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Coming soon: Bedardi Baalam

Harish Iyer’s ‘fun’ project for women, Khuli Tijori, will have him visit colleges and start a debate on local trains.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

He shot to fame when TV show Satyameva Jayate featured him on its child sex abuse episode. Viewers cried as Harish Iyer told his heartbreaking story, how the experience shaped his reality and how he took solace in Sridevi’s films. But if Harish gave you the impression that his early life must have made him a serious, constantly brooding individual who measures his words when he speaks, that impression will shoot itself in the face when you speak with him in person.

Because the man is funny and quite fun to speak with. And that forms the core of his ambitious project, Khuli Tijori, where young people of both sexes can speak about sexuality, their bodies, their ‘dangerous’ bent of mind and so on, in a light vein on a quirky blog. “Activism should be fun, then it becomes effective,” Harish says. “I am a big fan of Geet from Jab We Met, and I love the line where she says, ‘Akeli ladki khuli tijori ki tarah hoti hai. That inspired the name of the project. We are not looking at naari shakti activism. Rather than a boring (read: intellectual), Bengali activism method, I want to make it intellectually sl***y in a Tam Brahm way, like me,” he laughs.

Harish started the project in February this year, and the idea for it was probably germinating even as he started the Sita Sena in 2009 as a counter point to fundamentalist group Ram Sene’s Valentine’s Day exploits in Bangalore. “We were a group of men wearing the most obscene pair of shorts we could find, and each of us carried a whistle. Then we approached women on the street, and told them they could blow the whistle at any man in the group,” he says, adding that the blog and the project is a chance for him to present his views, which may not be the world view. “People have lost their rational thinking. Either they speak loudly in front of 10 people who share their opinion, or they act cool by not listening to other voices. There has to be a middle path.”

That middle path is what he chose for the project as well. “Women can be sexy, bi***y, sl***y and as horrible as men. We either make women goddesses or whores, so where are the normal, common women? The project will celebrate these women, the in-betweens.” He plans to do this by not intellectualising issues plaguing women, but by promoting serious activism in a logical, fun manner – and he started by adopting the name ‘Bedardi Baalam’ for the project. “So I might go to a college, hand a camera to two girls and tell them to stare at a boy’s pe*** and record his reaction. Do you know that a woman staring at a man’s pe*** is likely to embarrass him at least 10 times more than when he would stare at her body? Of course, the girls will not be shooting his pe*** on camera, but it will be a good experiment,” he explains.

Similarly, he and partner-in-crime Deborah Grey (whose moniker is ‘Maal’ for purposes of the project) will stage ‘train plays’, where they will travel by local trains in non-peak hours. “We’ll stand in the compartment and start reading out passages like, ‘Isne mujhe chheda, mujhe chutiya kaha’ and ‘Main akeli rehti hoon’. People will start listening in and a dialogue will be initiated right there,” he beams.

Harish’s plans include taking the project to college students in a major way. “By the end of this year, I will have two or three projects planned around these activities. The projects will be for women’s rights, for single women and for the right of women to have sex. We may also do basic conversations in flash mob style. And we plan to take the train plays to bus stops as well.”

Right now, he admits that he hasn’t been feeding in any posts on the project blog. “But I want it to be a place which is not just mine, though I will edit its contents to keep it non-sleazy. We will also build a team to take the project up in a big way. My end goal is to start an NGO called The Hiyer Foundation. All of this is very ambitious and it sounds great when you say it, but I know the actual implementation will be tough.” For now, though, Harish has already started visiting colleges in Mumbai “on the pretext of giving lectures” to develop “this sense of making activism fun. So the dialogue has already started.”

 

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Her quest for Olympic gold

Twenty-six-year-old Ayesha Billimoria, one of Maharashtra’s star athletes, battles a disinterested system that she says does not respect its sportspersons.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Blood. Sweat. Tears. And a world of pain. As an athlete, you pound the track and practice alone, come inclement weather or clear skies. You clear one milestone and set another. You work every day and you live by the rules. You listen to your body and respect its protests. And with every tumble, you pick yourself up, ignore your bloody knees, and you run again.

