Do We Not Bleed? Reflections of a 21st Century Pakistani
Mehr Tarar
Aleph
Rs 599

Most people are aware of the scenario in present day Pakistan – a world of fanaticism and patriarchy where women are at risk. In Do We Not Bleed Mehr Tarar puts together real case histories of people, some of whom are well known and feature in the international media and some who are not so well known. The book is divided into sections and each is fitted to the story that Tarar chooses. The themes are those that we are familiar with from the papers – honour killing, blasphemy, misogyny and others – five of them divided between 19 chapters opening with the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, the man who gunned down Salman Taseer and was showered with rose petals. There is also the story of Qandeel Baloch who created a sensation with her posts and was strangled by her brother for dishonouring the family – an opinion not shared by their parents. Or there is the story of Ambreen, a girl who was set on fire simply because she refused to bow down meekly to society’s dictates.

Tarar writes in a short snappy style which keeps her stories fast paced and attention grabbing. Perhaps she is at her best when she is most personal, in the section entitled Family and Friends where she writes about her mother and her son Musa. Without a husband, she writes, she is not allowed to be the guardian of her son or have a passport made for him. However, Tarar is a divorcee and speaks openly about drinking alcohol in her book. She is therefore more fortunate that some of the women she writes about, the victims who were sacrificed at the expense of the men who destroyed them.

She also writes about the relationship between India and Pakistan which she writes, wittily, consists of Amitabh Bachchan, politics and Delhi, though among other things she does list cricket and Bollywood. A dialogue between the two sibling nations Tarar writes, is vital, though in the face of the recent Pulwama episode, unlikely – despite the fact that ordinary people on both sides of the border are against war and Imran Khan has cricketing links with India.

The book is undoubtedly grim, making the reader wonder how women manage to survive in Pakistan. Men manage to escape in the face of extreme crime with the authorities making statements to the effect of, the family has suffered enough, let’s not make them suffer more by killing this son/nephew/father. They also get away with affairs while hiding their spouses under hijabs and women who try to protest have a hard life if they are not killed – after all they are regarded as ‘pieces of furniture’.

Despite her subject Tarar manages to keep a balance avoiding unnecessary bad mouthing – for example she says that the attitude towards terrorism has changed in her country – and she does include her interviews with extraordinary Pakistanis like Haider Gillani. For Indians and especially women, the book could be a warning of where patriarchy and fanaticism could take the country if allowed to continue unchecked.

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According to WHO, India has made groundbreaking progress in recent years in reducing the maternal mortality ratio by 77%. India’s present MMR is apparently below the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target which puts the country on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of an MMR below 70 by 2030.

This is due to India’s concerted push to increase access to maternal health services.  State-subsidized demand-side financing like the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram allows all pregnant women delivering in public health institutions to free transport and no-expense delivery, including caesarian sections – has largely closed the urban-rural divide traditionally seen in institutional births. Overall, 75% of rural births are now supervised, as compared to 89% of urban deliveries.  Significant emphasis has also been laid on lessening the social factors that

determine maternal health. Women in India are more literate than ever, with 68% now able to read and write. They are also entering marriage at an older age, with just 27% now wedded before the age of 18. These factors alone have enabled Indian women to better control their reproductive lives and make decisions that reflect their own interests and wants.

However, there are pockets in the country where maternal health and the demand for boy babies over girls is still causing problems. Against this background comes a rather unusual novel written by Almas Hussain, Venus With a P*nis. The title is, of course, designed to shock and attract, not to mention raising transgender issues. However, this is the story of Rajan the young handsome black sheep from a family of doctors who is shocked by the death of a woman in his care into wanting to do something to prevent maternal deaths.

He takes himself to his old maidservant’s district of Kaatgram in Jharkhand dressed as a woman and accompanied by Titli, a friendly anaesthetist from his brother’s clinic. The disguise is required because – and this is true in many cases – the men will not allow male doctors near their women, especially where the delicate field of gynaecology is concerned. Rajan reincarnated as the beautiful Rajani manages to make headway through a combination of luck and love. Along the way, the author brings in issues like rape and adoption which reflect on pregnancy, though many of her women are more fortunate than others. A rape victim in the book is lucky to find a young man willing to marry her if she has a dowry and someone else who is willing to adopt the twins she carries. Abused women find an ex-rapist willing to set up a centre where they can learn self-defence and find counselling.

