July 10, 2008

A mother’s work is never done

For one women it seems, the biological work of mothering continues even well after menopause:

A woman said to be 70 years of age has given birth to twins in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state after taking IVF treatment… The couple were so desperate for a male heir that they spent their life savings and took out a bank loan for IVF.

Omkari Panwar already has two daughters and is a grandmother to five children. “We already have two girls but we wanted a boy so that he could have taken care of our property. This boy and girl are God’s greatest gift to us,” Omkari said. [Link]

That’s right - she got pregnant at age 70 so she could produce a male heir! This boy isn’t even going to be able to take care of its parents in their old age, they’re already there. The sole reason for his conception was so that he could inherit the property.

While I shake my head in confusion at this (why do you care who inherits after you’re dead - you’re dead, right?), is the average American any better? It turns out that they have a strong preference for female children when they adopt:

… there are about 105 boys for every 100 girls in the general population of biological children under the age of 18. Adopted children … [however, have] 89 boys for every 100 girls. What’s more, adopted children under the age of 6 constitute a group where there only are 85 boys for every 100 girls…. the sex ratio of adopted children goes still further off-kilter if you look only at international adoptions… Girls make up about 64 percent of all children adopted by Americans outside the United States. That’s a mere 56 boys for every hundred girls. [Link]

When adopting abroad, Americans have a 2:1 preference for girls over boys. And that’s not a matter of supply, it’s purely demand:

It doesn’t matter if they’re adopting from China, where girls far outnumber boys; from Russia, where the numbers are about even; or from Cambodia, where there is typically a glut of orphan boys and a paucity of girls. Everywhere, demand tends to favor the feminine. [Link]

There are good reasons to tsk over the desi preference for boy children. Should we do the same when it comes to the American preference for girl children when adopting?

ennis at 01:10 AM in Gender, Health and Medicine · 115 comment(s) · Direct link


 

February 13, 2008

Mera Farz? How do you say, "A Blogger's Duty", in Hindi?

them lashes are real :D Dear ING Direct,

I blog this with a heavy heart.

Earlier today, mastervk submitted a link to a news story which caught my attention; it dealt with gender inequality and speaking out against a regressive advertising campaign in India. Duly noted, I thought, rather sure I was going to blog about it later. I saw the excerpt for this story a few more times throughout the day, but apparently I was not really understanding it, for if I had, the disappointment I suddenly feel would have flattened me earlier.

I didn’t realize they were talking about you.

You, ING, you are the one behind this?

In the commercial, the birth of a girl is followed by what the Delhi government considers as a derogatory statement: Hai To Pyaari Lekin Bojh Hai Bhari (Though loveable, she’s still a burden). “It sends out wrong message,” said education secretary Rina Ray. She has written to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and Delhi Commission for Women(DCW) asking them to ensure the advertisement is withdrawn and also a public apology is issued by the insurance firm on all channels.
Ray is unhappy with the overall gender bias in the ad, particularly the scene which depicts fathers being weighed down by the financial costs involved in bringing up their daughters and funding their studies so much so that the ground beneath their feet caves in. Ray quotes a hospital scene from the commercial in her letter which depicts girls as a burden.
Ray said: “This is unfair. Parents spend money for a boy’s education too. Then why single out girls, especially when the country is positively debating women empowerment.”
The DCW has written to the insurance company asking them to stop airing the advertisement. “Promoting such biased views on the girl child may have a demoralising impact on women,” said Barkha Singh, DCW chairperson.

The TOIlet paper concludes with this paragraph:

However, the company said they have not received any letter. “The ad was not meant to be derogatory to anybody and hurt others’ sentiments. Its aimed at rekindling emotions and sentiments of a father’s duty (‘mera farz’). We will look into the objection and take recourse if the ad has hurt anybody,” said Geeta Sarin, regional general manager, ING Vysya Life Insurance Co ltd.

Haven’t received a letter? Yet. You haven’t received a letter, yet. You know what else you haven’t received yet? My notice to cancel all my accounts with you. Because as much as I love you (and oh, how I do), I love little girls, equality and not perpetuating bullshit, more.

Do you know how difficult this is for me? Kindly allow me to explain why I feel a sense of loss about something as plain as a bank account.

Like almost every American, I was an AmeriCAN’T when it came to saving money. My “regular” savings account did not excite me, the interest it paid was insulting and often, it was pressed in to duty as a shallow well for emergency transfers to my checking account, to make sure that my health insurance premium was paid instead of bounced. I did not save. My anemic Roth IRA doesn’t count.

Then, I met someone a few years ago. He was many things, but most relevant for this story, he was a very, very wealthy C-level exec. I didn’t know any of that when I started dating him (like a movie, na?), but that’s another story, one which will later go in to a work of “fiction”. Actually, that’s relevant, too, because if that dream ever did come true and someone paid me to type a few hundred pages of something, that money was heading straight for you.

Anyway, I still remember the exact conversation which brought ING in to my life. I was teasing him for spending on his very gorgeous German car what most people spent on houses when he grew serious and told me that it was paid off. That he wasn’t shady or irresponsible and despite his infamously turning down an Ivy League med school, he was not stupid. “Believe it or not, I’m a saver,” he said. And he mentioned you. Orange, wonderful ING Direct-you. “I love my ING account,” he said, “more than all my others.”

That captured my attention. I worked for Bank of America while I was at UC Davis and then for Citibank just after graduating, when I was still procrastinating mightily about law school.

[Aside: I loved being a teller at BofA in the bay area. It was one of my favorite jobs, ever. It was so fun, I used to joke that if I won the lottery and could afford to do anything, I’d be a teller again, because I liked writing people’s balance information on Hello Kitty mini-memo paper and helping the Spanish-speaking customers, who were so old skool, they still came in with tiny, ecru-colored savings booklets for me to write in…my Punjabi customers…well, that could be a post itself. I loved BofA so much, that I have never left them, even though I could not bank with them in DC when I commenced grad school in 1999. I’m loyal, to a fault, and with that I can get back to my post, because if I’m devoted enough to stay with a bank that used to hold my financial aid checks arbitrarily, prevent me from using the ATM and otherwise cause me unbelievable amounts of inconvenience without my leaving, then I’m the kind of customer any company would want. I’ve been with Sprint for ten years; I’ve brought them my entire family and two ex-boyfriends. I’m one of those customers. I deliver.]

I had never, ever heard anyone declare that they “loved” any silly bank account. I thought that perhaps this had to do with the sort of kundi-kissing, kid-gloved treatment that uber-rich people get from their consumer bank-appointed handlers.

