Thoughts on the Throne

In the bathrooms in my building in NYU, there is usually no heat. Worse, however, is the toilet paper. Now being a good Girl From South of the Himalayas I am not very fond of the concept to begin with. And in New York it is exacebated by how cheap they are with it! The paper in NYU is much like butter paper and confined to a single transparent sheet. The paper in JFK and La Guardia is even worse, if possible. I assumed it was a factor of the publicness of the facilities only to discover it is not so! In Boston's Logan airport, and here in sunny California, even in the Oakland airport and the Saravana Bhavan in Sunnyvale that is far flung enough to not be connected by the BART, they have delightful, multiple-ply, soft and verging on spongy paper.

Does this say anything about New York and New Yorkers?

One answer: Yup. We have no nerves in our bums.

Dear Diary

argh.

*reatreats to corner and glowers*

Park Benches and Chocolate

It's been a strange day. Dear me I swore I wouldn't let this become another I woke and brushed my teeth this morning blogs. But. It's been one of those days. It's 6pm and I'm on the squishy couch in the study, as I have been most of the day. Except when i was coming back from little errands and sat on the bench on the road divider to read my book and eat a cookie, cos it was such a beautiful bright sunny day. Also cold and windy. And then I read one Jennifer Crusie and am on my second. And it's about a chubby girl called Min (short for Minerva). It's full of food and loving food, and discovering a teeny italian restaurant and having the one thing on the menu you always eat. Seeing how this evening is not going to be the way I really want it to be, albeit a fun evening, I have been driven to the evils of chocolate. Real hot chocolate. Made with cooking chocolate melted into boiling water. And stirred till it cools, followed by a tichy bit of milk, and then brought to a boil. Evil, Sinful, Dark Chocolate. *sigh*

Commuting the City

The subway is one of my favourite bits about the city. The most amazing things happen on it. Depending on which stations you're using you can find bongos, steel drums, a team of breakdancers, a choir, cellos, pan pipes, and the ubiquitous guitars and saxophones. There's even an old guy at West 4th who plays the synth, as in it's spouting noises and hes poking at a key a minute, surrounded by battery-powered dancing dolls - a G.I, a barbie-type thing, something with God Bless America on it.

Then there are the see the light jesus will save you types. There are the Good evening ladies and gennlemen, my name is XYZ and I am homeless speeches from people who walk the cars looking for money and food. Then there are the Good evening ladies and gennlemen I work for a corporation that makes up food packages for the homeless, etc.

Once there was this highly entertaining guy who came in and said:
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I am from another planet. My spaceship crashed on Earth a few years ago and I need money to buy the spare parts. I need to get back to the mother ship as soon as possible so I would really appreciate it if you would make any donation you feel like.
The car rolled its eyes collectively.
He continued: I would also like to inform you that when I leave I will be taking with me the most most wanted criminal of my home world - George W. Bush.
The car burst out laughing and produced $1 bills.

Then there are the days when I feel like India is haunting me. Last Tuesday, I was running downtown to meet a friend and as I leapt into the sbway car I heard the Mallu-est of Mallu voices [much like the priest at my friend the Bryde's wedding, who kept saying donkey, only it sounded like lungi] say, next shtop, 79th street. sadly phonetic transcription is impossible. Later that night, I leapt into a cab, rattled off my address and sat back only to realise the cabbie, apart from driving much like the BPO cabs in dear old Hyderabad, was jabbering endlessly on his phone, in Punjabi! At the end of the ride, by which time I knew a lot about his daughter and her school, I asked him where he was from. Pakistan he said. Unable to stop myself, or the wine, I babbled at him in Hindi and we had a little chat about where I was from and howcome I spoke Hindi so well.

One of the most interesting things is how people react to discovering they have sat down next to someone undesirable as a seat partner; in PC NYC you can't just get up and leave. Or so one would think. Last night, there was a smelly and definitely mentally unbalanced homeless man in my car. He was slumped down on the row of seats laughing and talking to himself. In jumped an elderly couple, who promply squished themselves into the first 2 empty seats they saw. If they had taken a second they would have seen how many more empty seats there were NOT sandwiched between the homeless guy and the door. Of course the woman then smushed between her husband and the homeless man was ina quandary, should she get up and be rude in indicating that she perceived a difference between the dirty unstable man and her clean middleclass self, or should she stay there. She stuck it out for a while but then evenutally got up and went to the other end of the car where she cooed over someone's baby. Not a bad reaction all told. Shocking however, was the clean-cut young man who got on at 79th street, sat far from the homeless man, twitched and fidgeted a bit before leaping off at 86th, to run the length of 2 cars and change cars. This I know cos I got off at 86th and saw him run.

