan jayegi mindset have left their thinking totally warped. A girl's consent hardly matters and her 'no' is yes.

With this sense of well entrenched entitlement many wrote that the girl must have 'spoiled' his life by rejecting him or she 'asked for it'. For such guys even stalking or threatening their object of desire is absolutely kosher - a belief that gets reinforced in our films, irrespective of language. And Tamil box office has made a huge fortune out of films related to stalking.

Around eight days after Swathi killing there was a road accident in Chennai, caused by a drunk woman Aishwarya Wilton and it was god send for the troll crowd. She was driving a high end Audi car in top speed and mowed down a pedestrian. Drunk woman from upper crust of the society causing an accident, and the victim a poor daily wage earner - was quite a heady mix for them.

Immediately they started linking it with Swathi murder, saying if the photo of the killer of a 'rich' girl can be splashed on newspapers, Aishwarya's photo should also be shown and paraded in front of TV cameras. They accused media and police of double standards saying female accused were being treated with kid gloves and called for 'level playing field'.

Aishwarya's crime is serious and calls for strict punishment according to law (though I have some scepticism considering how Salman Khan hit-and-run case turned out). But to equate it with a pre-meditated cold blooded murder is taking things a bit too far. The underlying unsettling factor for the troll crowd is the changing social mores of women partying and getting drunk!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

A Lowdown on Udta Punjab

During my school days in one of those nondescript Kendriya vidyalayas in the country's cow belt in the 70s, our Hindi teacher (who also used to teach us Sanskrit) often used to say that though Punjab is known as land of five rivers, but it actually has six. Then with a tinge of amusement he used to quip, "The sixth one is not filled with water, but alcohol!" 

Back then Punjabis enjoyed quite a reputation for their penchant for rich food and liquor and even earned a home grown moniker for their excesses - Patiala peg.

Though the state later lost its distinction of being the highest per capita liquor guzzler, the controversy over Udta Punjab has brought the state's yet another seamier side to spotlight. Though the state's dalliance with drugs has a long history, with its fascination for bhukki or doda, traditional poppy husk or opium dating back to the days of Mughals, but it never proved to be a threat to the social fabric.

The situation started changing in the 80s after it mutated to synthetic drugs. However, the early effects were felt in Delhi, Mumbai and other metros and it took a long time to swamp Punjab.

In fact when Dev D was released in 2009, I thought the movie had gone overboard depicting use of drugs in Punjab.

However three years later a longish reportage in Tehelka magazine (Oct, 2012) titled 'What hit this land of plenty?' proved quite an eye opener. Punjab's drug abuse statistics were quite startling with huge number of college students hooked to it and the government living in denial and behaving as if the problem was an individual one and not systemic.

The report also quoted a BSF officer who claimed that they had conducted a recruitment drive to fill 376 vacancies and more than 8000 men turned up. But they chose not to fill 85 vacancies as the candidates were too weak and unfit. Politicians, pharmacies and even de-addiction clinics appear to be have their own axes to grind to keep the populace hooked to drugs.

Later there were a steady stream of reports about the problem and some had even hinted at involvement of politicos close to Badal family. But the administration remained in denial and anyone raising the issue was accused of exaggeration and 'insulting' Punjabi asmita (sounds too familiar). The police confined their activities to catching addicts and small time pedlars, leaving the big fishes untouched.

But like any movie that involves Anurag Kashyap, this one ran into rough weather with censor board and sprang a few surprises both onscreen and offscreen. And needless to say the latter ones were so interesting that the film's promoters did not have to do much on the pre-release publicity front. 

The biggest surprise turned out to be Shyam Benegal, a man who had directed and produced many avante garde films like Manthan, Mandi and other arthouse films. His utterance that movies like Udta Punjab should be screened only in red light areas had the whole nation cringing. Surely censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani's influence seems to have badly rubbed on him!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Unreserved Chaos

The other day I had to rough it out in the ‘cattle class’ (general compartment) of a superfast train for a three-and-half-hour long journey, for want of an alternative. As it was around 6.30 pm and the train was nearly criss-crossing the country from Ernakulam to Delhi, I did not even take a chance to try my luck in a sleeper class compartment.

Earlier while buying the ticket at Koyilandi (a mofussil station near Kozhikode) for Mangalore I had enquired if it was any way possible to upgrade it. The woman at the ticket counter replied in the negative and warned that as it was already dusk I might risk getting fined if I travelled sleeper class with an ordinary ticket!

Having travelled many times in the reserved sleeper class for long trips (lasting 2-3 days) I was all too familiar with the inconvenience caused by those without reservation. Hence I decided not to be a cause of their misery and braced myself for the din, bustle and stench of the general compartment.

They are generally the first or last compartment of the rake and are the most unkempt ones. The train arrived about 20 minutes late and I made a dash to the last compartment, which looked already full with little foot space left. 

I did make it to the passage of the train and moved further into the aisles aiming to get a seat. A couple of years of commuting 'sardine class' in Mumbai’s suburban trains have taught me that getting into the aisle was the best way to ease suffocation, prevent achy shoulders and even get a seat in the bargain. 

