From Azad

An open letter from someone who has something to say.

I am an Indian Muslim. Apparently, some of my self-proclaimed leaders were some of the people to have appealed against the Delhi High Court judgement.

But I just wanted to tell you that the distance between us is not as much as they think it is. The distance between us, in fact, often is the jail cell. The distance between us, is the distance between S. 125 and S. 377. In fact, we are closer than even we want to believe. For a lot of you, and for a lot of us, the policeman does not represent security. He represents the spectre of state violence, he represents for us, the “colonial legislation”, but he represents the very reality of our lives: that we are marginalized, that our living and dying in this country is based on premises of obedience, on some “ancient traditions” that are summoned whenever uncomfortable questions of identity are raised. Words like assimilation and integration and unity are thrown at us, and we are expected to suspend our lived realities and live in the margins.

We are also living in these miserable times when our friends are openly the greatest supporters of this discourse of development and growth and other things like those. That, for them, their privilege makes them easy purchasers of dreams that our tormentors sell. Our friends maybe attending protest rallies in the evenings today, but each morning, they are subscribing to narratives (and to political forces) that would push us farther away from this mirage of a mainstream. Our suffering is, in a very convoluted fate, now linked. And I hope our resistance too, is.

So while I attend a pride parade here, oppose colonial legislations wherever I can. I expect, as part of millions who suffer, for you to reciprocate. 377 wasn’t the sole British vestige of oppression left in this land. AFSPA exists. Freedom of Religion Acts exist. So does a legislation that criminalises the lives of transgendered persons in Andhra Pradesh.

Our oppressors seemed to have united – the All India Muslim Personal Law Board could not spare money for hundreds of young men who became victims to this narrative of war on terror, but appealed zealously against the Naz Foundation judgment. The Board does not find time enough to reform oppressive provisions in Indian Muslim Law (that even Pakistan has), but it has found time to go after your freedoms. In it, it has found a wonderful ally in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has never, otherwise, lost a chance to spew venom against India’s marginalized.

In our tormentors’ vision: we are all the same. Dalit, Women, Muslim, Trans, Homosexual. But we have identities that have been suppressed. And I wish to assert my own. And maybe you would too. I am protesting against the Supreme Court verdict. Are you attending the protest for the rights of Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians – which, by the way, was also at Jantar Mantar?

Their fear after all, is that, one day all of us will be attending each others’ protests. Let us make their fear a little real.

-Azad.

377 rage

Disclaimer: This post is likely to be inarticulate as hell, but I need to write to clear up my thinking. 

I felt a great deal of anger at the Supreme Court's 377 verdict. When I heard, from a senior at college (whose blog post on Legally India on the Delhi High Court's judgement was the first thing I ever read by a nalsarite) that the Court had upheld the appeal, I spent a couple of hours covered in goosebumps at the idea that the highest judicial body in the land could make such a decision. I spent the day, as hopeless facebooking farts like me are wont to do, posting stuff on facebook, reporting abuse when I came by homophobic comments (there is great pleasure in hitting that report abuse button, sometimes, I feel) or arguing with people about the judgement and the Court's ideal role. Then the judgement came out, and I frankly was not surprised that it had no content worth engaging with. 

The cause for my anger was, at the most basic level, the fact that people I know and care about (and even some I don't care so much about) are being judged and declared to be criminals for no discernible reason. Beyond the personal, though, the worry for me was that our society, and our institutions, are still colonised. We still think in certain moral terms, we have yet to throw off so many of the shackles that were used by the British to confine us. To my mind, this judgement is part of a continuum that legalises illegitimate state violence and intrusion into the choices of individuals and of peoples. Despite all the articles on why we should all care, not only the LGBT community, I wonder if the verdict is really being seen as a part of a larger malaise. I wonder if calls for solidarity are meant to extend both ways. On comment chains on facebook, I found it common that those bringing up other concerns of violence that are not getting requisite attention were told not to side-track from the point. Whither solidarity? What is the point? If the point is merely that Section 377 exists and has been upheld to be constitutional, so do the Andhra Pradesh (Telangana Area) Eunuchs Act, AFSPA and very many others that are just as damaging (if not worse) symbolically and in action. Are they not the point too? Are they side issues? Do they not deserve global days of rage? Is it individual movements' fault that they do not have access to such publicity?

