sup

Internetz, I'm about to share a secret. Only a handful of people have heard it so far and that's mostly when I'm tipsy. Please, nobody tell my parents.

I finally decided (discovered? It feels like that time I walked into a pole and hurt my nose) what I want to do when I grow up: I want to be Leo Tolstoy. I did not actively reach out for this information. It came to me in a moment of absolute delirium/despair when I was writing an essay last semester. That was an earth-shattering moment, for reasons beyond this one.

What I'm really saying is that I've decided to reclaim my childhood dream of being a writer. It's one which reality tugged away from me in late primary school, because a) I couldn't see it fitting into my life with the kind of straight-laced engineer/doctor/IT family I have and b) I realised eventually that I never really liked to write, just wanted to be a writer. I wanted to sit at the window gazing absently at monsoon-swept streets (I had this weird romantic concept of monsoons back in the day) thinking heart-breaking, poetic thoughts. There would be a hot chocolate on the sill (I drank a lot of hot chocolate back in the day) and a cheap, chipped pen twirling nonchalantly at my fingertips. But... I actually hated writing so even in my pipe dreams that pen never touched paper.

Et alors, Tolstoy is the best.

So here's the thing: I have not much experience with anything but essays (which either do really well or not at all), strongly doubt my abilities in fiction, don't have a flowing beard, and uhh, I don't have the time/space. Creative work needs time and space but my parents will push me to get a job after this, then some day a husband... everything will go down the toilet after that. I've tossed up the idea of being a vile gold-digger but writers are meant to be tortured souls grovelling in crummy public houses, so that won't work at all. I want to do a writing course next year but: I'll feel guilty about doing something so... woolly while bludging off parents, + ffs what kind of real writer does a writing course? That's just silly.

Here's the positive: I do like writing now, and I am a fairly eccentric person.

Racism and the university

This is very vaguely based on a workshop at a shitty student conference that I was going to run. I didn’t because something made me very angry and I pulled out.

Let’s rewind to the point when I got involved in activism. One of the colleges at my university decided to have a British colonialism themed party. Exclusively sub-continental waiters, dressed in Indian clothes served some of the most elite white kids in the country. I was livid. And the blood was going to boil out of my skin when I realised how fucking poorly it was being addressed by the university, which wanted to cover it up from the media. I felt powerless behind a facebook screen (where I was venting all my anger), and that’s what prompted me to join student politics. Fun.

One of the first things I did was attend a meeting of the anti-racism collective. It was awful- with the exception of two people they were all self-important white kids. Maybe I’m being a little uncharitable here, but at the time I was quite angry and that was exactly what they struck me as. They weren’t discussing the Raj party at all, but focused solely on two issues- the NT intervention and refugees. That’s because, the anti-racism collective on campus only focuses on the NT intervention and refugees. Both of these are issues I feel very strongly about, but racism in Australia is NOT isolated to these instances! I remember talking about racism on campus at one point, it was totally brushed off- "like, what racism on campus?"

(And then I joined the Greens, then Grassroots and the rest is history)

In essence, there is nobody on campus actually addressing racial injustice (properly) and as far as I’m concerned, to ignore injustice is the same as perpetuating it. The university is a very important site of political activism so this sucks :-( Even the political left only pay lip-service to the endemic problem of racism.

I think this is a part of a larger cultural problem in Australia. We’ve all been fed with ideals, since school of being the land of the “fair go” and to contest this image is taboo. Hell, it's taken me a while to even be able to say to myself that Australia is a fundamentally racist country. I’ve been watching a few of the videos of racist bus rants and reading about racism in the news. Despite the increasing frequency, there is never acknowledgement in the reportage of an underlying systemic problem: it’s always fobbed off as one raving lunatic.

Additionally, it needs to be noted that racism is not perpetrated by white people alone, just as sexism isn’t just the fault of men. In my experience, most explicit racism is horizontal. There’s this idiotic idea that being a PoC legitimates bigotry against other PoC. I have never heard a white person use the term “fob” and it’s other Indians, not white people, who have made me feel the need to “edit” my ethnic-ness. Also, the Anti-Racism Collective is just a bunch of people who just meet on the grass once a week, why aren’t there more PoC involved? White kids can’t entirely be blamed for their white-ness. Now that I've gotten to know some of them better,  I understand that they are very well-meaning and good people. It doesn't change the fact that the whole situation is messed.

