Life as I find it

Arrest after man buries twins alive caught my eye as I read on in horror. While the issues raised by the selective abortion of female foetuses creates a great deal of social concern for the future of India, I think it is worse that newly borns are burried alive after birth. This makes me think that perhaps we as a society, a government are imposing our morals on people who would like to have the choice of gender in their offspring. If banning the testing of sex of infants and terminating female foetuses only mean that these activities are done illegally anyway, if it means that the women undergoing those options may not even have the right to sue for any malpractices they may be enduring because of their act being illegal, if it means that babies are being murdered…… I think that somewhere we are creating rules for how a whole lot of people should have kids. We are not consulting them, their interests, their concerns, or their choice. This is creating far worse problems than the ones it attempts to avoid.

A father who kills his own daughters may be a murderer, but are we doing the daughters that get saved any favours, if this is the amount of hatred they will be facing in life? Do those families really want them? Will they love them and be fair to them, or have a grudge about not having a son instead, for eating up the family resources? Would these parents be expected to raise these girls as healthy, happy citizens anyway? Would they care about their education?

On a different note, I have a feeling that society cures itself over time through the consequences of its own actions. Today, we are facing problems with discrimination against women, harrassment, social unacceptability of a divorce, dowry problems, unacceptability of remarriage for widows, etc. If things continue as they are, society is going to fall short on women in comparison with men. This might just be what the doctor ordered to deal with the other issues.

If women become rarer, they will be valued more. Competition between prospective husbands will ensure an eventual death of the dowry system out of sheer competitive tactics to procure a wife in the first place regardless of money. Women may be respected more. Widows and divorcees may have better chances of acceptance and remarriage through the sheer need of marrigable women. A decrease in the female population will eventually also reflect in a decreased population. Even homosexuality may be more easily accepted out of sheer acclimatization through necessity. I think, this would not really be a bad thing.

Consider a family who wants a male child. They may want it to carry on the “family name”. They may want it for managing the property of a home in the future in an agricultural society. They may want it to ensure “their support” in their old age. They may even want it because they like boys more than girls…… Whatever the reasons are, they are their reasons. They are as important to them, as our vision of respect for women is for us. Who are we to dictate what they should or should not do with regard to their own children? We can influence, but if we force, we are forcing them into something they don’t want for themselves.

I hate the thought of an abortion being done simply because the child is female. I wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to be like me.

Consider this family we are speaking of. They want a child. A boy. Ideally, they want only one, because that is what they think they can afford. Great. They get pregnant. They would like to ensure that their child is a boy as planned. They go to some shady sex determination clinic. Their being shady also makes them be careful to stay under the radar. No one can say that the instruments they use or the procedures they follow are safe. This couple is already required to flirt with risk to the mother’s life and health through a need for a technology that is available through clean medical facilities as well, if not banned. Yet, if they want to do it enough, they will do it anyway.

This is for the poor and gullible. Those who can afford it can simply fly out of the country and test all they like. So it cannot be completely stopped anyway. These shady things happen by those with access to information on these illegal facilities. Others will go on to deliver and find out. If it is a boy, Excellent! If it is a girl, she’s lucky if the parents fall in love with her at birth, or the options ahead are far worse - being murdered, or being hated all her life for being female. What right to we as a collective society have to inflict this on them? Is this killing of infants already born preferrable to the hypothetical lives that might be born in the future to those who cannot figure out illegal facilities? I think we are hurting the rights of the parents to avail all available knowledge to make their planned child exactly the way they want it. Abortion is legal in India. So why this selective fuss to condemn those born to hate and violence at an age when they don’t even understand anything at all?

We as a society are bigotted rats. We impose our assessments of what is right and wrong very easily, but what are the factors we should really be considering? Should we be sacrificing female babies to their own parents to follow our dream of equal gender ratios in the “shining India”? What right do we have to prevent the painless termination of an unborn life only to force it to be delivered into a cradle of hate?

