That is a sad enough indictment coming from a man, but even more searing are the words of a Malayali woman reader, Prema Nair. “Oh dear, oh dear!!” she begins. “Are you one of those who have seen everything through the tinted lens of the acclaimed ‘Kerala model’? Nobody is disputing the favorable development and lifestyle indicators this state has, but please do not confuse well-being with an empowered and independent sense of being. Do we not often also confuse literacy with education?”
Fair point, Ms. Nair. She goes on to assail what she ironically calls the “other glories” of Kerala — a state where women become regular victims of dowry harassment (“Unlike in the north of India, this is prolonged mental harassment leading to suicides”) and of domestic violence (she cites scholarly studies from INCLEN and Sakhi confirming the “increasing and alarming rise of domestic violence” in Kerala). “Yes,” Prema Nair goes on, “animated arguments are a regular feature of daily life in Kerala. But what happens after? Political parties and politicians play their games; women suffer. The elected women representatives are expected to toe the party line; women's concerns are always given a back seat, except when it can be a means of increasing votes. Women's groups and the autonomous women's network have to consistently intervene (with) regular gender-sensitizing and training programs (in order to) support women and equip them to withstand this masculinization of public spaces.”
I am already feeling the telltale symptoms of male inadequacy, but Ms. Nair goes on: “Isn't this the very state that produced the infamous sex rackets, or should we look the other way? Isn't this God's own country and the devil's own people who waltz their way into organized sex-racket gangs (a special feature of Kerala, by the way) victimizing teenage girls, luring them into jobs, and then sexually exploiting them? This is done by the VIPs… politicians, civil service officials, businessmen, film stars. Along with the distinction of having women ‘doctors, pilots, supreme court justices, ambassadors of India,’ we also have the women of Suryanelly, the Ice Cream Parlor sex racket in Kozhikode, the Vithura sex racket in Kiliroor; the list is endless.”
And Prema Nair drives the point home: “Isn't this the state where rape happens to a six-month-old baby girl as well as to an eighty-year-old female corpse? Isn't this the state where the latest sex-racket victim breathed her last in a private nursing home, under very suspicious circumstances? Isn't this the state where one of the latest sex-racket victim's brothers killed her, and gave the reason as ‘honor killing’ (that is another first for Kerala, or maybe not)? Or maybe we should just look the other way; away from the muddy fields to the beautiful backwaters. After all isn't that what we see when we just pass by?”
Citing my reference to the longer life spans of girls born in Kerala, Prema Nair argues that fewer girls are being born now, since studies have shown a declining female birthrate. My other points also get short shift: “Oh, she ‘makes the decisions,’ yet she cannot choose her own contraceptive. And when she works (‘men's work’ maybe) she gets paid less than men do. What about the high rate of dowry here, in all communities — one of the highest in the country? ‘Enlightened modern figure’ who stoops to be trampled? Have we missed something here…?”
I clearly have. “Dear Mr. Shashi Tharoor,” Prema Nair concludes, “We are proud of you. But please do get your facts and fiction right, sir — or Kalyanikutty would get angry, for she does know how to read.”
She does indeed. I am suitably chastened. But at least I was right about one thing. You can always trust a Kerala woman to put you in your place for praising the lot of Kerala women!
41. Oh, Calcutta!
FOR YEARS IT WAS FASHIONABLE to see Calcutta as the epitome of all the ills of our urban culture. Poverty, pollution, pestilence — you name it, Calcutta had it. (Forgive my alliteration: you could stick to that one letter of the alphabet and still find no difficulty cataloguing Calcutta's woes: power cuts, poverty, potholes, pavement-dwellers, political violence, paralyzed industry.) As business capital and professional talent fled the city from the late 1960s onward, the former First City of the British Empire spiraled into increasing irrelevance. “Calcutta,” I found myself writing in my book India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, “has become a backwater.”
It wasn't always that way. When, as a twelve-year-old in late 1968, I first learned of my father's transfer from Bombay to Calcutta, I embraced the news with great excitement. Calcutta still had the lingering aura of its old grandeur. It was the bustling commercial metropolis of the jute, tea, coal, and iron and steel industries. More important, it was the city of the greatest cricket stadium in India, Eden Gardens, the pavement bookstalls and animated coffeehouses of College Street, the elegant cakes of Firpo's Restaurant, and — recalling the whispers of wicked uncles — the cabarets of the Golden Slipper, the acme of all Indian nightclubs. It was the city of the visionary Rabindranath Tagore and the brilliant Satyajit Ray; for juveniles of less exalted cultural inclinations, it had India's first disco (the Park Hotel's suggestively named In and Out) and, in JS, India's only “with it” youth magazine. Former Calcuttans still spoke of the brilliance of the Bengali stage, the erudition of the waiters at the Coffee House, the magic of Park Street at Christmas.
By the mid-1980s, most of that list had disappeared. What remained, instead, was the dirt and the degradation, the despair and the disrepair, that made Calcutta the poster child for the Third World city. The global image of what had once been a great metropolis remained a cross between the “Black Hole” of historical legend and the tragic City of Joy of modern cinema. The best you could hope for was salvation in the slums.
Well, I am glad to report that Calcutta has turned the corner. On repeated visits to the city I had felt that nothing had changed, that the only alternative to decline was stagnation. As the twenty-first century gets under way, I have discovered this is no longer true. Two things have happened: the problems are abating, and creativity has returned.
I am not suggesting that Calcutta has suddenly become a paragon of civic virtue. But the streets are cleaner, the garbage is being picked up, hawker encroachments cleared, and power cuts are largely a thing of the past. There are still people sleeping on the pavement, but very much fewer than ever before: reforms in the Bengal countryside mean that destitute villagers no longer flock to Calcutta for survival, and nearly three decades of Left Front rule have given the city a measure of political stability unimaginable even a quarter of a century ago. It may be true that one of the reasons that “load-shedding” does not regularly plunge the city into darkness is that nothing succeeds like failure: the exodus of major industry in the last thirty years has reduced demand for power consumption. But there is also something positive in the air.
The signs of progress are everywhere: in the new roads and housing developments that are expanding the metropolis; in the stylish new buildings that have come up where collapsing colonial structures used to stand; in the new high-tech Science City, which both amuses and educates the young; in the gleaming Vidyasagar Setu, which bids fair to rival the great Howrah Bridge as both artery and symbol; in the dazzling prosperity of Salt Lake City, which used to be a mangrove swamp on the way to the airport; in the air-conditioned supermarkets and restaurants that are attracting a new breed of affluent customers. Calcutta feels like a real city once more.