Category: Enough said

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Saluting a young girl’s courage

It isn’t easy to stand up to a politically well-connected Indian godman, but Asaram Bapu’s victim has shown tremendous grit.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

What a lot of news has been capturing our attention in the last few days! Narendra Modi being nailed by his own men. Zubin Mehta’s concert in Kashmir in jeopardy. The Indian Rupee bouncing back a bit after the appointment of a new RBI Governor. And of course, other items of interest, such as daily rising inflation, scams and yet more rapes…

But what has gripped the nation the most is the recent arrest of self-styled godman Asaram Bapu, who is facing charges of sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl. And though he evaded arrest for a while and was later caught, what remained constant throughout was how tenaciously the victim stuck to her story.

Initial details of the case have revealed strong traces of perversion and an almost sickening level of lust in Asaram’s several alleged sexual encounters. As well-connected as he is, it took sustained media pressure and queries from the general public about the delay in his arrest to finally get the Government machinery to act against him. And this is why it is important to applaud his teenaged victim, the girl who had the grit to not just give details of his misdeeds with her.

It is not easy to go to a police station and give a written complaint of this nature. Such a complaint is accompanied by the most intrusive and insensitive of questions – ‘Who raped/molested? How? When? How much? Where are the injuries? Who are you? What does your family do? What is your private life like?’

And so on.

It must be utterly traumatic, after already having undergone a severe trauma, to then be asked to narrate details about one’s own rape, then undergo medical tests and face severe media speak out against sex offencesfocus. But this girl and her family have gone through all this bravely, without the slightest trace of fear. I hope that the Government deems it fit to provide her and her family with protection, because who knows what might happen next?

After Asaram’s arrest, it seems worthwhile to once again believe in the adage, ‘Truth does prevail’. There will be several obstacles till the girl finally gets justice, but the truth does hold out.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy indiatoday.intoday.in, www.rediff.com) 

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Come September…

A word to the wise as World Alzheimer’s Day approaches this month. But how much do we know about Alzheimer’s?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

World Alzheimer’s Day is weeks away – it falls on September 21 every year. But days and weeks before that day, I sit introspecting on this baffling disorder, Alzheimer’s. Ever since my father was struck down by this disorder, (he died in the winter of 1996), I have been trying to focus attention on this disorder, together with ways to cope with and handle the patient. Today, with life spans on the rise, the numbers of Alzheimer’s-affected are on the rise.

Yet, there is little awareness of the disease.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive, degenerative disease that attacks the brain and results in impaired memory, thinking and behaviour. With memory cells shrinking fast, there is a gradual loss of memory, decline in the ability to perform routine tasks, disorientation with regard to time, personality changes and a difficulty to express and communicate. An estimated 26.6 million people worldwide were afflicted with Alzheimer’s in 2006; and this number may quadruple by 2050. There could be hundreds and thousands more affected by it, as the symptoms of this disorder are often mistaken to be age-related, or manifestations of stress or some form of ‘madness’.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that till date, there is little remedy in terms of a cure. There is no medical breakthrough yet in terms of Alzheimer'sharnessing memory cells. In the disorder, the memory reservoir becomes ‘polka dotted’, and the patient may remember his present and past life in fits and starts, or not at all.

With this in the backdrop, the role of caregivers and family members is of the utmost significance. The affected person needs to be handled with love and sensitivity. The caregiver must try to keep the patient in her or his familiar surroundings and preferably in the home environs, listen to them and try to talk to them, make them feel wanted. That  bonding helps even if the patient has reached the very last stage of the disease – when he or she is unable to recognise even close family members or children.

My own father was somewhat comfortable and happy if we’d clasp his hand and hug him. He would talk of his childhood, of his mother. Often, he would sob like a child, going from room to room looking for his mother, as though she was still alive…

I could write volumes on Alzheimer’s, but I must emphasise this: if there is an Alzheimer’s afflicted person you know, handle him or her as you would handle a baby, with a lot of love and care and sensitivity. There’s no substitute for human warmth. A great majority of diseases could be alleviated by just a touch of warmth and a bit of bonding. Clasping the person’s hand or giving them a gentle hug could provide them the comfort they need as they battle their confused thoughts.

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. ‘Enough Said’ is her weekly column on current affairs, social issues and other musings.

(Pictures courtesy www.indianexpress.com, www.ekantipur.com)

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On Gulzar’s 77th birthday

What is left for poet and lyricist Gulzar to write about? A book of short stories for children, of course!
by Humra Quraishi

Last week, I just let myself be, sapped of all energy by news of crimes and killings all around us. I find that when I’m sad or in despair, reading a good book really helps.

And a great book couldn’t have come at a better time, or with better timing. I read the recently-released volume on Gulzarsaab, In The Company Of A Poet: Gulzar in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabeer.