Ayesha Billimoria did all this and more. She raced in scorching heat. She swallowed her pride and trained under a bully of a coach. She broke records. She bruised and pushed her body beyond its limits. And when nobody was with her, and even after those she had begun training professionally with had quit the sport, she still ran. And ran some more.

“In June this year, I took silver at the state-meet (at Balewadi, Pune). If conditions had been right, I would have won gold. They’re going to find a very different Ayesha at the meet next year,” the petite, pretty 25-year-old warns, a hint of murder in her eyes. “I hate losing, and for the first time in my life, I actually said that the girl who won the gold had won it for the last time. Normally, I let my running talk for me.” So what happened this time? “Everything. They kept the first race at 12.30 in the afternoon, followed by a two-hour break and the 400 metre race at 2.30 p.m. Who runs at that time in the day? And then the races were delayed. I ran on an empty stomach and I blacked out in the heat, though I completed both races. I’m going to be better prepared next year,” she says.

The life and times of Ayesha Billimoria

Ayesha took to serious running at age 14,  when she ran her first school race and won gold. Savio D’Souza, who later coached her, spotted the talent in her and told her to give running a serious thought. She did, with the result that the very next year, in 2001, she won her first gold medal at the ICSE National Meet in Bangalore. “I was running in earnest, and my only objective was to run for the Olympics. That dream sustains me even today,” she smiles.

We’ve sitting in her home in Khetwadi, a typically large Parsi house that Ayesha has only moments ago welcomed me in with a big smile. She’s spent the morning giving a massage to a client – she is a sports masseuse in her spare time, apart from being an occasional model – and is very open about her life has shaped up. “I’ve always wanted to be an Olympic medallist,” she says. “I’ve put everything on the line to be an athlete, and would you believe, till I was 21, I was so removed from things that were not track-related, I did not even know how to operate a computer or email! I’ve faced so much rejection, so many people have said they won’t sponsor me, and so many more have pulled me down. Others who used to train with me left the sport years ago. But I am determined to run at the Commonwealth Games in 2014. After that, I will represent India at the Olympics in 2016,” she says, as nonchalantly as one would say that their next big goal was to order a Chinese takeout.

What must one do to qualify for CWG, I ask. “Nothing, apart from perform. And I will,” she states.

Since her first race in 2000, she has added a bevy of medals (most of them gold) and award trophies to her prize cabinet at home, the last being her silver medal win at the Pune state meet this year. By now, she is firmly sitting pretty as Maharashtra’s number one athlete in the 100 metre, 200 metre and 400 metre categories. But she is bitter and quite often during the interview, seriously annoyed. She confesses that a couple of early false starts on her part, and almost no professional guidance from those in the know, resulted in her being plagued by running injuries and a loss of form after her initial good run. “From being number one, I was suddenly the girl who always stood fourth,” she frowns. “I was made to train at a level I was not ready for, and by 2005, my form had dropped very badly. So much so, that even my father, who had been very supportive from the start, began to lose interest in my dream.”

In 2006 – “the lowest point of my life” –a car accident gave her several new injuries, the worst being a tail bone fracture. “People thought I wouldn’t run the way I used to. ‘She is finished’, they said. The worst of it was, I was back on my feet without any guidance on how to retrain,” she says.

She rolls her eyes as she explains how she has had to make do with the “really pathetic” running track at Priyadarshini Park, the city’s only synthetic track for athletic training, and how she has run everywhere in all climatic conditions, just to train. “The problem in India is that nobody guides you about running to your natural rhythm, training after injuries, working out enough to supplement your ability on the track. I was constantly told to pump my arms, run a certain way. That makes me lose focus,” she explains, adding that athletes in India not only train in bad conditions, but that they are “put down all the time, there is no motivation to pick yourself up, you are often mocked when not performing well, and though people are friendly to your face, they’re bitching you out behind your back.”

After three torturous years of making it back on her feet without a coach or proper therapy, she took up a job as a trainer at south Mumbai’s QI gym in 2009, where she met physiotherapist John Gloster (who trained the Indian cricket team). “John worked at the gym, and he started training me for rehab. I hadn’t realised that I had been running with major injuries for three years. One day I told him about my Olympics ambition. He told me to go to Australia and train if I was serious about running.”

