Mistletoe Break

See you in 2007. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Act of Terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime.

The International Museum of Women explores the theme of War & Dialogue in its December edition. An article I'd written on the impact of the recent Mumbai blasts on the Muslim community is featured here, as are writings of women journalists, filmmakers and writers from around the world.

Daily Round of Russian Roulette

Sex workers in India don’t have the luxury of asking their clients to wear a condom. Going to work means courting death everyday.

The evening before this interview, Zila Khan, 19, performed a nude mujra in Lucknow before being auctioned for Rs 10,000 to a member of the audience to serve him for the remainder of the night. Khan, a sex worker, normally solicits her customers on Linking Road in Mumbai’s stylish Bandra suburb, and says she was tested for HIV last year. Like an estimated 70 per cent of sex workers in India, she doesn’t insist on a condom, and since both her tests returned negative, no longer nags her clients to roll on the innocuous stretch of latex, which may save her life. Sex work’s illegal status contributes to its clandestine nature, preventing the collation of reliable figures. According to a 2003 report by the World Bank, however, 1.1 per cent of adult Indian women could be engaged in sex work. With this figure, and on the basis of its own studies, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) estimates that in 2003, 70,794 of India’s sex workers were infected with HIV/AIDS. This is a conservative estimate. Incessant police raids ensure that the majority of sex workers—who are non-brothel based or “floating”—remain underground, unwilling to come forward to access treatment for sexually transmitted infections, receive condoms, and learn client negotiating skills from community counselors affiliated with NGOs. This attitude may remain unchanged even after the contraction of HIV, and many who are aware of their status, will not divulge it to clients or change their High Risk behaviour, for terror of losing their livelihood. India’s sex workers therefore, are strong only in number, and even among those communities struggling for a foothold on the fringes of mainstream society, sex workers—female, male and hijda—are more vulnerable. Described aptly by writer Sumanta Banerjee as Dangerous Outcasts, they arouse scant sympathy, and their trafficking, poverty, ill health, unlawful arrest, violent physical abuse and stigmatization are dismissed as a mere hazard of their job as providers of a service which is illegal and taboo. An activist with an aid agency in Mumbai, requesting anonymity, recounts the trauma of a sex worker who having been discovered by her lover as being HIV positive, was beaten, dragged to the field near the slum where they lived, doused with kerosene and burnt. She barely survived, and when the activist returned to the slum to garner support for her, was received with a silence that suggested his tale was neither novel nor deserving of consideration. In the red light district of Kamathipura—which at dusk exemplifies Bombay noir, where sex, poverty, violence and crime bleed into life and on the streets—the hijda sex worker Neelam, at only 21, concludes that “prostitutes have nothing. We may as well be dead.” Neelam’s mother died of AIDS when she was 14, and although Neelam now practices safe sex, she didn’t in the decade before she became a hijda when she would nightly solicit men in cinema halls. Neelam has been tested four times for HIV but not once did she return for the results. She believes given her fragile life, sometimes “it’s better not to know the truth.” Since the creation of the first Government organisation to formulate policy for HIV/AIDS awareness (NAC0, 1992) and the involvement of international agencies like The Gates Foundation, which pledged $258 million in 2003, the Indian response to the disease has evolved, and now prominently involves sex workers who assume the responsibility of peer educators. As a result, instead of dealing with “The Other,” of whom they are understandably wary, sex workers are approached by members of their own community. Organisations successfully using this form of intervention include Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha (SANGRAM), an HIV/AIDS support organization created by 2002 Human Rights Watch Award winner Meena Saraswathi Seshu. SANGRAM has 100 peer educators who distribute 3 Lakh condoms a week in seven districts in Maharashtra. Explains Sashikant Mane, SANGRAM, “Most sex workers are illiterate, and don’t understand they are being stigmatized or denied rights available to others. For example, a sex worker may not even know that a goonda who enters her house to rape her wouldn’t do the same in the house of a non sex worker. But to get to the point where you can discuss these matters you need to win trust, promise confidentiality, and offer tangible support. No one does this better than one sex worker to another.” In Kolkata, Durbar Mahila Samanway Committee (DMSC) has registered 60,000 sex workers, and its Programme Director Bharati Dey is a former sex worker. DMSC, whose Sonagachi Project has been described as a Best Practices model by the UN AIDS programme, became the first Indian organisation, in 1992, to understand that the participation of sex workers was essential to any large scale relief effort. Sex workers, many of who choose to continue in the profession even after becoming active members of the project, fan out amongst the brothels in the red light district of Sonagachi, distributing condoms to 10,000 women according to their transaction frequency. (A sex worker who says she entertains four clients a week, for example, will be given five-six condoms, but no more, to prevent misuse). Sapna Gayen, DMSC, says, “The DMSC was always going to hand over leadership to us sex workers. Unless we are in control, making a change will never be as necessary or symbolic.” Control is a rare commodity in the life of a sex worker; hence the allure of organisations like SANGRAM or DMSC. The majority of sex workers do not enter the profession voluntarily, though after years they may believe that it is safer to stay within the community, and given their history, and handicaps such as illiteracy, also their only option. This loss of control starts early when a girl, usually between the ages of 8-16, is trafficked into sex work from states like Kolkata and Bihar to Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Communities like the Bedia train their girl children for sex work and dancing, and their virginity is auctioned off, for as much as Rs 1 Lakh. Older women, who enter the profession voluntarily, often with the help of an agent, do so due to desertion by their husbands, widowhood, or poverty. An investigating officer with Mumbai’s Rescue Foundation, requesting anonymity, explains to me how the cycle of trafficking ensures the enslavement of women: "During the first weeks of her arrival, the girl is beaten, raped, and mocked that she can never escape. In time, she submits, is happy with the money she receives, and forgets all thoughts of returning home. When she's old enough, there's only one job she can do. So she returns to her hometown, impresses the young girls with stories of Mumbai's prosperity, and beguiles them into running away. They are thus trafficked into the brothel she has set up for herself."