If India has less females in the future, so be it. This is what society wanted, this is what it will get. If they find out in the future that they don’t like this scarcity of females and they want more girls to be around, they can allow their female offspring to live exclusively as well, and make their choice. It is not like the massive population of India is suddenly going to go extinct.

Walking down the street near the old Ajmera School in Borivli West today, I came across this:

In case the picture isn’t clear, this is a dog drinking at a leaking water connection. Take a close look:

I couldn’t get a better picture. It got scared and ran away. Actually, when I saw it, there were two dogs drinking there, mouth to mouth. It actually was looking very pretty, like a pose for a photo. Unfortunately, the minute I showed even a little attention, this one got wary and the one plain ran away. So I had only one model to shoot.

I find a couple of things very disturbing about this. One is the attention given to leaking taps. In a country, rather world, where drinking water is an issue, this connection was leaking like a regular tap left on. I wonder how many of these are in Mumbai, and how much of the water crisis could be solved by simply getting them repaired. In an area that looks pretty parched from the summer, the gutter next to it had about 3-4 inches of water in it, which dried out about 5 meters or so, on both sides from the tap. Obviously this little oasis was from the tap.

The other thing I find disturbing is that a bunch of street dogs are drinking straight from the water connection that probably comes to my home too. How’s that for maintaining the purity of drinking water? Hardly anyone in Mumbai boils or filters drinking water, as it is generally very safe to drink. Could freak accident epidemics be happening from incidences like this?

If I make a complaint, I dare say a standard complacent reply will be issued with someone assuring me that it will be repaired – eventually – one fine day. If I speak about contamination and stuff, they will bring to my notice that water is flowing out, not into the system, so the chances of contamination are low. Government departments are well practiced in the art of deflecting anything that would mean actually taking prompt action. It is very comfortable to continue on auto pilot.

But I will still be making that complaint and following up on it personally till the problem is solved. It’s the least I can do about the water problems we are facing.

Also disturbing to me, is the fact that if I can walk around for half an hour almost anywhere in Mumbai, I’m likely to find a broken/damaged/leaking public tap, connection or pipe or similar. How much water we as a city are really wasting? WHY?

And the thing that gives me the creeps is that my home is quite far from any main water supply of the city. How many such “compromised” points lie between the purification unit and main tanks and the water that reached my tap? Should I really be drinking this water at all? And, in a developing country, with a reputation for most of the public not having access to drinking water, is the little public that is supposed to have it, also not really getting it?

How much quality can be added to existing water supply facilities simply by including careful maintenance and strict hygiene?

I hope anyone reading this makes it a point to promote awareness of this among people they know. We as a people can report every single point we find that wastes water and opens the main supply for contamination and insist on action.

Who in India hasn’t encountered these clapping, lewd “female” looking presumably males? Indian hijras are a right menace in most public areas, traffic signals, parks, even homes, if they catch wind of celebrations happening. What is this scene really? Who are these people?

Obviously, they are men, dressed as women, but what is behind that obvious first experience?

Eunuchs have traditionally been guardians of harems, in the times of kings, as I recall from some ancient books. So they seem to have existed for a long time. Many people believe blessings and curses from castrated hijras to be particularly potent, so that gives them a chance to make a living out on the streets in a glorified form of begging, peddling their good wishes and threatening with curses to get money from people passing. Others get together as a group with musical instruments and fancy clothes and perform song and dance routines at weddings and other auspicious occasions and earn slightly better. Still others work as prostitutes.

Until I had the fortune to meet some really interesting people among them, I really hadn’t spared them a thought beyond fury if they tried to get pushy with me. Then I met Geeta, and recently, Anjali and Sunita. I came to know the people behind these threatening personalities. They work toward bringing reform in the lives of the transgender community, as they like to refer to themselves with respect.

I learned about the difficulties their lives are faced with all the time. Particularly touching was once, when Noorie said that when in a rickshaw with a girl she preferred to be dropped home first, as if she got molested, no one would come to her help, and even the cops might molest her for complaining.

