The East, The West And Sex: Same Schpiel, Different Day

As an "eastern" woman who has lived nearly half her life in the "west," I can admit to a personal interests in debates that tackle issues of gender, race, colonialist history and sex. After all it is an immensely rich vein to mine for political, social, emotional narratives. So I was obviously intrigued by a book review emailed to me about Richard Bernstein's The East, The West, And Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters. After all, the book had been described as "provocative and intriguing," (NYTimes), and "wide-ranging and astute" (NY Review of Books).

Funnily enough, although the review got over 350 responses within 24 hours – much of them virulently racist and misogynist – the voice of the “Eastern woman” is missing - perhaps because the book (and the review) says little we haven’t heard from lovers, acquaintances, strangers.

I remember that I decided within three months of living in NYC as a teenager that I would never date two categories of men: one, those who professed an interest in India; and two, those who had travelled to India. The first, I had discovered, very quickly were looking for their personal fantasy of the "Kamasutra girl," an impossible female caricature who was at once intellectually inferior, psychologically submissive and sexually voracious. The second category of men, I admit, seems to be a vast generalisation at first glance. Yet I realised that those who had refused to sample the local flavours at an Indian brothel during trip - due to an innate sense of decency, social or moral qualms, or plain good old upbringing - still nursed the same fantasy: the afore-mentioned Kamasutra girl. They want the final souvenir of their travels East, sex with the Oriental fantasy!

Unfortunately, the first dozen pages of the book made me realise something worse: Bernstein is far worse than the two categories mentioned above. In addition to travelling and living in the “East” (primarily China) and holding his personal Oriental fantasy, he is also of the long line of apologists who attempt to explain their own deeply held beliefs about race, sex and power in apparently “rational” terms. While a quick re-read of Said/Fanon/Shohat would be enough to rebut pretty much every single word of this book, let me just point out a few of the not so “provocative” and long-held notions that Bernstein holds forth on:

1) Bernstein’s “East” – and his pathetic little diatribe against Said notwithstanding – is blithely explained as anything ranging from Morocco to Japan. (Note to white, male writers trying that old “I know better” argument against Said: they not only make you look idiotic, irrational, unlearned but also don’t work in the post-colonial era).

2) He conveniently constructs a dichotomy between so-called "Christian" culture and the "culture of the harem." Nice! Except not all of the “East” had harems! Moreover, and with classic sleight of hand, he implicitly includes "Jewish" cultures in the same "western" rubric, conveniently forgetting the far larger “eastern” Jewish populations. But to acknowledge that minor historical detail would not quite hold with the idealised, and politically expedient, notions of the “Judeo-Christian West” against the Eastern “culture of the harem.”

3) In his grand Orientalist sweep of the “East,” Bernstein must – and does – overlook some basic cultural facts that don’t quite support his personal fantasist agenda. While I will not speak for the grand “East” and focus only on India, his false dichotomy of Eastern “harem” vs Western “monogamy” requires him to skip not only the many monogamous cultures that developed in the "East" prior to the white man's “discovery” of the region(s), but he also pointedly refuses to acknowledge the various polyandrous cultures (such as that of the Himalayas). Guess the eastern woman with a harem of men does not quite fit the Orientalist fantasy of the submissive!

4) Another overt exclusion is that of relationships between “eastern” women and “western” men that do not fit his over-arching colonialist paradigm. Not surprisingly then, there are no “anecdotes” of the likes of Begum Samroo – the famed Witch of Sardhana – who rose thanks to her political acumen from a courtesan to the ruler of her own principality. After all, as the transformation of the courtesan to the nautch girl in India shows, and contrary to all pretensions of 20th century Euro-American feminism, the “west” could not until recently conceive of public roles for women that did not include sex-for-sale. And this is why Begum Samroo – with her series of European mercenary/lover-employees, and finally a French hired-gun-turned-husband – does not make it in Bernstein’s fantasy.

5) Perhaps the saddest and yet the most offensively Orientalist aspect of Bernstein’s argument revolves around the apparent lack of guilt regarding sex in “Eastern” cultures. Again, he conflates everything from Islam to Hinduism to Confucianism in one large monolith, betraying not only his firmly Orientalist agenda but also an incredible lack of knowledge and understanding. This is particularly sad because there is a grain of truth in Bernstein’s thinking: most non-Biblical traditions do not centre on notions of a fall from grace. Unfortunately, this argument is buried – quite properly – under Bernstein’s slipshod reasoning and sweeping generalisations, especially as he chooses to use this lack of sexual guilt as a handy excuse for the sexual exploitation of “eastern” women by “western” men: after all goes the unspoken rationale, why shouldn't a woman be exploited when she lacks the moral compass of her western female (Judeo-Christianic) counterparts!