Help me!

Gloster put her in touch with his friend, Gavin Fernandes, a 200o Olympics gold medallist and a trainer in Australia. “I wrote to him in 2010, and he and I had a chain of emails where I would increasingly beg and plead with him to train me and he would refuse because he was busy. After two months of constant pestering, he finally gave in, saying I could come to Australia in May,” Ayesha laughs.

Her Australian coach proved to be a god-send . “He put me down several times, but he did that so I could realise how shallow my thinking was, how many excuses I was constantly making, how much negativity was in my head when I ran,” she admits. “Soon I was running well, peacefully and without stress, in an environment that respects sport and treats it like a fun activity. I was in my first race there within a month of reaching Australia, and I clocked my personal best of 58.08 seconds. I felt like a new person – the run was enjoyable and I was able to give my best.” She decided at that moment that she would train under Gavin’s guidance and only in Australia. “After my silver medal win in June, several Indian coaches have wanted to train me, but I’ve refused them all,” she says, adding that she pays for her Australia sojourns from the money she makes from her massage and modelling work.

Funds needed

Surprisingly, though she doesn’t have the monetary means to do it, she reiterates that she’s going to the CWG in 2014 and also to the Olympics in 2016. “You know why international sportspeople do well? They have a unique bond with their coaches, and they trust them completely. Besides, being an Olympian requires a certain attitude that I find lacking among Indian athletes, barring a few. Gavin told me at the start that an Olympic athlete knows that the 400 metre race is not about physical ability, it’s a mental game that’s won even before the race begins.” She adds that she met a few Indian Olympic hockey team players at Balewadi this year. “You should have heard them talk. ‘Haan, Olympics ja rahe hain. Dekhte hain kya hota hai,’ they said. That attitude will never win you anything,” she shrugs.

For now, she is focussed on getting together enough funds to leave for a longer training session in Australia in January next year. “I need a sponsor for my training, and I’ve gone to so many companies so far, but everybody’s refused,” she says. “They all ask: ‘Have you won nationally? If not, we can’t sponsor you.”

She says she needs a sponsorship of at least Rs 6,00,000, but she wonders where to get it from. And though she will find a sponsor once she wins on the National platform, the funds are needed to aid a professional training process before her big success. “And once I win, all those who put me down will be the first to come out and say that they always knew I could do well,” she smirks. “Only I know what it has taken me, still takes me, to get up every morning and run. All I can do is train and be mentally ready for the Olympics, and in the meantime, be around people who truly believe in me.”

(pictures by www.martinriebeek.nl, Abner Fernandes) 

 

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Two men for the great outdoors

Starting today, two Mumbaikars will travel across India to plant trees, speak to students and create awareness about environment conservation.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Hari Chakyar is 26, and a Borivli resident who on September 28 took a sabbatical from his content writing responsibilities at Jack in the Box Worldwide to fulfil a long-held dream with Worli resident and friend Anthony Karbhari (24) – starting today, the duo is set to travel all over the country to plant trees, a project they’ve titled ‘Project 35 Trees’. The Metrognome chatted with Hari to find out more about the project and what it entails.

What is Project 35 Trees about?

Project 35 Trees is about planting trees in all 35 states and union territories of India. It is also about educating students about the need to plant trees and other environmental problems that the world faces.

What is the genesis of the idea?

This project is a succession of my previous initiatives. I am immensely influenced by Proffesor Sudhakar Solomonraj of Wilson College who would take his students from the Wilson College Nature Club for treks to nearby forests. In 2009, I did a campaign in Ambarnath (where I used to live then). In the campaign, along with friends there, I put up a street play called Nature Baba Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai? and planted trees all over Ambarnath.

How long have you been working on Project 35 Trees?

Project 35 Trees began in October last year. The idea took a lot of time to form. I started thinking about this some time in early 2011. I found a name and created the Facebook pagefor it in October 2011. This is a community project that belongs to everybody…where Anthony and I play initiators.

Take us through the preparations you’ve made before you start on the trip.