Wrong.

“No, I got my Orange account when they came out…and I was making less money than you do, now.” I was perplexed. What was in this Orange kool-aid? Knowing what you now know about my deeply-ingrained loyalties and preferences, you will not be surprised to learn that I was impressed with such a testimonial. I joined. Modest automatic transfers went from BofA to ING and when I got my really ridiculous consulting job, those transfers grew fatter. Now I was drunk off the kool-aid, too, since the drink was not some sweet orange punch but my beloved Peet’s Coffee.

Though ING is a branch-less, direct bank, they do have, of all things, a Cafe in a cute part of Philly. The interior has the familiar Orange ball, free internet access and exquisite coffee. It’s all so random, I know. But I dug it. What does Berkeley coffee (which I never get to drink on this coast) and an airy space to serve it in have to do with the business of banking? Not much, unless you were picking up some material about their products.

At the cafe, you couldn’t do anything with your accounts while sipping Peet’s. But that didn’t matter to me, because it was all so brilliant and subtle. I love checking my email. I love good coffee (which was CHEAP, btw). My virtual bank was giving me both, in one appealing bundle. I loved it. I loved it so much, I have a photo album of my first visit to ING illadelphia, and that’s where the picture for this post comes from. Whenever I visit Philly, the first place I go is ING cafe, for my coffee and bonding session with orange stuff.

But wait, there’s more to my love affair with ING. That savings account grew substantially and 18 months ago, when I had to make one of the most adult choices of my life and move out, to my first grown-up, big-girl apartment, my orange account facilitated that. Me, who had lived with parents until age 23, who had roommates every year after that (it’s $$$ to live in the city, y’all) who had never lived alone…I was going to move. And moving is expensive. And for once, I didn’t have to do the sheepish Indian-perpetual-child thing and call my Mom for scrill.

I had enough of it in my beloved ING Orange account to cover first, last, and deposit for an apartment in a very beautiful, affluent neighborhood. I had enough to pay for moving. I also had something I had never really experienced in my young, free-spirited, under-paid life: independence. And for that, ING grew priceless. I even opened another account with them just last week (what timing). I am loyal and after the thrill of all that apartment-related agency, I assumed I’d be with ING for years.

And then I saw this.

And now, I don’t think of Peet’s, or orange balls, or financial goodness. I think of an advertising campaign which perpetuates a mentality I find reprehensible. I think of how I am confused, because it is ING insurance in India which screwed up, and perhaps that is very different from ING Direct in Amreeka (hey, I’m not the Wharton grad in the bunker, I don’t know these things!), but when I was researching this post and I saw the site for ING Vysya, I immediately recognized an orange lion and very familiar fonts. My stomach knotted and I knew. I just knew I would no longer look at my own accounts quite the same way. And the cynical among you can say that I am one person and insignificant and you would be right. You could point out that ING doesn’t need me and my cute little accounts and you’d be correct.

But.

That guy I dated? He’s still with ING. And he loves little girls and hates the antiquated, ignorant, “daughters-as-burdens”-bullshit as much as I do, even though he’s Punjabi and they’re supposed to be the most son-loving brownies of them all, right? Ha. No. I don’t think he could love a nephew the way he adores that baby girl; if anyone even hinted that she was “loveable, but a burden” I think that person would soon have a few bruises to show for such stupidity.

He’s not married, he has no children, in fact all he has is his little niece. Whom he adores. Who, if something were to happen to her doting Uncle, would inherit all that money in those various ING accounts. So while my paltry interest in ING is of no concern, maybe his will be. You never know who might have one of these accounts, who might be disgusted enough to vote with their feet and move their assets elsewhere. If ING is sincere about looking in to the “objection” and addressing it, I hope they do so, soon. My inner cynic thinks they won’t give a shit about any of this and that is why I’m already looking for a less colorful, but more sensitive place to take my business. I loved you ING, but not enough to look the other way.

Regretfully,

your quondam fan-girl

anna at 11:55 PM in Business, Gender, Issues, Musings · 104 comment(s) · Direct link


 

January 14, 2008

Drunk Women in Juhu: "What were they expecting?”

shame on them.jpg Soon after New Year’s Eve, we began receiving tips about a dreadful incident in Bombay involving two young couples who were on vacation (Thanks, Rahul and many others):

A mob of 70-80 men groped and molested two young women for some 15 minutes on a busy main street in Mumbai’s glamour district Juhu early on New Year’s Day.
An identical incident had shamed India’s safest city exactly a year ago — a girl was molested by New Year’s eve revellers at the Gateway of India. That incident was captured on film by a popular Mumbai tabloid; Tuesday morning’s horror was shot by two Hindustan Times lensmen who happened to be on the spot.
The women — one in a black dress, the other in a jeans and top — emerged from the JW Marriott with two male friends around 1.45 am, and began walking towards Juhu beach close by.
A mob of about 40 got after them and began teasing the women. One of the women swore loudly at the hooligans.
But the mob, now 70-80 strong, wouldn’t let go. They trapped the women near a vehicle and a tree, and pounced on them. A man in a white shirt tore off the black dress. Another, in a blue shirt, led the assault. As the women fell on the ground, dozens of men jumped on them. [HT]

The story and the wide-spread, collective anger it inspired grew considerably when the Police Inspector tasked with the case expressed himself in a regrettably insensitive way:

The comments of the Mumbai police commissioner, DN Jadhav further enraged the people: “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Keep your wives at home if you want them safe. This kind of small things can happen anywhere”. [meri]

Excellent. Two women who were brutalized deserved it because they were out and about, instead of in the kitchen. While a few Mumbaikars agreed with that unfortunate view, others certainly did not:

Arjun Ghai, executive with an MNC says, “The act was shameful but the attitude of the police in this regard is even worse. If MF Hussain puts up his paintings or a Hollywood star kisses a Bollywood actress, the Shiv Sainiks come to life, but what about such cases? It is the people of our great nation who need to be blamed. I am sure those who were involved in this gruesome act had sisters and wives sitting at home. Did they think about them even for an instance? No wonder we are living among vultures ready to pounce on the flesh of vulnerable women at the drop of a hat.”
Mira Sud, boutique owner opines, “I heard someone say that the girls might have been drunk or led the guys on. This is absolutely crazy. In a nation like ours where we worship Sita and Laxmi, people tend to lose their moral sense at times. Claiming that a woman might have been drunk is no reason or excuse. What about those instances where the men get drunk and pounce on women? Nobody blames them. In this male-dominated society of ours, we tend to blame the female gender without even considering the situation.”[meri]

Thankfully, someone contradicted Jadhav:

The state’s Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil made a statement saying, that the police chief’s reaction was inappropriate and that the government was taking the matter seriously. [NDTV]

As I alluded to earlier, some of the more retrograde opinions (which I didn’t care to publicize or quote) declared that these women were “asking for it” by behaving shamelessly and not respecting traditions which apparently involve always staying at home, lest one entice a helpless man to molestation. Well, these weren’t disobedient, frisky, fornicating teens on the beach (not that they’d deserve any of this either).