Gulzar turned 77 on August 18 – he was born in 1936 in Punjab. The book chronicles his thoughts, views and experiences and illustrates several points with his verse. Laced with these are details of his childhood spent his ancestral village in the undivided Punjab, his school days in old Delhi, his early days in Bombay where he’d worked in a garage before moving to the film world, where he associated with such luminaries as Balraj Sahni, Sahir Ludhianvi, Bimal Roy, RD Burman and several others.

rakhee and gulzarThen there the personal details of his life, ‘his deep connection with his wife, the legendary actor Raakhee, his daughter Meghna and his grandson Samay.’

I met him for the first time in the summer of 2005, for an interview for a national daily. He was staying at New Delhi’s India International Centre (IIC), so it was decided that I meet him over breakfast at IIC’s tea lounge. And though we spoke of several things, the most enduring image I have of him is how the tears flowed down his cheeks as he spoke about his bond with the Kashmir Valley.

“Somehow, the Kashmir Valley always fascinated me to such an extent, that Raakhee and I decided to go to Srinagar for our honeymoon. We often teased our daughter Bosky that she was conceived there in the Valley…”

He’d added, “Kashmir is an integral part of my emotions, it’s a region which is close to my heart. I was even planning to make a film on the Valley; I’d named the film Iss Vaadi Mein, and it was based on Krishna Chander’s short story collection Kitaab Ka Kafan. It dealt with two lovers in the two parts of the Valley and how they try to overcome the military barriers. Sadly, the film could not be made as the Kargil War had broken out.”

The good news is that Gulzarsaab is nowhere near retiring – his latest collection of short stories, Half A Rupee Stories, was recently launched here in Delhi. And though a family emergency prompted me to skip the release function and go to Uttar Pradesh, on returning I was touched to learn that Gulzarsaab had dedicated one of the stories to me. The story, centred on the Kashmir Valley, comes with this line about me: “We share a lot of Kashmir, though neither of us is from there.”

The genius writer is currently working out the plotlines of several books. “There are several books in my head,” he says. “I want to complete them. Writing is very important, it is a shock absorber. It has the capacity to absorb all upheavals, shocks, pains, all the conditions you’re going through. It is like driving along a road which could be uneven or bumpy. Writing then becomes your vehicle, it takes you along and you go atop it, as though you were riding a tiger.” He is also translating Rabindranath Tagore’s books for children. “I love writing for children and I find it very fulfilling,” he says. He adds, “Today, we are snatching the childhoods of our children by putting them too early into the formal education system. We are shrinking that crucial phase in their life. My worry is that in the coming years, children could get extremely lonely, especially in urban locations.”

(Pictures courtesy Amit Kanwar and www.missmalini.com)

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A dash of humanity

Three academics in Delhi have set up a trust that will encompass the spectrum of Humanities Studies in the country.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Last week, I wrote about Kolkata’s Presidency College introducing ‘Love’ as a subject in its curriculum. Now there’s another bit of good news from the world of academia – three senior academics in New Delhi, Rakesh Batabyal, Mahalakshmi Ramakrishnan and Antony Thomas have set up the Humanities Trust.

What for, you ask. I quote Dr Batabyal (in pic above), “The Trust will try and encourage high quality in humanities education, which will include research and publication in different languages of Indian and other societies. The Trust also seeks to come to help the teachers of classical languages, liberal arts. Its centre for advanced study will try and spread the message of Indian philosophy and culture, through high standards of research that it will try and promote.”

This Humanities Trust has a definite plan to set up several concrete platforms to reach out to the masses. In fact, these academics want to reach the masses through this Trust by setting up the Institute of Advanced Studies (HTIAS), Curriculum Resource Centre (CRC), Humanities Bibliospaces and Espaces: New libraries for schools in remote areas and for students from deprived sections (HBE), Centre for the Study of Philosophy of Religion and Secularism (CSPRS), Centre for Studies on Institutions (CSI), Centre for Indian Nationalism (CIN), to name a few initiatives.

Dr Batabyal adds, “With the declining quality in education, particularly in public education delivery, there is an urgency to intervene in the education system by starting an Institute of Advanced Studies. The Institute will house scholars from across the country and the world who would use its residential character to congregate and discourse on issues and areas designed broadly by the Institute. The active training, publication and seminar programmes of the Trust aims at disseminating the work of these scholars and their discussion to hundreds of other institutions of education, which would bring the cutting edge knowledge paradigms closer to those who do not have access to these.

“The  Curriculum Resource Centre (CRC) shall be an ongoing archive, documentation and facilitation centre for curriculum development across education segments. These will be made available to institutions to enable long-term development as well as for short-term modules. The centre will provide the training for educators in the using of these curriculum frameworks as well. The Trust shall also seek to develop a centre for the study of religions – the philosophies, history and evolution of newer belief-systems. It will also seek to promote the understanding of secularism through research, seminars and teaching modules on conceptual issues, thinkers, philosophical questions related to the subject.

“The endeavor is to truly integrate the idea of humanism with that of inquiry. The Trust shall study the origin and trends in the growth of institutions across the world, particularly the democratic institutions. Legislation has been the finest art of human kind and therefore study of legislating institutions shall be studied in close conformity with the changing patterns of humanistic expressions.”

