DAY 14
St James Court Crowne Plaza Hotel, 51, Buckingham Place, London UK
May 1, 2008 10:22 pm (GMT)
I breathe heavy ! I think my asthma returns after a long remission. The timing and its difference from different zones begins to overpower me. I am sluggish and not optimum. But I miss the blog and the messages and the comments and my post and all my readers. So I gather strength and am back with you !!
Its been a 12 hr flight from Bangkok to London and within a short while after arrival its been the press in England and the promotion for ‘BhoothNath’. First a general conference, then each one of them wanting a one on one. I have always wondered why ?
Bangkok was equally pushed for time. IIFA announced activities. Premier of ‘Sarkar Raj’ at Bangkok on June 6th. A formal meeting with Her Royal Highness the Princess of Thailand – a gentle soft spoken sanskrit scholar, with a great love for India, the United Nations to plant a champa tree as token participation in their ‘Billion Tree’ programme – Bangkok being the head quarters for the UN in the entire South East. They were unaware that I was Ambassador for UNICEF, that I had worked with some degree of success in the polio eradication campaign in India, that I had been now asked by UN, NewYork to work for the female infanticide in India. As crowds collected in the premise, of Indians that worked there, a sudden interest gathered among the local officials. I paid my respects to a recently installed statue of Mahatma Gandhi and that was an end to the day.
Thailand and Thai’s dress predominantly in pink on Tuesday’s an in yellow on Friday’s. What a wonderful practice ! It is not a forced regimentation I think, but what a marvelous way to demonstrate unity and togetherness, fast disappearing from a cruel and disturbed universe of today !
Your messages pour in in overwhelming fashion and my frustration brims over too. I am unable to address each one individually. I will someday, despite Anupam’s(helloanupamsonu@gmail.com) disbelief that it is actually I that am writing my posts, or worse, even duly reading them.
There is constant and untiring comment by hundreds, on my efforts to clear media misreportage. They believe in my integrity and not that of the media. They are annoyed that I bother to challenge colleagues and others that comment on me, and I am annoyed that they are annoyed.
I need to justify my attitude, my stand of a million years. I have a medium to be able to do that. I have a medium that converses with me and my conscience. I may not be faithful to you as a viewer, an admirer or even as an antagonist, but I doubt if any would deny me my little moment with myself. I write what is within me, not to fill a page or to garner the admiration of an invisible mass of humans that show me abundant love, but to be able to talk to myself. If you listen I shall not despair, if you do not I will not question.
Allow me then to continue. Allow me to acknowledge what baban pawar (babanpawarmumbai@gmail.com) expresses that “I am the most fake person” and that my writing “irritates him” and that he wishes why “I do not just move to the mountains”. Allow me to acknowledge Prasad’s (pacapetown@gmail.com) ‘disgust’ at my ‘going to temples’ and to understand why he feels that in doing so I am any less than ‘a modern man’. Allow me to apologize for my in capability to write in Hindi, not because I do not want to, but because the software for that is being prepared for my Mac, an instrument 80% of most users do not work with. Allow me the temerity to address Salim Saheb and his comments through a Marathi paper that headline that ‘I take money to speak lies’ and that I am a victim of ‘bad and ill advised company’. Allow me to correct facts stated in Kunal M Shah’s article in the Mumbai Mirror of April 30, 2008 titled ‘Promises to keep…’, before his printed word becomes an inaccurate document of history. And allow me to comment on Shubha Shetty-Saha’s article in the DNA of April 25, 2008 titled ‘Whose award is it any way ?, with some pertinence, in order to honor the glorious and most dignified code of ‘unbiased’ journalism. Allow me… Just allow me that…
But…before that..some self praise ! Ha..Ha
There has been endless appreciation on my speech at Shobha De’s book release and demands for a personal copy. Thank you.. I attach it here much to the consternation of those readers who wish that my post would contain itself within the confines of a post card !!. Er..mm…!! These are early days and this, my little childhood birthday gift. You know what I talk of ?? As kids we looked forward to our birthdays and the birthday party, simply because we were so anxious to know what gifts our friends would bring. At times, even have the audacity to walk up to them and ask “What have you brought me !!”. Then when the guests had gone,
to open each gift with patience and delight and keeping the precious ones close to your bed as you turned in for the night – some under the pillow, for fear of them being pinched !! Oh !! Those wonderful years !! I feel much the same with my blog. So, please please please allow me my indulgence !
The speech -
Shobhaa Dé Superstar India; from Incredible to Unstoppable
Book Launch 29th of April
Shobha De, distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman .
It is an honour to be here. The honour is not only that of being asked to say a few words to commemorate the release of Shobhaa Dé’s present book. It is also a great honour to do so in her beloved home town, a city so deeply embedded in my own affections and habit of life for these last forty years. It feels right and good to be here.
Political correctness been taken care of. I can now dare to move on !