Another was when Sowmya spoke of the love she has for her sister and family that she is unable to express and be close with them, because society drives prejudices in the way. Aarti remembers being harassed even as a child, for being “delicate”.

This seems to be a common factor. Some times in their teenage years, they discovered that they weren’t really interested in girls as much as in boys, and identified with women better than with men. Acting on these impulses, and even becoming aware of them, simply intensified them, and they soon started seeming obviously “different”. Soon, there remained little choice but to leave their homes and join trans-gender communities and be among people like them, because others rarely would accept them.

In rare cases, their genitals are not “properly male” and in others, pursuing a profession like prostitution makes them undesirable. They are then castrated in some “home treatment” fashion, rarely in a hygienic manner, or with the benefit of anesthetic. The idea is to look as female as they can. Not all hijaras are castrated, though many are. This also creates other hormonal imbalances that they need medical help with. Few doctors are willing to entertain them.

Transgenders face a whole load of problems in their lives - from practical respect and acceptance problems, to finding accommodation and occupations beyond begging and prostitution. In a world where forms give you options of male and female, they have no box to tick. Ration cards and passports are problems. Claiming justice is a problem. Self-esteem and assertiveness is a problem for all their loud body language. Health care and AIDS is a huge problem. The bottom line is money and survival.

A touching look at the legal, social and religious aspects of being a hijra can be cound in this article

If we want less of “these hijras” harrassing us on the streets, we also need to be willing to be ok with them in other areas when they are working honestly. Who cares if a web designer is male or female or transgender? Or someone working in an office, or a reception person, or a tailor? It is silly inhibitions and a fear of the unknown that keeps us from even sparing them a second glance. We keep our distance with our contempt and hide our fear behind our aloof masks.

Some interesting means of employment and income are slowly creeping into public consciousness. Films employ transgenders to do their usual lewd routines, which earns them decent money, but is hated by many as an insensitive showcase of their plight, and reinforcing their image in the mainstream society as not particularly appealing individuals. Using their song and dance routines to collect over due taxes from defaulters follows the same lines, but firmly projects them as people working on the side of “the good” and seems to be getting interesting results as seen here. Perhaps, once we are able to see them as constructive workers, we might be able to offer them work beyond embarrassing people into paying money.

Luckily, there are organizations working with them. Some have even been started by educated transgender professionals to reach out to others like them. I suggest that we as people make that special effort not to cringe and turn away, but to deal with them as normally as we can, and see if we really like or dislike them, like we do with any other person. Not all of them are charming, and not all of them are bad. Can we look at the people more than their appearances?

*names changed to respect privacy

Edit: As routine maintenance of this site, I sometimes check to see what people are searching for, when they land up here. Many visitors from Europe land up here searching for conditions of this community, or information on what they are. The most popular search from India is “photo boy castrated India”. I find it sad that the leading interest in them is still morbid sexual curiosity. Very few searches from India actually have words that are asking about the people very few Indians really know. It is a long and uphill struggle.

I read the shocking plight of Jawahar Manjhi, a farm labourer in Bihar, working for 27 years to reply a loan of about 40 kg of rice for a family wedding. They agreed that he would work for a day for each kilo. Today, 27 years later, he has needed to borrow more rice, and is still working to repay his loan. The police are currently investigating this story, but if it turns out to be true, it will be another highlight on the huge economic and living conditions gap in the different social classes in India.

Bonded labour was banned in India in 1976 - some 30 years ago, but there have been few prosecutions of violators over the years. Anti Slavery International says that such exploitation is commonplace in India. And it is true isn’t it? Even Child Labour was taken strong action against last year, but how many people were actually caught? How many children were rescued? I have no clue. If anyone knows, I would welcome this information.

All I can see is that there are plenty of children still working on the streets - washing dishes on food stalls, selling newspapers, shining shoes, …….. So what has the law really done? It is not like isolated cases that the police miss. It was a huge thing for a couple of days, and then life was back to normal.