Trafficked women are even more vulnerable to HIV than voluntary sex workers. The annual funneling of thousands of women into brothels is carried out by a powerful criminal network that ensures that trafficked girls have little contact outside of the brothel. Naturally, this stymies access to condoms, health check-ups and even knowledge of the daily health risks they are subjected to, ultimately impacting their own, and the lives of others. A girl who has contracted the virus but appears healthy will continue practicing sex work. Purchased for upwards of Rs 25,000, she has a debt to repay, and until this happens, which could take as many as 15 years depending on the brothel owner’s whim, she will not be released. When I ask Sashikant Mane if SANGRAM requests HIV/AIDS infected sex workers to stop practicing sex work, he points out that that would be a violation of their freedom of choice. “We ask them to use a condom,” he says. Those who continue practicing sex work without using condoms will of course transmit the infection to some of their clients, who then transmit it onwards to their own partners, including their wives, counter-intuitively making married women one of India's highest HIV risk groups. Yet, to blame a sex worker for not using a condom is like blaming a trafficked girl for performing sex work—It presumes that the girls possess power of choice. Lucky, 24, who solicits in a park in Mumbai’s Vashi suburb, was beaten with a rock by a customer who was enraged that she dared request him to wear a condom. He forced her to have unprotected sex even as she bled profusely, leaving her incapacitated. She required 12 stitches, and has refused to take an HIV test since. She says, however, it is the neighborhood police who is her biggest threat. Policemen in groups of two or more, drag a sex worker into their patrol car or behind the bushes, and rape her through the night. ”Hame bina condom ka sex chahiye!” (We want to have sex without a condom!) They demand, says Lucky. Girls who refuse are thrashed and then raped—without a condom. “Tapori log” (Goondas) are the other threat. In groups as large as 15, these young men brandish sticks and knives, attack sex workers at knife point and rape them. How often do you have sex without a condom? I ask. She stares at me. “When I have a choice, never. When someone holds a knife at my throat, every time.” In Mumbai, Prabha Desai, Chairman, Sanmitra Trust, is counseling a Bengali sex worker of no more than 25, who has contracted HIV, and been deserted by her only family member, her brother. Desai will accompany her to the city’s Jyoti Terminal Care Centre for AIDS, where she will remain, receiving antiretroviral therapy. Desai recalls that several years ago HIV/AIDS infected sex workers wouldn’t admit their status until incapacitated and would sometimes die just a day after being rescued. “Sex workers are the most vulnerable social community,” admits Desai. “For while awareness has improved the situation of the general public, it’s meaningless to a sex worker who has no bargaining power to turn down a client refusing to wear a condom. Sex work is also stigmatized, and HIV/AIDS has added fuel to the fire. Don’t legalise sex work, but don’t illegalize it either. It’s a legitimate profession, but as long as stigma exists, and police raid and harass sex workers, they will be constantly uprooted, vulnerable, in denial, and neglectful of their health, unwilling even to show their face in the queue at a government hospital. ” Even among the marginalised and the brutalized there are some who are more so than others. So it is with the sex workers of India. If their life already resemble what most of us would consider a horrible dream, their inability to even protect themselves from HIV during the course of earning their livelihood has certainly brought them closer to both living and dying that nightmare. *Names of all the sex workers have been changed on request. Tehelka, December 23, 2006.

"The City Must Win, Progress Must Win, The Slum Dwellers Must Win, and I Must Win"

Founder of the National Slum Dwellers Federation in India, Jockin Arputham has notched up a long history of struggle for the rehabilitation of slum dwellers in India and abroad. He also helped set up the Slum-Shack Dwellers International in 1996 to help the urban poor share poverty-fighting know-how with their counterparts all over the world including South Africa, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. A Tamilian who came to Bombay from Bangalore in 1963, Arputham was stung by the poor conditions in which the urban poor lived. "They are treated like shit," he says, "there is no place for them in society." The realisation probably became the launching pad for what has become a lifetimes' commitment and occupation--working with slum-dwellers to improve their lot in life. He has often been asked why he continues to live in a slum and his response consistently is: "I have had many chances of moving out of the slum, but I haven't. I have lived here since I came to Mumbai from Bangalore and do not see myself moving out." Arputham recieved the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay award for Peace and International Understanding. Shortly after winning the award he told an interviewer: "There is one vital thing that I have learnt from my experiences--If you have to tackle poverty, you have to make the poor participate in your programmes. It is because this hasn't happened that the Government's Slum Rehabilitation Authority has failed." Continuing to live in slums is perhaps part of that logic for him.

1. In all the interviews you’ve given, you’ve never once spoken of your childhood. Your story, if you are to be believed, starts when you first came to Mumbai.

Oh my God. I’ve resisted talking about my childhood all my life.