There’s another important site of racism that’s regularly overlooked: (drumroll………) academia. In the late 1960s, a number of women realised that there was a huge vacuum in the political and academic left that hadn’t engaged with the position of women. The other, more prolific ideology of oppression at the time was Marxism and so they tried to position women somewhere with relation to class structures. This led to some of them trying to subsume patriarchal relations within Marxist class, others to see it entirely outside capitalism, and yet others to consider the relationship in a much more fluid sense (ok this is incredibly crude version but that’s the essence of it). In any case, the fight to bring feminism within the purview of academia, as a legitimate subject of discussion was not easy but it eventually carved its own niche in the social sciences. Feminist analysis today is incredibly nuanced, diverse and well-theorised. No such struggle happened for academic racism, except, like some vague consciousness which started to seep in by the 80’s: "iz bad, omg dun do it”.

This year, one of my courses for Honours required us to delve into The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen. Many of the anecdotes he uses and many of the philosophers he quotes are Indian. To my own horror, my first reaction was to assume that they wouldn’t be legit.

After I noticed this HORRIBLE thought process, I started to reflect about my overall experience at university. It’s a common topic of debate that the mass media sucks at representing ethnic people. Well, academia is bad too. In all these years of study, almost everything I’ve read has been the story told by dead, white guys. They are the Protectors and Producers of Important Ideas, for all the world to follow. Philosophy is Kant, Hobbes, Locke. Economics is Smith, Marx and Keynes, though I guess, we did once touch on some Latin authors. In all the units of Government and International Relations I did, I don’t even think a single major theorist was non-white (except maybe in the Politics of China). The more I think about it, the more frustrating it is, because I’ve always held academia as a kind of enlightened bubble outside the drudgery and ignorance of the "real world”: it ain’t.

Anyway I need to finish this and do some real work. It may all sound relatively petty. But, the fact is that small, insidious things like this are what snowball into more extreme oppressions like refugees and NT intervention. I mean, if academia- a tool to redeem oppression, is perpetrating and conditioning people against recognising the legitimacy of non-Western perspectives… we’re fucked.

EDIT:
So uh... I forgot about the PoC discussion thing oops

TONY ABBOTT AND VOLDEMORT

J.K. Rowling thinks Voldemort could be likened to Hitler and Stalin. Alfonso Cuaron, director of The Prisoner of Azkaban  draws similarities with Saddam Hussain and George Bush because they "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power" besides a disregard for the environment and love for manipulating people. (courtesy Wikipedia- shut up it's not an essay)
 

Wrong. The character of Tom Marvolo Riddle, who prefers to go by the name Voldemort or not be named at all, is unbeknown to the author, actually an oracle of Australia's destiny. If the following makes you anxious... well, yeah. 

~It came to me in a dream~

VOLDY	LORD TONE
   SPOT THE DIFFERENCE	     LOL JK
Hates: muggles and mudbloods	Hates: boat people
... but born of a muggle father	... but came to Australia on a boat
Studied: Hogwarts, encountered (legend of) Salazar Slytherin	Studied: erri1 says USyd looks like Hogwarts, encountered Santamaria
Devilishly handsome as a boy	Probably a philanderer back in the day (the sleaziness persists)
Tried to overtake the world  books 1-4: failed	Tried to overtake Autralia in 2010: failed
Tried again book 5: succeeded	Tried again ’13: succeeded
Most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years	Worst PM ever
Has no conscience, feels no remorse, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself. (except Nagini)	Has no conscience, feels no remorse, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself. (nope, no exceptions)
Surrounded by many who adore him but loves none	Those poor daughters... read THIS
Bellatrix	Bishop
Awkward hug	Awwwwwkkwarddd kiss
EGOMANIAC	EGOMANIAC

But where is Auspol's 'boy who lived'? edit: other things strike me but I don't know how to change the table. Tony was SRC prez, Voldy was Head Boy. Tony won a Rhodes scholarship, Voldy was the most talented pupil to attend Hogwarts. Voldy can fly unsupported, Tony wears budgie smugglers (and budgies can fly). Tony has ASIO, Voldy is an accomplished legilimens.

Sonam Kapoor

That I have no close Indian friends to discuss Hindi films, may be the biggest tragedy of my life. Then again, I guess it could be a good thing because my eclectic tastes don't fall in line with most people. I don't want to have to defend my choice in movies, like I do political opinions.