Its funny how there are different types of commuters. There are the Starers, who just stand and stare into space; the Gadgeters, who fidget with blackberrys, iPods, DVD players and occasionally laptops; the Entertainers, who play music so loud its obviously for the entertainment of the entire train; the Readers, who well, read; the Eaters, and the people who combine any or all of the above. [In case you want to know, I'm a Reader and a Gadgeter, I can't commute without iPodito.] Of course the main purpose of all these distraction is not so much to pass time as to avoid making eye-contact with or acknowledging the existence of other commuters. Which is why, when an old professor-like gent hopped on the train, sat next to me and bent over to peer at the title of the book I was reading, I grinned and showed it to him. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to talk to someone about a book they were reading in the train. Anyway, soon after, a black teenager comes by, selling candy. Mr. Professor says, young man, I'll buy your candy if you can tell me who this man is, pointing to the book he was reading - a biography of W. E. B. DuBois. Let us call him the Lala Lajpat Rai of the Black movement. Actually I don't know an appropriate equivalent, but he was the first black man to get a PhD, and from Harvard no less; he was a leader of the PanAfrican movement; wrote extensively on black issues, and the identity of African-Americans; etc. So the kid had no clue, and Mr. Professor gave him a short lecture and the kid promised to go look him up. Mr. Prof then said, do you know the Schomberg library? [Arturo Schomberg, another shining light of the black mvt] No sir I don't. Do you live in Harlem? No sir, the Bronx. Well you should go to Harlem to the Schomberg Library. Yes sir, I will, tomorrow. Hopefully, the kid grinned, thinking I've been so good maybe he'll buy some candy. But nope. It made me think about Indian kids and their awareness of people in the struggle. Maybe I shld read up on the Dalit movement...um sorry my Ancient Witch, the braincell is taking over again.

That same train ride, a bunch of Brazilians got on the train, carrying bags and suitcases and obivously dressed up to go out. Two of the women stood near a pole and started unzipping suitcases and pulling out makeup, and one proceeded to make the other one up like a harlot [:D] with bright red eyeshadow and huge amounts of glitter. In a moving subway train. Huh.

And lastly, I realised last weekend that I seem to have acquired the Angry Newyorker walking attitude. Head down, much like a bull, and charge onward, refusing to apologise to anyone who moves out of their original trajectory and thus gets run into. Ok, I'm not that bad, I do look around and apologise to people I run into. I have however found myself, especially when in the area of Times Square, gritting my teeth and growling to myself: move move MOVE DAMMIT!!! Fucking tourists, SOME OF US HAVE PLACE TO GO!! If you must walk like children on a ramble, DO IT IN SINGLE FILE!! ARGH! ARGH! MOVE!! STICK TO ONE PATH!! DECIDE WHICH WAY TO TURN BEFORE THE CROSSING! THE LIGHT IS TURNING RED, MOVE MOVE MOVE DAMMIT MOVEEEEEEEEEE!

Hee.

Also, annoying couples who must sway all over the sidewalk, I mean come on! It's bad enough you're rubbing my singledom in my face, but do you HAVE to make me late for class as well?

EEP!

Post-op

Perhaps its the things I read as part of coursework, perhaps its because its a year since I realised I needed help and sought it, or perhaps its just the way the whole chaotic synchronicity of the universe just works sometimes, but one of the themes asserting itself in my life right now is that of recovery.

On a thematic level it’s the week I read Lawrence Weschler’s masterpiece on Brazil and Uruguay [see sidebar]. The theme: recovering from torture, as a newly-formed nation state, as a person released from fourteen years of solitary confinement, as people who kept their heads down and looked the other way, as the man who runs into the man he intricately tortured several times, as the citizens who fled their homeland when it mutated.

The book is part of the course I’m doing on International Human Rights in Latin America, taught by a rather film-star-like nauseatingly Disney professor who brings out the most cynical and abrasive side to me. His question: is the glass half full or half empty? My answer: half-empty and evaporating fast. The man, whom I think of as Bambi in my head, often makes me want to scream in frustration and SHAKE him, if only to burst that bubble of “love…..and tolerance…..and compassion” that he lives in and therefore believes we all have hidden away inside our mean little souls. But this week I was forced to agree with him.

Compiled from three articles in the New Yorker, the book is excellently written, engaging the reader and, much like the eye in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, in refusing to actually give shape and form to the deep horror that lies at its heart, i.e. the torture and disappearing* of innocent civilians by repressive authoritarian regimes, does not permit you to pin it down and move past it, but leaves the details up to the mind of the reader, making it your very own little hell that you then have to think about getting over.

But, I digress. It’s hard not to, it isn’t very often that work with these kinds of impulses can affect me so much.

Anyway, the point of the book, and of many of the texts [including clips from documentaries] that we’ve dealt with so far in this course is the dilemma that is recovery from these things. The main conclusion arrived at across several countries and ideologies is that the only course of action that will grant peace to the people who remain while ensuring the stability of the political situation is a truth commission, that will investigate what happened, and publicly acknowledge the horrors so that people can attain closure, both collectively and individually.**

And thence to the next thought, that of victimhood. The importance of rehabilitation on an individual level is its ability to empower people to elevate themselves from the status of agency-less victim to survivor and agent. Ugh, bad sentence. I mean that the most insidious aspect of torture or abuse is that it takes away your agency. It makes you believe that you have no voice, and even if you were spouting the Truth*** no one would believe you, so why bother? In the act of seeking validation, seeking a figure in/of authority to hear you, to acknowledge that you have a voice, you are empowered, and are no longer a victim, but become a survivor.

It is the same process that underlies therapy. To stand up and say all the terrifying thoughts out loud, to have them heard and acknowledged, is the single most rehabilitating thing about therapy. Some people go through their own personal little hells; maybe because a boy told you you’re unattractive, maybe because your parents are divorced, maybe because you were systematically lied to as a child, maybe because someone molested you, maybe because you were forced to grow up too fast. The acknowledgement of the issue is the hardest step, acknowledging it to yourself first and then, in the act of seeking help, acting to obtain affirmation. It doesn’t matter if there was a reason, if things were done in error, if the people who did them are sorry; the biggest relief comes from the fact that you can yell, IT HAPPENED.

I suppose my point, when I began writing this, was that acknowledgement is the cornerstone of recovery, even if it is only acknowledgement of the damage done, of the existence of the injury, whether you’re talking about the blood of a civilization, or the fears of a child.

*The verb is used in a special way in the context of Latin America, coming from the Spanish desaparecido or disappeared, which referred to the way people were made to disappear by the government, and would vanish without a trace. Any trace. Ever.

“¿A dónde van los desaparecidos?
Busca en el agua y en los matorrales
¿Y por qué es que se desaparecen?
Porque no todos somos iguales
¿Y cuándo vuelve el desaparecido?
Cada vez que lo trae el pensamiento
¿Cómo se le habla al desaparecido?
Con la emoción apretando por dentro”

Where do the disappeared go?
Seek them in the water and the pyres.
And why is it that they disappear?
Because we are not all equal.
And when does the disappeared return?
Every time memory brings him.
How does one speak of the disappeared?
With emotion tightening you inside.
- Maná "Desaparecidos"

**In Uruguay, the government granted a blanket amnesty to everyone – both those imprisioned for their “crimes” againt the repressive military government, and the military themselves, for the atrocities they committed. This was out of fear of the still powerful military, whose strength threatened the very fragile new democracy.

In Brazil, a Presbyterian minster and the Catholic Archbishop of Sao Paulo organized a team of people to photocopy the records of abuse and violation that the military had, and then privately published a book Brasil: Nunca Mais. The book was named after Argentina’s own revelation from its dirty war – Argentina: Nunca Más.

Greg Grandin, history professor at NYU wrote a book called The Blood of Guatemala about the 200,000 people killed in the US sponsored and supported civil war.

In the Republic of South Africa, they came up with the most successful rehabilitation attempt, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. People who wanted amnesty would have to apply, their cases would be reviewed to see if they really did act under duress themselves, if they were contrite, and if they could aid the commission in finding other people implicated in worse ways – the Generals who organized the troops, the ministers who ordered the Generals, etc. They did not always get amnesty for their crimes, but the victims got closure.

In December 1981, the US Army trained Atlacatl regiment of the Salvadoran army proceeded to systematically and brutally massacre about 900 people across several hamlets in the guerilla-controlled Morazán district. El Mozote has only 2 survivors. Groups of people were herded off and shot in the back of the head, or decapitated; for days later the corpses just lay there mummifying in the sun. [The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner, if you’re interested. Stay away from food.] Nobody has ever been held accountable.

I’d go on, but it’s a whole post one day, country by country, the bloodshed in Latin America.

***for a given value of Truth of course

Spoil Me

Please?