I was born in a very rich family. My father, SC Arputham, was a freedom fighter in the Kolar Gold Fields, where I was born and grew up. I’m the second child, and second son. For a father who was very illiterate, I don’t think he had ever been to school, he did well. My father’s father lived in Salem, where he worked as a village magistrate, during the time of the British. I called people like him Half Heads, because officials had to shave the front portion of their heads. Half takla, I would laugh. One day he gave a judgement against some dacoits, a major punishment. I don’t know the exact story, but the dacoits performed a jail break, escaped and killed my grandfather. So my grandmother took my father, who must have been 2 years old, his sister who is two years older than him, and left Salem immediately for the Kolar Gold Fields. She walked from Salem overnight with her two kids. My mother had great entrepreneurial spirit. And she was charming. As soon as she migrated, she set up a small stall near the entrance of the mines, selling fruit and other foodstuffs. So all the miners would stop by, and my grandmother and father would be selling things to them, some for less than a naya paisa. The Britishers would catch my father and for fun would take him up and down the mines. The animals. At the age of seven or eight they picked him to work in the mines. Slowly, he moved up in life. He became a foreman, and then a political leader with a direct connection to (then Chief Minister) K. Kamraj. Then my father became the Panchayat President. He would enter a room, and everyone would stand up. Those were the heady days of Independence. Politics were all he thought of, and because of that he gained two addiction—alcohol and power.

2. At what age did you comprehend power and its potential?

I must have been about eight when I began questioning my family. The fact that my father preached one thing, and did another. I saw my father’s dealings with less powerful people. Now I can articulate this. As a result, I grew up to question all power and politics. I remember listening to BR Ambedkar and thinking, ‘this guy is fooling everyone!’ but of course I couldn’t say that aloud. Also, I went to school, an English medium, with two, what was called, Tea Boys. They were actually two grown men, one walking on each side, one carrying my bag and the other carrying my day’s water and tea. School was only 10 minutes away, but these Tea Boys were a status symbol. I never understood this before, but finally I can intellectualize this.

3. What are the most poignant memories of your childhood?

I remember at the age of five, going in a car, to the village. We were treated like the Prime Minister’s children. At the time Panchayat President was a big thing.

At school, when I made a mistake I got nervous, because my teacher would make me stand on the stool with my hands up. The moment my hands went up, my pants went down, because I never wore a belt. We were rich, but I refused. I didn’t like how it felt, and to date don’t wear a belt. My teacher was naughty to keep punishing me despite this! Sometime she would tie my pants with a ribbon.

Also, I was a church mouse for the first 10 years of my life. I would spend all day in church, returning only for dinner. I’m religious now too, but I’m not a horrible practitioner of religion.

4. Your family was devout?

Very much so. Every family, in my whole khaandaan, sent a son or daughter to be a nun or a priest. I was in church all day, but still I was fun loving. I had to hold the plate under the chin when the priest gave the Sacrament. When it was a pretty girl, I would tickle her chin. No reason, just fun. And of course, we stole a lot! A lot! We stole the Sacrament, the wine. We would think, ‘bloody padre is drinking wine, why not us?’ We were all over the church. But I was very holy, morning I would pray, evening I would pray.

5. Did you attend a seminary?

I did, for a short period. But I ran away. I couldn’t bear rituals. And you had to suffer in the seminary, not like now where everyone is puffing on a cigarette.

6. You ran away from home at 16. First to Bangalore, and from there to Bombay. What caused this?

I tasted poverty, so I had no choice. I left school in the 7^th standard. For a year I fooled everybody. Instead of going to school I went to the Headmaster’s house to perform chores, wash his clothes and dishes. So he gave me a promotion mark. Sorry to use the word, but I would say Algebra Gand Ghabra. I knew nothing of any subject.

In the 7^th grade I came home one day to find nothing to eat. That harassed my mind for a week. Since then I can be awake for 15 days and be without food for eight days. Because of that I survived in Bombay on one pav and one dal a day for over a day. For that too I walked from Mankhurd to Mahim every day. I get a craze for the old times sometimes, drive down, and sit in my car. Just to keep myself in touch with those days.

Poverty came upon us slowly. My father lost everything. According to the story, he was hijacked by some political persons for a month. He was an alcoholic. So they took him somewhere. As a freedom fighter, he had lands, factories, lots. They made him sign away everything, and then let him go. We were wiped out. Everything I had enjoyed, the land next to my house where I played, all gone. That day when I returned from school there was nothing to eat, my mother was crying, moneylenders were knocking on the door. I was so frustrated. There were so many changes, mental and otherwise when this happened.

7. Did you blame your father?

Of course. I blamed him a lot. I blamed him, I blamed myself, and I blamed even my mother. She would distribute our wealth to her brothers and sisters, so my father would beat her. She wasted a lot.

8. You lived in Bangalore for two years. What was that experience like?

Because I had been of a respectable family, a rich family, but was no longer so, the other respectable families rejected me. Bad boy, runaway boy, they would say. So I lived on the veranda of my cousin’s house, and then later rented my own place. I learnt carpentry, and remember crying and weeping, it was hard to live and work and earn on my own. To live on my small earnings. I tried to kill myself with poison. It was either Phenyl or Tincture for Rs 10 a small bottle. But I had such an empty stomach that I vomited it entirely. I woke up the next morning, lying on the grass next to a stadium. That was the first and last time I attempted suicide.

Shortly after, my parents and siblings, seven altogether followed me to Bangalore. They lived with me but none of them worked. So I supported them all at age 16. I had three jobs every day, and every evening I would buy food for my family and carry it in both arms. I really struggled a lot. I thought, ‘I’m such a Godly person, why am I going through this?’ Finally, I left all that and at 19 came to Bombay.

9. Why did you choose Bombay?

It wasn’t a choice. I met someone who was from Bombay. He looked rich, he was well respected and well educated. Where was he from? Bombay. Looking at him, I was very sure that in Bombay I could work, eat and live. So I left my family behind. My family struggled on their own because I had been the sole bread earner. For four years in Bombay, I didn’t send them a penny; they suffered a lot but then managed.