If we consider solely the three pre-Islamic Indian traditions, Bernstein’s reasoning is demonstrated as half-baked and less than half-informed. Yes, the Hindu/Buddhist/Jain traditions attach no guilt to sex. Indeed, the Hindu goal of the four purusharthas includes kama (material and physical pleasure). Unfortunately this is not automatically a call to non-monogamous relations or indeed grounds for the “harem” cultures. What Bernstein conveniently ignores are the philosophical/moral rules that require the pursuit of kama to be about quality not quantity: the “East” may lack the Bible, but it has no trouble privileging the gourmet over the gourmand.

Finally, there is a far more troublesome aspect of Bernstein’s apologia: the ghost of Haditha haunts these pages, reminding the discerning reader (and more importantly, the Asian woman reader) that this same rationale has long led to, and justified, the rape, torture and murder of “Eastern” women. While Bernstein chooses to focus contemporary East-West sexual encounters on prostitution in Far East Asia, he conveniently ignores that the same thinking – non-western women as objects of fantasy and thus less than fully human – also continues to drive “western” men, especially Bernstein’s idealised virile, colonialist types, to the excesses we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. And that makes Bernstein’s book neither “enlightening” nor “provocative” but simply another in a long line of Orientalist apologia, based on half-truths and prejudices.

New Story Out Now

The summer issue of The Drawbridge is now out. Available online as well at major bookstores, the issue carries writing by Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago and the Latin American great Mario Vargas Llosa. It also has a new translation of a short story by Sadat Hasan Manto, as well as contemporary writers: Vicenzo Ruggiero, Etgar Keret.

It also carries a short story that I wrote last year.

I will write more about the issue and my story soon. But for the moment, believe me, its got some really great writing - I am still thinking about the Vargas Llosa piece that is a cross between a book review and a rumination on the erotic, repression and life itself. Actually have to confess that I read the piece and got kind of stuck at it. Its made me think and set off a whole range of questions and ideas - which I suppose what great writing should do.

So till I post my take on the new issue, I suggest you do some exploration and reading of your own at at the magazine's website.

Torture American Style: A Short Story

Full disclosure: This piece was written immediately after the Abu Ghraib story broke. It was meant for an anthology on America and torture but never published: the publishers decided - I guess - it was a bit too controversial. Think its a good moment to share it what with the new torture memos being released:

Pentagon says response to controversial ad overwhelming

By: Jeffrey Dahmer

WASHINGTON, April 1: Pentagon officials announced today that the response to a controversial recruitment advertisement for women interrogators has been overwhelming.

Maj. Chuck Tarrington, spokesman for the Pentagon announced that the advertisement recruiting “all-American” female interrogators to assist in the nation’s war against terrorism had met with unprecedented success. “We have received over ten thousand applications in less than six weeks,” Tarrington said.

The advertisement formed part of the military´s recently expanded programme for highly aggressive interrogation techniques. The advertisement specifically asked for “all-American” women between the ages of 18 and 25, “of sound moral standing,” to work as civilian contractors on interrogation sites “in U.S. bases around the world.” The advertisement promised “special uniforms,” “trips to foreign countries,” and “position of power” as job perks to women who would ultimately be hired.

In recent months, under fire for using physical torture, the military has chosen to expand its use of women as part of its increasingly aggressive psychological interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects. United States prison camps in Guantanamo, Sudan and Phillipines have widely reported the use of sexual references including touching and wearing erotic clothing by female interrogators to break Muslim detainees, who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren’t their wives.

“Thongs, miniskirts and high heels are the standard uniform for women interrogators,” Terrence Haliburt, former Army colonel who commanded the Guantanamo detention camp for over two year explains. “And they are extremely effective.”

The advertisement has come under fire from equal opportunity groups. Willa Reese, president for Association for Equal Rights in the Military for Women of Colour (ERMWC) protests the “racial and sectarian discrimination practised by the programme.” “We understand that all-American is simply a code for white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant women. We feel that the conditions deny black and Hispanic women the right to serve the nation as well as to those who may be aligned with the Catholic church or other Christian movements,” she said.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a senior Pentagon official pointed out white, blonde women consistently produced better results in the detainee interrogation programme. “There is a certain image that these people have of America, and it makes better tactical sense to push forward on that front.”

One of the key backers for the Pentagon’s new interrogation programme is Senator Tim Wright, also president of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations, who justified the programme on moral and strategic grounds. “We are living the clash of civilizations, which is why we must use all available resources. And who better to defend our way of life than young women with strong moral convictions,” he said.