We are finding schools or colleges in each of these 35 places we are going to visit. We have already found hosts to stay with in almost all these places. We are and will be collecting funds for the trip. People can contribute via the Wishberry.in page. Currently, we are ticking things off our list of things to take for the trip.

What equipment are you carrying?

A projector, a laptop, cameras and so on, apart from a few digging implements. On our person, we’ll carry enough cash to last us in a particular state. The rest will be safe in our accounts. If you ask about our budget, we need Rs 5 lakhs.

What other preparations does one need for a trip of this kind?

Both of us have never travelled continuously for such a long time. The most we have done is travel for a month. Anthony (who is a freelance filmmaker) travels more frequently than me. For now, we are preparing ourselves mentally for this epic four-month trip. We also continually tell each other that we have to wash clothes for four months. Anthony is fitter than I am. I am also watching my diet for now and cycling regularly.

How did you decide on the places you plan to target?

We decided the route we wanted to take and then started finding hosts who are mostly friends, friends of friends or relatives of friends. We have hosts who are related to friends. We don’t know most of them personally. It helped if they also had a school nearby. A few people even offered to put us up after they read about us in a magazine. I have only travelled to Kerala, Ahmedabad, Daman and Hyderabad, apart from a whirlwind tour of the northeast. Seeing a lot of new places and meeting a lot of interesting people is also what we are thrilled about.

In the past, you have been known to cycle to work and be involved with unusual green initiatives. How did the awareness for these come about?

I cycle for fun. I rode the bicycle to work on World Environment Day because I thought that would be a nice way to promote Project 35 Trees.

Have you ever faced ridicule about the ideas you’ve had?

Never. People have always been supportive. Personally, and even from strangers on social media. We get a lot of free advice, though.

What has been your family’s reaction to Project 35 Trees?

They too have been very supportive of all my initiatives. Every parent must encourage their children to support environmental causes. Even though my parents are concerned that I’ll be away for four months, they haven’t stopped supporting me.

What is your expectation of the Project?

I would love it if even a few students I speak to decide to take up initiatives to know more and act for the conservation of the environment. We will be ready to help these schools set up a nature club in their schools or colleges, like for a class assignment. It’ll also be awesome if people could plant trees on their own.

For us, Project 35 Trees is also about understanding what environmental problems the country faces. Meeting people who are doing good work in conservation will also help.

Your opinion on general awareness (from society, NGOs, government, media) about green initiatives.

Awareness programmes must be included in the scholastic syllabus. Students must be encouraged to participate in awareness and conservation programmes. This will help them make informed, sensitive choices as adults.

A lot of simple human actions affect the environment adversely. When you purchase shells and conches from Kanyakumari, you don’t realise that those creatures are caught live in the waters and boiled in the hundreds to ‘clean’ and beautify them for your showcase. Some women want ivory jewellery made from the tusks of painfully-slaughtered elephants. Did you know that sharks will soon join the ranks of endangered creatures because some of us want shark fin soup for dinner?

It’s time to stop taking the world around for granted and finding out which of our actions are causing great distress elsewhere.

The project:

The duo will visit educational institutions across the country and plant trees with students to create awareness about

fighting global warming and climate change together. The session will last about 60 minutes, and will include a documentary film screening, a talk about the Project and a Q&A session. The session will ideally be followed by a tree-planting session, and is aimed at students of class 8 and above.

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There’s a comedian in the (hospital) building

Stand up comic PapaCJ is visiting the country’s hospitals and making patients go BWAHAHAHAHA

By The Editors/ editor@themetrognome.in

You’re lying miserably on your hospital bed on a Sunday, your broken leg inside a cast, staring at a flaky ceiling and wishing you could hide in the ward boy’s laundry basket and make your way to freedom. But you can’t, so you must continue staring at the ceiling, wishing you could hide in the ward boy’s laundry basket and make your way to freedom.

It goes on. Hospitals really suck. Even the ward boy’s laundry basket is a foolish contraption that would fall apart if a kitten hid in it. You look down the rows of beds next to you, and you note that each patient is eyeing the laundry basket with distaste.

And then the good doctor tells you that somebody’s going to come along and entertain you soon.

“Sure,” you think. “This means that I’m going to have my blood taken by an intern who will poke about my arm looking for a vein till I have no arm left.” But instead of an intern, in walks a good-looking, long-haired, big-grinning PapaCJ.

