Ladybug's field notes

Today after a long time I was thinking about our time in Banaras Hindu University (BHU). We had studied there in the mid 1990s. BHU has a large number of hostels for students which made it one of the most sought after university of our times. A time when Kolkata did not have many residential colleges and hence BHU received horde of students. I do not know how it is now. BHU or Varanasi was our first encounter with North India and its culture. In our cities we had faced taunts on the road, catcalls, comments on how we looked etc which was called "eve teasing" in common parlance. I have a problem with this term. It probably does not describe the grave impact it can have on a girl's life. I am relieved to note that others are also finding that expression strange. It is being called sexual harassment. and the #askingforit campaign by Breakthrough  http://www.breakthrough.tv/  has been launched to show the falacy of the term. Coming back to BHU, however, what we faced the...

1. How do you know the students/women/rape survivor/villagers/displaced people were right in their manner of protest? Why were they using sanitary pads to write their messages? 2. How do you know they are not wrong in raising the issue? 3. Why are they raising it NOW? Why are you supporting them NOW? 4. How do you know this is not political in nature? (I know it is. So? You lose your case. ) 5. Have you heard the other side of the story? 6. Have you protested against all the bad things that are happening in all the other parts of the world? (I am sure you did not against the afforestation in Central Africa which is causing the current Ebola epidemic! What! you did not hear about that causing it? See. I told you!) 7. Did you stand up for that particular incident 10 or 20 years ago that happened in your college campus in the 1990s? You did not? You have no right to feel bad about anything that happened thereafter. 8. In such and such part of such and such country if women/student...

Arati said “My husband’s family had become Christians about 20 years ago…but then we returned to the Hindu fold about 6-7 years back”! We did not believe her...she hardly looked 40! But then, two women helped us to calculate. Arati got married at the age of 15! She already has sons in their twenties. We therefore better believe what she was saying. We were in Depaketa village. It was situated in the worst affected Blocks during the 2008 Hindu-Christian riots in Kandhamal district of Orissa. In the tribal dominated areas of Orissa, villages are mere conglomeration of many hamlets situated far away from each other. They are separated by forests and hills. As many as 10 such villages and 20 such hamlets make one Gram Panchayat. Sirtiguda Gram Panchayat in K. Nuagaon Block was no exception. Depaketa was one of the 17 hamlets of Sirtiguda. It is unique as the number of Christian families is almost equal to number of Hindu families. When the riot broke out, all the poor Hindus and all Ch...