Human rights groups have also criticized the new programme. “The new tactics appropriately reject the use of torture. But they do nothing about cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which is also prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,” says Jeremy Foster, legal advisor for the Human Rights Watch.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly defended the use of psychological interrogation tactics as more humane than those using physical force or torture. “U.S. forces treat all detainees and conduct all interrogations, wherever they may occur, humanely and consistent with legal obligations prohibiting torture,” Tarrington said.

Until recently, female interrogators played little or no part in the U.S.’s increasingly aggressive war on terrorism. However, the new programme will expand their role significantly. Tarrington said, “the new recruitment drive intends to ensure that female interrogators form at least 40 percent of the total corps.” He refused to explain what that would mean in sheer numbers. “The number of interrogators needed at any given time is determined by strategic and tactical considerations. There is no magic figure, unless of course its 34-28-36,” he said amidst peals of laughter from the audience.

Writing: Assumptions, Ethics, Boredom

Last couple of weeks have been all about writing: On a personal level, I have a minor writers' block - not the kind that goes on forever, but the sort where ideas and sentences flicker in and out of consciousness, too vague, too fast, too out of reach to make sense. Having been in this state before, I am just getting on with things until the block dissipates: watching interminable hours of cinema, surfing the web for news through the night, reading whatever I can find including the nutritional information on food packaging. And then people wonder why so many writers are well-informed; what else can you do through these long hours of tedium while waiting for your mind to click into an articulate state?

On a social level, a stranger drama is unfolding. I keep running into people who find the idea of being a writer fascinating! So last week, on a date, the man kept asking me questions about what "inspired" me! Then I met some people for drinks, one of whom was an American woman who insisted on telling me how she admired writers because we were "so creative." And then, just to cap it all, the Guardian carried an entire article about Writers and Writing. Why anybody would care to know whether writing is joy or chore is beyond my comprehension. How many times do we ask cardiac surgeons whether their profession is a "joy or a chore"? Or a fireman? Or less dramatically but none the less logically, the postman?

None of this is new, of course. I have grown used to people assuming that being a writer means that I am any or all of the following:

1. An alcoholic/drug addict
2. Bohemian with unpaid bills and incapacity to manage personal finance
3. Social liberal (read: easily convinced to have indiscriminate sex with strangers)
4. Living the Vida Loca, with late soirees with free flowing intellectual conversation and copious amounts of alcohol (see #1) interspersed with writing in a freezing Parisian garret; how I am supposed pay for this is of course left unexplained.
5. Neurotic, psychotic, manic-depressive, purposefully seeking pain in my personal life (or may be thats just a male excuse for bad behaviour?) in order to find "inspiration." In this particular state, I am supposed to alternate between slashing my wrists and presumably writing with the seeping blood!

I always am met with disbelieving looks when I explain that writing is a job, albeit my dream one. As a child, I loved making up stories, and never could have imagined that I could do it as a career. For me, its like being paid for playing street cricket, or drawing on your mum's kitchen wall. There isn't much pain involved! Although it is hard work, just as playing street-cricket used to be; and the consequences aren't always fabulous. But at the end, that's all! (I think thats why that date last week didn't go well - I think he wanted a neurotic, bohemian, nympho!).

Which is why when a friend asked me about the Julie Myerson story, I was a bit shocked (full disclosure: I have never read her; and given my general lack of interest in contemporary British writing, hadn't heard of her either). Once I got the basic outline of the unfolding pathetic tale, however, I realised what my friend wanted to know wasn't what I thought of Myerson; she was trying to establish the outlines of my personal value system, and thus the limits of our friendship.

In writing a tell-all account of her son's encounter with drugs, Myerson had opened a can of worms for all writers. What my friend really wanted to know was if I would cannibalise our friendship; whether I would "betray" her in writing; in short, did I have a moral compass that could tell the difference between betrayal of a loved one and an addiction to writing.

I was a bit insulted at first. And saddened too. But then I think, she deserved (and so do others in my life) an answer. Writers are cannibals, no doubts. Or at least consumers of psychological carrion. But most of us are not immoral, unethical or automatically addicted to betrayal. Nor are most works of fiction - at least not the good ones - mere jazzed up memoirs and autobiographies. In fact, I find the constant questions on my writing being "autobiographical" quite insulting because they suggest that I have no imagination!