And he starts to tell jokes. He doesn’t patronise. He doesn’t joke about people’s suffering. He doesn’t do ‘non-veg’ stuff. Soon you’re grinning. The pain in your leg, about to make its presence felt, pipes down. He does impressions. He tells it like it is, only he makes it ten times funnier. If your leg allowed it, you would be running around the room, laughing hard.

Why he does it

PapaCJ, noted stand up comic and humour writer, thought of presenting his acts in front of a hospital audience “just one day” last month. “I do lots of shows where I make people laugh, because I genuinely love to make people laugh,” he tells us. “I am in the ‘happiness business’, and I truly believe that laughter does heal.”

His bright idea is called The Best Medicine. He explains, “Hospitals are really depressing places. The white tubelights, the smell of medicine, the constant aches and pains and other suffering. I thought, ‘Why not let patients laugh and have fun?’ From a comedian’s point of view, it’s a privilege doing shows like this, where your only payment is in the form of blessings.”

Getting on board

For starters, CJ wrote to the wife of chairperson and managing director of Medicity Dr Naresh Trehan (Padma Shri). “She was very welcoming of the idea, and I had a meeting with Medicity’s HODs to figure out which patients could benefit from the exercise and how to do the entire thing. I am open to showing up and speaking in any hospital in the country, any random medical centre that wants me to do this,” he says. CJ will perform on any Sunday, totally free of cost. “I only want my travel expenses covered. There is no charge for performing,” he says.

A few of his friends from New York, he says, were very excited about the idea and wanted to come down and perform. “But there was no way to take care of their travel expenses. However, I’m speaking to my colleagues here who can also take this up.” He says there was a call for him to perform in a Kashmir hospital as well.

What kind of jokes?

“No material that is offensive or which jokes about what is troubling patients will be allowed,” he says firmly. “It’s about making people feel better about themselves. Laughter has such a big impact on people, it makes a big difference physically and mentally. Patients are regular people, too. They deserve a laugh as much as anyone.”

Help set up a showCJ doesn’t have a publicist or a PR machinery backing him, and not knowing too many people in the hospital industry is a big concern. “I want to spread the word that I am available for doing this. There is a lot of red tape you need to cross if you approach hospitals directly. I am hoping that I get the word across and cover as many hospitals as I can.”

Do you know anyone working at a hospital? Help CJ put up a show by recommending him. CJ can be contacted on papacj@papacj.com

 

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‘I cover issues no one else is willing to touch’

Journalist Javed Iqbal talks about the challenges of covering a ravaged people – and why these issues are not extensively covered by the Indian press

by Vrushali Lad/vrushali@themetrognome.in

Javed Iqbal (28) is a Bandra resident, a freelance journalist, an excellent photographer. He is also one of the few journalists in the country covering issues of displacement, dissension and demolition. He used to work as an investigative journalist with The New Indian Express for two years, before taking the freelance photojournalist route. The Metrognome caught up with him at his exhibition of photographs – ‘Ghar’ – that detailed his considerable body of work, encompassing everything from police encounters in Bastar and Dantewada to slum demolitions in Golibar, Mumbai.

You graduated with a degree in Journalism. What did you do right after your graduation?

I, as a young, arrogant, no-good idiot, walked out of an interview with a tabloid. I didn’t want them, and by the fact that I made fun of the newspapers’ gratuitous coverage of a celebrity, they didn’t want me. And then I started working as a freelance photographer, wrote for a music magazine, a lot of other ‘abort missions’ with newspapers, but my heart always lay with the idea of doing things the old-fashioned way – to just go somewhere and work. But the problem was logistics and funding, and it was only a few years later that I realised that the best way of dealing with logistics and funding is to simply do away with it. I finally went with a pocketful of cash and lint.

How did photojournalism happen?
I used to take photos since I was 16, and I knew photojournalism was just around the corner if one simply put themselves on the front row seats of history. And that’s what I did.

You write extensively on (and photograph) issues affecting PAPs, tribals, those facing demolition of their homes, and the lives of villages in the grip of Naxal forces. That’s a road not many journalists take, since development journalism is still a very niche branch in the Indian media. How did you make this choice?