He signs off by saying, “The study of the unique phenomenon of Indian Nationalism will be encouraged in the context of its anti-colonial past and globalized present. There will also be emphasis on the comparative history and process of nation-building in different parts of the developing world.”

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy utcp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

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Lessons on love

Kolkata’s Presidency College is starting a course on love. What could be a better idea in this day and age?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

In the midst of the almost daily barrage of bad news and gloom, comes this good news of an ‘academic’ nature, which has come as a breath of fresh air. Kolkata’s Presidency College is starting a new course…on love.

Yes, I said ‘love’. The subject is to be introduced as a full-fledged one by the College’s Sociology Department, and like English Literature, would be open for all students from different departments, faculties and streams.

Perhaps, for the very first time in this country, love will be discussed in a formal way, just like it used to be centuries ago, when there would be heady discussions on love, romance and emotions, before a frenzied development mode took over and bypassed lay ‘subjects’ like love and everything connected to it.

So we are finally moving backwards, towards the very basics of our existence, for with love, there are bound to be emotions. I’m not sure whether these classes on love will be held under sprawling banyans or neems. And why not? Why not impart all this gyaan out there in the open, amidst the natural environment?

Wherever these classes are conducted – indoors or outdoors – those discussions on love will have a direct impact on the very thought processes of students, and might have long-lasting effects. I have no idea of the teaching format or how the syllabus is going to be shaped for this newly-introduced subject, but in all probability, these classes will help simplify the tangle of confusing notions blamed on love. These discussions would bring about a de-link between love and lust, between want and desire, between fulfillment and release, between innocent spontaneity and stalking, between fall-outs and falling in love!

Today’s youth need these lessons, at least to be able to tell negative emotions apart from positive ones, when several confused boys and girls associated both with real love. Even some loveof our current films reinforce these wrong stereotypes, and which can be dangerous on a vulnerable mind.

And what about the other departments of our other universities and colleges moving ahead with the times and introducing ‘love’ as a subject? When will they discuss it and all that is connected to it, right from the theoretical to the practical to the mystic and even beyond, taking the learner towards the Divine?

Love is important in today’s times. Love is powerful. There’s something so magical about love; it has the power to heal, to protect, to smoothen out troubles, to reach out, to keep illnesses at bay, to help you understand life with all its complexities. When one accepts love in its totality, with the immense pain and turmoil it brings along, it takes one to another level of existence. After all, love brings along a powerful ingredient – emotion.

You can buy sex, but you cannot buy emotions. I’m tempted to quote this line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memory of My Melancholy Whores, ‘Sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love.’

Humra Quraishi is a senior journalist based in Gurgaon. She is author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant. 

 (Pictures courtesy www.fanpop.com, funlava.com)

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When divisions benefit the rulers

The carving out of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh could have very real implications for others looking for separate State status.
Humra Quraishiby Humra  Quraishi

Divisions spell doom. A division is like a divorce. There is a break-up, with long lasting implications and offshoots. Divisions aren’t good for anybody.

This week came the news of the new State of Telangana being carved out in the Andhra belt. There is a very real danger of several other States in this country demanding divisions of territory. The list could get longer and be no longer contained to just Maharashtra – who is to stop J&K, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal or Bihar taking the same route?

Divisions suit the politician and the bureaucracy. Not just for purposes of the clichéd ‘the  more, the merrier…’ but more along the lines of governance. A freshly-carved State brings with it the need for more political and bureaucratic heads, justifies the need for planning commissions and departments and ministries. The field becomes wider for several mafias to extract an extra pound of flesh even from the malnourished and the diseased, as the new State grapples with working within new systems. And do not for a minute think that these divisions and bifurcations benefit those in the backward sections of society.

A good example I can cite is that of the State of Uttarakhand. Several years ago, it was carved out from the erstwhile undivided Uttar Pradesh. See for yourself – apart from being blessed with its own natural bounty, on which the State subsists, where is the development? Could it combat nature’s fury, is it able to deal with the ongoing destruction and havoc in the wake of the ghastly floods?

Divisions also brings along distractions of the worst sort. Not to drag you backwards, but I must write of the prominent happenings of this week – we, the hapless masses, could not telangana even adequately react to the teenaged biker being shot dead by the cops in the heart of the capital city, nor could we mourn the sight of a dead human form being pulled by a bull dozer, nor could we find the miracle meal costing just a couple of rupees!

As much as it depresses me, I am beginning to be convinced of the Right Wing parties’s theory that the Congress and the Samjawadi Party are adopting the age-old political strategy of relaying a set of opinions – one to suit the majority, and the other for those ‘others’ in the minority. Soon after the Batla House encounter verdict, those residing in the Jamia Nagar/Okhla/Batla House localities seem convinced that this particular encounter was State-managed; this suspicion is fuelled by the dramatic U-turn that the Congressmen, who were earlier with these people, have not taken in their stand.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.thehindu.com, theviewspaper.net)

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