May I first wish Shobhaa the happiest of birthdays in her sixtieth year, an achievement of longevity in itself, although to see and hear her tonight, the mere accumulation of years is not what first springs to mind. Needless to say, it is obvious to anyone that Shobhaa Dé is not over yet, far from it.
Indeed, so all of us might hope to mark such rites of passage. Shobhaa herself tells us how she marks each day, watching the sun descend over South Mumbai into the Arabian Sea, acknowledging its blessing of life and the promise of another day to come – that is, when she is at home. Considering the contents of this book, she may mark each day in such a manner, but not every day in Mumbai, presumably watching the sun decline into many different horizons as she makes quiet prayer.
So in its sixtieth year of Independence might we do the same for India: count our blessings, know our strengths, admire the great achievements of our compatriots, as the sun sinks into the Arabian Sea and we also mark this rite of passage. These blessings are the promise of another dawn: our next decades and generations, our hope for a shared future.
I applaud Shobhaa’s achievement. I applaud India’s achievement. I applaud the applause of Shobhaa, I applaud your applause of Shobhaa’s applause that the dynamism and resourcefulness of the achievers of contemporary India are indeed extraordinary; our industrialists, people of commerce and the emerging greatness of the Indian middle class are blessings. Let us not forget the blessing of plenty – even surplus – provided by our veritable Stakhanovite agriculturalists – that is, those professional farmers amongst us. As Shobhaa notes, the present energetic youthfulness of our population is a blessing. The proven endurance, stability and justice of our political system, the largest democracy in the world, surely this is the greatest of blessings. For at its best, it will enrich us more than all else, economically, socially, culturally and intellectually. These are the promised outcomes of a virtuous body politic at the core of our nation. We count such blessed bounty and feel enriched in our first sixty years of Independence.
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And now, this evening, in the darkness as we await the dawn, there is time to speak of other things.
Shobhaa must be publicly defined according to her own wish, primarily as a writer. This must be respected. She writes: it is her active vocation, her creative labour. Her prolific works are truly extraordinary, spanning all the many shades between professional journalism and literature over a long and productive career. The writing is distinctly hers: an insatiable curiosity, chronically alert observational skills, playful juxtapositions, impassioned responses and a sheer joy of life. She brings graceful intelligence to the frivolous and mordant wit to the serious. She is eminently readable – she is, actually, beyond my powers of description. I humbly defer to her own.
But I was most interested to hear that this present book has already been noted for its ‘distinctly female voice’. By contrast, within its pages, Shobhaa expresses legitimate concerns about her professional achievements being colonised by her sex. As she says,
‘The minute you create separate categories for successful women, you are already insulting womankind. There are counter-arguments in abundance, and determined feminists will point out the inspirational/aspirational value of holding up such role models.’
Shobhaa is right. But Shobhaa, you are also right about something else as well: as much as we applaud and dwell upon our blessings now as we await the next dawn, we must balance our enthusiasms with careful analysis, acknowledge our weaknesses and then speak out against their ills. So I am going to try to be one of those determined feminists that you mention who disagree with you, abundantly but respectfully.
The reason is this: the insult is not that some people create a separate category for successful women, however well-intentioned that insult might be. The real insult is that even in the most enlightened cultures across the globe, there is still a separate category from that of a human being per se. It is the separate category of being a woman, whether successful or not. This is the insult. It is an insult to all of us, men and women alike. It is an insult to humanity.
All of us here tonight have been the beneficiaries of comparative privilege. Most of us here have probably grasped the potential of incipient privilege, and through endurance, intelligence and luck, we have flourished beyond its first blessing. Individual asymmetries can thus be largely overcome by individual achievement. But that does not mean the asymmetries aren’t still there. They remain with us, even if they merely cloud our thoughts. For others, these asymmetries are real, insuperable structural obstacles. They suffer.
The absurd and intolerable way in which humanity has been separated from each other by all manner of prejudice against difference is at its most shameful when it categorises half of the world’s population into a different, secondary and profoundly demeaning status from that of humankind.
In India, it is worse. Womankind is not even permitted the dignity of fifty per cent of our population. Over the last four decades in this country, the child sex ratio has been declining, with the sharpest fall from 1981 onwards. A 2001 census found there were 927 girls for every 1,000 boys in the age group of six years and below, compared to 945 in 1991. The male-female equilibrium will be lost within a few decades: this would not only be a future national disaster. It is now already a source of deep shame to us that ten million girls have disappeared at birth in the last twenty years alone.
Where have they gone?
We cannot blame economic poverty: it is Rajasthan and Punjab, two of India’s wealthiest states, where female infanticide is most prevalent. When we look for these lost daughters, sisters and mothers, do we there find our all-pervasive progress? When we look for them, do we there find our most revered cultural traditions in which we take such pride?
No. We find these lost souls murdered by a lethal alliance of new technological and medical advances – progress – and one of the most backward chauvinist traditions in our culture.
Thus we know our present strengths in how we are weak.