Now they’re all doing well. My brother has a baby factory. Every year he has one. I can’t deal. Even as a child, I would hate when I mother got pregnant. She gave birth to my three sisters after me, and after every birth I would stand on the road to the hospital and throw rocks at the relatives who visited her, to discourage them. They would visit her quietly and hiding! I would think, ‘damn my mother!’ ‘Why does she need to have more children?’ ‘What are my parents doing in their old age?’ One day I smuggled my younger sister, who is now married, to Bangalore. She was one year old! Then I didn’t know what to do. I would buy puffed rice, then some hotel chai, dip the rice in it and feed her. My family traced me after three days!

10. What was the most painful aspect of your poverty?

The nakedness. For the first three years that I was in Bombay, I would walk with my hands pulling down my shirt. Because the back of my pants didn’t exist. There were two big holes. Even now sometimes, unconsciously, I walk pulling down my shirt. What was underwear? I didn’t know as an adult—even though I wore underwear as a child—because there wasn’t money. I would say, ‘I have two sets of eyes. On my face, and on my behind.’

11. You had a sense of humour about your circumstances.

I think that’s what kept me going. I would take my problems and laugh aloud at them. I would laugh at my poverty, at my father, at not having a proper pair of pants despite being a grown man.

12. In Bombay, you moved into Mankhurd Janata Colony, a slum, and when the slum dwellers faced eviction, drew them together in an agitation. How did that experience evolve? How did you evolve as a result?

That was my first act of activism in 1967, when the Janata colony was to be shifted to what is now Cheetah Camp in Trombay, to make place for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. I had done some social work; things which are taken for granted now. Like cleaning garbage, telling people ‘if the Government won’t widen the road, do it yourself,’ and ‘if they don’t give you water, find a source for yourself.’ I would write three letters of complaint to the necessary Government organisation. The fourth letter would say, ‘now I’m going to do this myself!’ I got recognition quickly, and people gathered around me. They saw I was selfless, incorruptible. I did it from my heart.

When the slum dwellers were to be evicted, I began to go deeper into the matter. I studied the history of the colony of slum dwellers. I found out how new migrants were shunted into Janata colony. At the time there were only two slums in Bombay; pavement dwellers were picked up from the entire city and dumped here. There were 70,000-80,000 people in Janata colony, and I learnt they had been twice displaced. This would have been their third displacement, after they had lived in central Mumbai, in places like Fort. At the time, the Bombay city limit was Aurora Theatre in Matunga. I studied more. Why people migrated here, how they reached the slum, how they were moved out. I learnt to articulate these problems. I was the first person to pull up then Chief Minister Moraji Desai who wanted to empty the Churchgate Road of slum dwellers and convert that area into a Mini Paris. They wanted to make a beauty! We didn’t let them.

We barricaded roads, organized mass demonstrations, secured stay orders and fought the eviction order all the way up to the Supreme Court. In the end, we lost Janata Colony, but learnt many lessons. This became a 24-hours job.

13. Has the nature of your agitation changed since then?

Participation of the people involved became key. And I decided early on that we would not align with any political party. This attitude was the basis of the formation of the Bombay Slum Dwellers Federation (1969), which was expanded into the National Slum Dwellers Federation in 1974. Now when I look back at how things were then I can see the change. Things happen automatically now in slums, people take charge. For me personally, I can walk into any slum in the world and talk to them, nobody will tell me to get out, or tell me that I’m talking nonsense. The capacity of such organisations have enormous appeal for people. They take greater control over their lives. Of course, in this group of people there are some who are motivated by self interest or are in the builder’s mafia; people who manipulate and fool, but the majority think for the community.

14. Despite the efforts of people like yourself, over 70 per cent of slum dwellers in India don’t’ have access to water or proper sanitation.

Somehow our planners, bureaucrats, and political visionaries lost their vision. It happened in the name of progress. So our fight is as basic as the creation of a toilet. Recently we completed construction of 250 toilet blocks in the city. We can’t afford individual toilets in 5 square metre houses, but we can do this. But there’s nothing common about a toilet. It’s where people interact and communicate. So it becomes a communication centre where social messages are circulated. I constantly hear about the booming stock market, India shining and the global economy. But what about the 80 per cent who don’t have clean drinking water? India is doing nothing for its poor and homeless. If you can’t provide a toilet to the 60 per cent of Mumbai’s population, which lives in slum, what economic growth are we talking about. Nevertheless, these toilets are a milestone and were created because of the people.

15. What have been the other milestones of your career?

It’s hard for me to say, but I’ve been achieving steadily for the past 40 years. Today I can stop the city from functioning in an hour’s time. Make one call and it’s done.

16. Who will you call?

My slum dwellers. They just have to walk onto the streets. Come out of their houses, don’t even walk, and just stand there. I can call the slum dwellers in the airport. Stand on the runway. Shut the airport. My strike strategy is not heavily planned. It’s simple and no cost, I have to say, ‘come on, come on, move onto the streets’ and can be organised in ten minutes. In the last 15 years however, I’ve moved towards a Gandhian non agitation. If I keep quiet, don’t talk, who’s the sufferer? The Government. They get uneasy; they know if I’m keeping quiet I’m planning something very seriously.

17. What is your current project?

I’m working on rehabilitating the slum dwellers that will be displaced by the new runaway for the Bombay airport. We may be poor but we must be consulted. I’ve told the Government, ‘keep the land that you require for the runway operational area. The rest of the land, give to me and I will rehabilitate the slum dwellers, of which there are 300 families, on that land itself.’ I’ll build apartments. You can’t build a single storey house in Bombay. That’s not good economics and I don’t trust it. So you get everyone’s interests fulfilled. My strategy is everyone must win. The city must win, progress must win, the slum dwellers must win, and I will win.