One of the images that caught my eye, in the many that are doing the rounds on the internet is a picture of the press meet at Chennai:

I could not get my eyes off the battalion of cameras in this photograph. To have access to such publicity is not merely the work of the movement (though that is definitely not to be discounted). There are definitely class elements to it. More importantly, however, it is an issue that corporate media finds, sells. If packaged in fluffy, byte-sized snippets on love over all else, it makes very few people uncomfortable. But love isn't fluffy and easy on the mind. Love is powerful, it scoffs at petty institutions and can be deeply subversive. The call for dignity of the individual has the power to change much that is wrong with Indian society. That is pretty radical stuff. This is a moment that could lead to deep thought on what we want the Indian State to stand for or it could be a moment about Section 377 of the IPC. I worry that it is only going to be the latter:

Fanon, aptly said: "The colonial world is a world divided into compartments.… In the capitalist countries a multitude of moral teachers, counselors and ‘bewilderers’ separate the exploited from those in power. In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of the peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native."

Ours is a State that merges the worst of both, and we have much to agitate about. And that agitation cannot happen if we're unwilling to let others 'sidetrack' from the 'point'. To have social movements divided into compartments is what suits governing institutions, not movements. I have felt an unsettling discomfort at the pit of my stomach about the Global Day of Rage, not because the rage is unwarranted, but because of the narrowness of its construction. A recognition of privilege by those leading the LGBT movement would, perhaps, turn the protest against unwarranted State violence and coalesce with others fighting violence and labelling. The movement calls for solidarity, but at this moment, it ought also be extending solidarity.

It is true that this Supreme Court verdict is a blot on our judicial history. As Cover would say, not only did it reach a decision that can be termed morally reprehensible, it showed no commitment to its stand, for it gave no real reasons. To my mind, that is the bigger evil; the idea that a State can choose to turn down people fighting for their ways of life, without needing to reason it out to its people, without committing to its position. This is a moment when we can force this accountability upon our institutions; it is much much bigger than any one problematic provision.

just get on a diet already

Right. So I have always been chubby. ALWAYS. From when I can remember, I have had pudgy fingers, wobbly arms and a tummy. It might have something to do with the fact that I inherit my body structure (right down to the stubby toes) from my paternal grandmother who is round, as was her mother, as was her mother and so on (you get the flow?). My great-grandmother lived to be over ninety, with her critical faculties all in place. My grandmother is still puffing on, and she's nearly eighty. My mother, however, insists that if I "don't get rid of that fat" I will "waste my education" because I will "die early". Apart from the fact that this seems statistically unlikely in my family, I frankly don't care enough about living for very long anyway. My maternal grandmother thinks out aloud, sometimes, that I look 'quite nice' and as long as I do not put on any more weight, I'm sure to be find someone who wants to marry me. I do not know whom she is reassuring, the idea of marriage really frightens me, especially to someone who needs me to fit a certain weight bracket.

Family expectation related woes aside, some things have changed in the time that has passed between my being a chubby baby and a 'fat' adult. When my parents would tell the family doctor that their daughter was overweight, half a decade ago, he'd pooh-pooh them into silence and say that I'll lose the 'puppy fat' soon enough. Now doctors are falling over themselves, during routine medical tests, to tell my parents that their daughter is overweight, and detailing grotesque consequences unless I lose weight at the earliest. Maybe they mean well, I most certainly do need a lot more exercise, but I wonder if the collective paranoia (inherited, I feel, from a weight-loss infatuated white West) puts me off exercise more than it lets me do the things I like.

For a fat person, exercise is a 'weight-loss' thing to do; you walk into a gym and they bloody tell you how much weight you need to lose and how. As a child, I would play cricket; I enrolled myself in tennis classes; I enjoyed throwball; I sucked at kho-kho but played it nonetheless. As a child I loved dance class; I loved theatre. Somehow, in one way or the other, society found it necessary to inform me that fat people don't do these things; that fat actresses can't be 'heroines', that I should stick to recitation for Teachers' Day celebrations (dancing isn't my thing; despite the fairly awesome scores I got in my practical dance examination and all that) and that sports are for winning and fat people aren't fast enough or good enough to win, so bye-bye. And as a child, I didn't know better than to believe those who told me these things were out of my reach - my slim peers, my teachers (yeah, one used me as an example of  'something you'd weigh in tonnes'). Now I look back and feel stupid about letting myself be defined by selfish, oppressive gits, but it is hard to unlearn things you've spent a good part of your life internalising. I was told I could not possibly be sexually attractive; years after these comments, I still can't be physically intimate with anyone because I'm fucking scared they will find me repulsive, and leave.

So, one by one, I stopped doing all of the physical exercise I enjoyed doing. As a rebellious adolescent, I let myself go--ate all the fatty food I could lay my hands on, dressed in baggy clothes, stopped exercising--in order to stick a finger up at society. Then the same god-damned society came back to me and said, "Sorry bro, you're fat, you need to exercise." Well, yeah, that is what I was doing, isn't it? Instead, now, I must 'work out' because it will make me 'feel good' in gyms or in my house watching youtube videos, with the sole objective of losing weight being healthy. There are some who go at it with maniacal persistence. I do not have that sort of tenacity, because I do not care as much. But what I find really saddening is that I was exercising, I was healthy, and I was doing things I enjoyed. And now I am struggling with myself, in order to get my lazy butt up to go for walks and do a crunch or two. I wonder at the hypocrisy of it all.

PS: For those who write back, if anybody writes back, saying "but you can play tennis, dance blah blah blah again" yes, I am aware; just being able to do it despite years of conditioning telling you otherwise isn't really cake-walk. It is doubting myself, all the time; it is feeling like a repulsive being because of the tyres and the stretch marks; it's wondering whether it's worth it, just to hear those comments again. This isn't to make myself out to be some sort of victim or anything, it's merely to point out that the 'self-help' rhetoric sounds like synchronised farting sometimes.

PPS: I don't know whether people ordinarily face up with this, so maybe the use of the term 'society' is unfair. Possibly I was stuck with an especially despicable sample.

PPPS: It's all a capitalist conspiracy, really; make no clothes that fit the fat folk (or call it the Plus size and charge them double the price), shame them into going to the gym (guaranteed weight loss) and laugh all the way to the bank.

Solidarity. That's the key.

I've been acerbic, the last few times I've posted here. Acerbic, angry, hurt and a whole gamut of emotions that make those who wish to understand you, truly empathise, while simultaneously alienating a whole host of others who don't really care very much about the human being that you are. This time round, I've got the best shot I've had in ages, to write something that isn't going to be read as an attempt to take anybody down. And, by golly, I shall use it.

Sangeetha wrote a blog about her experience as an academic representative. It can be accessed here: http://thehinduleftist.blogspot.in/2013/10/this-is-not-rant-sob-story-cribbing.html. I do not know if I would have had the courage to write as she has, if placed in a similar situation; there is grace and honesty in her writing that I do not think I would be able to replicate. Even if nobody else bothers to take her point and introspect, I'm incredibly glad she understands; Sangeetha, after all, had nominated me for the same post in my second year.

While I have been vocally critical of some of the stuff the present academic committee has been up to, and do disagree with some of what she has said, in her blog, I want to continue with the bigger point she made about the manner in which representatives are treated in this place. Sangeetha's experiences have not been laced with the added flavour of university politics, being the alleged "mouth-piece" of certain members of faculty (because nobody here has independent judgement) and having "hotlines to bigshots", but they are startlingly similar to mine, in their minutiae. And I'd hazard the guess that they are similar to the experiences of anybody in a position of power, seeking to work earnestly, in NALSAR (if not elsewhere). And I wonder why. Across the board - student representatives, administration - we treat anybody in a position of power as a bounden slave. For the longest time, I thought that this was the "electorate's right" but that's true only if your responsibility in a democratic set-up is merely to get somebody in power and then sit down and twiddle your thumbs. If that is the case, then you're expected to take whatever the person in power does, and not complain (or be nasty). And if that is not the case (and I certainly believe that it is not), then engagement requires both sides to take responsibility. You cannot expect results when you need to engage, and fail to. You also cannot expect personal preferences to trump everybody else's, because there are way too many people and way too many preferences, for everyone to get their way. Democracy entails compromise and understanding; I think that's where we falter. We're so ensconced in our sense of entitlement that it doesn't often hit us that we're not the ones the world revolves around; the universe is not going to conspire to grant you your every little wish.

There is also a difference in Sangeetha's experiences and mine, and part of it was to do with where the nastiness was coming from. It is rare that a good friend of mine would publicly deride me and treat me like an instrument towards achieving her ends. I think the same goes with Sangeetha too. The most startling example being the fact that one person who sent innumerable mails to my batch group detailing my 'duties' (and the fact that he didn't even vote for me, and was being forced to tolerate me) stood up in vociferous defence of Sangeetha, when she was facing the heat about her own 'duties'. Being friends with a person in power makes you see them as human beings, and that makes you treat them with consideration. Now you cannot be friends with everybody who occupies some position that you need to interact with, but I really think we need to start extending to everybody who is working in positions of authority, the basic consideration of being human. And that entails recognising human frailties; it means tolerating the sudden burst of anger, the occasional snap and sometimes, the one task left unaccomplished. Once, when I was still a representative, I was arguing about similar things with Sangeetha, and she said, "What if the person in question portrays themselves to be 'more than human'?" Yes, some people find it hard to acknowledge frailty in themselves; I know I find it hard to ask for help or explain that I'm down and out and need somebody to just be nice to me. That too is frailty; the fact that a woman is strong and seems unassailable does not give you the right to rail against her with all your might, until she crumbles. Recognising people in power as being just as human as any other person, with their own stories, their own private issues, is basic; it simply must be extended to everybody, regardless of whether they actively seek it or not. If we want to be treated as human beings and be empathised with, by administrators and representatives, then we must extend to them the same courtesy.

I've pissed off too many people in law school for my words to be the cause of any sort of 'neutral' introspection; whatever I say is perceived as coming from some inherently biased position that needs to be countered immediately, not thought about. But take Sangeetha seriously; recognise the fact that we are two people who have been at loggerheads with each other (publicly) agreeing about something; please do think about it.

new stories.

I've a pile of movies sitting around on my hard disk, waiting to be watched. A whole host of story books that I really ought to read, but haven't got around to reading. Bushels of poetry that I have marked out for myself, but haven't read. My usual reason for all of this is the fact that I'm "busy".

But the truth is, that's a lie.

I spend hours re-watching bits of movies that I like, reading parts of books that I already know off by heart, reciting poems that I've known since I was a child. I've spent hours re-visiting all those life affirming moments, while effacing the rest of the story-line. And I've ached, as I watched it. Ached as I watched the last scene from Intouchables, the jubilation of the team from Wiley College, the student clambering onto a table and saying "Oh Captain! My Captain!", the tie of friendship between Miss Daisy and Hoke.

I'm scared of art, suddenly. I'm afraid of the sort of impact it has on me. I am afraid of uncertainties -- I often read the plot of movies/books and watch/read on that basis. Art used to be a revelatory experience. It had the power to reaffirm my faith in relationships and life. Now it seems taunting. And I don't quite know why. I don't know when and why I turned, from a girl who wolved down books at alarming rates, into a person who would much rather live inside her head. A person who is afraid of stories, be it in her own life or otherwise. A person who treats mere friendliness with unqualified suspicion, even hostility. A person who is more accustomed to having people afraid of her than not; indeed, to the extent that she doesn't know how to react to being approached normally. A person who has begun, sometimes, to think of herself in terms of instrumental value, as opposed to merely having a place in the universe. A person who's perpetually on the defensive and sometimes on the offensive, but rarely just being. A person who presumes that the worst opinion delivered is most likely to be the common view of a matter. A person whose instinctive reaction is now to walk away, because anything else is just too exhausting. A person who is reading these very words and thinking that even war veterans seem more optimistic about things, but is writing this nonetheless.

Each time I hear a story, I find more things to be envious of. The ache in me grows. It's almost like I have come to believe that these stories are not for me. That meaningful relationships are beyond me or, perhaps, that there is something inherently repulsive in me that I somehow can't get rid of. And so aches are all that one is left with.

But I watched Sherlock over a few days. And I went back to watch the scene where Sherlock knocks Neilson out and moves swiftly to kneel before Mrs Hudson and reassure her, and the one in which he tries to break the 'ice' with Watson, after having behaved horribly on feeling doubt. I went back and watched those scenes because there is always hope that human relationships can be forged and maintained. There is hope that you can be redeemed, both to yourself and others. And that is why new stories are so important -- they force you to hope when it's easier to just give in to the snarling, stony side of yourself. So I watched that suicide scene and I howled my eyes out and realised, that if art can cause me to feel so deeply about a character that I have only seen through the viewpoint of some director, perhaps I wouldn't want to miss out on the power of real human relationships, despite the pain, the judgement and the disillusionment that often comes gratis.

Of condescension and monopolies.

For the longest time now, I've been trying to be tolerant and remain unshaken by slander. I have tried to work within a system that gave me cause for nothing but disillusionment, for people who perceived a willing worker as a bounden slave, and I have given it everything I had. I have done my best to keep my temper at check, and on the occasions that I failed in that effort, I have felt the need to apologise. I have tried to convince myself that the sense of entitlement with which people approach me is valid. Yesterday, all of this trying ended. I stood for office in the belief that critiquing a system without engaging with it is unfair. I stood, thinking that there is much work that needs to be done, and perhaps I could help do it. I stood, knowing that I had a dream of a law school that stimulated my mind and gave me the freedom to be who I want to be and I didn't think this was an illegitimate end to pursue, for a university. In two years of office, I've realised why nobody with half a brain or any sense of self-preservation would want to put themselves through this grind, if the grind is to be undertaken in earnest.

Yesterday was the fourth election that I contested in NALSAR, and the third that I won (marginally). I wasn't certain whether I ought to have stood or not, but with a system changing by leaps and bounds, I felt that perhaps my previous knowledge of its functioning and my investment in its success would be useful tools to have on board. Yesterday was also the culmination of my tolerance towards comments made without the slightest inclination towards thought, sensitivity or decency. So, I want to address certain longstanding charges against my work in office, and against me. These were well summarised by our present Vice President, in explaining to me why an Executive position for me was undesirable. As I write this, there are those who insist that I resigned from office because I wanted to be on the Exec, and this having not materialised, I chose to walk out. Well, in my experience in NALSAR, it's always easier to believe the worst possible of a person, but I would want to clarify that I resigned because of unsubstantiated, pointed insults to my dignity and the effort I put into these years in office; insults that I felt that I no longer needed to waste my breath tolerating.

Reason Number One: Condescending and Unapproachable
Being a representative has been hard for me. I'm an exceedingly private and hot-tempered person by nature. If there is anything I owe this office, it is the training I've had in biting my tongue and listening to people, regardless of what I feel about them or the point they are making. I am sure I have, now and then, snapped and the person talking to me felt that it was unwarranted, and for the most part I have tried to apologise when those incidents occurred. But what I find interesting is how I am unapproachable, only when I don't need to be approached. When there is something that folk require of me--their grades (in order to pass) or their attendance or medical certificates or bare Acts for examinations or exemptions from exams or reworking of examination schedules or rules they take issue with--they approach me; even when they want to insult the living daylights out of me, they approach me. Otherwise, I am unapproachable. Yes, I have not functioned in the league of my predecessors in terms of speaking to teachers to get marks increased or attendance added, but I have worked in the field of policy to ensure that every person in that situation gets the benefit in question; and this hasn't been for friends (they usually don't fall foul of NALSAR rules anyway) but for a wide assortment of people who are neither close to me nor have any specific reason to find me more approachable than others do. Yet, as a matter of image, I am perennially unapproachable, which begs the question, then why have people been getting so much of their work done through me?

Reason Number Two: Undemocratic and Oppressive
Here's a rough list of things I have worked towards in the past year in office, because the administration was finally one that was willing to be democratic:

1. Frequent open houses to discuss policy decisions 
2. Attendance being scanned in and sent to students every month
3. All policies being mailed to the student body for comments, before being implemented
4. Decisions like surprise tests being removed, etc. being made after polls by students
5. All existing rules being scanned in and sent to the entire student body for comments, in order to have them re-worked

These were, of course, undemocratic. It is immaterial that barely anybody showed up for open houses and that nobody really bothered to actually send in constructive suggestions on the rules, but I made undemocratic decisions.
I made decisions on the basis of what I wanted. I made the university's timetable, and now I'm told that it was on the basis of the courses I liked (and an effort to ensure they don't clash). The preference forms sent before making the timetable were for fun--you know, my vacation's worth of Excel-playtime while dealing with a painful breakup and being incredibly lonesome in a big city? Nine people chose both Banking and Finance and IoS, seven chose IoS and Cap Marks, while there were clashes ranging up to thirty-six (17 courses more than 10, all of which clashes were avoided) with these subjects and other ones. "Why couldn't Banking and Finance not be made to clash with IoS when over thirty students wanted both?" Here's my answer: "Because when you were asked to give in your preferences, you didn't bother to think it through, but you will not introspect enough to find fault with yourselves, so it's convenient to make me out to be some kind of self-serving bitch who made the timetable only to serve her own ends." Because spending an entire vacation researching timetabling software and learning PHP is totally work one would do while being self-serving.
So I asked the Vice-President which of my decisions he found oppressive and imposed. He said: "So many of them." So I asked, "Which?" And he said, "Erm, the timetable? Last year's timetable." I asked him if he noticed that the schedule that people suggested as an alternative in Semester 5 was the schedule that was followed in Semester 6 (oh no, but that would mean that student opinion had actually been taken seriously, an admission that would really harm the argument at hand), and he blinked and moved on to the other problems with me.

Reason Number Three: Monopoly over Power
This, supposedly, doesn't even require an explanation. I have a monopoly over power in this place and that's just a statement of fact now. I would, however, like to unpack this a tiny bit.
So I was Academic Representative in my second year and the Convenor of the same committee in my third year. I have a tiny group of friends. I have neither tried nor want to try bullying people into voting for me, so Boys' Hostel politics is not my cup of tea. When men have monopolised the political system and positions in the Executive since the existence of the system itself, that doesn't count. There have been two women in Executive positions in the history of NALSAR, and that isn't monopoly over power. One woman, winning three elections consecutively, working her guts out for humane policy in the university and building relationships with people in the administration (though never ceasing to oppose the things she dislikes, hence often being told off by the same members of the administration for 'abusing space') is monopolising power. The first time I spoke to the Vice-Chancellor was when I was asked to convince him into making an exception for a LLM student who could not afford to pay the fees to be admitted into the university, and the VC yelled at me so loudly that the Registrar's office heard. Clearly, 'hotlines to bigshots' involve a good deal of persistence and a much greater amount of work in terms of putting together cogent arguments that are hard to deny. And if you try it out, you might find that you'll have hotlines to bigshots too; even hotter lines, perhaps, given how horribly unlikeable I am.

Reason Number Four (and this is the best): Will Work Anyway
"You can work anyway, even if you're not in the Exec, so..." I mean, you can think it all you want, but at least don't say this to my face! It's not as though I wasn't aware that my batch wanted its personal slave, but was disinclined to consider the slave worthy of any respect. I was. But literally being informed that the reason why you don't merit any consideration is the fact that you'll work anyway was a punch in the face. It is also why I am not going to work. I don't work on policy because I need student validation, but they outlawed slavery a while back and I'd like to remind you of that. If you recognise the fact that the work one does it worth some consideration, then give it that respect, for Christ's sake! In any case, I'm also told that "there is nothing" to all of the timetabling and project bidding and enrollment forms: it's cake walk for some, I guess. It was hard work for me, to take on this work for the whole of the university, and a shitload of pressure, because nobody here really forgives mistakes, and I don't think I'm unjustified in expecting basic decency in being dealt with, after that. "Haan haan, Gen Sec chod do, VP ke liye vote kar rahe ho na?" is not basic decency (especially if you're crooning about how you're trying so hard to get me into the Exec). It's hypocrisy. And it's hypocrisy I'm done with.

I was told by someone else (with a sense of urgency) that the problem with voting for me "is not your work, it's you!" Which, forgive me, I don't understand. I'm guessing he was talking about my image, but I still don't understand it. My work can be divorced from my image, but the negatives can't? And, more importantly, ragging someone into voting for one does no harm to one's image, having no manifesto or plan of action does no harm for one's image, having done no work in all one's time in the university does no harm, having done no work even while holding office does no harm, but perceived condescension (with the humaneness of the person in other situations being completely ignored), despite work being done and a clear plan of action in hand, is good reason to refuse to support a person. Bravo!

I shall condescend, monopolise and oppress no longer.

Word Vomit.

Have you ever felt like you're living in a haze and you don't really know what you're doing? You're not intoxicated, and technically you ought to be in your senses, but everything seems numb? Have you ever lived days hoping that you weren't really living them, and that your real life would get on track sometime soon? Have you let somebody in, against all your good sense, so much that he's become integral to your thinking and then, suddenly, found out that it might have been best to let your good sense prevail? Ever been forced to sit down and erase a name from your vocabulary, your dreams, knowing all the while that you didn't figure in his, but wishing against all odds that he's the one who's getting it wrong? Ever realised that it was all a lie while knowing that an emotion as strong and simple as that was necessarily real? Ever felt so incredibly small that all of your insecurities come tumbling out of that shelf in the back of your head where you'd hidden them for the longest time? Ever taken on more work than you would care to do, or are capable of doing, but feel lost and aimless nonetheless? And then to feel completely repulsed by yourself, because despite your claims of independence, one single person can make such a complete mess out of you.

Glad to be unhappy

Do you ever miss somebody so much that it becomes a constant ache in the pit of your stomach? But memories make you happy - so you're simultaneously ache-y and grinning like a loony toon? Miss somebody so much, when you're low it brings tears to your eyes that you don't know when you'll next meet the person? Yet, when you're low, just a conversation makes the universe you inhabit seem a whole lot brighter? It leaves you smiling in class to be able to snatch a minute's conversation or a text message or two, between hours. Makes hurtful things seem immaterial, because there's somebody who understands, or is willing to talk things through and make sense of them. Who might disagree but doesn't do so by cutting you up into strands of ribbon. Who understands what drives you, and whose passion (for entirely different things) seems completely sensible to you. Somebody whose embrace you long for, so much that it's almost a physical pang.

I owe the stoned chai-wallah, Kamani Auditorium and the Dilli winter something special.