The newly-wed, NRI couple who faced humiliation at the hands of a mob in Juhu on New Year’s eve, had married in a traditional ceremony in Gujarat just a day before the incident…
Hiten Patel and his wife had come down to Mumbai along with Hiten’s cousin and his wife a day after their wedding to bring in the New Year. The couple wanted to holiday in India for a fortnight before flying back home.
Hundreds of their friends and relatives from the US had flown down to India for the wedding. Hiten’s uncle Sunil Patel told TOI, “Hiten was born in the US and has lived in Texas. He runs his family-owned chain of motels. His wife is pursuing her MBA in the US and theirs was an arranged match.”
The couple is still in a state of shock following the molestation. Hiten’s wife has said she’s trying to “get over the horror” while expressing her anger over the fact that bystanders had not come to their rescue. But when Hiten spoke to TOI, he said there were some people in the crowd who tried to “help us pick up our belongings. I have not lodged a police complaint since I do not want the wrong people to be booked.” [TOIlet]

Do some of these the so-called traditionalists feel a little sorry for condemning these women, now that we know they were so obedient and homely, one of them allowed her parents to choose her husband? Sorry, what’s that? All I hear is crickets chirping. Now it is two weeks later, and the alleged culprits are denying involvement:

The Juhu molestation case accused on Wednesday said that they were innocent. Addressing the media, the accused who are out on bail, said that they were merely onlookers who were pushed by a crowd on the New Year’s Eve, and the photographers clicked the wrong persons.
The men, in a belligerent outburst, accused the media of jumping too fast to their own conclusions. One of them said that he was not even there at the spot when the incident occurred.
“We were returning from dinner and saw a crowd of 150 surrounding two couples. We became curious and got thrown into the scene. The photographers just clicked our pictures and the police took us for interrogation,” the accused said. [Zee]

But wait! There’s MORE. These men don’t know when to shut up, but that flaw gave me my title for this post, so a microscopic thank you to these perverts for that:

The men didn’t stop at that clarification. They said that while the newspapers splashed ‘molestation’ pictures, they did not write a word about how the girls in question were drunk.
“The couples were in an inebriated state. They were smooching on the road. What were they expecting?”, they said. [Zee]

If this outrageous molestation of a new bride and her cousin wasn’t revolting enough, unfortunately several other instances of assault are in the news, some of them involving tourists, which has helped muddy India’s name on an international-scale.

Over New Year’s Eve, cases of molestation of tourists were reported both in Mumbai and Kochi.
A British journalist has alleged she was raped by the owner of the guesthouse in Udaipur where she was staying last week.
In another incident in Rajasthan, a 28-year-old American tourist was allegedly molested by a priest in front of a temple in the Hindu pilgrim town of Pushkar. The priest was subsequently arrested. [MalaysianSun]

2007 wasn’t so great for female travelers, either:

In March last year, the son of an important police official, was found guilty of raping a German researcher in Rajasthan.
Also last year, a Japanese tourist complained that she was drugged and raped by a group of men in Pushkar.
The latest report from the National Crime Records Bureau shows there has been a phenomenal eight-fold increase in rapes in India since 1971. [MalaysianSun]

About that appalling increase in rapes— Chachaji posted a link on the news tab which discusses exactly that chilling upward trend:

The latest crime statistics, pertaining to 2006, released by the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that every hour 18 women become victims of crime. The number of rapes a day has increased nearly 700 per cent since 1971 — when such cases were first recorded by NCRB. It has grown from seven cases a day to 53.
The figure grew 5.5 per cent over the number of cases registered in 2005.
In comparison, all other crimes have grown by 300 per cent since 1953 when the NCRB started keeping records.
And these are just the cases that have been reported; the number of unreported cases is far higher. [HT]

Now that last bit has been on my mind while wading through all of these links that so many of you mutineers were kind enough to send in— is there an increase in the number of rapes or an increase in the number of rapes which are being reported?

According to NCRB figures, among 35 cities with a population of more than a million, Delhi topped the list of crimes against women with 4,134 cases (nearly one-fifth of the total crimes against women). One-third of the rapes and a fifth of the molestations took place in the city. Hyderabad was second most dangerous for women with 1,755 cases.
Among the states, Andhra Pradesh had the highest number of crimes committed against women — 21,484 cases or 13 per cent of the total cases in 2006. Uttar Pradesh was a close second, with 9.9 per cent of such crimes. Madhya Pradesh reported the highest number of rape cases, at 2,900, and also molestation cases. [HT]

Frustration is palpable, and not surprising. Tourism is important to Incredible India. Beyond that, regular ol’ Indians and NRIs are rightfully angered by such ugly acts. Yes, India has a conflicted view of women; for all the negativity associated with issues like infanticide, dowry deaths and other well-known social ills, there is also a strain of that so-called “traditionalism” (which the accused disgustingly attempted to use as justification for their reprehensible actions) which is protective of women. India is that complicated and that simple.

In DC, desi cab drivers in their idling Crown Victorias duck slightly to peer at stranger-me, their faces filled with worry, until I unlock the inner doors to my apartment lobby, enter and wave gratefully— they hear these news stories and feel anguish as they replace the victims at Juhu with their own kin. They worry out loud that India is changing and for the worse. Why do they wait to make sure I’m safely inside those glass doors? Because during my ride home from work or Trader Joe’s, they’re telling me about how they have a daughter my age or a niece who also took her Master’s at GW. There are more of these men than those who emulate the after-goodies mob at Juhu, but they will be obscured by all this scandal.

It must be so frustrating; at a time when so many exciting, promising things are happening in India, what is a foreign country going to cover— the Nano or the brutal rape of one of their female citizens? Even if they publish stories on both, which will retain the most mindshare, especially among those who are predisposed to believe the worst?