It is one of our greatest national weaknesses that we ignore this catastrophe to value females equally from birth in our culture and society, in our minds and in our lives. One of our greatest failures is that we have permitted it to worsen. There are those deserving of more or less opprobrium, but we are all to blame. It is our problem. India’s problem.
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Shobhaa Dé may indeed only happen to be in that separate category of womankind by the sheer whim of fate. And after all, it may be an irrelevant public identity to her, the identity of being a woman. I completely agree with her that for the present, claiming the category of humanity is infinitely more appealing. And thus she chooses to be primarily a writer, before a female one; a ‘voice’ before a female ‘voice’; to claim power, not ‘Woman Power’. She has a human right to be successful according to her own lights, as does anyone else, and I defend her claim absolutely.
But then I find that I must disagree with Shobhaa’s choice in order to follow her lead in critical judgement, because I want this harmful predicament of categories to change. Such change is not a promise, as we are promised another dawn over Mumbai after the passing of these few dark hours. The juggernaut of ‘progress’ will not deliver us this change of its own mindless accord. First we must acknowledge our failure. Then we must hope for change, and lastly, we must work strenuously for it together.
If we are to change, then this cannot be achieved merely through formal legislation and activism. We must accept that to change, we must change our mind. We must change our minds. We must re-think ourselves, without sterilising the richness of our language and culture with the extremities of political correctness. We must be more imaginative.
There isn’t a person in this room who would not wish to respect the basic dignity to life of another human being, regardless of sex, age, ethnicity or any other attribute of difference between one individual and another. There must be one ultimate category for all of us, wherein our most basic human rights and duties reside. Sixty years after our independence, it is now time for ‘humanity’ to be de-colonised.
Here, I must now defer to my betters for such a task.
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So I applaud Shobhaa now. I wish to honour her present choice with all due respect and admiration: I applaud her achievements as a professional writer, a serious writer, a creative writer, an astute cultural and political commentator.
But I will not await an unpromised dawn of change to arrive when females, girls, women, are no longer subject to slaughter at birth and direct and insidious discrimination throughout the rest of their lives. In that better future, it would not be problematic to acknowledge a true respect for Shobhaa Dé in her entirety, as all women of our country should be – whether successful or not – without a hint of any under-handed criticism by naming their womanhood, nor castrated as honorary men.
I pre-empt its arrival. As a gesture to hope, I honour Shobhaa in the entirety of her identity right now. I wish to publicly acknowledge the true extent of her achievement in contemporary India. In hope, so I applaud Shobhaa now, problematically and impatiently.
Yet after all, I believe that Shobhaa Dé already claims that unmistakable identity in this most recent book: within its pages, she insists on being entire. She thinks with her entirety and she entirely writes it. Of all her shrewd predictions for the future, I hope that this is how she proves to be most gifted with foresight.
Nevertheless, this is still not enough with which to honour her. I must also honour my conscience as an Indian, and as a man, in the present, for this particular dawn ahead that we will soon see rise to our East. I salute her achievements simply as a woman in India today. Regardless of any initial comparative privilege, she has met inveterate prejudice and active discrimination with endurance, resistance, courageous self-belief, and the sanity of good humour. Simply because it is the general fate of contemporary women in our nation, it does not belittle her achievement of transcendence.
Surely Shobha, the more achievements, the better.
Finding the name of the author in a larger font than that of the title of the book, is a conscious and brave beginning !
(Shobha De’s name is printed much larger than the title of the book !)
Ladies and Gentleman, thank you.
Relevant I hope, for the protection of the girl child and the need to address it.
I recall an incident. My father was once hospitalized at the Hinduja Hospital for a broken hip, due to an accidental fall. We had put him in one of the more exclusive floors of the Hospital, an area that had fewer rooms, but with large attached accompanying areas, to house relatives and visitors. A set of nurses looked after him. I stayed in the adjoining room to be constantly by his side. He was happy and comfortable with the care he was getting. In hospital one tends to get attached to the nursing staff, purely because they work so hard to make the patient feel at home, despite the strenuous circumstances. One morning his approved nurses did not come on duty. Instead, a male nurse started attending to him. He was disturbed by this. A change in curriculum at an advanced age does this to people. He inquired from the male nurse where the regular nurses were. With great hesitation the male nurse informed him that a ‘Baba’, a preacher with some following, had been admitted in the room opposite his and that he had wanted all female nurses to be removed from that floor. A somewhat puritanical practice that he and his followers believed in. My father, now not able to contain himself at this absurd discrimination, quietly turned to the male nurse and said ” Unse jaake poocho, ki woh jab is duniya mein aaye thae, to nikale kahan se thae !!( Go and ask him, that when he came into this world, where did he come out from !!)
I rush now to BBC, London and their Studios for a live interview. Long may the Indian Film Industry live ! BBC wanting to have a ‘third rate actor’ from the ‘third world’ on their programme??
The World changeth ! And changeth for good methinks !!
My love for all and more -
Amitabh Bachchan