It doesn't really go down well when I tell people I hate Ranbir Kapoor. I think his face is stupid, most of his movies are stupid and while I'm at it, so is his whole family... except his mum. I like her. I'm balked at when I say Karan Johar is a hypocritical, homophobic pretentious wanker with no talent and much ego. I like all of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's films except Black. Priyanka annoys me more than anyone, ever.

I would almost say I have a girl-crush on Sonam Kapoor, but for the fact that I sometimes feel I am her. Am I a creep? Yes I am a creep, sorry.

1) I love her face.

She doesn't resemble a porcelain doll like Deepika (pictured)

Hi Deepika.

 but she's earthy, in her own way.

2) I love her movies.

Most of Sonam's roles have like actually been roles, not freaking props (like Deepika). Zoya in Raanjhanaa is the most well-written, executed character I have ever, ever seen on screen. I am probably even a teeny bit like her myself, which is... disturbing, to say the least. Sonam made her so human.

3) I think I can see into her soul.

Sonam Kapoor says some very cringeworthy things. She seems really obnoxious in some interviews and in others she seems like she has no brain at all but I don't think she's actually a bimbette. The overconfidence and depracating tone at times, is a shield for a fragile sense of self-worth that flashes occasionally. That Omar Qureishi guy is always a massive prick so she cackles incessantly and says things that make me want to tear my hair out.

Something clouds her and she can't give a measured response in these situations. I know this, because it happens to me. It's worst when I'm around someone I like, because then I'm blank and to make up for that I scramble for whatever bullshit floats at the surface of my mind and... yeah. At other times, likely when she's in a happier place, Sonam is so thought-provoking. If a girl says stupid things sometimes and says clever things at other times, I'm inclined to believe the latter is more reflective.


 4) I love her CLOTHES!

I have a problematic relationship with the institution of fashion. Obviously consumerism and unsustainability is not my favourite thing but that can be circumvented. I just really hate the concept of expressing "who you are" by the fabric on your body. I hate the worldview where your physical self has some bearing on your identity. It becomes especially irritating when people express "individuality" through the same, mass-manufactured clothes that change every season.

Buuuut... I love clothes very much. I love my crazy purple lipstick I just bought. I love my navy blue dress I wear every second day. I covet anything, ever with flowers. It's not really about "me" though. It's just a simple girlish delight which sweeps through when I see my beloved peacock earrings catch the light (if you don't know what I'm talking about you might want to reconsider your status as my friend). It's the sound of rustling silk and the caress of soft cotton. When I get dressed up, it's almost an impersonal experience. I'm decorating a reflection in the mirror, not me. The point is in making myself look nice, not in looking nice. Not for myself and not for anyone else. That is why I've been known to turn up at 21st parties in jeans and a fleecy jumper.

This dress! And with those shoes!

Sonam's clothes are flippin' glorious. She has such a keen eye for beauty. It's actual beauty type beauty, not "style" or being "interesting". Her clothes are an outlet for creativity and it's not a look-at-mah-Jimmy-Choos-type thing (LIKE DEEPIKA, OMG). There's no statement involved except "squeeeee, this is fun". I love that.

ooooooh

4) She's a person

Her answers are never manicured, simpering (Dippy!) or polished. Sonam is basically without extraneous sophistry. She's naive and she's awkward.

I like her.

I think you may have noticed that I don't like Deepika Padukone. If she hadn't completely butchered the Tamil language in Chennai Express I might have tried to be less irked by her complete lack of talent or originality or... anything, really. hmph

the last few days

My life has been a bit of a whirlwind since last Friday.

Kevin Rudd announced his announcement. After I clued on to what was going on (inebriated, 3am that night/morning) something exploded inside me. I spent the night pacing my room before I turned to my laptop and the world in it.

Like everyone else, I too changed my profile picture to “seeking asylum is a human right". I changed my cover photo and I made a status post on the issue. Then, I spent ten minutes 'liking' every other relevant profile picture, cover photo and status. I wrote a tumblr post. This is all behaviour I would usually consider rather tacky but it seemed like the only thing to do! After a semester of idleness, I even decided to write for Honi Soit. In my email pitching the article, I apologised that I hadn’t written all year- because I "forgot I was a reporter". That's not true. I've been too scared... but in that moment I was so emotionally overwhelmed that all my hesitation dissolved (it's come back but I'm committed now eee).