What the perpetrators of these sexual assaults fail to understand is that in commiting these lust-fueled, power-hungry attacks, they don’t just bruise or traumatize innocent women; they thoughtlessly and recklessly give their country a black eye, as well. If nothing else convinces these assholes to keep their hands to themselves, perhaps it might be effective to convey to them that a Cricket-related slight isn’t the only reason to obsess over India’s reputation; if they care so much about their country’s honor because of an unfair decision in Australia, they should spare a thought for India’s honor off the pitch, too.

anna at 04:07 PM in Gender, Issues · 408 comment(s) · Direct link


 

October 24, 2007

Displaced People, Especially Women (Guha Chapter 5)

(Part four in an ongoing series dedicated to Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi. Last week’s post can be found here. Next week we will look at chapter six, on the Constituent Assembly and the writing of India’s constitution. )

There are lots of interesting bits in Guha’s fifth chapter, on the resettlement of refugees scattered across India after Partition. The part I will focus on in particular is the status of women who were abducted, forcibly married, and then forcibly returned to their families. But to begin with, here are some general facts on the displaced people who ended up in India:

Those are some of the general facts Guha gives us. What stands out to me is how effective the new Indian government was, on the whole, in responding to the mass influx of people. There were failures — and again, Guha singles out West Bengal as the worst — but if you think about the numbers involved, it’s astonishing that the process was as orderly as it was. Hundreds of thousands of displaced families were allotted land through a rationalized, transparent process oriented to ensuring their survival. And food relief and temporary shelter was provided to thousands more (not without international help).

However, one area where the state really did fail — astoundingly — is with women who had been abducted, converted, and forcibly married in the Partition. Guha’s account here is quite thin, so I’m supplementing what he says with material from Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin’s book, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition.

The abductions happened on both sides, and both India and Pakistan agreed to cooperate in the effort to restore abducted women to their families. Here are some of the numbers, from Menon and Bhasin’s book:

The official estimate of the number of abducted women was placed at 50,000 Muslim women in India and 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women in Pakistan. Although Gopalaswami Ayyangar (minister of Transport in charge of Recovery) called this figures ‘rather wild,’ Mridula Sarabhai believed that the number of abducted women in Pakistan was ten times the 1948 official figure of 12,500. Till December 1949, the number of recoveries in both countries was 12,552 for India and 6,272 for Pakistan. The maximum number of recoveries wre made from Punjab, followed by Jammu and Kashmir and Patiala. (from Menon and Bhasin)

In 1949, Indian Parliament passed a rather bizarre law called the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Bill, which gave the government virtually unlimited power to remove abducted women in India from their new homes, and transport them to Pakistan. The government could use force against abducting families, and it could also hold abducted women in camps if needed.

The problem with this process is that nothing in the law, or the major humanitarian effort that followed, was oriented to ascertaining the will of the women themselves. While some were in fact eager to rejoin their families, quite a number (no one knows exactly how many) were not at all eager to return. The biggest reason is of course the sense of anxiety and shame about being marked as “fallen women” — they weren’t at all convinced that they would be accepted by their families. Other times, the women had had children by their new husbands, and were at least resigned (if not happy) with their new lives. (Nothing in the law passed by Parliament dealt with the situation of women who had had children, nor was the final status of children born of these marriages determined by the Bill.)

But there were other reasons not to return as well. Menon and Bhasin have a fascinating account from Kamlaben Patel, a social worker working with abducted women for the Indian government. She was stationed in Lahore between 1947 and 1952, and worked on a number of cases. She became personally involved with one particular young woman, and Menon and Bhasin give us the story in her own words:

I have written about a case where the parents thought it was alright to sacrifice the life of a young girl in order to save a whole family. And when we were arguing about her recovery then the father said, this is our girl, and the girl denied it because she was terribly hurt by their behaviour. She said, ‘I don’t want to go back. I have married of my own free will, I don’t want anything from my parents.’ When she refused to return, it became very awkward. She was in the home of a police inspector. We felt that if we have found an abducted woman in the house of a police inspector, then how can we expect the police to do any recovering? That is why we had to bring her back.

After interviewing the woman, Kamlaben found out why she was so adamant:

That girl kept saying that she didn’t want to go to her parents, she wouldn’t budge an inch. After two or three days she broke down, she told us that her parents had been told by the police inspector, ‘If you leave your daughter, gold and land with me, I will escort you all to the cantonment in India.’ That man was already married, had children. He had told her father, you give me this girl in exchange for escorting you all to an Indian cantonment. Then her father gave him his daughter, 30 tolas of gold and his house. One night I called the girl to my bedside and said, if you want to go back (to the inspector) then I will send you. If you don’t want to go back to your parents, don’t go, but please tell me why.’

What happened in the end: the young woman said she didn’t want to go back to the police inspector (in Pakistan), but she also refused to go back to her parents. Acting beyond the call of duty (and beyond the mandate given her by Mridula Sarabhai), Kamlaben was able to arrange a marriage for the woman to a displaced young man living in Amritsar. She later had a child, and came to thank Kamlaben personally for her efforts. (At the same time, Kamlaben was castigated by Mridula Sarabhai for getting too personally involved.)

For me this story illustrates some of the basic problems in the government’s “recovery” effort, though it also suggests how individuals can sometimes intervene to try and respond to the particularities of individual cases, and more importantly, the will of individual women affected by the Partition.

Menon and Bhasin don’t suggest that the recovery effort that was undertaken shouldn’t have happened. Rather, they point out that the way it was done was flawed — it was, in effect, an arrangement between the men ruling the two new countries, carried out to protect national (and familial) “honor,” rather than to ensure the best possible result for the affected women. Though the goal was to rectify a wrong, one could argue that it in some ways continued the patriarchal mentality that led to the atrocities against women in the Partition in the first place.

I should point out that most of the stories about women abducted in the Partition do not end as happily as the one above. Many “recovered” women committed suicide, while others ended up as prostitutes. But there are many, many stories, which you’ll find recounted in books like Borders and Boundaries as well as Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence. Amrita Pritam also wrote about this in her novella Pinjar, which was made into what I thought was a decent Hindi film a few years ago.

What comes up again and again in these stories is the failure of the government’s blanket policy to address the particular experiences of women who had been abducted. On the other hand, it might not be the government’s problem entirely: in the late 1940s neither Indian nor Pakistani society was really set up to accommodate women who had been so brutally alienated from their families and communities. What these women really needed, perhaps more than anything, was the ability to determine their own fates, to be enabled to become independent, both socially and financially. But it appears that that, which is to say, freedom, simply wasn’t an imaginable conclusion in the vast majority of the cases.

amardeep at 12:01 PM in Gender, History · 37 comment(s) · Direct link


 

September 28, 2007

"...given up hiding and started to fight"

October 31, 1984

“Mummy, Daddy can I dress up for Halloween this year?”