There are echoes of Mrs Doubtfire and other such instances where men dress up as women but for the most part, the story is a different one and love, sacrifice and betrayal sum it up quite aptly.

Venus with a P*nis ticks the right boxes for readability and atmosphere, good family connections and romance but what sets it apart is the concept behind the book. A young doctor’s wish to do something for women against all odds and the fact that India is a country plagued by a shortage of doctors, hypocrisy and lynch mobs. Of course, Hussain writes that India is close on the heels of Nigeria in the matter of maternal deaths which may not find favour with government sources given the current figures. Given the fact that Hussain uses a secluded district with a landed family running it for her setting, certain things may be overlooked. Those interested in rural society dynamics, male-female relations and health care will find the book worth going through.

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The Lives of Freda

Andrew Whitehead
Speaking Tiger INR 499/

A Hollywood star and a Buddhist nun – a combination that seems rather strange unless you consider Richard Gere. In this case the movie star is Kabir Bedi, famed for cameos in the James Bond Octopussy and the Buddhist nun his mother Freda. Neither he nor his sister approved of his mother’s devotion to the Buddhist cause and felt that she had abandoned her children but nonetheless his mother was adamant.

The  Lives of Freda  outlines the life of an unusual woman, a English woman who married a Sikh fellow student whom she met in Oxford at a time when interracial marriages were frowned on in the British Empire. Freda’s marriage was ultimately accepted by her mother but she struggled to overcome her foreign roots in the Indian subcontinent. She and Baba Pyare Lal Bedi formed an intellectual partnership publishing magazines and analytical essays while being staunch communists together. They lived in Berlin while Hitler was coming to power and then they were thrown into the turmoil of Partition, more so because Bedi’s family home was in Lahore. As a journalist she wrote a column on women’s issues though some people said her viewpoint was more English than Indian.

They rubbed shoulders with political figures and were both thrown in jail by the British for joining the cause of Indian independence – though in Freda’s case she was one of Gandhi’s first satyagrahis and one of the first non-Indian women to be jailed for her role. What emerges is Freda’s dedication and her ability to carry out her publishing work, her politics and raise her children – though there were gaps between her first born and the other two, she lost a child to dysentery in the middle. Freda organised gardening groups in jail and when she was released and she and her husband moved to Kashmir. There she involved herself with woman’s organisations trying to spread the cause of sanitation, pre birth and post birth care and deal with rape victims. She also, along with her eldest son Ranga, ended up cleaning bloodstains in a church in Baramulla where the congregation had been massacred. Ranga at 12 was carrying secret messages in his schoolbooks to the Kashmiri undercover agents while his mother was totally unaware of the fact.

From this is was a small step to caring for the Tibetans who flooded to India  in the wake of the Dalai Lama. They were housed in refugee camps and Freda pleaded with Nehru to be allowed to work for their cause. Andrew Whitehead is an appropriate choice for biographer since he spent a great deal of time in Delhi working as a journalist and bringing up his family. He goes into great detail where her work for the Tibetan refugees is concerned, notably her association with the various lamas and the school she set up for young incarnate lamas – many Buddhist nuns in fact saw her as an incarnation of White Tara.

The book draws on papers belonging to Kabir Bedi and highlights Freda’s independence and sense of self. Despite being British she saw herself as Indian and struggled for that identity. She was in fact upset when she was given an award for the work she had done as a foreigner for India. Ultimately her personal life is slightly glossed over – issues like her relationship with her husband who was a womaniser but nonetheless loved her dearly, her separation from the Communist cause or why she chose to become a nun without telling her children will remain somewhat of a speculation. Also the fact that despite clinging to her Indian identity, everyone who met her in her Buddhist incarnation commented on how much the Memsahib she was. What remains unquestioned is her sincerity and dedication to the cause of women, freedom and spiritual matters.

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Puffin India  INR 199/

The Indian Government has been talking about ending open defecation and building a toilet in every village home so that women do not have to go out into the fields at night and Narendra Modi reaffirmed this commitment last November on World Toilet. The habit of open defecation, part from being unhygienic was triggering kidnaps and rapes in many cases. However, the matter of toilets for urban girls in schools and other public places still remains an issue. In I Need to Pee, Neha Singh brings the matter to the forefront with the story of Rahi, a very normal little girl who likes drinking coconut water, orange juice, soda and other kinds of fluids. She does this very often on buses, trains and while travelling, driving her mother around the bend.