Most writers do not hurt those they love, or betray them in writing. Or perhaps it is better if I speak only for myself: I have in the past inadvertently hurt people close to me by writing on topics that leads the press or general public to question me or my lifestyle. When my first play was produced, my mother was asked invasively personal and stupid questions by the press. My father, like most fathers, hates when I write anything sexually graphic. But for most part, those closest to me have been aware that what I write is not intended to hurt, nor even about them. Even when particularly well constructed sentences - most often from my brother - are cannibalized into my writing, they are in completely different, fictional, contexts.

Most of my family and friends have long read my writing not to feel betrayal, but rather, to quote one of them, "to see how the reality they live with me is metamorphosed into something completely different."

Over the years I have grown better at protecting those I love. After my first novel, I started sealing away journals and diaries so I wouldn't be tempted to go find particular sentences that I felt were well constructed. For my second book, I refused to give the press access to my boyfriend at the time; a decision that led to particularly nasty insinuations by some journalists (pick from the assumptions list above). And with my last boyfriend, I took - at least for me - an extreme stance: I gave him the diaries I had written while we were together and told him to do what he wished with them. I felt that our privacy was the best and possibly only parting gift I could give him. I have yet to regret that decision!

Which is why the Myerson saga bothers me so much: she has betrayed her son by publishing what was a family matter. She has the right to write it of course - that is how writers come to grips with their thoughts, emotions, lives. But to publish it has been a betrayal of the son - and the family - she should have protected. And that is a betrayal she will have to live with - and pay for - for the rest of her days.

But she has also betrayed what she considers her profession/vocation/addiction. She has betrayed writing, which in its greatest form is about truth, not merely a subjective viewpoint. And it is about compassion and understanding of humans, both in our strength and frailty. By placing personal gain - of telling her story as the "right" one, of exerting a narrative control over her contentious relationship with her young son - she has betrayed that essential requirement for truth and compassion. And in doing so, she has also betrayed the rest of the writing community.

Thank You Yet Again, Mr Rushdie

Last year, well before the now-ubiquitously adored Slumdog Millionaire was released, I promised myself that I would not add to the general hysteria. There were two reasons for it: the film promised to push every ideological and political button I have (for the record, it does!); and second, having followed similar mass marketing exercises about India before, I knew that all dissenting voices would be shouted down.

I wasn't wrong. The western media juggernaut has been extraordinary in hyping the film, but also at silencing all alternative opinion about the film. Much of British and American media in any case refuses to let an Indian writer/journalist comment on issues linked to India: our best hope recourse is to get a generally clue-less British-Indian or Indian-American holding forth in a manner that consistently repeats the immigration myth that so many of us from the South Asian subcontinent detest: "West is better, richer, modern; back home is poor, superstitious, backward."

The motives boldly ascribed to such criticism has been simplistic and offensively - albeit cleverly - racially coded: any criticism of the film by Indians must be rooted in nationalist pride and a corollary inferiority complex. And worse still, publications and journalists have declared with complete hubris and ignorance that of course Indians don't make such real movies because they would rather make and watch "escapist Bollywood fare." And to hell with the hundred years of Do Bigha Zameen, Traffic Signal, Chameli, and a hundreds of well made, mainstream, successful Bollywood films about the country's underbelly. Who cares about facts when the white man has spoken!

When the screen legend - and in my mind, one of the few Indians with the credibility and stature - to make the point, mildly took issue with the film, he was pilloried. Western journalists who knew little of Bachchan's trajectory and work, declared that he was "jealous" because he hadn't been included in the film; that he was a has-been; that he was delusional. Under the onslaught, Bachchan withdrew his very valid although poorly formulated remarks.

Which is why I am so grateful for Salman Rushdie's piece today in the Guardian. And once again must thank him for saying what many of us have wished to say but have known that it shall be shouted down, mocked, dismissed:

"What can one say about Slumdog Millionaire, adapted from the novel Q&A by the Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup and directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, which won eight Oscars, including best picture? A feelgood movie about the dreadful Bombay slums, an opulently photographed movie about extreme poverty, a romantic, Bollywoodised look at the harsh, unromantic underbelly of India - well - it feels good, right? And, just to clinch it, there's a nifty Bollywood dance sequence at the end. (Actually, it's an amazingly second-rate dance sequence even by Bollywood's standards, but never mind.) It's probably pointless to go up against such a popular film, but let me try.

The problems begin with the work being adapted. Swarup's novel is a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief: a boy from the slums somehow manages to get on to the hit Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and answers all his questions correctly because the random accidents of his life have, in a series of outrageous coincidences, given him the information he needs, and are conveniently asked in the order that allows his flashbacks to occur in chronological sequence. This is a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name. It is a plot device faithfully preserved by the film-makers, and lies at the heart of the weirdly renamed Slumdog Millionaire. As a result the film, too, beggars belief.