“No.  You are not allowed to participate in this ritual begging for candy.”

“Daddy, I meant for school…we’re supposed to…”

He eyed me suspiciously.  “I thought fifth grade would mean the end of such nonsense, but if you are supposed to…what do you need to wear”

I had thought about this.  Based on what the popular girls were last year, I decided…“I want to be a cheerleader!”

“Absolutely not.  Those skirts are indecent.”

“Caroline Auntie was a cheerleader!”

“In college.  When you’re in college, I’ll forbid you then, too.”

Nine-year old me promptly burst in to tears.  Later, my mother came to my room and helped me match a v-neck sweater from my old Catholic school uniform with a pleated skirt I usually wore to church—i.e. one which went to the middle of my knee.  She unpacked a box in my closet and wordlessly handed me my toy pom-poms.  My six-year old sister glared at her indignantly, so Mom rolled her eyes and did the same for her.  I was so excited.  Finally, a “cool” costume, one which didn’t involve an uncomfortable, weird-looking plastic mask to secure with an elastic band, from a pre-packaged ensemble.  I went to sleep feeling giddy.

The next morning, for the first time ever, I was tardy for school.  I don’t remember why, but I was.  When I walked in to class just before recess, everyone froze and stared at me.  The hopeful smile on my face dissolved; this year, the popular girls were all babies in cutesy pajamas with pacifiers around their necks.  I thought the weirdness in the air was due to my lame costume, but within a few minutes I discovered it was caused by something else entirely. 

The moment the bell rang, my desk was surrounded.  This couldn’t be good.  Was I going to get locked in a closet or a bathroom again? 

“Why are you here?”
“Yeah, we thought you weren’t coming.”
“Shouldn’t you be at home crying?”
“Mrs.  Doyle said you wouldn’t come in today.”

The questions assaulted me one after the other.  I was baffled. 

"Why…would…Mrs. Doyle say that?” I stammered.

“DUH, because Gandhi’s daughter got killed.”
“Isn’t she like your queen or something?  Or a Hindu God?”
“No you buttheads, she’s like the president of her country.”

At the end of the last sentence, the boy speaking gestured towards me.  When did they get so enlightened?  Last week, they asked if I was Cherokee and said “How” whenever I walked by, or pantomimed yowling war cries with their hands and mouth.

“She’s not the president of my country.  I’m…I’m from this country.  My president is Ronald Reagan.”

They got impatient and vaguely hostile.

“No, you’re Indian.  Mrs. Doyle said you were in mourning.”
“Did you not like her or something, is that why you don’t care?”
“I heard they dip her in milk before they burn her up.”
“Duh…that’s because they worship cows.”

I put my head down on my desk, as if we were playing “heads up, seven up”.   

“See?  She’s crying now…she is Indian.”

And with that they walked off, to do whatever it was that popular fifth-graders did.

::

Spring 1987.

I was sitting by myself (as usual…it’s always awesome to transfer to a K-8 school in the seventh grade, when no one is interested in making new friends with some outsider), reading something from the “The Babysitters Club”, pretending I was Mary Anne Spier.

“Hey ugly girl…”

I looked up to see a tall 8th grader whom every girl was crushing on…he was standing with his best friend, who elbowed him and muttered, “ask her!”

“Weren’t you supposed to be aborted?

I was horrified and confused.  Horrified because these people never talked to me, confused because…

“You know, since you’re like…a Hindu and we just learned that they only like to have sons.  So we were wondering if your parents wished they had aborted you. You should ask.”

The sidekick started guffawing and both of them ran off.  I sat there, my book still page-down in my lap, unable to read for the rest of recess.  I wished I could go home.

Four hours later…

“Where is your sister?  What is she up to?  I haven’t heard any noise.”

“I dunno…reading the dictionary or something nerdy”. 

I realized my father was headed to the dining room, which is where he left the huge, so-heavy-I-couldn’t-lift-it Webster’s dictionary open for me, so he wouldn’t have to constantly retrieve it from the shelf.  I slapped half the book over, to obscure what I had been looking at…

“What are you doing?  Why did you just do that?  What are you hiding?”

“Um, nothing.”

I tried to slip my finger out from the page I was trying to bookmark, but he was too quick.  The pages flipped back to “A”.

“ABORTION?  You are looking at ABORTION?  Oh my God, why did I sacrifice and struggle and come to this country, so my 12-year old daughter could be impregnated?  Were you raped?  Did someone do something to you? WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT THAT WORD!”

I actually didn’t know what “raped” meant, either.  My parents hadn’t explained anything like that to me yet.  I was still playing with Barbie and sleeping with my stuffed Persian cat; they saw no need.  I made a mental note to look up “rape”.

My mother came running, “What is this?”

“She is looking at ABORTION!”

“Why?”

“Was I supposed to be aborted?”

My parents faces fell slack from astonishment.

My Mother looked at my Father, then me.  “Why…would…you…ask…such a thing?”

“Some kids at school asked me to ask you if you wished you had aborted me.  I didn’t know what that meant…”

My Father walked away.  My Mother came up to me, looked me in the eye and said, “No.  We did not wish that.  Your Father was very excited, in fact, he always said he hoped you would turn out to be a girl and he was so happy you did.”

My Mother seemed sad.  “You don’t like your new school, do you?”

I shook my head, no.

::

Fall 1989.

“Class, today we are going to do something a bit different—we’re going to look at Catholicism’s impact on the world.”

I tried not to smirk as I recalled my Father’s rants about how Catholicism destroyed things and was rather evil.   

“We’re going to start with India, which is where Anna is from!”

Uh…

“One of the most visible Catholics in the world has chosen India, to serve.  Mother Theresa uses her faith to care for the filthy, the neglected, the unfortunate…”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

“…let’s start our discussion by asking our Indian student more!”

“Um, I’m American.”

“Yes, dear.  But you’re Indian.  What’s India like?”

“I’m just saying, I was born here, so I don’t really know—“

“Now, let’s not fib…I now for a fact you just came back from your country.”

“Well…um…yes, but it’s my parents’ country…no, wait, even they are American citizens.” 

The nun was getting impatient. “May I remind you that discussion counts for your participation grade?  Now would you like to add something constructive to this conversation?”

“Uh…sure.  Well, I did just get back from India.  I had not visited it since I was five, so I learned a lot.”  The nun nodded, with an encouraging smile.

“And tell us about the poverty you saw, the contrasts with America.”

