The law is an ass

(Published in Business Standard on December 14, 2013)

Like many other people, I often fantasise about living in a different age. What must it have been like to be in Shakespearean England, when sewage ran in the streets and bathing was a special occasion? What must it have been like to be a Mughal princess, with emerald rings so heavy you’d need a whole other attendant to support your hand? What must it have been like to wander around Pompei as the mountain began to judder and spew? What must it have been like to insert a penis into the nostril of a buffalo in 1925?

Wait, what was that?

A funny thing happened this week, and by ‘funny’ I mean ‘say it isn’t so’—India discovered time travel! We’re back in Victorian England, except with the internet. This is very awesome because thanks to the internet, we can tell that Victorian England itself has moved on into a world where you can have consensual sex with whomever you like, in whatever position you like, without landing yourself in jail. We, the people of India, hope that this pathbreaking evolution of sexual mores lies in our future too.

Section 377 is a colonial relic of a law that makes it criminal to have “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”. Nobody really knows what “against the course of nature” is, but the thrust of it, so to speak, is anything not involving a penis entering a vagina. The Law Commission recommended deleting Section 377 almost 13 years ago, and the High Court rightly read it down in 2009. Finally, thought India, we’re beginning to stand by the meaning of the word ‘freedom’.

But where there’s sexual freedom, can a bunch of insecure patriarchs be far behind? A collection of Hindu, Muslim and Christian petitioners, and other random self-appointed custodians of “Indian culture” is all it has taken for no less than the Supreme Court to decide to reinstate Section 377 on the grounds that it is not unconstitutional. Judge Singhvi who, after dropping this shameful turd of a judgement tottered off into his professional sunset, had suchlike things to say:

“…[C]arnal intercourse was criminalized because such acts have the tendency to lead to unmanliness and lead to persons not being useful in society.”

And: “[I]t could be said without any hesitation of contradiction that the orifice of mouth is not, according to nature, meant for sexual or carnal intercourse.

And: “…[T]he so-called rights of LGBT persons”.

Here’s the interesting part of being back in Victorian England, folks: It’s not the Supreme Court, or gay people, that have made the trip. It’s every Indian, gay or straight, male or female, rich or poor, Brahmin or Dalit, old or young. If you give or receive oral sex, you’re a criminal. Get ready to exchange your thrilling leather handcuffs for a real pair. And hello, singles and sleeping-alone-tonights, if you were thinking of flirting with yourself before your eyes close, do remember that blindness and hairy palms are even less enjoyable in jail.

It appears that the Supreme Court has preferred to do a mincing little dance around the issue and pass the buck on to Parliament. Nobody has forgotten that our Parliamentarians didn’t delete Section 377 when they could have after 2009. However, India’s lawmakers can redeem themselves by fixing this gargantuan, well, cock-up.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court should rest assured that the people of India gay and straight, are pretty much going to do whatever their sexuality dictates, and nobody is going to take this judgement lying down in the missionary position. The long arm of the law inserting itself into the bedrooms of the unwashed asses is the only thing against the order of nature.

The latest magazine news

(Published in Business Standard on November 30, 2013)

I bet lots of people didn’t really register the fact that the US and Iran recently agreed to dial back Iran’s nuclear programme, thus making the world a little less likely to spontaneously combust. I bet my last issue of Tehelka that that’s because they, along with their compatriots, colleagues, and most of the planets in the solar system, have spent almost two weeks entirely consumed by a burning need to know what did or did not happen in a lift in Goa in early November, and whether all parties concerned did or did not consent to what did or did not happen, and whether the situation thereafter was or was not handled in the worst possible way, leaving or not leaving everyone’s feminist credentials in shreds.

Notice how I’m being extra non-committal about that one-, four-, eight-, or fifteen-minute episode in the lift (depending on who you’re listening to)? This is because every life form known to man has already made up its mind about What Really Happened, but I’m Aquarian, so I feel duty-bound to be contrarian. Now that there are policemen involved, I say let them do their job. Also, lay off the rest of Tehelka. Acknowledge that the magazine has done some stellar work. Stop trying to get the remaining staff to quit their jobs. Just get back to scrutinising your own life and your own organisation’s anti-misogyny and anti-sexual harassment mechanisms, would you? And to Tarun Tejpal: don’t imply, though darkly muttered hints, that there is more to this story than meets the eye. If you have things to say in your defence, say them clearly, or shut up and face the music.

In any case the whole thing loses steam after a certain number of daily headlines reading ‘ARREST IMMINENT’. One can set up the public’s relish for the gallows and then dash it down only so many times before the public goes back to something more reliably titillating, like Miley Cyrus’s butt. It’s exhausting, you know? All that adrenaline, all that emotional energy, and then nothing happens, despite Times Now’s best efforts to provoke it into happening. At the time of writing arrest really does seem to be imminent (though postponed to 2.30pm), so perhaps by the time this is published events will have overtaken me and I’ll be back to following it on Twitter, which is enough to give a person hives.

Or not quite, because there’s this other thing I’m reading about a lot, namely the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case verdict. I’m no high priestess of the law, but even I feel confident saying that any judge who thinks it’s a good idea to write stuff like “He has also admitted that Hemraj was average built but he has no knowledge as to whether his willy was turgid” and “…had come to her house on hearing boohoo” should be taken aside and given a short, focused course on how to save the reader from repetitiveness and ennui without, however, coming across as deranged. Reading the whole thing is like watching a head of state walk into a G-20 meeting wearing a jacket, tie, and boxers.

And that’s the best part of the judgement. I like to think that a higher court will re-examine what look like great big gaping holes in reasoning, to guard against a truly tragic miscarriage of justice.

I’m hoping for a lull in these two stories over the weekend. Then, finally, I will be able to get around to being attentive to the US-Iran détente and, apparently, some kind of election in Delhi.

Whining and dining

(Published in Business Standard on November 16, 2013)

Many things about college were scary, such as discovering that the long reading lists they regularly handed out were not just friendly suggestions. Or realising that one day they were going to lend me a hat and gown, give me a piece of paper, and then give me a little push in the small of my back. They’d have to push hard. Nobody in their right mind would willingly leave a wonderland where you can walk into a room, eat limitless quantities, and walk out, without ever planning, shopping, cooking, washing up, or paying a bill.

But by far my scariest moment in college was when my friend from Oregon, turned to me and said “Quitcherwhinin’!” From what I could tell, based on tone and body language, that’s Oregonian for ‘If you complain about one single thing more, one single time more, I will pull your abdomen out of your body via your eye sockets, and if you think I’m exaggerating, I can show you the remains of the last person who thought so.” I was so frightened that I think I ran straight to the cafeteria and ate food I did not have to provide for.

But one reverts, inevitably, to type, so I resumed whining shortly after being rapped on the knuckles. In fact, I took a policy decision not to stop. Don’t you believe those people who say that a good attitude will get you through anything, look at the smile on the face of that blind vagrant who just had an amputation and a divorce. Those people know not the sweet release of keeping up a gentle burble of complaint. It’s cathartic. It’s the oral equivalent of those evil-eye-warding-off thingies. It feels good.

My Oregonian friend was the first to point it out, but legions of people since then have told me to stop whining. One blog I read says that complaining is like second-hand smoke. (It also says that whiners just want attention.) Don’t get me wrong: I totally get that not everyone appreciates the finer points of bitching and moaning, but I assure you that whine-less dinners are dead boring. What are we supposed to do, sit across the table and smirk at each other about how wonderful our lives are? That sounds smug as a bug in a rug, at best.

Plus, I’m convinced that whining brings out the flavour of food. You could be gagging on some dreadful slime slopped out into a tin cup by a cook without tastebuds, and a good old moan will make it taste a lot better. To test this theory I googled ‘benefits of moaning’ and, expectedly, the internet gave me a lecture on sexual vocalisation. Then I got a grip and googled ‘benefits of complaining’ and got an article that nailed it: whining—more accurately expressed as futile complaining—helps you feel better when the world fails to match up to your expectations. Granted, it makes you feel better the way six shots of tequila do, not the way a daily morning jog does, but then you’re whining for the same reason as you’re drinking six tequila shots: to immediately relieve discomfort. The author says a lot of nitpicky stuff about the fine line between finding a connection to the person you’re whining to, and alienating them, but the burden of his song is that it’s evolutionarily not a bad thing.

So try it out. Go out to dinner with a friend and try a nice long vent. If your abdomen ends up on your plate beside your eyestalks, change tack and go to your happy place instead.

Wooooo! Wooooo!…Um.

(Published in Business Standard on November 2, 2013)

It’s that time of year again when we Delhiites excitedly prepare for colder weather, an uptick in the number of social events we commit to being late to, and rich cultural traditions such as Navratra, Dussehra, and, Halloween. Ah, Halloween. That Celtic pagan tradition of Samhain that Indian kids have looked forward to for generations going back at least three years.

Ha ha, fooled you! Halloween is not a traditional Indian festival.

Ha ha, fooled you again! Go stroll around in the markets, we’re obviously all pretending that it is. You can’t throw a pea without hitting a kid in a witchy costume asking for candy—not that you’d want to miss. The great thing about globalisation, and when I say ‘great’ I mean ‘maybe great and maybe not’, is the cultural fast food that you might call McTraditions, tagline “If you can buy the merchandise, you can have the festival.”

I’m not against shallow, rootless celebration, by the way. If there can be a Diwali puja in the White House, why shouldn’t we celebrate Halloween in Delhi? And when I say ‘celebrate’ I mean ‘buy a lot of themed stuff’. You’re going to say that the White House celebrates Diwali because it’s a representative democracy with a large number of influential Indian immigrants. By the same token, we’re a representative democracy with a large number of people who like to find ways of making money, and a large number who like to find ways to spend it. And frankly, we atheists are shallow, rootless celebrators most of the time anyway, so who am I to judge? So what if your brain does cartwheels when it sees Delhi beggars in Santa Claus hats on December 25, or Bombay heart-shaped paans on Feb 14 or Bangalore awash in tiny sorcerers and fairies looking for a sugar rush? No, I’m all for it.

It’s just that the new sanitised trick-or-treating version of Halloween is not scary. The real thing began as the seriously hair-raising idea that on All Hallow’s Eve the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and that spirits roam the earth. People would put out food and offerings for their departed loved ones and friends, and give alms to the poor in exchange for prayers for their dead. The idea that some of these spirits are malevolent eventually made a debut, and people wore costumes so that these evil spirits would not recognise them. All through, young women tried to figure out when they would get married, and people tried to read the future.

I don’t know if they therefore saw that, as it its wont, a very large institution would get into the act and put it about that pagan celebrations are just not cool. This institution also disapproves of the Harry Potter books, which is odd because it is itself headed by an old man in a big pointy hat with a cloak. The point is, this institution tweaked Halloween to take out the really creepy stuff and make it more about entertainment. Enter the age of little kids knocking on people’s doors and demanding candy. Not scary.

The new thing in America is trunk-or-treating, which is about getting a bunch of wobbly tots together in a parking lot and making them just take the candy out of the trunk of a car, already, and then let’s go home. It’s apparently much safer than having them walk around dealing with traffic. Evocative, huh?

Nah, I don’t see the point of Halloween as it is now. If you really need something to scare the living crap out of you, all you have to do is read the newspapers.