18. You don’t trust the Government to perform this rehabilitation?

The Government doesn’t consult those it seeks to rehabilitate. You want to move me out of my house, but you won’t ask me where or how?

Now they say they want to change Dharavi into Shanghai? Why don’t you change Dharavi into Bombay? Don’t sell out the city. The Government wants to work top down, but I insist it must be done bottom up. This is what I told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. My target is to clean all the slum dwellers off the street, give them houses. That is my life’s dream, to clean Mumbai of slums. My first success was giving 25,000 slum dwellers homes in one go in Mankhurd. People who have lived on the street for decades, born there, given birth there, moved into their first home. The poorest of the poor need access to water, sanitation, electricity, and a roof above their head.

19. That’s ambitious. What is your strategy?

My strategy is simple. People should not ask anything for free. Fight, but not street fighting. Do your homework. Work hard, unite yourself. And do this with women’s leadership, not male leadership. When the males take the lead, their decisions are individual. When the women participate, the decision is collective and everyone must participate. You cannot be a silent spectator. You sleep and expect someone to build your house? Non sense. When people come to me and ask for a house, I ask what they’ve done to make it happen. They’ve done nothing? Then get lost. Everything has to be paid for, and to pay, you must work.

And once they get a house they’d better not think, ‘oh I can sell this house and create four jhopdas.’ Not a chance. I’ll shoot them.

20. You work closely with politicians, the police, and the poor. Do you adopt different strategies to deal with each?

I’m very clear and transparent. The mechanism is people’s participation in decision making and in implementation. People are the power and they must decide, not the politicians and the police. It’s the same strategy for everyone. No one can dispute that. And I bring the police to the people not vice versa. That’s what I tell politicians now. Go back to the people, because if you don’t you’ve had it. You’ll be out. We don’t need the Government. Look at me. Today I’m running a parallel government.

21. You are? How many people support you?

In Bombay alone I have the support of two lakh families that I’m working with. I have as much power as the politicians I work with. But I don’t undermine them. My only problem is that they don’t understand their power. They’re politicians only because of us. We have to look at them with a pinch of salt. They’re not all good or all bad though according to me politics is absolutely bad. I say, ‘we don’t need politicians for anything. Nothing.’ But they have achieved a certain level and we must respect them. They make the polity decisions, and we must implement these decisions. Politicians are dangerous, but you cannot ignore them.

22. Will you ever consider joining politics?

I can create 10 MP’s. Why should I become one? I can finish 10 MLA’s.

23. In 2000, you won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding. How did that change your life?

Look at Bombay. It’s one of the beautiful cities of the world. It’s the only city where the poor and rich can live together. In about 1970, if you went to Kalbadevi, people would pull you into their house and make them comfortable. There was great love. But slowly politicians and animal behaviour changed the city. And why did migration start? Some of the Biharis who came to Bombay would walk around the Maharashtrian neighbourhood collecting the previously day’s bakri (bread), which had been discarded. Maharashtrians would have new bakri everyday never saving anything. The Biharis would collect these scraps and carry them home to Bihar in a gunny bag. In Bihar, villagers would ask, ‘where did you get some much food?’ They would say, ‘Bombay’! So tem more people from Bihar would come to Bombay and so on.

It’s a wonderful place. I cam here and got food, water, clothes, everything. This is a place where you can get a job, and get everything.

Then 1976, onwards there was a feeling growing of Middle Class against Lower Class. Rich started hating the poor. Name calling. Abuse. Some people even went to the court to clear the slum dwellers from the city, there was such a big class divide. The love had died. There was hate between the settlements—slum dwellers were seen as thieves, pickpockets and as filthy.

Then after 2000 it changed. And I’d like to think it had something to do with the award. People realised the possibility, they saw that things could change. I can say with some pride that I’m the only person in the world who has won the award and has done so despite not being a graduate, I’ve not written a book, I’ve not crafted a theory, nothing. I was so shocked with the award. I literally cried for two days. I asked, why do I deserve this? But I’m still on the ground; I’m humble. I keep my cool. So the award helped recognise the mettle of the urban poor. As a result of the award I got to visit the world. Last month I was in Washington and I went to meet the Housing Secretary. For a minute I had a twinkle in my eye. Where have I reached? He told me he had $67 million for US housing per annum. I said to him, you don’t have any shame not even keeping aside $1 million for housing in the Third World? I told him straight. He said, let’s talk about it.

24. You’ve travelled the world, and set up partner organisations to Slum Dweller’s International in 25 countries Africa and Asia. How have your Bombay experiences been adapted elsewhere?

We’ve built 35,000 slum houses in South Africa based on the Bombay model of people’s participation and women’s leadership. It’s a basic model and can be adapted anywhere to change the social equation and bring about change.

25. Do you ever stop working?

I can’t have fun. If I’m not working I must be sick because there’s no other reason for me to not work. If I take a holiday I will get sick. That’s not to say that I boast about being hard working. My work is fun. Talking to you, talking to someone one else, what is it if not fun? You can’t survive by enjoying life all the time. I’m an animal. Animals don’t relax do they? Maybe I’m like a dog or a tiger! For me Sunday is a working day. So is Ramzan and Diwali and my birthday, on which I work over 20 hours. I awaken at 6 a.m. and go to bed at 1 a.m. I can’t eat dinner before 1 a.m. I’ve been doing this for the last forty years. I have no regrets about the way I’ve lived my life.