“I…didn’t see poverty really…”

“Calcutta is very impoverished!  How is that possible?”

“I went to Kerala.  I’ve never been to Calcutta.  I’m from South India.  I went to where my parents are from and visited their families.  And Kerala is lush and green and so pretty.  The people are all really smart and the museum I went to—“

“How far is Careluh from Calcutta?”

“It’s really far.”

“So far that you didn’t see beggars?”

“I saw a few…”

“JUST a few?”

“No more than I see when I visit San Francisco.”

“That’s it young lady.  I will not tolerate your smart-aleck behavior.  To the principal’s office you will go and you’ll have detention, later.”

“But I didn’t…”

“Would you like me to double your punishment?”

I nodded miserably and walked out, reaching in to my backpack for my headphones.  Reel Life’s “Send Me an Angel” accompanied me as I dawdled on my way to the office. 

::

I thought of all of those moments, yesterday.  I’ll get to why in a mere moment. 

Besides my younger sibling, I was the only Indian kid at all of my schools except for the last one I cited. Obviously, my little sister did not accompany me to high school, but there was one other Indian girl there. Unfortunately, she wanted nothing to do with  me, because she couldn’t relate to me; she told me I wasn’t Indian enough, that I was white-washed. 

I was South Indian and Christian, I didn’t do garba or understand what she was talking about when she asked me about whether I preferred Salwars to lenghas—in fact, I didn’t even know what a lengha was…just like I was clueless about which Bollywood actor I should have a crush on. Once she realized that I had no experience with such things, she decided she had no use for me.  We didn’t speak, despite sitting next to each other, in home room.

This is now a well-known tale, this trial-by-ignorance which older 1.5/second gens went through.  I am amazed and relieved when I understand that things will never be that brutal for generation 3, not in this world where the internet sates curiosity while dissolving international borders and knitting us all together via the web. 

India is no longer so weird or foreign; today, people don’t eat monkey brains on the big screen. The little ABDs I’ve met recently who are nine, 12 and 14 are informed, empowered, righteous and sassy.  Once upon a time, if you had told me that girls in this country would wear lenghas and saris to their Junior Prom or in their Senior portrait, I would have thought you were a bad comedian.  I would have and did wear Gunne Sax, to both, way back in the early 90s.

::

I often say that I didn’t become a desi until my final year of college, which is when the ISA was allowed back on campus; nothing like “India Night” to give you a concentrated dose of culture. By the time I commenced my second semester of graduate school, in 2000, I had crossed over in to what felt like another realm—for the first time, the majority of my friends were brown. That was life-altering for a girl who lived through the three childhood situations I started this post with. The more people I met from abroad, the more I experienced, and the more I changed.

I had taken plenty of South Asian studies classes as an undergrad, but going to a hyper-International school like GW was like getting the practical experience to complement years of theory. Now, I have a rich, self-defined relationship with the subcontinent, a relationship which I’m so immersed in, it confuses and vaguely irritates my parent. She shakes her head when she catches me reading “Learn Malayalam in 30 days” or when she overhears me interrogating my cherished, fobulous friends about everything I don’t know (which is obviously a LOT).

The end result of all this is that though I’m not from India, now, I am of it. I love it, but not blindly. I celebrate it, but I don’t do so because of inherited jingoism. India is like a family member; I will bitch about it and worry and criticize…but heaven help someone else who attempts to do so in my presence. I know I have annoyed and even enraged some of you with some of my posts; some of you have accused me of being anti-India, when that is the furthest thing from reality. “I love my India”, I’ve written cheekily a few times at the Mutiny. Once, one of you pushed back; “What does that even mean? How is it YOURS?”

It’s mine because it just is, because I want it to be and also, because for my entire childhood, I felt like I was being thrown in to a deep well by my classmates, in an extreme act of othering. My sole company? No, not my Baby-sitters Club or Cheerleaders books—it was my ancestral country, which had been roughed up along side of me, before being tossed in the pit after me.

Once, when I couldn’t take the torment meted out to me, I burst in to tears in front of my Father and told him that I hated my uber-competitive, ultra-bitchy high school, where uniforms which were meant to equalize were an ineffective joke played on girls who didn’t have Dooney and Bourke backpacks, Gucci purses or polo players on their shirts and socks. I wailed that I was miserable, that I hated sticking out like the stench of patchouli in a room full of Chanel, that I didn’t fit in anywhere, especially with thick, long hair which reached the backs of my knees. “Where am I supposed to go? Where will people be nice to me?”

For once, instead of dismissing me or mocking me, he looked lost in thought, before he murmured, “India”.

Later that summer, we visited Ooty, another boarding school I can’t remember and two private high schools, one in Kottayam, the other in Cochin. Though I had hated India the first week I was there, after being terrorized by insects which looked like they had been imported from my nightmares, finding myself mired in a decades-old family feud and realizing, to my hostile resentment, that no, Indian girls did NOT have hair so long that they could sit on it, that I was the only naïve moron who lived up to that now passé ideal…I eventually calmed down.

Two weeks in to our two-month long trip, I was fluent again in my first language, Malayalam, and after my first month in Kerala, whatever resistance I felt to this strange new reality melted. I felt a peace I had never known before, because for the first time in my life, everyone looked like me, worshipped where I did and ate what I ate. I was enchanted and fine with staying; I daydreamed about waving to my father and sister at the airport in Madras, before being whisked back to Kerala by either my Dad’s elder brother or his beloved best friend.

My father realized that he couldn’t bear to leave me on the other side of the world, and that was the end of that. I returned to the U.S., to nuns who loathed non-Catholic, uncooperative me, to girls who yanked open my cardigan so that they could exclaim, “OMG, she’s still poor!” when they saw no logo prancing across my breast, to once again being exiled and alone. Daddy was troubled. Had he been selfish? “You know, you can always go to India. In a way, it will always be your home. If you are fed up…you could go back. You have that option. You are not rootless. I know you were happy, there…”

So, to me, India has always been synonymous with sanctuary. A naïve sentiment, I know, but also, a necessary fiction; it helped me survive.

How could I disparage my refuge, my roots? And could I stand by idly, when, on a popular blog, India was repeatedly tarnished?

::

Jezebel is part of Gawker’s online empire. Its tagline is Celebrity, Sex, Fashion. Without the airbrushing. When I stumbled upon it, it was love at first browse. It was smart, defiant and allergic to bullshit. It was fierce. For the first time, in many, many years, I felt like I had found the successor to Sassy, the legendary teen magazine which saved my sanity in a “YM” world. And who were these commenters?! These women who were righteous, bawdy, witty and often, hilarious? This was like the best of my sorority years, with none of the annoying idocratic declarations or pesky monthly dues. After weeks of lurking, I wanted to dive in this rollicking online hot tub…but there was one catch: you had to audition to comment!