Through the story, Singh highlights the problems little girls from the cities face when the loos they are presented with are stinky and wet. Rahi, however, has a book of useful quotes that she brings out on appropriate occasions, forcing people to let her have her own way and getting them into trouble. Rahi browbeats bus drivers, Sikh doormen at five star hotels and a woman determined to fleece her at a public toilet.No one asks to look at the book and quite obviously it was cooked up by the little girl herself.

She also describes the toilet of her dreams, an ‘Indian’ style dry toilet that she encounters in her aunt’s house in the North Eastern State of Meghalaya where poop is covered by mud kept in the toilet for the purpose. Singh’s text is accompanied by quirky illustrations by a Bangalore based team that makes the book delightful to flip through.

However, it is obvious that this version of the story is for little girls only and while it performs an important task, perhaps another book needs to be done for little boys who are also open to worries about toilets – not to mention the recent news item of a child who was murdered in a school toilet. And, while dry toilets may be hygienic, can they replace the western style potty that dominates most urban Indian homes?

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in India by 

Rs 599/

Review by Anjana Basu

The situation of the Indian domestic is an awkward one. Maids from the Eastern regions are in demand in the more affluent parts of India, but the average Indian employer has no notion of how to behave with a domestic in a 21^st  century world. The concept of domesticity has been part and parcel of life since the days of the landowners and their great houses, though before that, of course, there were the slaves who worked to build the Pyramids and other similar labourers. In the West domestic workers were gradually phased out and apartments that could be self-serviced were built.

Indian homes, however, remain different. They have stone or marble floors resistant to vacuum cleaners, they are plagued by dust and grocery shopping still necessitates sending someone to haggle for fresh produce in slushy markets stepping over fish scales. Add to that the fact that the difference between the haves and have-nots is vast in cities like Delhi.

Journalist Tripti Lahiri takes Delhi as her base and narrates the different stories of the maids who go there to work. The main issue she writes is the treatment meted out by the employer. Maids who are sent by go-betweens may or may not strike it lucky and there is always an undercurrent of domestic abuse. Many employers think that they have a right to physically ill-treat those who work for them because the women come from a different social circumstance. Because of the demand, Delhi has a formal maid’s agency called The Maids Company where the women who apply are put through formal training sessions and after the training is completed are introduced to prospective employers in a two-way interview process.

Lahiri points out factors that persist even though the days of democracy are supposedly in force. The domestic usually sits on the floor while the employer has the comfort of a chair or sofa – to be fair of course, most village folk are used to squatting on the ground while urban dwellers have lost the habit entirely. Lahiri follows the lives of many of those professionally trained. At one point there was a demand to raise salaries and give the maids a day off – that demand fell through simply because while it might have worked for those who held high powered jobs in the capital, others across the country simply could not afford it.

A maid’s salary can stretch from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000 or beyond, depending on who she works for. In most cases they are treated as the outsiders and in case of a theft, or a murder, domestics are the first to be accused. Their rooms are cramped, especially in the new apartment buildings and quite often food is dealt out to them and they are expected to eat after their employers have finished dining. Lahiri tells the stories of  how Fullin from Athgama in rural Jharkhand, Lovely from a tiny neighbourhood in Bengal’s Malda, Mae from Kokrajhar and a Santhali girl from Annabiri, in the heart of Maoist country—find themselves in the nation’s most powerful city, working for its richest people. Of course, they are lucky – many other girls promised dream jobs find themselves in the hands of traffickers.

The anecdotes in this book are a mix of dashed hopes and opportunity – Lahiri’s employers cover tycoons and politicians as well as everyday people, though everyday employers are not so exciting. It is the difference between the refugee and the tycoon seen at close quarters that makes the story. Once upon a time the rules for the memsahib and the maid were clearly set out and understood. Today there is a crossover happening – domestics are encouraging their children to move up in the social sphere by finding white-collar jobs – and the rules are no longer so clear. There are maids who will refuse to work for Indians, find ex-pats more reasonable and generous.  There are also employers with consciences experimenting with different ways to employ – through the division of labour in a few cases.

Lahiri tells her stories with a journalist’s flair but has no clear cut solutions to the issue. Though she has chosen Delhi because that is the one place where the maid’s uncertain role in society is best highlighted and where experiments may lead to a new order.

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If you are a voter, or a group wishing to convince your government that the problem of hunger can be solved financially and technically, this handbook can be used as core reference material. It is factual, readable and up to date.

How to end hunger

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