It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead. In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

Thank you, Sir Salman!

Random, Pointless but Totally Fun on a Lazy Sunday

I should thank The Buddha Smiled for pointing me to the most ridiculously fun idea for a lazy Sunday morning. Its The Hero Factory, a website that allows you to make up your own super-hero alter-ego.

Mine is posted herewith. I wanted something a bit tougher but in the interest of complete honesty went with the first result! The "whipped" bit worries me a bit, but oh well, guess even super-heroines have bad days....

At least it cheered me up!!!

Panties, Pubs and Protests

A couple of years ago, a friend was on a business trip from Delhi and we decided to head out to Brighton for the weekend. Not, mind you, because Brighton was particularly attractive but because she had read about the place in all those old English romance novels. Then a couple of other friends - also from Delhi and travelling through the UK - joined us. Finally, there were about half dozen Indian women, all in our thirties and forties, who hit Brighton night-life on a balmy summer Saturday.

Many drinks later, while sitting out on the hotel balcony, my friend turned around and asked, "When we met all those years ago, could you have imagined we would ever do this?"

Her eyes were wide with wonder. And perhaps just a dash of tears. Nostalgia or perhaps just too many gin and tonics.

All of us knew exactly what she meant. We had all grown up in small towns in India in conservative families. Most of us did not count as the colonial elite, separated from that echelon by economy and politics. Perhaps, out of the group, I had the most international upbringing, more thanks to my father's government job rather than any active parental choice. Many of the women on that balcony had been brought up with limited dreams: go to university, get a (respectable!) job, get married and raise a family.

But we had fought hard to find new dreams, and then to make them come true. Every woman on that balcony had forged a brilliant career, often rising to the top against all odds in her chosen field. There were extra-marital and pre-marital sex, divorces, schisms with the family, travails of being a single mother in fairly conservative society that linked us all together. We had rebelled and we had survived.

And through out it all, even ten years ago, we could never have imagined that motley group of friends could ever manage (or even afford to) travel overseas, shop, party, bond, just live on our terms!

We - from the generation born in the 60s and 70s - were lucky to grow up in times of tumultuous change. The choices we had made would have been impossible for our mothers. The country's steadily improving economics through out our lifetimes has meant that we can have careers that could not have been imagined even in our own adolescent years. We are the first fortunate ones.

Just as the ones who have followed are the next generation. They are products of an era that can push the boundaries of change further. My mother's generation had to choose between studying science and arts: "tradition" decreed that "good" girls studied arts, especially since science involved "mingling" with boys. My generation fought to wear jeans and "western" clothes because "good traditional" girls didn't wear those. And now the next generation is fighting to be hold hands publicly with their partners, to travel safely on public transport with their friends of a different gender (instead of curtailing their movements), and for the right to unwind in a public space after a hard day's work. Same war, different battle.

The weapons of this new battle are different too. Our generation struggled mostly alone, enlisting help from friends and family, but rarely a larger like-minded community. Our battles were often fought with cunning, secrecy, never fully and openly challenging the cultural and moral thekedaars of our society. When we made our choices, we knew we would take the consequences and prepared for them: we went home early so as to be "safe," walked the streets armed with a hockey stick, learned martial arts. And somewhere deep inside, we hid the quiet despair of having to fight for what our male counterparts took for granted.

No more. The current battle has been taken to the moral thekedaars: on facebook, by internet, in pubs and across the world. The pink panties protest is an apt response to the attempts at terrorising innocent young women for daring to choose their own lifestyles.

It is particularly effective tactic because for many decades, the foul-mouthed moral thekedaars have used vile language to intimidate and disgust us. Many of us have chosen to ignore their disgusting language and actions. And they have constantly benefitted from the idea of "good" Indian women - who are too "delicate" and "well-bred" to engage with their thuggish tactics. Their formulation of "good Indian women" (the ones who don't take them on) vs the "westernized bad" ones (the ones who will) has long helped them dominate and control the discourse about women in the country.

The Pink Chaddi campaign has only just begun to change that dynamic. Finally Indian women have begun to claim space on the political turf: once the moral police crossed that final line of maryaada, there is nothing wrong with using knickers - pink or otherwise - to shame, horrify and fight them.

One final word: the moral thekedaars have already shown themselves ignorant of history of India and its traditions. Seems that despite their delusions of religiosity, they are also as ignorant of religion, especially Hinduism. Otherwise they would realise that the time of Sita and Draupadi is well over; the time of Durga and Kali begins now!