Audition to become a commenter. To become a registered commenter on this site, you first need to be approved by our team. We’re looking for comments that are interesting, substantial or highly amusing. So write a comment, polish up your words and choose a username and password below. Your comment will only appear once (or if) you’re approved. Want to know more? Consult the Comment FAQ. [Jezebel]

I submitted my thoughts and then spent an anxious day or so wondering if I’d be deemed worthy; a few hours in to the weirdness, I realized exactly what it reminded me of—the end of sorority rush, when you make your choice and then sleeplessly wait for a bid. When my comment finally appeared on the site, I cackled triumphantly. YES! I was allowed in! I was a part of the coolest clique ever, the anti-clique, which called out anyone and everything. This was AWESOME.

Except…I started to see references to India, in their news roundups and then comments, which would inevitably refer back to the brown element of the post…and unlike the rest of the Jezebel experience…they were less than…fair. Sometimes, they were downright ignorant. Worse still, the female bloggers whom I had been crushing on pretty heavily seemed to not get it; sometimes, it seemed as if they were encouraging the ick. I have to tell you, it really did feel like being a teen all over again, right down to the confusion, the angst and the anticipation of exile.

Does that seem melodramatic ? It’s not, to me. I spend all my time here, at SM. Like a new, stay-at-home mother who is starved for “grown-up” conversation, i.e. that which does not involve poo or puking, I wanted more (and please, no stupid conflation of poo/puke/infancy with SM…sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar and a metaphor is, too.) Unfortunately, my source for what I had craved seemed less than welcoming.

And here’s where it gets all afterschool special; would I quietly observe the unfair digs at my “sanctuary” and remain mute, to protect my coveted place in that Jezebel-space? Or would I do what I was aching to—speak my mind, at the risk of alienating the popular and powerful? Yeah, you know how this turns out…

Indian actress Shilpa Shetty has been arrested at the Mumbai, India airport. Her crime? Obscenity. The act? Being the recipient of that overly demonstrative kidd on the cheek from Richard Gere. [Daily Mail] 12:45 PM ON THU SEP 27 2007 BY JENNIFER. 1,428 views
BY WARMAIDEN AT 09/27/07 12:58 PM This takes ‘blaming the victim’ to a whole ‘nother level. yay, India! (PS - Shouldn’t they be hanging those guys who drugged and raped the Japanese touristas?)
BY LOVESTOSMILE AT 09/27/07 01:03 PM My lord. I’m Indian and this is absolutely embarassing.
BY LOVESTOSMILE AT 09/27/07 01:11 PM As someone who’s Indian, I can say with all confidence that this is a matter of national shame.
BY ANDALUCíA AT 09/27/07 01:11 PM @LovesToSmile: I’m American. We won the Embarrassment Sweepstakes years ago.
BY RAINBOWBRITE AT 09/27/07 01:12 PM You’d think India would be trying to look a little more progressive these days. That “India at 60” campaign is everywhere here in NY, but stories like this one don’t really help their tourism…
BY SARAHINSASK AT 09/27/07 01:13 PM What a disgusting, filthy crime. Right? Right? Clearly India has no heinous criminal at large than Shilpa Shetty.
BY AHWANNABE AT 09/27/07 01:14 PM lovely country we’re outsourcing work to.
BY HABIBI AT 09/27/07 01:16 PM Jennifer, fix the typo - India is spelled “India” and not “Indnia”. Since when is getting a kiss on the cheek a crime? The Indian government should be embarrassed by this.
BY ANNOYINGFEMALELEADVOICEOVER AT 09/27/07 01:16 PM She was let go as soon as the cops realized the charges had been turned over months ago. Not that this justifies the act, but for a heads up.
BY CHOCOLATECOFFEEBEANS AT 09/27/07 01:30 PMIt is things like this that make me completelly terrified to travel to the Middle East at all, even though I consider myself relatively well-travelled. This combined with stories of getting hands cut off for stealing (not that I would steal) or the weird rules about things like alcohol and women’s dress. I just know it would take me approximately 15 minutes before I broke a law or offended someone. No thanks.

BY SUITABLEGIRL AT 09/27/07 02:32 PM @ahwannabe: Yes, let’s bring outsourcing in to this, it’s obviously germane. One tiny reminder: we should also bring it up when Canada or Ireland or every other country we outsource to gets brought up in any context whatsoever— that way we’re consistent.

.

She wasn’t arrested, she was detained by some idiot on a power trip (not rare in India). This is not a matter of national shame, not when there are a million worse problems in the subcontinent. Is it stupid? Yes. Should this have happened? No. But let’s not go overboard, even though it is *so* fun and satisfying to snark at those unenlightened, job-stealing misogynists.

BY SUITABLEGIRL AT 09/27/07 02:34 PM @CHOCOLATECOFFEEBEANS: Right, except India is not in the Middle East. And as flawed as it is, its hassles are a far cry from Saudi Arabia, which is what you’re comparing it to.
BY SPECTATERTOT AT 09/27/07 02:40 PM @LovesToSmile: ditto (on being indian and finding this embarassing)
BY CHOCOLATECOFFEEBEANS AT 09/27/07 03:32 PM Ya know, I realized what I had said right after I posted it. I do realize India is not the “Middle East” but as has been mentioned, it is the crazy mix of government and religion that is a common thread to a lot of these countries and I would just not feel comfortable, and would be terrified of doing something wrong.
BY NARYMARY AT 09/27/07 04:10 PM This is really sad. I hope nothing awful happens to her!
BY NIGERIENNE AT 09/27/07 04:34 PM Way to set India back more than the people of Dell.

BY AHWANNABE AT 09/27/07 05:18 PM @Suitablegirl: AFAIK, Canada and Ireland have human rights laws that are at least somewhat similar to the ones we have in the good ole USA, so if the fat cats want to oursource there because it’s cheaper, can’t argue with that.

What I take offense to is when our fat cats outsource jobs to countries where this kind of abuse is considered okay, when we have LAWS in place to prevent it from happening here. That is the height of hypocrisy, and yes I will continue to bring up the subject of outsourcing until I’m blue in the face, or people get a clue.

BY SFIKUS AT 09/27/07 06:41 PM @Suitablegirl: “She wasn’t arrested, she was detained by some idiot on a power trip (not rare in India). This is not a matter of national shame, not when there are a million worse problems in the subcontinent.”

- Were she not Shilpa Shetty, and considered a bit of a national treasure, she could have faced a whole trove of other pleasures reserved for women in India - acid, stoning, etc. Yes, after all the sabre rattling, she was let off easily, but I think much of her reported reaction was compounded by her knowledge of what _could_ have happened…

BY SUITABLEGIRL AT 01:40 AM

@narymary: I think she’ll be okay.

.

@sfikus: Were she not Shilpa Shetty, Richard Gere wouldn’t have kissed her…I think it’s a bit much to call her a national treasure, but hey, I also think it’s a bit much to paint this dire, sensational picture of a country which has issues— just like other countries. The horror is everywhere, India doesn’t have a monopoly on it— to me, misogyny is global.

I’m bemused that I am now in this bizarre situation where I stick up for a country I normally criticize righteously.

Want to call India out on something? How about gender-selective abortions, that I’ll agree is an India-specific problem. But acid? Double standards about women who are public figures/tabloids rushing to fan flames? Pot, kettle. As for stoning, again, that’s more of a Taliban penalty for adultery, not an “Indian” one; my concern throughout this thread has been exactly that sort of conflation. India is by no means perfect— but it doesn’t deserve to be painted by such a broad, ugly brush.

“a whole trove of other pleasures reserved for women in India - acid, stoning, etc.”

I was drawn to this site because I loved the fierce women who were creative, free-thinkers…but I’m chagrined to see less thinking and more reacting here. India is a subcontinent, with an amazing range of cultures, traditions, people…my parents came from a state with a matrilineal tradition, but that’s not part of the “India” caricature, so no one knows or wants to acknowledge that. I get sad when I see intelligent, otherwise tolerant women engage in reductionist stereotyping which minimizes and demeans.

Sorry for the extra-long comment. I’m new here, I want to make sure I articulate my position well, because that’s how much I respect this space.

Sigh. My inner teen is currently vaguely miserable. I thought I had discovered this amazing group of girls to hang out with, every day (and you know how difficult that is to do after college!), but perhaps I was so desperate to belong, I didn’t consider the totality of what I was coveting. Worst of all, why were the other two brown Jezebels okay with this? Was I wrong to be hurt on behalf of a country I had never even lived in?

That’s what really bothered me— I was the only one who was not echoing the chorus and following the mood; the choice of the other two desis, to toe some stupid line was like NaCl in my wound. Now it REALLY felt like high school. Is this how it is? You have to kowtow to be welcome? Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t do that the first time I was required to, back in 1988. I’m supposed to find it within me to do so NOW, two decades later? Perhaps I’m wrong about my orientation and I’m not a Jezbian after all.

The prospect of that is depressing. As much as I love my sepia baby, it’s nice to get out and do more than mother (and smother). The last time I tried to get in to a sorority, I was surrounded by people who were often clueless and thus, unintentionally hurtful; at least at the DG house they were essentially oblivious, what hurts the most here is that these women are aware, that they know a little something about India. But it’s just like what my Mom always says (especially after meeting a patient who has become “empowered” with drug or other info via WebMD, who is helpfully clutching a printout of such): a little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous. For the first time, ever, I wonder if it’s better to be ignorant about some things.

anna at 03:25 PM in Gender, Identity, Musings · 445 comment(s) · Direct link


 

July 10, 2007

Another "Isolated" Incident of Infanticide.

A few days ago, I wrote a surprisingly controversial post about a baby girl who had been buried alive, in Andhra Pradesh. Stupid me, I thought everyone would find such news abhorrent. But, in a shocking and to some, sickening twist, it would seem that condemning infanticide is wrong because it is more important to engage in the worst sort of cultural relativism.

Disagreeing with a man’s choice to bury his newborn granddaughter alive would be Western and especially Feminist stupidity. Are you perplexed? Wondering what I am going on about? Ah, then enjoy the following amuse bouche of comments from a few lurkers and readers, which that post inspired:

Dont get carried away by sensationalism
Everyone has it bad in India. you’re the only one who choose to single out the plight of women and measure it by YOUR western standards. It MUST be measured by Indian standards, i.e. the plight of Indian men, children, grandpas, grandmas, the whole society. Everyone has it bad in India, not just little girls.
just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards…If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness.
Poor people will do anything to survive. As long as its their family, and not anyone else’s, no one has a right to interfere.
you, possessing such a craving for attention, would rather start a thread focused on a single baby, a TOTALLY isolated incident, just so you can feel better!

Yes, I felt much better after that depressing thread, especially after I naively attempted to offer a counterpoint to it while proving that feminism can be a desi concept, too. As one of you said via email, after wading through comment-sewage, “I can’t believe there is so much misogyny and so little outrage here.”

::

Isolated. I thought of all those apologist quotes when I read the story which MasterVK was alert enough to submit to our news tab earlier today, about another newborn baby girl, who was also found and rescued:

AHMEDABAD: Her feeble cries help almost drowned in the din of the heavy downpour near Kankaria lake on Monday. Until a fireman found the newborn baby shivering in the rain, abandoned mercilessly without a piece of clothing on her body!
The child’s cries had gone unheard for hours and she had turned pale, lying in the incessant rains, near Kankaria lake. The baby was found by a team of firemen led by Rajesh Goswami who heard the faint cries early in the morning when they embarked on duty to check the oxygen levels in the lake.
Instead of the fish, the firemen found the freshly delivered girl who was dumped from the womb straight into the lake to die. “The girl did not have any clothing on her and had turned completely white. We had become sceptical about her survival,” said Goswami.
The firemen first thought of waiting for the police but were alert enough to realise that any wait may compromise the life of the infant. The fire personnel immediately took the girl to L G Hospital where she was admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit. “The girl was hypothermic as her temperature had dropped due to exposure in the rain. She was also covered in sand,” said Dr Abid Vijapura, assistant professor in the paediatrics department.
Dr Vijapura said that the girl was probably delivered at home as her umbilical cord was cut non-surgically and tied with a thread. “Her condition is stable. We have screened her for infections and will treat her accordingly,” he said.

I’ll close with a different quoted comment from one of you, because I hope someone else declares similar fifteen years from now:

Every time someone (sometimes me) reprimands my 15-year old daughter for her highly “spirited” personality, I can’t help but think that she was born on the streets of Kolkata (one can only guess), spared infanticide, and turned over to an orphanage at the tender age of 5 days.
Just look at her now!

anna at 06:58 PM in Gender, Issues, News · 274 comment(s) · Direct link


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