One shining incident I remember is the story of Palabakam in Tamil Nadu, a village of bonded slaves mostly belonging to the Irula tribe rescued from the rice mills in the year 2004 (I think). The government supported them after activists brought the matter right into their faces and made any other action an embarrassment. Otherwise, they had been happy to ignore the Irula plight and deny that there was any problem.

Somewhere down the line, I think it comes down to all of us as citizens to speak up on the things we see happening as they shouldn’t around us. If we can file reports of every child labourer on the streets that we see, there will be a time when the police will be answerable for the sheer number of reports piled up and their progress against them. This is something we should be making an effort about.

Female foeticide is a saddening problem in India. While many modern and educated families don’t really care about the sex of their children, rural families want boys. Girls are an unwelcome strain on the family finances for the dowry in their weddings, as well as incapable of physically standing up to the strain of labour intensive occupations like farming, which is the mainstay of India.

It is easy for us to sit in the cities and preach what should be, but to a poor, illiterate farmer (or stubborn orthodox family) it is the male child that matters. Whether it is for bringing in money as dowry, or staying in the home to care for parents in the old age, manage labour intensive occupations, carry on the family name, or just out of plain prejudice, but the fact remains that our words cannot change preferences of people.

It is extremely unethical to abort a child for being female. On the other hand, for a person without the understanding of ratios of males to females or even plain old fairness to their own progeny, it is something that is to be framed and worshipped, but not done.

I found the Indian government’s initiative toward adopting the unwanted girl children noteworthy. Here is something that can save some of those lives lost to orthodox preferences, but the one stumbling block in this that I see, is that very few people will be comfortable approaching someone to hand over their daughter and say that they don’t want her, even if it is true. This will be perceived as heartlessness, in a society where sin is not sin if it remains hidden from the world.

I read this article on how the ancient system of foundling wheels, where mothers could leave their babies in convents has been adopted by a hospital in Rome to help collect babies their mothers plan to abandon.

ROME, Feb. 27 — In the Middle Ages, new mothers in Rome could abandon their unwanted babies in a “foundling wheel” — a revolving wooden barrel lodged in a wall, often in a convent, that allowed women to deposit their offspring without being seen.

Now a Rome hospital, the Casilino Polyclinic, has introduced a technologically advanced version of the foundling wheel — not at all a wheel but very much like an A.T.M. booth. For the first time a new mother left her baby there on Saturday night, and on Monday the child, a boy about 3 months old, was doing well, said Dr. Piermichele Paolillo, who directs the neonatal unit at the hospital.

This is only a very small part of the article and I recommend all to read the whole thing.

This set me thinking. We have very strong plans in India to encourage adoption of female children to combat female foeticide. This would also enable parents who later had a change of heart to reclaim their daughters. A truly inspiring initiative. The government plans to adopt these girls in order to give them a life.

I remember thinking when this was announced about who would openly give up their girl children to orphanages. Surely, this itself would mean a social stigma, and the foeticide would only marginally be affected.

Could this system from ancient Rome be put to good use in this programme in India?

It would have several benifits. The anonimity would encourage people to use the facility without fearing social criticism, saving the lives of many unborn girls. The government would probably find larger support of its adoption scheme from rural organizations and people. The girls would get a life, rather than an abortion for fear of being saddled with a female child.

It would become far more easy to crack down on providers of illegal abortions, and providers who may be doing so under local pressure/demand would be able to advise their clients of this more acceptable alternative.

Based on records of dates of the child being left and DNA tests, parents who change their mind and want to claim their daughters would still be able to identify them.

I suspect, though I may be wrong, that the refusal of sex determination tests, with this option as the plan of action would allow the family to form an emotional bond with the unborn child rather than thinking of it as genetic currency, and perhaps, just perhaps, they would love her even after she was born, and would not want her to grow up an orphan.

This is not so well written, so if anyone feels they could put it better, please feel free to suggest changes. I think this is an important issue in India.