Firstly, I wouldn’t call it ‘development journalism’ when state-based development usually seems to only follow after state repression and its symptoms, human rights violations. Look at what’s happening in Koodankulam today. Old women and folk are being teargassed because they’re the only ones who’re raising the very serious issue of nuclear safety and while the whole world is shutting down their nuclear power plants, we got hundreds of excuses and lies to justify them, and thus the repression on the local populace.

And for me, the choice to cover issues like this was easy – when I started, there were less than a handful (of journalists) working on these issues. Koodankulam today has a very young talented photographer and a lot of decent writers. But coming back to central India, there were journalists like Ajit Sahi of Tehelka who’d come and go, and of course, there was P Sainath, whose work is as admirable as it could be, and I remember writing to him when I wanted to work in Dantewada but he himself barely touched the insurgency, the civil war in Bastar that really started in 2005, and his one warning does still ring true: ‘All work that challenges the status quo carries risks.’

Yet the choice I made, way back in 2009 in Dantewada is a principle I still follow – cover issues no one else is willing to touch. And my future editor Aditya Sinha, then in The New Indian Express gave me some valid advice: that if one newspaper starts (to report something), others follow. And that has been something I have noticed over the years.

Have you ever directly experienced any of the famed police atrocities that are written about so much?
I have experienced them (beatings, threats). But then you just keep doing your job. I honestly don’t feel it merits a description as it’s ancient history.

What has been the most heart-breaking incident that you have been witness to?
There have been too many. But there have even been many moments of joy. And the things that cause you joy, then face state repression or Maoist violence. And that really hurts. But recently, I was at Dhanbad at the Chasnala coal mine, where in 1975, some 380 miners drowned within seconds. It was something that happened when I wasn’t even born, and looking at the names on the memorial fading, the pieces of coal all around me, I just, I picked some coal up and kept it with me, remembering that 380 people died for these rocks, for ‘development’ to some, for ‘exploitation’ to others. And I just couldn’t forget it.

There is a box at home with these kinds of things, a photograph of a working class dalit musician who died of a heart attack, a map drawn of how a police firing took place at Ramabai Nagar by someone who lived it, a passport-sized photo of a young adivasi murdered by the police, gifted to me by his father, a lump of coal.

Which issue is closest to your heart?

Everything is connected. There are no hierarchies. Just difficult choices on where to travel when.

How did you get involved with the housing and displacement issue in Mumbai? What kind of research and on-field engagement goes into covering it?
Once I started coming home, I realised there was a lot happening in Mumbai – and I started with drawing parallels to ‘development’ with Ward M/Chembur East that has development indicators that are worst than some places in central India. And I knew someone in the housing movement and he told me about a place that was very close to home: Golibar.

And thus, every time I came back from central India, I found myself covering demolition drives there.

Have you worked with activists (such as Simpreet Singh in Mumbai) who work extensively against slum demolitions and displacement without rehabilitation?
Simpreet was the one who told me. The one I asked.

Which journalists and photographers have you had the chance to work with on your travels? What has the learning experience been like with each of them?
Many. There is a very long list. I am one of those guys who, thanks to the ethic of my editor, doesn’t give a hoot about getting the story first, so thus competition is something I did not give a f*** about. So I have always worked with whoever is in the area, or anyone who calls. In central India, you name the usual suspects, Aman Sethi of The Hindu, Tusha Mittal and Tarun Sehrawat of Tehelka, and I have worked with them.

Give us an example that illustrates the statement: ‘The law is an ass’. I’m sure you’ve encountered this several times in your work.
(Laughs) I have never heard that, but the sentiment it illustrates is true to only certain points. While there has been some movement by the judiciary towards judicial activism that has brought some moments of calm to the affected, the overall behaviour of the state has also found ways to subvert the judiciary itself. Mining in Goa takes place irrespective of orders by the Supreme Court, suspects are not brought before magistrates within 24 hours, the police doesn’t arrest builders who the High Courts have asked them to investigate, workers who won a court order to be regularised by ACC Holcim in Chhattisgarh are not being regularised, a CBI team sent to investigate an attack in Dantewada is attacked by Special Police Officers, and of course, while the Supreme Court bans the use of SPOs, they’re still there.

The law is not an ass. The law is made to look like an ass.

It is not always easy interacting with, and later coming to terms with, the problems and the lifestyles of slum dwellers. What was your experience the first time you decided to investigate or  document slum demolitions?
Honestly, I’ve never had problems interacting or coming to terms with the ‘lifestyles’ of slumdwellers. But slums themselves are not some homogenous mass, there are class distinctions, caste distinctions within all of them. Some slums are self-developed to the point that I have known upper-middle class funnies, considering renting a room there. Some, such as those built on the Deonar dumping grounds, are a universe of their own, a world upside down.

During a demolition drive, it can be difficult, but I’ve always managed to get across to both the police and the people. And I am now at that point, where I am euphoric if a demolition drive is cancelled.

How would you rate the performance of the police and the security forces in areas like Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh?
If we had a reality TV show on which is the most violent, corrupt police force in the country, I think it would be a very hard choice to make. But it would be the most-watched TV show in the country because everyone across the country has faced it somehow or the other.

There is even an infamous quote by Justice A N Mulla, that he was forced to expunge later: ‘I say it with all sense of responsibility that there is not a single lawless group in the whole country whose record of crime is anywhere near the record of that organised unit which is known as the Indian Police Force.’

And decades after he said that, a woman may get stones shoved up her vagina in Dantewada, but in Mumbai a watchman would get a packet of chillies shoved into his anus. In the past, a police station in Kerela had a history of committing sodomy.

Have you worked in Naxal-affected areas in Maharashtra?

I worked in Gadchiroli. I was there in 2010. It’s very different from its neighbouring districts, but the police operations and the daily repression of the police, Maoist ambushes of police, are still commonplace there.

Let’s talk about your exhibition of photographs, ‘Ghar’ (held in September 2012). How long did it take to compile all the pictures and set up the showing? What did you hope to achieve by having such an exhibition?

‘Ghar’ is just a work in progress as long as I keep working in dispossession, displacement and ‘development’ as you call it, and there have been photographs in the set from 2008 till 2012. And honestly, I don’t think I set out to achieve anything on the exhibition. I like working in the field, and for the last month, I really have missed it.

Have you held such exhibitions earlier?

This would be the first exhibition which I have attended. Usually, my photos are put up in public spaces or in working class neighbourhoods by the people who I took pictures of, themselves. Once, some people got together and had an open show at Carter Road, and a friend sent me a video of the responses of street children to the photographs of the killing of adivasis in central India. One child asked, “Wherever people are poor, do the police do this?”

What do your parents do? What are their feelings about your chosen line of work?
(Laughs) Father was in the IAS and is a great believer in the McMohan scheme of things. While he is ambivalent to know that my work challenges his idea and order of the world, and it’s really easy to beat him with logic, statistics, and the simple truth, the dinner table has become a lovely, more dramatic space. Mother is not surprised by what I document, she sometimes adds to it, with stories from the past.

But they are supportive. Even though, they, like all parents, are a bit circumspect when I get into trouble.

How did you start writing in newspapers?

I’m actually a writer. Photography is the second skill. Which makes me laugh about this whole interview. I started writing the same time I started taking pictures. Pictures told the story and the story was told by the pictures. I worked for the New Indian Express as a reporter when Operation Green Hunt, the second phase of the insurgency, was in full phase. Then when my editor quit in 2011, I quit. Since then, I’ve written for DNA, Tehelka, Al Jazeera, Infochange, Sunday Guardian, etc.

What are your thoughts on the alleged ‘disconnect’ that mass media has with issues that affect development, if such a disconnect exists, in the first place?

There is a gigantic disconnect. And to simplify, before we start talking about censorship of the press, advertising and corporate control over editorial, or editors who’re not supportive, we first need to challenge self-censorship itself. Most journalists don’t write, don’t report, because they themselves don’t give a shit.

Lastly what are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a few stories, and a plan on getting back to reporting in Jharkhand or Orissa. As I told you, the hardest choice is to choose your tatkal ticket.

 

 

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