26. Do you have time for family?

My family comprises of my wife Rita, and my two daughters Glorita and Sujatha Elizabeth both of whom are married and settled in Bangalore. I hated little children but I got two lovely girls. Luck for me. I have one grandson as well. My wife is one billion times unhappy with me. I’m never at home; family life is not for me. When we married in 1974, I told my wife, I’m already married, this is my second marriage. It was 9 am, minutes after the church marriage. She couldn’t believe it. She said, ‘what?’ I said, ‘my first marriage is to my job. You’re my second.’ She cried for three hours. It was an arranged marriage. Not only it is an arranged marriage, it’s a horrible marriage. After one month of being shown someone, you marry them? I pity her for the suffering she goes through. It was my only mistake. We’ve never once had lunch with her in 40 years.

27. She must be proud of you.

It doesn’t come naturally. She was jealous when I won the Magsaysay award. She thought at least before he was with me, now he’s with everyone. What woman would like it if her husband spent all his time elsewhere?

Vox, Critical Conversations. Buffalo Books, Rs 250. Photos 1 and 2: Akshay Mahajan

Photo 3: Raghu Rai

Good Girl, Bad Dog

Zoey's trainer tells me: "When she makes a mistake or refuses to obey commands, say 'Bad Dog!' When she does what you ask say, 'Good Girl!" Is a Girl really better then a Dog? (Not having any girls to bring up I can't be sure). And on the subject of Zoey, when I told my father she would be coming with me to Goa for Christmas, he inquired, "What denomination is she? Will she be offended we celebrate Roman Catholic style?"

She's Jack Russell Terrier and she's a-okay with all manner of celebrations particularly those involving a mutton bone to call her own.

Magical

The Prestige. (Though the theater's plush leather seats, which recline to the length of a bed and come with a pillow and blanket, did help. )

Could We Be More Self Absorbed?

An Indian interviews George Clooney, who is promoting his new film, The Good German, and her first question is:"Are you familiar with Indian cinema?" ( Mollygood)

"Christmas in Goa"

"Home-made presents, earnest letters from Santa Claus, welcoming a new baby into the family, and trying to prove her identity comprise Sonia Faleiro's childhood memories of holidays in Goa.

A week before my tenth Christmas found me scavenging in my father’s office for possible presents for our extended family in Goa. I didn’t receive pocket money, and us children weren’t expected to give presents to the adults. What was clearly my parent’s way of saying, ‘don’t ask us for money to buy presents for us’ never dissuaded me. I would rifle through the “Do it Yourself Projects” section of my mother’s Good Housekeeping and Country Living magazines, which would arrive, glossy and perfumed, via air mail two months after they were published in the United States, and contrive of gifts both attractive and useful. The previous year, I had proudly presented my mother with a green apple plunged with cloves. “For your lingerie closet,” I beamed, repeating a word I had recently heard on Santa Barbara. My father received one of his empty cigar boxes, which I had pasted with paper and decorated, in what I believed was pure avant garde, with curlicues of oil paint. “For your buttons,” I cried gleefully, as he looked, bemused, from his present to his hands, which were smeared with colour. Perhaps my parents recalled these moments when they requested, kindly, then ominously suggesting than Claus wouldn’t care to have his position usurped, to not trouble myself over gifts. “Leave that for Santa,” my mother begged, as I took myself off to the store room to fashion an apron for my aunt, using a lace table cloth sent by a cousin in Portugal, a box of silver sequins, and a pair of vicious garden shears with a reputation for lopping off idle thumbs. That year, my position as the baby of the family, had been displaced by the birth of my cousin, a delightful pink-cheeked boy with a disposition as cheerful as Christmas itself. In the months preceding his birth in my grandmother’s rambling old house in the town of Margao in Goa, I had, even though we lived at the time in Delhi, followed the development of my aunt’s pregnancy with growing jealousy and deep worry. My family, of course, laughed off my behaviour, until it became obvious that I was genuinely upset, at which point my mother told me brusquely to snap out of it and grow up. Grow up! That was exactly what I didn’t want to do. However, after the birth of my cousin, it was impossible to not dote on him, and I was also secretly thrilled that a changeling such as me could be related to someone so beautiful. Determined to prove that I no longer cared about being Second-Youngest-in-the-Family, if there was, in fact, such a position to make myself comfortable in, I promised to find my new cousin a present to outshine all others. This I knew would be no easy task. Our Christmas munificence was traditionally accompanied by an earnest letter from Santa Claus, wishing us well, gently upbraiding us for our shortcomings (“Although I know you do your very best, you must work harder on your temper and your Maths”), and hoping that the presents, which would vary from a manicure set to a paperback book with colour illustrations, would be inducement enough to take his advice. Before sitting down to enjoy our loot, therefore, we read aloud the letters for the edification of all gathered, and if we were in the least disappointed with what we got (“A sewing kit!” “Another beach ball!”) the contents of the letter suggested that we only had ourselves to blame. But even I, who sometimes dared wonder how Santa was so intimately acquainted with my temper and my report card, knew that babies don’t get admonishing letters—only magnificent presents of confirmation that their decision to be born had been quite right. No, the letters would start the following year, and might say something like this: “You almost never cry, and I know your parents are proud of you because of that. But you must try harder not to suck your thumb. Your teeth will protrude, forcing your parents in due course to invest in braces for which they haven’t the money.” The pressure of presents was also, in my pre-adolescent mind, immense, because we lived apart from our vast numbers of relatives, and only saw them once a year, at Christmas. However poorly behaved I had been, as disinclined as I remained to bathe through the bleak winter months, once even leading my class teacher to pen a note of complaint to my mother about my malodor, when it neared December, I became the model of good behaviour and hygiene, determined to prove that separation from Goa didn’t make me any less Goan. What being Goan implied, I didn’t quite know, but certainly it was something to aspire to, and involved in some measure being ladylike, and smelling of Cuticura powder and Sunsilk shampoo. Shoving my salwar kameez’s at the back of my cupboard, I would drag out my token dresses, one of which was a blinding candy floss pink, with a hair ribbon for a belt that mother had hurriedly sewed on an hour before I was to attend my best friend’s birthday party, and spread it out on the lawn to dissolve the must and chase out the colony of mites. When in Goa, I would insist on sliding cartoon character-inscribed hair clips on my buzz cut, in an attempt to ingratiate myself with the antiques in the family, who were given to suspicious mutterings about Indian children and India, which, listening to them led me to suspect—despite my better judgement—was somewhere far away from Goa. Part of the package, therefore, included presents, which even the Three Kings, had known, were a mark of one’s prosperity and a symbol of honour and respect for the recipient. The other children, I muttered darkly to my mother, could get away with “looking like beggars,” but me, oh no, I had to appear like the big city was treating me well. How that point would become obvious with my gifts of purloined office supplies, wasn’t clear to me, but I was determined to make the effort. I still recall that Christmas eve in Goa, when upon my mother asking me to hurry up and get dressed for Midnight Mass, I responded, “I’m not coming. I have presents to wrap.” My mother’s face drained of colour as she said, “Presents are not important. God is.” Although I knew I had disappointed her dearly, as I sat on my grandmother’s four poster bed, drowning in what must have appeared to everyone as a tragic assortment of trash, I was determined to wrap and garnish, until my offerings were the biggest and the brightest under the tree. That Christmas, my newborn cousin received a pink stapler and a sheaf of thick white paper for him to “inscribe his thoughts on.” My aunt unfurled inky typewriter ribbon, and to her credit, stifled her giggles well. My father unwrapped a vase, which still smelt of the wine it had once held; my mother, a magazine I had borrowed days before from the local library; and my two elder sisters, who were given to colluding against me, were each presented with a box of pins and a handful of steel paper clips. The stationary I had given my grandfather, whom I adored, would have been the perfect present, for he wrote many letters to newspaper editor’s— if it weren’t for the fact that it was my father’s, and it was his name on the letterhead. In the years since, much has changed in my Christmas. No letters from Santa accompany presents to me, which make me in part both grateful, and wistful for days past. I’m guessing he just doesn’t have the time to take stock of my crimes, which long transcended algebra and back-answering. I travel to my hometown often, and no longer feel the need to prove that I belong. I realise now that my family never doubted that I did. Of course, I do still adore giving presents to those I love. And if I spend too much, and offer too many, it’s just the 10-year-old inside—red-faced with excitement to see how her offering will be received—battling with the adult outside—still trying to humbly apologize for the stapler, the pins, and the stolen magazine." Travel + Leisure, South Asia, December, 2006.