About two stations later lady luck smiled, though the seat I got was hardly comfortable. Nearly six passengers were squeezed into a row seat, which was actually meant for 3-4 people.

The passengers were a mix of locals who were going on short haul journeys lasting a couple of hours and the migrant workers, who were in for a long haul to their home towns in the country’s cow belt. This under-class also happens to be the mainstay in general compartments of almost all the trains that chug along the Indian Railway’s expansive network. 

As for Kerala these migrant labourers provide the much-needed brawn to its acute shortage of manual labour, thanks to the upward mobility of its natives, who prefer white collar jobs or migrate to Gulf countries. After months of back breaking work at construction sites and other places that require hard labour, they were on their way to meet their near and dear ones. 

From the snatches of conversations I overheard I could gather that some were going to attend marriages, some to fix the roof or flooring of their houses and some even to reclaim their dues from recalcitrant and shifty borrowers.

In Loop With Wireless World

Though the way they live or travel may not have changed from their predecessors (could see the same old padlocked antique looking trunk boxes and cloth bags stocked under the seats), there was one tangible difference.

The new generation migrant workers have definitely got a toe hold into the wireless digital world, all thanks to low call rates and the entry of cheap mobile phones in the market. The presence of large number of smartphones (mostly of the Chinese and Indian make) in the compartment came as quite a revelation to me.

These labourers may be light years away from following the Mahesh Murthy-Mark Zukerberg free basics vs net neutrality debate and the ad blitzkrieg by Facebook, but they appeared quite savvy and nimble fingered while handling the devices they had in hand. Almost everybody was busy playing games, listening to music and watching downloaded movies to sustain them for the long journey. Some were even WhatsApping.

A couple of them were on the lookout for sockets to plug in their phone chargers. I am sure some of those ancient trunk boxes may even have power banks stocked in them!

A couple of years ago there was a news item stating that India has more mobile phones than toilets, a finding that was not so flattering and pointed to the skewed priorities of our countrymen. Now the day is not far when we may hear that the country has more smartphones than toilets!!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Rohtak Sisters: Bravehearts or Hunterwalis

The twists and turns of the Rohtak attack saga makes one realise the limitations of cameras in depicting reality and the whole story would make late Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa proud. His Rashomon effect - a term which refers to real-world situations where multiple eye-witness come out with conflicting information about the same event, had come to full play in this nondescript town in Haryana.

It all started in a bus, where two skinny college girls took on three youths, one of them attacked the guys with a belt, and someone shot a video. It went viral on social media and for TRP driven TV stations it was godsend as this audacious act happened in Khap heartland and girls had survived to tell the tale. So the gutsy duo had to face the media flash bulbs and field questions ranging from valid to inane. Terms like 'braveheart', which were first coined during the infamous 16/12 Delhi rape were dusted up and made regular fixture on tickers.
 
Talking heads (all usual suspects) were brought in and the people who got branded as the ultimate villains were the passengers for not coming to the girls' rescue. The girls were put on a pedestal and showered with never ending accolades.

The state stepped in and announced recommendation for bravery award (the easiest thing to do) and patted on its own back for doing enough. The fact that  girls and women find even mundane tasks such as stepping out of their house, boarding a bus or going to college a life threatening risk, and the government hasn't done anything much in this regard was totally forgotten.

But a day later another video surfaced with the same girls thrashing another man, making many of their new found fans wonder whether they were the cornered victims or serial thrashers of men with camera in tow.
 
Around two days later the boot was in the other foot. A third video surfaced with journalist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj interviewing some of the passengers and women from villages to which the boys and girls belonged. The overwhelming tone of the interviewees was that the boys were being framed and the case was set up. One of the speakers, an aged women passenger, mentioned how her seat was usurped by the girls and the men had only asked them to vacate it, thereby leading to a fight.

Deepika by the way is a documentary film maker and currently working on 'Martyrs of Marriage', which depict the misuse of section 498A of IPC on dowry harassment by women to frame husbands and in-laws. A not so politically correct cause to follow for a woman.

The government then decided to put its plans to award the girls on hold and ordered an inquiry. Till then the guessing game continues, whether the girls were genuinely fighting eve teasers or the boys were being framed.


Also Read: Bangalore Beat

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, A Watered Down View

I first came to know about it through one of my school mates, now based in US, with whom the only interaction I had in past three decades was to accept his Facebook friend's request. He had posted a video of him on Facebook undergoing this bizarre ritual of getting drenched in cold water. That was my first brush with 'ALS ice bucket challenge' and it did take some time for me to bother what ALS stood for. Initially I mistook it for some reality show, going by the fun, frolic and narcissism the participants were exuding and the way it was going viral with every celeb, Page 3 wannabe and 'like'-starved Facebookers willingly getting splashed with ice cold water and flaunting how hot they looked.

After Googling I came to know that ALS was a grim affair - it stood for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neurone disease - a crippling ailment that affects the neurological system, with no known cause or cure leading to paralysis and a very miserable end. Those afflicted with the disease rarely live beyond five years, one notable exception being famous British scientist Stephen Hawking, who was diagnosed with ALS when he was 21 and has now crossed 70. The other ALS afflicted notable figure that comes to my mind is former chief of army staff General Krishnaswami Sundarji, but he could survive only a couple of years after being diagnosed with the disease.

