A.R.Ts (133) Those were the best days of my life...

Nair Aunty made the most amazing egg curry. The smell of the coconut and curry leaves frying would find it’s away from her kitchen to our drawing room where we would all be huddled up watching TV. Within an hour, the bell would ring, and Aunty would hand over a bowl filled with curry to us, which we would then savor with some freshly cooked rice.

In less than ten days, we would refill the bowl with some snowy white dahi wadas, topped with coriander and chilli powder, and send it back to her.  It was only a matter of time before the bowl found its way back, this time with Aunty's signature vegetable stew. In return, we would send her onion sambhar. We grew up with these bowls making their way between the two households. Bhajiyas traded for payasam. Curd rice for spicy yams. Garlic rasam for fluffy white appams. The unwritten rule in this exchange was that the bowl never went back empty. And it was regular to have one of their bowls always in my kitchen, waiting for the next delicious offering to fill it up.

Neighbours were an integral part of my growing up. In a tiny society of 50 flats, the doors of which would literally open into each other, the neighbour was the extended family. The neighbour's house had it all - the keys to your house, the movies you wanted to see, the foods you wanted to eat, and the games you wanted to play. Minimal physical boundaries to separate us. Their window almost into my drawing room. Their kitchen from my balcony. Conversations over drying clothes. Sign languages through the windows. A big fat joint family parading as 50 nuclear families. Intrusive sometimes. Intimate otherwise. Keeping your secrets. Leaking them occasionally. Watching over you. Taking care of you. Spying on you even. It was all part of the game. The family you loved to hate. The friendly neighborhood uncle who wished all the kids with a "Darling" that made them blush. The villainous Aunty who saw you coming back home with a "stranger". The grumpy old grandfather who yelled because your loud chatter deafened his peaceful evenings of watching Doordarshan news. The strict teacher like Aunty whose glass your ball always broke. The loud cheerful Aunty who would treat you to bread rolls everytime you went to her house. Joint families parading as nuclear families. Where you got your first taste of everything in Life. Gender. If you spend all your time playing cricket with the boys, you will be called a tomboy. Competition. Pradip's home has a VCR. When are we getting one? Camaraderie. Because you stayed up the whole night and put up the pandal for Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. Studies. Because you exchanged notes. Money. Because you saved up to treat your friends to pani puri. Tradition. Because you celebrated festivals together.

Fast forward to today. Nine hundred flats. Two thousand people. Five blocks. A privacy I have never had. Boundaries that separate. Spaces distinctly earmarked. A play area for the kids. A running track for the joggers. A barricaded tennis court. An anonymity that estranges me. A neighbor I have never seen. A smell I don't recognize. A book I don’t exchange. A lady I hesitate to call Aunty. An old man I never wish. A doorbell I never ring. A group of us huddled in a lift, awkward in that intimacy, never making eye contact. And a bowl that never makes its way out of my kitchen.

A.R.Ts (132)

Three years ago, I pulled down one of my blogposts which was supposedly offensive to Bal Thackeray. I cant believe it is three. years. It feels like yesterday. The abuses, the trolls, the hate speech. Initially I remember responding calmly and focusing on facts to clarify my position, but then the insults got more and more personal and vindictive. “People like you don’t deserve to live in Mumbai…. Get out of the city”, screamed one of the commentators. Needless to say, I was no Sagarika Ghose or Rajdeep Sardesai who face a million such trolls every single day. Finally, deafened by the name calling and the foul language, I pulled down the post.

Last month, Perumal Murugan, a renowned Tamil writer, was harassed and bullied by extremist right wing groups to take down his book One Part Woman. The book originally published in Tamil, translated into English last year, covers a consensual sex tradition that existed in the Tiruchengode district in Tamil Nadu, while narrating the story of a childless couple battling the social stigma that surrounds infertility. The outfits allege that by talking about this tradition, the book shows the community and the women in that district in a poor light. I read the book last week (Kindle editions are available). If I ever write a book, I want it to be like that. Soft and sensitive, beautifully capturing the interplay of human relationships with the prevailing socio-cultural ethos. But more on that later. Perumal Murugan not only took down the book, but said he would compensate his publishers for the losses, and issued a public statement saying that he was quitting writing. “Writer Perumal Murugan is dead” read his Facebook page.

Last week, All India Backchod (AIB) – a comedy group pulled down their Roast video – which used crass, abusive and filthy language to crack jokes on a bunch of people from Bollywood people. They didn’t spare even themselves, and the show was meant to be offensive, in line with the traditional “Roast” format, but that was of no consequence to those who filed the FIR citing the show to be inimical to the Indian culture.

So what happens to you when you pull out something you believed in? When you encounter so much resistance that you are forced to question what you stand for? Just how easy or difficult it is to issue “retraction” “clarification” or “apology” statements, when you don’t even believe in them?

The first thing I acknowledged when I brought down my post was that freedom of speech is not absolute. No artist who thrives on creative expression for his living will ever want to admit that. Artists are conditioned to believe that their personal integrity depends on expressing what they believe in and standing up for it. No matter what. But the world outside does not corroborate that. And every artist learns it in his or her own way. With varying degrees of intensity. As an extension to that, the seed of doubt is sown, and sometimes even gets firmly planted in your head. After the Bal Thackeray incident, I had five people proofread my next blogpost for its “offensiveness quotient”. “Will this be perceived badly by anyone” you want to know.  One can be an idealist and say this signals the death knell for a writer. Which is what Perumal Murugan was. In one of his interviews he openly shared that this incident has sent his mind into a self inspection mode, and he can now start writing again only once he is completely out of this mindset. Alternately one can be pragmatic and say “Too bad it didn’t work. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.” Which is what AIB did. But between the idealism and the pragmatism are motley of complex emotions that no scale can capture.  The shame that you could not stand up for what you believe in. The disbelief that you buckled under pressure, self induced or otherwise. The rage that you live in a society which can turn against you in less than a minute. The helplessness of not being understood. The agony of dealing with what you fear is a sellout of our soul.

My own interest in the freedom of speech debate is fast fading, largely because of its application by self appointed censors who do not think twice before taking the law in their own hands, and the refusal of the state to intervene and protect an individual's right to express himself. I personally find Kapil Sharma’s Comedy show and Honey Singh’s lyrics far more offensive that the AIB knockout, but the problem is just that – the freedom of speech debate has been reduced to who is worse and what should have been actually banned – rather than having a discourse on how we as a society be more inclusive of varying forms of creative expressions, and more tolerant of dissent.

Until such time, for each artist who believes in his right to express his voice, however dissenting it may be, may the force be with you. And come back Perumal Murugan, even if it means you have to die again.