Oprah Learns a Lesson

"Four years ago, you may remember, I went to South Africa to bring gifts to 50,000 children, many of whom had never received a present in their lives. It was the best Christmas I've ever had. During that time, I adopted ten children, ages 7 to 14, who had no parents or family to take care of them. They were living in four separate households, trying to fend for themselves. This is happening all over Africa. I knew I couldn't save all the children. But I could manage to stay personally engaged with these ten. I enrolled them in a private boarding school and hired caretakers to look after them. Every Christmas I returned with gobs of presents. This past year, I bought them a big house and hired a decorator to personalize each of their bedrooms."

Then, surprise, surprise. Read what happened next, here.

Not in My Fridge

From top: Chef Ryan Poli's green and white asparagus with poached quadil egg; Local honey at Château d'Estoublon (Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle); A selection from Carmelis Goat Cheese Artisan, a boutique dairy in Kelowna, British Columbia (Jonathan Sprague); Coeur de Linz cookies at Le Petit Duc, France (Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle); Fish market at the Deira district (Martha Camarillo); Freshly picked porcini mushrooms, Piedmont (Oberto Gili). Other stunning food and travel photos: Travel & Leisure.

From the Archive

Eternity in Monochrome

In Dayanita Singh's black-and-white chronicle of life in Goa the photograph and the photographed become one

It's 5.55 p.m. In Saligao, Goa, the sky has turned a deep orange. The fairy lights (a Christmas week frivolity) that curl around trees in gardens slowly spring to life and the Star of Bethlehem that hangs from the roofs of houses-Casa Bobo 1890, Villa Princessa-have been switched on. At the end of the narrow road, a few steps ahead of which has the church, sits photographer Dayanita Singh.

It may seem incomprehensible to many why Singh, 39, should choose to spend her evenings on the porch of the Saligao Institute, that amiable old building that hosts tambola and bridge sessions every evening. It's easy to dismiss Saligao as a one-horse town, to point to its football field, haunted by clusters of crows and sleepy dogs, as just one indication of the vado's (ward) extreme lethargy. Singh, who first visited Saligao last December to stay with a friend, however has ample cause to say, "I love it. I see no reason to return (to Delhi)."

Singh ( top); her photos are an outsider's view of a Goan family, its people and its religion

If not followed to the institute, the aforementioned road leads up a steep incline flanked by fields. Higher still, a temple bathed in gleaming white paint is festooned with ribbons. As the sun sets and the weather cools, Saligao's green, light blue, orange and brown houses throw their shadows with a casual shrug. A few minutes later at 6 p.m., "Demello Vado", Singh's photo exhibition of 44 black and white images of Saligao (with a clutch from Rachol, Chandor, Margao and Loutolim) is open to the public.