I had a rather nodding acquaintance with a person who was quite literally 'felled' by this ailment. I first met him at a hospital. He had come to visit my father, who was convalescing after a heart attack. He seemed happy and boisterous type and tried to assure me that my father will be fine and not to hesitate to call him if there was any need. Later I came to know he was the latest tenant in the house close to mine.

His name was Thomas, a middle aged man with two teenage sons and like most Malayalees had spent best part of his working years in Gulf. He was quite energetic and was always seen going around in his red TVS Suzuki bike. On seeing me he often used to stop by and enquire about my father's condition. Through neighbourhood grapevine I came to know that he was a small time financier.

Later on during those brief encounters on the road I noticed that his manner of speaking had changed and he had difficulty pronouncing certain sounds, especially vowels. Quite often I had to make a guess about what he was talking about. I thought something had gone wrong with his vocal cords, though never bothered to check out what his ailment was.

A couple of months later he and his bike were not to be seen and it took me some time to realise that he was not stepping out of his house altogether. Instead his house began witnessing a steady stream of visitors.

Out of concern I too went to his house and the sight left me shell shocked. Thomas was now confined to wheel chair and though he could recognise me, he could barely speak and tried to make hand gestures, again with little success as he could barely move them. It was then I first heard about motor neurone disease. As his wife explained to me about the seriousness of the disease, it left me too numbed to say anything. It also made me realise how much of nervous coordination and energy is needed even to do mindless gestures like scratching ones hair or nose. 

Some months later they shifted to a new place and I lost touch with them. But one day one of my neighbours told me that Thomas had passed away. I guess for him it must have been a welcome end to a long drawn suffering.

Coming back to ALS challenge, the current hoopla on social media is showing no sign of cooling off with bucket full of controversies. Matt Damon decided to use toilet water for the purpose (to highlight about scarcity of clean drinking water across the globe) and Obama ducked the bucket challenge, though he agreed to donate for ALS research. The fact that Corey Griffin, one of the pioneers of ALS challenge died in a road accident added a sympathy angle to the event.

Though some reports claim the drive has raised $100 million, many participants in Britain admitted that did not donate to an ALS charity after taking part in an ice bucket challenge. Many participants were not even aware what the event was all about. For them it was just another souvenir to be posted on their Facebook wall.

In India it has mutated to 'rice bucket challenge' with participants handing over a bowl of rice to a needy persons and posting pictures on Facebook. Looks like in this era of social media epidemic even the good old anna daanam has to be clothed in vanity.

Pic courtesy: Wikipedia

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Badaun: Nirbhaya Redux

It is turning out to be Nirbhaya redux with Bharatiya characteristics. When Nirbhaya happened in Delhi there were some who said rape was a city phenomenon, it had to do with displacement of population, loose morals, short skirts and even Chinese food and rural India was an idyll insulated from such crimes. For them the verdant fields, cow dung plastered houses were repositories of all that was good with Bharatiya sanskriti (culture) and it blinded them from all the atrocities happening there. But the recent grisly footages of two Dalit women hung to a mango tree in a village in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district comes as a chilling reminder.

Most parts of rural India are no strangers to these kinds of ghastly crimes against women, done more out of sense of entitlement or to show someone their place than to satisfy lust. But the exploiter-exploited caste matrix seems to have changed. Earlier the oppressors used to be Thakurs and other upper castes, but now it is increasingly Yadavs, who figure among OBCs, thanks to the upward mobility and political clout acquired over the years. With it has come a sense of entitlement to oppress those in the lower rungs of caste hierarchy.

The flippant patriarchal mindset among our politicians which was on display during Nirbhaya tragedy is very much intact. In post-Nirbhaya days when laws on eve teasing were being tightened, Sharad Yadav wondered how will youths indulge in 'mohabattein'. Recently Mulayam Singh Yadav said boys make 'mistakes' and should not be hanged for crime like rape.

For Akhilesh Yadav under whom the state's crime graph has docked into an orbit unheard of even by UP standards, this is time for cheap retorts, with no room for remorse or sensitivity. His snide remark to a scribe asking whether she faced any danger was reminiscent of 'painted and dented' remarks by Pranab Mukherjee's son and Sanjay Nirupam's 'thumka' remark against Smriti Irani. But being a Chief Minister and responsible for the state's law and order this remark scores much higher in terms of crassness quotient.

For opposition parties, with next election in their minds, Badaun has now become a new 'rape tourism' destination. Long motorcades of red beacon Ambassadors and high-end SUVs on dusty roads, hurriedly constructed helipads and hordes of TV crew, it is indeed a mela time for all except for the bereaved girls' family.

One positive fallout of this incident is that the issue of toilets and sanitation have come to the fore with an added dimension of women's safety, as open defecation leaves them vulnerable to attacks. The issue had somehow tapered off after former minister Jairam Ramesh had triggered a national debate over it.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat