Paradiso/Inferno - How they remember

“Can you hear the screams
Now see the revolution
Their bullets, our stones …

I protest
Until my freedom has come” I Protest by MC Kash, rap artist from Kashmir. 2010

A man, who once called me an occupier, tells the story of a bloodied man who dragged another bloodied body in the streets of Downtown Srinagar in 2010. On the footpath, he stumbled, and lifted his shirt. The bystanders or the protestors saw the two holes from where blood spurted. A bullet in the abdomen,  and another in the heart. Another young man lifted him. In masks, young men had been pelting stones. There were bullets, and tear gas from the other side. 

They recall he was called Generator, and ran in the streets looking for any means of transport to take him to the hospital. This was 2010. Srinagar was burning. Stone pelting had become the collective means of protest. They shouted slogans, and they died in dozens. Masrat Alam invented Ragda. They tapped their feet, and chanted slogans. It was a heady time. By the time, this other young man found an auto and broke open its lock, it was too late. Generator was dead. That morning, they say, he had promised his mother he wouldn’t pelt stones. But he had worn black, and had gone to his father’s grave in the morning, and had prayed. When he met his mother later, he sought permission to pelt stones just that day. He died on the streets trying to drag the body of another who had slipped and was run over by a truck. They still remember him. And there are other stories about those who pelted stones, and beyond anger, and frustration, there was also love. But that is for another time. Because those belong to those that collect them. We must never steal stories.

Over time, we moved beyond the occupier and the occupied tags. 

Once, he wrote "... A foggy morning, a stern man lies down on the bare road under a blanket of hunger. Sheeps come and go honking their guts out from the Sailaabzada cars. Boom. A tear gas shell hits the road, chaos and slogans run through the air … Another boom …”

He wrote they are used to the smoke, and the tear gas in a note in December 2014. There were a few protests. The stone pelting had become a way of asserting anger. Or hope. 

“We crazy pundits of resistance … we ran like Forrest Gump did, we look out for each other; it's like a slow motion scene. You see that baton coming down on your brother’s back, you laugh and hoot to divert the attention. This is no Palestine with all due respect, but that's Maisuma of Kashmir. The resistance continues even if I die …,” he wrote.

There is an old building. This is where the army resides near Maisuma. You could see their fatigues hung in the barbed windows for drying. The clock tower at Lal Chowk is symbolic. Protest also must choose its space. 

Nowhere else, the identities are so pronounced as here. Here, you get defensive. Even apologetic sometimes. You must take sides. The last time, I walked along the Dal Lake, I could feel the strangeness in the air. It was just after Muharram, and two young men had died in an encounter. In an almost curfewed city, you walked along the deserted streets just to feel the air. It was almost neurotic. You couldn’t trust anyone. It was a place of distrust. There was also sadness. You could almost breathe it. If at all, you could. An editor I spoke to later said the place is like a mental asylum. He could feel it. The man, who was born here, and lives here, says it is not far from the truth. Mirza Waheed, who wrote his second book The Book of Gold Leaves based in Kashmir, says Srinagar is a melancholic place. 

In the winter haze, with the mountains glistening in the sun, and the Jamia Masjid wearing a forlorn look in Downtown Srinagar, a stranger tells the stories of 2010 protests. He says in the shops of tailors, you will find sherwanis the would-be grooms got stitched, and could never collect. They either died, or the curfew didn’t let them. And you know, he continues, in Kashmir where you feel defeated and tired, marriage is something you look forward to. There are feasts, and there’s something to be happy about. But then, there was curfew. There were deaths, and there was trauma. He is going to get married soon. There’s this and that, he says. Curfew here is a way of life. Sometimes, they even rent wedding clothes. In a place like this, you calculate the odds. After 2010, you were always on the edge, he says.

But there were other things, too. Stories that a writer goes looking for so they could tell you what it means to live in a conflict zone. The 2010 protests changed a lot of things for a lot of people. All these conversations flow from the fact that Masrat Alam, the hard-liner leader, has been released. He said he was only being shifted from a small prison to a bigger one. In Being Masrat Alam, which was published in Indian Express, Bashaarat Masood goes back in search of the man, and writes how his teacher at Tyndale Biscoe, a missionary school in Lal Chowk, once called him “Ishfaq”. He meant Majeed, the first militant commander of Kashmir. He writes of the song that Masrat Alam sang in school.

“Sanz kar koori, waerev tche gasun, trayi koori khan majar, danus che pewun (Prepare, oh girl, prepare, to go to your in-laws, stop being pampered, you have to light the hearth)”

And we drive past the old Srinagar where once I had first encountered the conflict. On the streets during the floods, they had put up banners saying “Indian Choppers Go Back”. The only thing storytellers can do is to listen, and here, as we gaze at the old buildings, he says he is tired now. He says he feels defeated. All he wanted to do was to write about his city. But the wear and tear has begun to show. He says he will get married, and grow old.

I can only say “Inshallah”.

Along the Dal Lake, the city looks serene. We are driving along the Boulevard Road.

“Such beauty. Who wouldn’t want to occupy?” I say to him, and laugh.

And he looks at me, and says beauty is a curse. He is a writer. He wanted to be a doctor once, but returned to Kashmir to write about the people, and the place. But it isn’t easy to tell these stories. He is in his 30s, and says he is trying to come to terms with being here. But sometimes, he gets angry. Instead of stones, they have taken to writing. 

He tells me other stories. Like how once when he was a child, they would make fun of him at school. They would say he didn’t have the fire in him. So, one day he went to the graveyard, and he knew militants hid their guns under tombstones, and he picked up one, and fired at the transformer. There was no electricity in his neighborhood for a week almost. And he never told his family it was him trying to test his own spirit of protest.

People are tired in Kashmir, he says. There are evenings when there would be peace in watching pigeons flap their wings as they flew in and out of the courtyard at the shrine of Maqdoom Sahib. It is an abandoned place, he says.

On Friday, I ask him if there would be stone pelting in downtown. He says there would be no stone pelting. Not now.

In 2010, when Alam, who sports a long beard, and is hailed as a successor of Geelani, there were protests. Around 120 young men died.

“A stone to a bullet,” a man tells me. “You won’t understand.”

And another, a policeman, laughs when I ask him if I can see the stone pelting.

“A four-year-old can throw with so much strength that you would be surprised. Don’t go. It isn’t such a romantic thing,” he says. “You could get hurt. Where will you run? It is dangerous.”

By now, I have become used to being dismissed. But crossing over isn’t so easy. 

Alam is the co-founder of the Muslim League, the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference. Beyond the politics, and the facts of his arrest and his life, and his own agenda, there are stories of ordinary people. It is about their collective memory, which then leads to personal ones. Everyone has been through loss. They have been to funerals. It is depressing. The writer says he knows there won’t be Azadi. But the fact that they have been fighting for so long has its own repercussions. You can see it in the eyes of people, he says. They are tired, and vacant. There is no music at the shrines. Only pigeons flapping their wings. The mystics told them peace is possible. But in the streets, there are memories. 

We don’t take sides here. We only listen. 

The man says the truth lies in so many places that if you started to pick up the crumbs, they’d scatter. He tells another story. This is one of the short stories by a Kashmiri writer.

So, there was once a curfew, and a child wanted sweets. His mother tried to tell him they couldn’t go out. The CRPF man outside heard the child pestering his mother, and told the child he will get him sweets. He picked him up, and got him sweets, and he thought it would ease the tension. Again, the question of identities. The occupier, and the occupied. When he was dropping the child to his house, he asked him what else would he like. The child looked straight at him, and said “Azadi”.

“It’s fiction but you know what I mean,” he says.

We go into bookshops, and there are popular and racy fiction like Paulo Coelho, and Sidney Sheldon. There is also Allama Iqbal, and his philosophy. Outside, there are fashion magazines, and another that is titled “Ideal Home” and I wonder if this will ever be home. Or if they will ever feel at home.

And then, the man who once called me an occupier, and now tells me stories of homeland, and laughs often, says he writes sometimes. Because loss is so personal, he says. And then, when I ask him how it is to live in a paradise is, he recounts a conversation with a friend the other day. 

“We don't care for fame …  we should enjoy it day by day because we don't know when we will be killed by a bullet …,” he says.

This is what his friend had said. That should be enough for you to know, he says. He is a young man, and returned to Kashmir from America where was working to take care of his family. Another left. He found his freedom in Chicago. His brother says he says the paradise was like a cage. 

Beyond the political debate, there are stories of ordinary people like him. They fall in love, they drink coffee, and they watch films on their laptops. Even conflict is a routine thing here.

And then, he says there is always a conflict in any story. There would be no paradise if we lost the reference to hell. And then, you remember what Dante said in Inferno.

"I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way into eternal pain,
I am the way to go among the lost.

...

Before me there were no created things
But those that last forever—as do I.
Abandon all hope you who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

But they hope. Like the man who will get married soon, or the man who collects stories, and tells me “sab faani hai (everything is earthling)”.

“Remember this when I am gone,” he says.

But the stories will remain, I say. And after the harsh winter of 40 days, roses will bloom again. And Dante found inspiration in Inferno. He also wrote Paradiso.

And they smile. That’s the only moment when the conflicting identities of the occupier and the occupied have dissolved.

The daughter, and the sister - Priyanka Gandhi

A version of this was published in Open Magazine in May 1, 2014 issue

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-intimate-daughter

Chinki Sinha

New Delhi, April 30, 2014

A handful of days before she was assassinated, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi walked the lawns at the Nehru guesthouse in Srinagar barefoot telling a close aide how her meeting went with a priest. It was around 5:30 in the evening, and she had got her grandchildren Rahul and Priyanka for vacation. Moments ago she had returned from the Shankaracharya temple, which is housed in the Srinagar district on the hill known as Takht-e-Suleiman. Chinar trees lined the horizon in the evening sun.

She was with a close aide. She told him she could see herself in Priyanka Gandhi, who she had wanted to name Sarika when she was born but the name had been given to another worker’s daughter and so they had settled on Priyanka. According to close family friends who have been watching the Congress party for a long time, she told the trusted aide that the responsibility of her granddaughter’s education and training would lie with him in case anything would happen to her. Perhaps she knew. A few days later she was gunned down, and the aide was sidelined. But Priyanka Gandhi learned kathak, and Sanskrit, and generally about the India her grandmother who was often referred to as the ‘iron lady’ ruled. Her brother Rahul Gandhi, Congress’ vice president, was always more western. It was his sister who the grandmother had projected as her progeny.

That was in 1984.

It was not an easy childhood. By no means normal. First, they saw their grandmother getting killed, and later, their father in 1991. They lived in isolation, trapped within the dynastic setting. Heavily protected, they lived mostly indoors. At first, in fear. They couldn’t go to school, and both brother and sister formed a bond then that was cemented by their isolation in childhood. They were not free, family insiders say.

Even as adults, they would only move around with the SPG guarding them. There was no scope for encounters, or relationships. They say she met Robert Vadra when she was very young and was taken by his dance. They say he danced very well. To someone who hadn’t been able to explore love and life like others, that must have led to an infatuation. Love, marriage, and future. These are all private, and yet public questions when it comes to the dynasty. Speculation abounds. Insiders are tight-lipped about the marriage.

Now that Priyanka Gandhi, 42, has taken over the campaign in Amethi and Rae Bareilly, and is ruling the front pages of national dailies for taking on BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, and defending her husband, there are those that see her as the savior of the Congress. Others, who claim to know her, feel she would not pose a challenge to her brother, who she shares a close bond with. They spent many lonely hours of their childhood being with each other, and for each other. It is the solitude of power, and dynasty. Surrounded by a coterie of men, who a few insiders say, have made them enigmatic, and inaccessible, they have nobody to turn to, or trust. There are insecurities, and expectations. There are winds of change that they are trying to deflect. Together, and alone.  Almost. The mother Sonia Gandhi remains an anchor, and as her daughter roams the hinterlands for her mother and brother, mobilizing cadres, stopping by to speak with the women and men, she is relying more and more on Priyanka Gandhi, who remains her trusted soldier on the ground. She connects easily. In the family bastion of Amethi and Rae Bareilly, they are waiting for her to come to the aid of the party. But she won’t say anything except standing by her brother when he needs her. Rahul Gandhi remains yet another enigma. His approach to power remains a baffling theory for most, who have not been able to understand why he would speak about empowerment within the party, and dismiss dynasty. That he is not much of a peoples’ person as his sister in the way she navigates through questions, and smiles, is a known fact. But to say he is a dumb person is a fallacy, a close aide who is handling the media for the party, says.

Last month when Rahul Gandhi came to file to his nominations to contest elections from Amethi, a seat vacated for him his mother Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and husband Robert Vadra came by road to greet him. Through the odd 40-kilometer journey paved with rose petals showered on the two as they held a road show in Sultanpur and Amethi holding hands of the people, and smiling, and waving, she was hailed as the daughter of the land. At chai shops, and chaupals, they recall how she came to the constituency after her marriage, and the women made her gifts.

Outside the guest house in Munshiganj in Amethi, Iqbal Ahmed, who is a party worker from Tiloi Vidhan Sabha area, was waiting for his turn to get an audience with her. She had come on April 17 for a few days to campaign in the two constituencies, and was meeting party workers to understand the issues. The sun was riding high, and Iqbal Ahmed was trying to find a cooler spot on this highway that was of people waiting for her to come out.

“She is better than Rahul Gandhi. If only she would come, politics would change. She listens to us, and she knows most workers by their names. She broke the caste barriers in the party by bringing in meritocracy. She doesn’t impose. But we tell her to take over, and she says there should be no issue between the brother and sister. She says she is here for him,” he says.

Her style of campaigning hasn’t changed much from what it used to be. It is much more visible. Those that are close to the party say she is much in sync with the system, and works mostly from Rahul Gandhi’s house on Tughlaq Road, or Jawahar Bhawan. She clocks in more than 12 hours of work every day. It is elections, and the party is worried they are losing. After May 17, the future will be decided. They will clamor for her to take over the reins of the party that seems to be facing anti-incumbency and confusion over the role of the dynasty. Already, the myth of the dynasty is fading out. A resemblance to her grandmother and imbibing her style in the public life aren’t going to bail out the congress from its current crisis – leadership.

In 2004, she had said she had inherited her saris from her grandmother Indira Gandhi . She said she was much taller so she had to put ‘fall’ to make the sari fit her profile. That was an instant identifier for people. In places where the memory has not been overwritten from the time when Indira Gandhi visited their forsaken land, that was a connection that was emotional, and loyalists that they were, they wanted to believe in the mythical powers of the dynasty – its eternal appeal, and charm.

It started with a comment on her cousin Varun Gandhi who is the BJP candidate from neighboring Sultanpur. She said he had gone ‘astray’ and that led to a war of words. That was the beginning of the battle of words that has now made her the reigning figure in Congress. But in the hinterland of Amethi and Rae Barielly, they will tell you she is an amiable person. Her body language doesn’t ever suggest she would attack anyone. It is mostly the media that picks selectively, and sensationally.

Shivmanohar Pandey, the bureau chief of Jansatta who is based in Rae Barielly, who has been covering her rallies, says Priyanka Gandhi connects easily.

“She goes around in the villages, stops by where she sees a gathering and generally smiles and talks to people. That’s her classic style – picking up children, folding hands, etc. But last election campaign, her body language was more enthusiastic. Not this time around,” he says.

There’s a meeting he recalls in 2012 when she was asked why she doesn’t come to Rae Bareilly so often. She told him she would like to come more often but she didn’t want it be perceived in wrong way.

“I try to come. My brother is dearer to me than my life. I don’t want to be a power center hence I don’t come here regularly,” she had told him.

He had also written a story in Nayi Duniya about this conversation back then.

“She doesn’t want to challenge Rahul,” he says. “They are very affectionate towards each other.”

He speaks about a friend who was a close family friend of the Gandhis who said they had spent so much time in solitude with each other and in fear that they have developed a different dynamic.

“They would cry together, hold on to each other when they had lost their father. They were afraid. They couldn’t trust anyone,” he says.

In Rae Bareilly, she has managed to reach out to the people.

“Rahul doesn’t connect to the workers. Amethi party workers say he looks at them with suspicion but he is just being careful about his name not being used in shady deals. He doesn’t have political tact,” he says. “But Priyanka has it.”

He goes on to recount yet another incident where a local asked her why he should vote for her. At this, she didn’t get angry. She smiled, and said they were restricted in their own ways because of the SPG protection, and admitted where the party had gone wrong. She said she would like his views, and this was done well, he says.

Again, her husband Robert Vadra isn’t around as much. At least not in the frames that have been captured of her as she navigates through the villages holding her nukkad meetings.

“Perhaps it is a strategy,” he says.

Again, there is the other side of her. Of a mother. Rolly Kumar, whose younger son Anmol is in the same grade as Miraya at Shri Ram School in Delhi, says she attends almost all the workshops and PTA meetings.

“She is always prompt. She would come to drop off her daughter and pick her up until Class 5,” she says. “You would see her early morning at the railway station when the school planned an outstation trip.”

That she came in a cavalcade of three cars, her bullet proof Safari in the middle, was a display of power. Although it was also out of a concern for security. But inside the campus, she would interact freely, smiling at everyone, Kumar says.

“Of course she is very stylish, and wears these long skirts. Always casual,” she adds.

Anmol, who is in seventh grade, finds Priyanka Gandhi funny. He says she is a Congress worker. Beyond that his own interactions with Miraya has never been about her family.

“She is into sports and is great in races,” he says.

Once Priyanka Gandhi had played a scientist in a skit when the kids were being taught a class, and he found her very funny. She always sends cupcakes, and other baked items to school.

“Miraya is not like others. She says hello, not what's up. She has a lot of friends. She is very popular,” he says. “And her mother is always there. Her class projects are really good.”

But beyond being a dedicated mother, and what is available about her in the public, she remains shrouded in mystery. Family insiders won’t reveal much. Nehru-Gandhi family has always been private. During the times of Indira Gandhi, accessibility was not a difficult thing. Now, it is only through a coterie of trusted soldiers that are their counsels.

In tough times, then there are demands from within the party that Priyanka Gandhi should be more involved. That’s how they can resurrect the dynasty. But she herself has refused any such commitment.

“She is very close to her brother who is not a classical politician who believes in the rhetoric that one has to win this election. He isn’t hungry for power. He has a vision, and is a strategist. I think when he talks about empowerment, he believes it.  But of course you can’t divorce RSS from the BJP, or the dynasty from the Congress. No Congressi can question the dynasty. Elections have been fought and won on dynastic charm,” another aide says.

They wouldn’t even speak over the phone. It is important that they not be named. Only then they would reveal a bit of her personality to a scribe.

These are ‘those times’, they say.

“She has charisma. She is less anglicized than her brother, and in a speech recently, the only English word she used was ‘computer’,” he says.

Language is a tool for connect. She understands it well.

In a rally in December 1998 in Sriperambudur in Tamil Nadu when Sonia Gandhi decided to enter politics, Priyanka Gandhi was with her. The rally was only attended by a couple of hundred of people, says a close family aide.

“She spoke a sentence in Tamil,” he says. “She had that instinct. She is a natural leader. She isn’t a housewife. That’s an understatement.”

Yet another instance he mentions that offers yet another window into her personality.

The day the Telangana Bill was mooted in the Parliament, the Congress workers were worried. They had gathered at Tughlaq Lane and said Rahul and Sonia Gandhi should not go to the Parliament that day because there would be opposition. That moment Priyanka Gandhi entered, and asked if they were going to shoot bullets, or explode bombs.

“The issue was explained to her. She said ‘We are political people. Why should we be scared? My brother is not a coward. My brother will attend and so will my mother’ and that explains her natural instinct for politics,” he says.

Previously, Rahul Gandhi was the face of the Congress, and now she has taken over by directly challenging Modi, he says.

“Call it her induction or call it her suction, it has begun. It is inevitable. She has spunk. She is uninhibited. It was the family’s decision to project Rahul Gandhi. She has been a great source of strength to her mother, and her connection to Hindi heartland in terms of her reach to the people,” he says.

But with the Vadra controversy, the party feels that he must be a liability to the dynasty. Like how Indira Gandhi lived with Feroze Gandhi despite differences but never divorced him, Priyanka should do the same.

In fact, a UP congressman had said she should divorce him. But private and public gets blurred in the political space.

“He was her biggest mistake,” the aide says.

But perhaps it is love. Who can tell?

But again, in politics as Harold Lasswell, an acclaimed political scientist, it is “who gets what, when, and how.”

Here, it about who gains what and at whose cost. It seems they have already admitted defeat this time. Only after May 17, they will ask for her. But what Priyanka Gandhi, the loving sister, will do, is yet another mystery.

“In many ways, the battle is about mindspace. She has managed to compete with Modi on that,” the friend says.

But again, why should a sister finish her brother? When difficulty comes, the party stands united, yet another friend who has been in and out of the family house, says.

“I was close to her father. But I have seen her grow up. Indira ji used to keep her by her side, making her make the lists to distribute gifts to. But again, she can’t be Indira Gandhi,” he says.

And then he recites a couplet from Allama Iqbal. That’s signals his loyalty to the dynasty, and allegiance to that one name – Indira Gandhi.

“Hazaron Saal Nargis Apni Benoori Pe Roti Hai Bari Mushkil Se Hota Hai Chaman Mein Didahwar Paida,” he says.

Maybe that time isn’t far. That’s what he would like to hope for. But again, the mind is a difficult thing to navigate. There are a million sides to her. Like her grandmother.

Barefoot on grass that evening in Sri Nagar she had known. Or wished. Now, the party is hopeful, and wishful.

That Place Called Transit | OPEN Magazine

That Place Called Transit | OPEN Magazine

That place called transit - a letter for those that forgot the lone passenger to Havana

Letter from transit

Dear Condor and Lufthansa and Frankfurt Airport Authority, and Germnay,

Since I couldn't take the flight to Havana from Frankfurt because of the industrial strike in Germany on Feb. 21, and Condor staff wasn't there to tell me anything in person or on the phone about rebooking, please let me know if you will reimburse my ticket money to Delhi via Kuwait and Mumbai, and rebook me for Havana from Frankfurt on some other date or reimburse that too. I am a journalist and was going to Cuba to write a story about a country where time is frozen, and where people are waiting forever, and about love and freedom. I tried my best to figure out the next option but the Condor staff wasn't there to help. They said they can put me on a flight to another city in Cuba and I could take a bus from there but you see, Pico Iyer wrote in his Cuba and the Night that buses almost never come, and I also don't know Spanish. They told me the flight would only be available on Monday. To Havana, a flight was available on Feb. 26. I was asked to stay at the airport in a transit zone because I had no German visa and the Condor staff said if I fell sick, there was an ambulance I could call. That's all they could do. They would only get me to Havana. It didn't matter how long I stayed at Frankfurt airport. I have been stuck in many airports. Because of tornadoes, and snow storms but we were treated kindly, and with dignity. For all my issues with the US, they are very professional, and ready to help out. The Germans said it is a legal right to strike in Germany, but it is not a right to treat people like animals. it is also a human rights issue. Your airlines can't just sit and not pick up the phone. That's no way. You can't forget your lone passenger to Havana. For months, I had been collecting money for this trip. I had people waiting in Havana for me. I was carrying toothpaste, and soaps for them. They couldn't believe Germany was such a bad place with such people, and Condor, such a bad airlines.

I had no option but to return to Delhi because I had no German visa and Condor was unavailable to provide any assistance.  I am still in transit, and now in Bombay because there was no seat available in the flight to Delhi. Who will pay for the damages? It is easy for you, and Lufthansa and German authorities and airport company to shift the blame to legal right to strike but we were clueless, and for no fault of mine, I couldn't reach Havana.I am very disappointed in the services of your airlines. I would request you to reimburse my fare to Delhi and rebook me to Havana on some other date and give me a voucher. How can your staff ask me to stay at the airport for six days until the next flight to Havana? Can you do that? Is it the best option? It is inhuman, and a very unprofessional thing to say to a passenger who is stranded in transit zone with no food, or anything. Germans gave us soda water, and snickers, and some sandwiches late in the night. I got fever because there was no blanket, and no proper bed. I have seen some prisons. They are better. As a reporter, I have been through many places, and cities, and I think this attitude is racist, and devoid of compassion. I have never come across such a pathetic treatment meted out to passengers. Lufthansa was not ready to help me. Condor representative was nowhere. Last time I managed to get through to Condor on 28666, I was told to stay at the airport until Feb. 26, and if I felt ill, I could get the ambulance. Sir, this is no way to operate. I would treat my animals better than this. How do you run an airlines with such callous attitude? I had put in all my hard-earned money into buying the tickets to Havana and then to Mexico, and from there to Seattle. I was to write a story on the country that I have always been intrigued by and because of your strange way of operating, I ended up returning to my country. But I am a writer. And we write about experiences. It remains in public domain. So others can read, and experience these things. I would never return to Frankfurt because they are such callous people there. It was the worst nightmare of my life being there with no assistance. Condor forgot about a passenger, and remained out of bounds. 

I don't know which country you come from and what your values have been, but let me write this to you. I am an Indian. It is never good to forget people. I was traveling alone. I had no change of clothes, no medicines, and not much money. They were waiting for me in Havana, Sir. I had to give them soaps and toothpaste, and some hope, and we were going to share our stories. It probably sounds ridiculous to you but to me, this was my life's dream. I had to buy them a nice dinner at Hotel National, and see the Hemingway Bar and bring back coasters from there. But because you forgot the lone passenger stuck in Frankfurt's terminal 1, or didn't care much about my dream and my limited means, I lost my story, and theirs. I have been to other countries, and have been at strangers' mercy, but I have never been let down. The only staff who was helpful was Shariq Nasir, an airport manager. He is Pakistani. We probably are enemy nations but we love each other. That's being human. He stayed with me, helped me find a convenience store on the other side, and gave me his coupons to get dinner. At the Lufthansa service centre, I saw staff shouting at the passengers. A few passengers had fainted. Children were wailing. Don't you have a heart? They told a woman they would corner her if she insisted on getting back. If it is not racism, what is it? I met a man from Bahrain but an American citizen who said if you were American, you'd be treated well. Is it only a matter of passports, sir. 

On the return flight, with a broken heart, I was greeted by a happy face on Kuwait airlines. In our part of the world, and you call us fundamentalists or extremists or uncivilised, or underdeveloped, or whatever, we care. The food was better. They gave me water when I wanted to take my medicine unlike the Lufthansa staff who told me they had no water on my way to Frankfurt. The Kuwait airlines staff woke me up and gave me coffee and muffin, and I felt I was respected. I now believe that every encounter changes you and there is no place like home. It is country or whatever it is but it is where they love you for what you are. We maybe poor, but poor have dignity too. We are honest.

Unfortunately, Cuba lies on your side of the world. I am sure people are nice. They are. Like Albertto who says he is there always. He waits for me in Havana. And since I am not rich, I must find cheap fares on websites, and this one was booked via cleartrip.com. But I also deserve to be treated with dignity. I don't make a lot of money. This was trip planned in love. With the country, and with the revolution, and with Jose Marti, and with whatever Havana stands for. I am in Mumbai after numerous harrowing hours at the airport with no food or water. I hope you will give me a chance to reaffirm my faith in professionalism. 

I hope I can travel back to Havana. And I hope I can travel on Condor.

regards,

Chinki Sinha

Assistant Editor

Open Magazine

New Delhi

Bound to be Free - On India's BDSM community

Bound to be Free

Bound to be Free

Chinki Sinha

New Delhi

On the bed of stones she lay for a long time. Ants bit into her skin, but she wouldn't move, or even scratch herself. She was forbidden to. In this time and space, she had consented to give up her freedom of choice.

He had told her to not move until a butterfly came and sat on her body.

It must have been an hour. Maybe more. She can't tell. But finally a butterfly landed on her. She had completed her task. There were more orders from the man she refers to as Huzoor. Tasks given to a sub by the dom. A game of power, a way of entering the fantasyland. Sex could be part of it. Sessions could be online or offline. There could be multiple partners. The realm of desire is unbound. Fantasies could be outrageous to many. It could mean subversion, or perversion.

It was behind a cottage on top of a hill somewhere in Karnataka. They had gone for a session there. They met soon after she joined the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) community, and was referred to him by a friend. She knew he would take her on many journeys.

"It was a beautiful place," Parvati (name changed) says. “He was watching me all the time. I had surrendered to him.”

She is 49. She has fought for many causes. She is a feminist, an activist, and many other things. But she won't judge herself for her fantasies. Those exist in a different realm. A place where desire is supreme. Fantasies could convert into reality. Perhaps only for a short while. Almost nothing is taboo, and pain is sought after.

But unicorns aren't so outwardly. They have a reference in reality. They have the bodies of horses. Only an imposition of a sole horn is the only fantastical element, I say.

“It is fantasy within reality,” Parvati says, and smiles.

Parvati had been eager when she first joined the underground online community. She was called a 'slut' because she was lusting for experience. It isn't about who you 'play' with. The people are mediums. The psychic space where you want to be is what matters to her, she says.

She has never bothered about personalities. The person would cease to matter in that moment. Beyond a few questions, she would not want to seek more details. Nor divulge more. For the adventurous, the journey mattered.

"Take me on a journey," she says. “Push my limits.”

When a man told her "I love you" while they were in the middle of a session, she didn't know how she would handle it. For long, love was kept out of the community's interactions. That he was playing with her mind is what she eventually figured. He vanished, but she is now thinking about love and kink reality. Why is love kept out of role play?

"Because love is love. It is up there," she says. “It is sacrosanct. There are many in the community who are in love, many more who want to be in love. But now some of us are discussing this. Perhaps love can be part of role play."

On one of the walls at her house, there is a painting by Baaraan Ijlal, a Delhi-based painter. A man, who is wearing a coat, and sports a moustache, is holding a kneeling man in a public toilet. There could be a lot of ways to tap into the layers of this painting. The man in submission is poor. His shirt sleeves are torn, and his eyes are open wide, almost in wonderment. The other man is bending with his eyes closed, holding the poor man gently. Domination and submission. The rich and the poor. A man with another man. The urinal in the background, and the tiled wall of a public toilet are part of the plot.

“Isn't that interesting,” Parvati says. “It is about us. Hence, it is here.”

One of the major issues with BDSM is its inherent lack of equality. In India, it is a stigma. Some perceive it as a psychological disorder. In such a lifestyle, there is a master or a mistress, and there is a slave. There is dominance, and there is submission. Choice, freedom, and other such things are willingly suspended. That you could get hurt is a possibility, although according to Parvati, this is extremely rare given the care taken about safety. Besides, in this ritualistic space, consent is important. There are safe words, and limits are discussed before a session.

***

Pain is real. Everything else could be fantasy. But there are contracts. Written or spoken. The problems of the 'vanilla' (a term used to denote everything non BDSM) world don't exist here. But discussions about kink exist in a small space. Its education and its articulation, a few would say, is an elitist activity in India. Because so many still aren't online. They aren't part of networks. They don't have access to the community.

Yet, Parvati, says she believes everyone is kinky.

“Love bites are an expression of kink,” she says.

***

When Parvati, one of the spokespersons for the Kinky Collective, speaks, her eyes have a faraway look to them. As if she didn't exist in the time and place. A cigarette dangling from her hands, she embarks on a journey of her experiences that she equates to junoon, a state of intensity where surrender and collapse is a spiritual experience. One that eluded her for so long.

“Intensity is when nothing else matters,” she says. “It is about timelessness. It is not the pain. It is about surrender. The intensity has been enabled by this person but they don't matter in the end.”

She says she is a late bloomer. At 35, she heard a young woman articulate about the rights of the LGBT community, and instantly fell in 'lust' (not love she clarifies) with her. She chased her. They had a relationship. At 46, she figured she was kinky, she says.

That evening, she isn't feeling well. It is getting cold in the city already. Wrapped in a shawl, she slumps in a sofa, an ashtray by her side. The photo exhibition called Bound to be Free, a first in India by the Kinky Collective, is now on its way to other cities. They dared to do it because creating awareness and dispelling myths about BDSM is important for a lot of reasons.

***

Around five years ago, Parvati was in Brighton with her girl friend and other friends, and they decided to go to a fetish ball. The party, her first such event, was in a basement club, and she was cold. They hadn't turned on the heaters to save on the costs. They were huddled together when man walked in with two women. They were gorgeous. The man sat in a couch near her. The other woman sat next to him, and the third sat on the floor, and rested her head on the man's lap. Then, on the woman's thighs. Her face didn't twitch. It bore no signs of humiliation. It was a deeply moving sight, like poetry. The power flow was interesting.

She was watching them. The expression on the woman's face as she lay her head on the man's lap as he began to pat her was peaceful. As if she was in complete surrender. She was his pet. Beer had spilled on the floor. The man took off his coat and spread it on the floor so she wouldn't get wet.

“That was surreal,” she says. “Loss of dignity. That's what so haunting about it.”

The collapse of ego, the beauty of surrender, she adds.

We are at a friend's house. There is a bottle of wine, and she is comfortable talking. That image stayed with her. She would have her first BDSM session much later.

“Everyone has a fetish,” she says.

But these are difficult conversations. She is nervous about me. I am an outsider, and I have already made my first error. I asked her about the 'paraphernalia.”

“We don't call it that. Those are tools,” she says. “You are welcome to see those. It is about the mastery of senses.”

But BDSM isn't just about tools, and costumes, and role plays. Those are just stereotypical notions. It's not about sex even.

***

At the Abadi Art Gallery in a tucked-away lane in Lado Sarai, there are 40 photographs on display. These have been taken by members of the community. Much could be tagged as BDSM stereotypes – stilettos digging into a man's throat, blindfolds, whips and bodies, melting wax, leashes, and other such representations.

The point is to shatter the notion that BDSM as anti-women and misogynist.

There are women Dominants. There are male Submissives. It is essentially about power flow, she says. Gender isn't of consequence here.

In a hazy photograph, she drinks milk from a bowl. Someone says that's the reward. There are rituals, he says.

There's more to it. She was playing the role of a dominant's puppy. She is in other photos. As a domme (a female dominant), with her stillettos digging into a man's throat. In another, she has her feet on top of a man, who has prostrated himself. A cigarette in her hand, she is laughing.

There are other photos. It is just a hall with a small terrace. These photos aren't every explicit. They aren't shocking. But for the uninitiated, it is all very strange. Almost surreal to know that those that are in the photographs are in the room. That it is not a still from a movie. That reality ad fantasy can co-exist.

Like the face of a woman wrapped in cellophane. Or the dog collar in a woman's neck in a car. This is in Delhi. Because beyond the dog collar, you could spot a CNG auto rickshaw. There is one of a man with wax being poured on his back. Pleasure in pain.

“No gain without pain,” someone says, and chuckles. 

For many, it is erotica. It is what turns them on. That it is. But it much more than that, I am told.

There is a cage, and a woman's steel heels, and a whip in a picture. There is a man inside the cage. You can't see him. But the heels are in focus, and so is the whip.

I later see the cage at her place. She has two dogs. At one of the collective's gatherings, they had played a game. It was just for fun, and a man had gone inside the cage. It hadn't been easy. It meant squeezing oneself into a cage on all fours over iron mesh.

Outside on the terrace of the art gallery, Parvati sits dressed in a black skirt, and black stockings. This is the first time in the country that a kinky photo exhibition is being held. The photographs have been taken by the members of the community. It is a traveling exhibition and will be shown at Bangalore, and Kolkata among other cities.

Over 150 people came for the exhibition, she says, but not hardly any from the community. In fact other than the organizers, only six have come from the community.

“They are afraid,” she says.

For three days, the photos hang in this space. It is not easy to be seen in this space. Associations of a wrong kind in a society that doesn't understand such fantasies can belong to those that live routine lives, go to work, have families, and do everything else.

***

The fact that Parvati can speak about the collective, and their photo exhibit is a liberating feeling for her. There is a certain relief in coming out. Like when she figured she wanted a woman.

“I would think about her, and it was like my bed was on fire,” she says. “I had to come out to my mother. This had to be the bravest thing I had done, and I moved out of the house. People are very paranoid about the media. There is a history of fear in the BDSM community,” she says.

But perhaps now is the time for Kink (even if not kinksters) to come out of the closet, she says.

Fifty Shades of Grey, with all its pathologization, broke the silence about kink. But she and other members of the community in Delhi had burnt the book at a fund raiser party for the exhibition. A photo with the shreds of the book and rose petals hang at the exhibition.

“BDSM is about consent. Consent is sacred. We have rules,” she says.

At workshops which can be held only in people's homes, the members meet to discuss issues, and to do skill sessions – training in wax play, whipping, or tying with rope. You can't whip in the stomach. That could hurt someone, she says. Certain things are off limits. Like paedophilia.

“But isn't that desire?” someone says.

“Where is the consent there?” she responds.

It is not only about dispelling myths, she clarifies.

“Those outside the community can learn from us about consent. As someone who has been part of the women's movement for 30 years and fought against violence against women, I have learnt a lot about consent after joining the BDSM community in which consent is not assumed, it is proactively sought and given, negotiated. Even more importantly, what makes it powerful and real, is that it can be withdrawn instantly and unconditionally. Limits are spoken about, and they are pushed.”

Parvati doesn't like the term 'lifestyle' because she has never been comfortable with labels. BDSM community, she says, is an often misunderstood sexuality. Much like the LGBT community.

“I feel differently about identity. Everyone has experienced power in sex, the wrist being held if even for a moment, or rough sex.... I believe this is a sexual orientation,” she says.

Whether the time is approaching when kinksters can come out, not be branded as perverts, and not be forced to lead double lives, is hard to say. This is their first photo exhibit. The collective has only 21 members. There is an online underground community, but not many see it belonging to a realm or even needing activism.

***

After joining the online BDSM community, Parvati went out into the garden at her mother's house. She had stayed the night over, and there was a tall iron grill, and a creeper wrapped itself around the grills. She went out in the morning, placed her hand on the arrow-shaped grill, and stood there. Thereafter, she took a photo, and that was her profile photo on the networking site for a long time. She says she felt like the vine – dependent.

That she is a feminist, and an activist is incidental. She is that and this. It is not as if that is reality and this is fantasy, she says.

“This too is real, but it's my erotic reality...” she says.

And in that spectrum, she lives. Shuttling between this and that.

For her, the magic happens when she plays with intensity. She says it is much like Hindustani classical singing which she is learning. It has discipline, and that allows for creativity.

“When I first came into this, I was a sub in a hurry,” she says. My friends in the community told me to slow down so I did. But after I met the first dominant who I knew I could trust and within 12 days, I was on my way to Rishikesh for a session. It is about trust and faith. That we have in abundance.”

While there are safe words and defined limits, Parvati says she usually doesn't play with too many limits. One that is not negotiable is that she wouldn't eat meat.

As she stubs yet another cigarette, she speaks about one her most intense journeys of pain. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's dhamal played in the background.

“It was all very hypnotic. My dom (short for Dominant) in that session was a sadist and very experienced. In my journey of pain, I went into a kind of space that was trance like. In the community, we call it the sub space,” she explains.

She defines this space as consisting of nothingness.

“It is still and calm. I didn't want him there then. In my state of collapse, I wanted to be alone,” she says.

But she insists that aftercare is very important in the community. That's one of the things they speak about in their meetings.

Is there pleasure after all?

“For me, its difficult to call it pleasure. It is just the pain, and the intensity of the moment. It is not that I don't dread these sessions. Yet if the whipping stops, I am disappointed,” she says. “I am definitely turned on.”

Parvati has a reason beyond the terminology and articulation of BDSM.

“I want to cease to exist,” she says. “That is the only thing in life,” she says. “It is a spiritual journey to me. It didn't happen with meditation. We are just mediums for power flow. It is like singing. How to best let the notes flow. It is the trance.”

Some of her sessions were very ritualistic. Some pushed her own boundaries in a way that she felt liberated in the end.

Like after one of the sessions, a dom asked her to send him her photos everyday. She felt the fear. She was never comfortable taking her own photos, but she did.

“That's how a dom understands you. They release you, empower you,” she says.

With another dominant, it was about dancing. He asked her to do a striptease in front of him. She rehearsed, wore a pink sari, and danced to the beats of a song from Bollywood.

“It is wonderful to not have a choice,” she says. “If I am a good sub, I will let you take me on any journey.”

***

Much of reality is fantasy, she says. She is reserved, and speaks softly. It is like she has measured her words, and then doles them out one by one.

“BDSM helps me to distill out parts of fantasy within reality,” she says. “I long for a daddy figure. But it isn't incest. It is not about debunking my feminism. The fantasy here is about unconditional love. That daddy doesn't exist. Even if he did, he couldn't rule me in that way. In my BDSM, I want it. I can even get it.”

But kink isn't a new deal.

“You only have to look at the kamasutra. The articulation of it could be. But speaking about such issues requires courage of a different kind,” she says.

Even in her own work in rural areas, she knows she can't speak about it.

She can talk about instances where she knows of people in lower middle-class settings who are kinky. But for now, those are off limits. Maybe there will be a time when there would be open conversations. For now, it is best to tread slowly. It is not elitism, she intervenes.

In one of the sessions, her ear drum was injured. She was told to tell the doctor it happened because she fell down. But she had wanted to tell the truth. But it could have been misconstrued.

“We want to speak to mental health professionals. Why should we make up stories. Awareness needs to be there,” she says. “This isn't perversion. We have a meeting coming up soon with some doctors to discuss this.”

***


As a child, he would pull out the ties of the bolsters at his grandfather's house and tie himself to the french windows in the old house. It was a child's play. His parents were only concerned he should not hurt himself.
 He would pretend he had been captured, and he loved the feeling of being in bondage.
 

“Maybe I didn't know the terminology. I have been into it from a very young age,” Aditya (name changed on request) says over the phone.
 

He is a lawyer based out of Kolkata, and is one of the founder members of the Kinky Collective that was set up in 2011 though he has been closely associated with the community for more than ten years now. As an experienced member of the community, he says he supports new members who joins the BDSM lifestyle, a term that is widely used by the community, but certain members feel it is not representative of something that isn't an acquired taste, but is at the core of who we are. Much like homosexuality, and its articulation in terms of many saying it is just an acquired lifestyle, and a choice.
 For many years, Aditya thought something was wrong with him or he was diseased because he was kinky. Those were pre-internet days. He couldn't discuss it with others. He was worried about perceptions, and stigmatization. 
 

“I used to think I was the only one in India with this disease. I wasn't sure if it had anything to do with sexuality. I though the rest of them were in America. I was almost in my late 20s then. In 1998, I had my first computer and internet through a dial-up connection. The point is that there was no exposure to media. At the time there was no pornography to tell me about it. So accept from my example this is natural in human beings,” he says.
 

The first time he was inducted into the network was when he received an email from someone asking him whether he was into BDSM, and he first thought it was a spam. However, he did reply to it, and was pleasantly surprised to see a response the next day from a woman in Bombay who was compiling a list of those that were into BDSM, and establishing a community of sorts so they could discuss issues and network to find willing partners.
 

“In 2003, I travelled to Bombay and at that point of time. I met others like me. It was real. It was fun,” he says.
 He hadn't been practicing it in his personal relationships because he was afraid of the reaction. But he did mention it to his partner that if she was tired of him teasing & disturbing her, she should tie his hands. That did the trick. The other felt the surge of power, and they would make out. But it was introduced carefully. He would never say he was into self-bondage.
 Aditya identifies as a polyamorous, gender fluid and a switch, who can be both dom and sub. But he has a primary partner while he also plays with others, and he says he keeps all his relationships transparent with all his partners. 
 In college, a friend of his had once confided in him that she was turned on by a scene in a film that had Jaya Prada being dragged by the villain to get raped while her husband was tied up.
 

“She wasn't enjoying sex, she told me. I said something was wrong with her and said she should go and see a psychiatrist. I thought both of us had this disease. I want to apologize to her now and tell her that it was alright to fantasize. We never met after college. This was in 1992-1993. Over the next 10 years, I kept things within myself and I suffered. In 2002-03, I had my first session. Pain was an amazing experience. This lady used to say she could take a needle through her nipples. When I was very ill and was hospitalised and the nurse would come to administer injections. I had this fear of injections but that conversation helped me gather courage. When you are in pain, the mind shuts down and you tend to run away from it. Here, pain can be pleasureable too. I felt I could be brave,” he says. 

“Just like bungee jumping is not for everyone. Or like the game of chess is not for everyone. It is just a choice that people make. That's why there are a variety of choices. The problem is we are comfortable laughing at anyone different. It is a misogynist culture.”
 

Over the years, Aditya has become an experienced member of the community but feels there is still a lot to learn. He feels there is a need to disseminate information even within the community about safety in a session, respecting the limits and use of safe word. 
 

“For the first timers, it is important that it is done right. Someone who wanted to have a session with me. She started with a list of 50 hard limits. Over a span of six months, we had negotiations and long discussions. When she met me recently, she only had four hard limits. If one has to push the limit with a newbie, it should be in the conversation, not directly in the session. It might leave a scar if things go wrong. Let them take the conscious call beforehand by understanding the pros and cons,” he says.
 

In a BDSM context, which the members say is based solely on consent, sex is not presumed. In marriage sex is presumed, he says.
 

“In India a man can't be charged for raping his wife. In the kink community, consent is important. If you don't abide by the rules, you can earn a bad name. The community will denounce you,” Aditya says.
 

For instance, he says one of the rules is to have a safe word. That is agreed upon by the people prior to a session.
 

“The sub goes into a state of mind when they feel devotion and complete submission. You want to feel overpowered. Until you use the safe word, you can't be released. Otherwise, it may just imply that you are enjoying the helplessness,” he says. Just like any other relationships in the society, “Abuses could be there too.”
 

Aditya is a switch. He can be a dominant or a submissive partner. He says he enjoys both equally.
 

“As a submissive there is this sensation of giving up control. I don't want to sound religious but if you take up Bhagwad Gita, Krishna shows the Vishwaroopam avatar to Arjun and says give up all religion, give up all thoughts, and surrender yourself at my feet. This is ultimate surrender. I am for my domme's pleasure,” he says “and will enjoy my sub doing the same for me”.



There is the need for clear understanding articulation between the play partners. The fear is good. It is a way of looking at things. It releases chemicals in the brain, which is a high in itself, he says.
 

“The fear is not of being exploited, or of being abused. It is not a negative fear. The fear converts into a sense of surrender. I am ready to take what you give me. That is the high. Even an ordinary person can do it. When you take a fight you give your consent to hand over your life at the hands of the pilot! Similarly we are constantly surrendering in daily life, in many things,” Aditya says.
 

There are ways to look at it. There could be love, or there could be only sex or a session in isolation. Surrender is also being vulnerable. There is trust, and there are conversations.
 “It is an extremely volatile situation. The chances of falling in love with the dominant are quite high. Because you stand naked in mind and physical. The dominant takes you on a journey. You survive the fall, and when you are done, you are empowered. You overcome fears. There have been marriages within the community. For me, I have a problem with love. Trust and faith are more important. Love is merely a collection of feelings. You make it sound holier than thou,” he explains.
 Someone fell in love with him once after a few sessions. When he declined he advances, she became violent. She started saying things about him, he says.
 “Being a male is also very vulnerable. If I tie up a woman, and she has rope marks and we have sex, and she says rape, then I am done for,” he says.


In this underground community, there is a fear of being recognized, and then of being outed to others that might perceive of kinks that could include flogging, whipping, and other things, as perversion, a mental disorder. International researches have shown that a person practicing BDSM is in no way different from anyone else. They are not perverts. According to Aditya, the only form of perversion is when something is done to someone without their consent. What is apparently violent is not always violence. He gives the example of boxing. 


“Thereafter, we formed this group. Kinky collective was formed in 2011. Even papers were presented on BDSM in academic conferences in 2010 . There were some of us that thought we should take the cause forward. You are bringing someone out of the cocoon so they can have clear meaningful lives.
 “It is willing suspension of disbelief, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has said. It is not real,” he says. “If in the mind of the protagonist it becomes real, how do you distinguish between consensual and abusive relationship. This is not real.”
 

But in this world where there is a need to be invisible, and yet find willing partners, the community helps. 
 Some are monogamous, and others are polyamorous.
 

“The question comes from the perspective that we think everyone is monogamous. The dynamics could be fluidity. One could do multiple sessions but there needs to be clarity and transparency. The most dangerous emotion is jealousy,” he says.
 In this articulation of BDSM, there are justifications to self. To simply say it is erotic is not enough. Aditya says he had a session with a woman who came from a conservative background, and he wanted to push her limits, to liberate her, and to set her free.
 He inserted Ben Wa balls in her vagina, and together they went to a mall.
 

“She could have had an orgasm right there,” he says. “Only we knew she had these in her vagina, and she felt free that she could be out in the open and be so naughty without anyone knowing of it. I was controlling her. It had been done by me. It is about knowing a person,” he says.
 

In another instance, he had an exhibitionist as his sub, who was comfortable wearing a dog collar to a queer party.
 “I was holding her collar, and dragging her. There were interesting reactions. This was an act of dominance in public space,” he says.
 

***


 Parvati says she would rather not show her face in the photos. These are reasonable fears.
 But she has dared to speak out. That's enough. 

She has withdrawn her name from the piece. As an afterthought, she says.

"Now you know why there is paranoia," she says.