"Demello Vado", as photographer Pablo Bartholomew who was at its December 16 opening observed, is not about "Old Goa". It is also not, as Singh suggests, so dramatic as to be in danger of attracting "curious busloads". It is instead an outsider's inside view of a Goan family-of the people, their rituals and their religion. As Rosarina Cordeiro sits straight-backed on a swing, hands crossed on her lap, a mantilla covering her graceful silver hair, and the windows throw their shadows on to the wall behind her, one acquires a startling glimpse of the dignity of age. Her grandchildren, a pre-teen boy and girl, sit side by side in the parlour of the same house, the boy displaying all the ease of one thrown headlong into the Dudsagar Falls, the girl, as composed as young ladies are wont to be. The plump seats, the fading photos, the delicate curios, tell of youth in age, of the present in a room built on the past.

A graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Singh initially distinguished herself as a photojournalist. Published prominently in the US and UK, her content-sex workers in Mumbai, eunuchs and their place in Indian society, women industrialists in Delhi-and style have been described as an "object lesson in the way fantasy and everyday life interact (The New York Times). "Work of a gone century," she says, reading aloud from a copy of a 1999 india today profile of her photos (Issue dated Dec 20, 1999, Inside Eye). Cigarette in hand, brow furrowed, Singh says, "They asked me where I would be when my work was no longer contemporary." "This," she looks around, "is the answer."

Visitors exclaim in delight as they recognise family and friends in the 2 ft by 2 ft laminated pictures. Several swoop over Singh, engulfing her petite frame. "This would be considered sacrilege anywhere else," she says, of her art being prodded by Saligao's collective hands. "But as a photographer you take so much from your subjects, it's only fair to give something back." So the exhibition that opened with feasting and festivity (think 60 people dancing the mando) will close on January 16, with the presentation of the photographs to the subjects. "As a photographer I'm forever feeding off people," she insists.

Singh's transition from documentative to interpretive photography is subtly illustrated in "Demello Vado". It seems only just, therefore, that Demello be a name she conjured up and that her favourite photo of the collection be a rack of cups, their delicate china surfaces embroidered with a confection of flowers. "One can only imagine what's behind them," says Singh. Another photo, all white lace and molten eyes, is of bride Rowena Kapparath standing by the priest on her wedding day (her husband has been spliced out of the photo with delightful cheek).

There are homes too, Singh's first step towards focusing only on the inanimate. "You don't have to have people in your photos to say something," she says. Hence, a church facade bathed in night-light. And as a suggestion for introspection, a stall selling "Chinese and Tandoori" sports the bright red of Coca-Cola and dwarfs the magnificent Saligao Church behind it. In another, illustrator Mario Miranda's altar in his ancestral home gives off the heady smell of incense, and writer Mario Cabral e Sa's house is all calm and cold floors. "You bring out the colours in black and white," a visitor says to Singh. She is intrigued. "Your pictures are devastating," says a journalist.

Back in Delhi, Singh's base, the congratulations are more subdued. Photographer Raghu Rai's praise ("she's very dedicated") is thrown aside. His observation that "She is yet to discover new spaces and new energies in her work", spat at. "It's an irresponsible thing to say," says Singh, "I am very offended." She gets fidgety. "I get printed all over the world," she says. "But one wants so much to get recognition in one's own country." Geetanjali Sinha, currently curating "Vilaas" in Mumbai, where Singh's are the only photographs among art depicting pleasure, is unequivocal. "Her photographs have the quality of suggestion," she says. "She represents photography as an art." Singh is unappeased.

Singh's itinerary for 2001 includes an exhibition of her work at the Tate Modern, London, in February, as part of "Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis". She is also working on a portfolio of museum or "display" pictures. The piece de resistance though, is a 10-year retrospective of her work, to be published in October by Scalo Publishers, Switzerland. Four hundred pages, 250 photographs. Not bad for someone who, when she was starting out on her career, was told by India's then numero uno lensman, "Why do you want to be a photographer? You're a woman. You should get married." As the exhibition closes at 8 p.m., Dayanita Singh can introduce you to at least three score people who are terribly glad she didn't take the advice.

A Film To Queue For

Final Solution, the formerly banned documentary on the Gujarat genocide, by director Rakesh Sharma. Tonight, 7.30 p.m., S.P. Jain Auditorium, Bhavans College, Dadabhai Road, Andheri West. A previous post on Sharma's run-in with racism in New York. Excerpt from a detailed interview in the Berlinale catalogue.

"The right-wing cadre were hostile to media, especially to “national” media as opposed to local Gujarati newspapers – some of their reporting actually incited people to violence against Muslims. Television channels were specific targets since their initial reporting brought the horrors of the carnage into peoples’ living rooms. Anyone with a camera faced all kinds of questions and I was no exception. Regarding security cordons and political rallies, my experiences in the past have taught me not to bother with permissions. We’d just confidently walk into anything! My beard led to some problems a few times: “He’s a Muslim!” people would say. But then I can speakvery chaste Hindi and come up with a few phrases in Sanskrit. During the Gaurav Yatra (pride march) in a smaller place, we were once the only camera crew apart from Narendra Modi’s own cameraman. After I had shot some of his more graphic speeches, we got “detained” one midnight outside a small town by dozens of cops. The rumour that went around town was that suspected Kashmiri terrorists had been apprehended. Soon there was a part-curious, part-hostile mob. A night has never seemed more sinister to me. The police basically wanted to know why I was shooting, what had I shot and why. Luckily, my cell-phone worked and people could be activated who vouched for my non-terrorist and filmmaker credentials."