(In between, other stuff happened including: watching  Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, spending lots of time with my darlingest nephews, bumping into half my extended family separately at Aroma festival, rally in support of Jonathon Moylan, being asked out by random Georgian tourist on the street who now keeps pestering me, some *cough* study)

A few days ago, I went to the city with a pair of young, recently resettled refugee girls. Their story is awful but they requested me not to repeat it to other Afghan people (after I already had, oops! ERASE IT FROM YOUR MINDS). Just trust me, It’s bad. I spent the morning teaching them how to get to the rally on Sunday. It was the first time they'd been out in public since they lived in Indonesia. It was also the first time catching public transport! They didn’t know anything about Sydney, except that it’s a city in Australia and it has an Opera House (?).

The girls weren’t impressed with the suburb in Western Sydney, where they're housed : “it’s very quiet". When we got on the bus I could feel them watching me very closely. "You must give money to the driver?" “Do you have to tell him where you’re going?" At the train station, they not-so-surreptitiously studied every person who crossed our path. Sometimes their innocent curiosity got a little awkward: “There are so many Chinese people!" they noted loudly. We walked through Wynyard, Pitt Street, George Street and Hyde Park. They loved it.

I felt for a long time (Because they’ve had a terrible past? Because they’re wearing hijabs?) like I needed to guard or protect them. I really, really, reeeeeally didn’t. These girls have seen and done ten times more that I ever will. They have spent their whole lives buffeted from one shitty predicament to another. By the end of our excursion, their quiet strength left me astounded.

At 17 and 18, they are essentially in charge of fending for a family which more than doubles mine. They need to work out housing, schooling, food, everything. Their proficiency in English is remarkable, within just a year. The older one isn’t allowed to do anything for the foreseeable future but she’s determined to acquire skills to assist her family. She was particularly insistent on learning how to drive. I need to find her a cheapish instructor (anyone?).

I was so impressed that they found their way home alone: catching a train, a bus and then walking a few streets. That might sound silly but each of those steps is a HUGE deal if you have absolutely no familiarity with the concept of public transport. Inundated with information and technology as we usually are, it's impossible to imagine how vast the world must seem to these girls. When I met them again at the rally on Sunday, they had made plans to go to visit their only friend at Silverwater. I don't even know where that is.

The family used to be on Manus Island. I tried to ask what it was like but they were hesitant to say much beyond “it is such a very terrible place". Later, I mentioned it again in passing but they could only insist that it was really, "so terrible". The girls were able to open up about real horrors in their past before they came to Australia... but this clamped them up. That is terrifying.

On Saturday, I went to Villawood. When I arrived, everyone was intently sketching someone I hadn't met before. I joined in, pushing a blue biro across lined paper.
"so uh, this is what my article is about… do you have something to say?"
"the Australian image of us is not correct"
"yeah uhh, can you say why?"
"we are not like that!"
It was pretty hard but I got the hang of it eventually. What they told me blew my mind. I only hope that I can do it justice in the article. edit: maybe you liked the article but I still don't think I did justice. I lost all my notes :(


more edit:  the following was meant to be in the paper but didn't make it ( 'twas for the better)

The threat that refugees apparently pose oscillates between xenophobic concerns of national security, to making us “too full”, to what must be an attempt at human compassion: the threat invited into their own lives when venturing across the Indian Ocean. Jessica Watson did the same thing in 2011 for leisure but she was youthful and blonde so… Kevin Rudd made her Young Australian of the Year. Narratives which nonetheless do acknowledge the incredible challenges asylum seekers have overcome, sit comfortably alongside portrayals of opportunistic, dole-bludging leeches.

Amidst the clamour, it seems to pass largely unnoticed that the various images conjured of asylum seekers completely contradict each other- even from the same side. Sometimes, it’s in the very same sentence: Kevin Rudd claimed that that his Pacific solution version 3.0 addresses needs for “border security and orderly migration” (protecting us from them) but also “fulfilling our legal and compassionate obligations under the refugees convention” (we need to protect them). In any case, that is a sick, strange fulfillment of compassionate obligation… politicians say the darnedest things!

At the heart of our confusion is a caricature of the asylum seeker, whose voice has drowned.

Because journalists are actively prevented by the government from entering detention centres, refugees with histories and personalities are melted into a puddle of statistics. Regardless of whether political predilections conjure images of evil “boat people” or innocents withering behind bars, this means what we are presented is an abstracted caricature. It invites benign, paternalistic attitudes from some sections of society and from others, resentment against the “burden”. Such reductionism actually holds asylum seekers at the periphery of discourse. It’s all about us. I too, was amazed when I realised these people have actual faces with names. They brush their teeth in the morning and laugh at my bad jokes. This is what terrified me the most: that refugees are real people, not victims of a sweeping Shakespearean tragedy.

The absolute worst things that fling me into the depths of despair: this is a serious list.

(I wrote this in the middle of essay season... can you tell?)

• When I forget to water the plants for months on end and then I sit on the swing in my backyard. It's haunted by their lingering souls, parched and unloved.
• When Tony Abbott is almost definitely going to be PM.
• When I want to tell people that I love Tolstoy more than life itself but can't because I haven't finished War and Peace and really, the only book of his that I've actually read is Anna Karenina
• When I realise how many basic words I still struggle to spell, like vacuum (one c? two?)
• When I imagine small puppies falling in the gap between the train and platform (every time I get off)
• When the ticket machine swallows my ticket at Town Hall and won't give it back. I paid $2.50 for that!
• When I get the grouchy old woman driving the 642X though I was expecting Rory
• When I procrastinate essays
• When I think about what we're doing to the environment but the zombie apocalypse (which will make it better by destroying all the factories) hasn't come yet
• When my mum tells me to clean my room
• When my mum doesn't tell me to clean my room... and does it herself *worst* 
• When I imagine one of my grandparents dying and not being there

Less serious problems:

• When I realise Changi airport doesn't excite me any more and I must be growing up
• When I come to terms with the fact that I will never have pretty feet. Feet are really important to me.
• When I wonder if my friends will all scatter with the wind in a few years and get jobs in far off places. Or, if I will. 
• When I really want to be Vandana Shiva but I can't because she already exists GAH
• When the alternative to Tony is Julia.
• When the jasmine flowers wilt so quickly.
• When I listen to Adele. I wasn't feeling angsty before... and suddenly I'm cursing everyone who ever broke my heart (mostly, fictional characters in books)

This post will probably grow with time. I hope you have a good day.

Da Police

When I was 14 years old, I watched an Indian film called Rang De Basanti with a tribe of family friends. I didn't like it very much at the time (spoiler: everyone dies). I burst into tears during this scene of a peaceful candlelight vigil that the police thunder into, indiscriminately beating protestors to break it up. I remember congregating outside the theatre afterwards, the old people denouncing the scene as ridiculous, far-fetched in vilifying the police. They thought that this scene diminished the integrity of the rest of the film.

I never, ever thought that I would come so close to this brutality in real life, repeatedly. Certainly not on my own campus fighting for of all things, decent conditions for university staff. That's just nowhere near hard-core enough to justify today.

It was a harrowing day at the protests, at times shoved and manhandled by the police. I became more upset when I came home to my mother glued to a television screen featuring slightly biased reportage of the event. Leaving aside media bias, the violence was awful. To me, triply so because it featured people I know well and like very much. It seemed to affect my mum too, who turned on me and reproached me for over an hour about my involvement with activism, telling me to mind my own business and just study. She pointed out someone on TV with a piercing, who I've never even met. "OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE KIND OF PEOPLE YOU'RE HANGING AROUND?" I let her overreaction slide because after all, it must be quite frightening and foreign. Considering that in school if I ever got a detention (never did, for the record) that would be a matter of eternal shame to the family, or at least for the next three generations, it's a pretty huge deal to see me potentially caught up on the wrong side of the police. It doesn't help that I once told my parents ASIO might have a file on me.

Every time I try to speak to someone about this, I become completely incoherent and choked. In the interest of finishing my readings, I'm going to pour everything out here and let it land in a messy puddle of despair, anger and bitter disappointment. My faith in (most of) society is hacking its way below ground level.

So, as a collection of teenagers and twentysomethings with signs, chanting slogans about FUNDING EDUCATION (!?), apparently we are threatening enough to justify calling the riot cops ON HORSES. I used to get prickly when I heard the phrase ACAB. It has taken me a long time to understand that the police force is really an inherently unjust institution. I want to wring my hands in despair when I realise there is no mechanism to hold them to account. The state won't protect people against the violence of the state. The police nearly choked someone, they broke someone's leg. Last time they punched people in the face, dragged them down stairs, made five unwarranted arrests. Their response to the situation, in every case that I have been witness to, is hugely disproportionate. They have incited every instance of violence. Besides this, I know of a friend who they winked at and today I was actually catcalled. Being objectified at any time is bad but by policemen on ego trips actually makes me sick.

It doesn't even matter that we film them, nothing even happens. It hasn't happened for the thousands of Indigenous people who have died in lock-up and it won't now. It becomes truly horrific when this meets the sweeping social consensus that they are "the good guys", just "doing their job". Since when did a "job" redeem such barbarity? People's reaction against demonstrating dissent, even on an issue that most people agree on (outside the Labor government), is scary. Once, someone (who got a really, really high ATAR) even told me that it was out of my place to raise a squeak because it's Spence's university to do what he wants. I don't even know where to begin with a statement like that.

I thought I lived in a more sophisticated world than what has been revealed to me over the last few months. Much disappointment.

I came back from India yesterday.

I know I said to a lot of people that I'd be home today... but everyone knows that I'm not very good at things like numbers. Sorry.

At first, I was just LALALA HOME! BED! SLEEP! because these were very exciting things after a harrowing and uncomfortable plane trip. It was only after I woke up this morning that the familiar post- holiday depression started to creep in. I tried to push it away with a 67th viewing of Hum Aapke Hai Koun, which is essentially a 3 1/2 hour long wedding video with lots of beautiful smiling people who are just happy all the time. I thought it worked but after turning it off, the wave of depression hit again with redoubled force and a plaintive voice was now crying in my head: "whyyyy doesn't my life look like theirs???". I took to restlessly flipping though the books I bought in India because they have a bookish smell that makes me happy. I know I'm crazy. I just finished watching Roman Holiday (ahh, Audrey!) but now it's back to square one. Does it count as nostalgia if it only happened a few days ago?

A few people have asked me today, "how's India?" or "what's it like?". It's not a simple question. What do I say? Full of people? Big? It's particularly odd to answer because having spent over two years' worth of my life there in holidays, I'm not exactly a tourist. Most the salient differences have become normalised to me, so what I find to be noteworthy probably isn't what you want to hear. I'm not really interested in giving you the ridiculous exoticised version, though I am sometimes tempted to write something sarcastic about the natives in their colourful costumes that struggle to keep their chins up in the face of crippling poverty and the caste system... but this is the internet and lots of people won't get it.

This trip was only 2 weeks long and we spent all of it in Chennai, where my grandparents live. Chennai is a pretty sleepy city and Besant Nagar, the area they live in, weirdly resembles Cherrybrook in some ways.  I love it though- going back to slow, stable Besant Nagar is the most comforting thing in the world and for some reason, it makes my "real" life feel frivolous and plastic in comparison. It offers me everything I need: food,  freedom and very good bookstores.

This is what I do every day:

I wake up, eat breakfast and then grate coconuts. This activity is filled with much more adventure than it sounds like, because of the lethal apparatus involved. If I don't pay attention, I could slit my wrists. I do random bits of housework to impress my grandparents and then I go upstairs, here:

 and paint and read books. I return downstairs for lunch and then read for a while, till everyone's taking their afternoon nap when I slip out and roam the streets like the vagrant I am. I go to the beach, buy food, buy clothes/jewellery/books, explore uncharted territory. All my purchases (and including food, there was a LOT of them) came to less than $200 over three weeks.

On a daily basis, I buy a coconut and drink from it. This is partly because I'm addicted to the stuff and partly because I'm in love with the lady who sells it. She is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life, with a willowy frame, lush hair and deer-like eyes. She sits in the dirt but she is always poised and elegant. Somehow, she's even graceful when she raises a sickle over her head and roughly swings it down to hack a coconut open. I rarely approach her before 12:00 am because until then she's engrossed in the newspaper and the way she pores over it, I feel like it's on the brink of swallowing her up.  She is also extremely unself-conscious and transparent, which is something that's probably true of most people there. She has a gorgeous 4-5 year old daughter and a stupid-looking husband who sleeps a lot.

In the late evenings, sometimes I accompany my grandmother to the park next to her flat. I love this park so much, not only because it's pretty but also for the motley of people that fill it. It's usually being circled by kids from the neighbouring karate school in bright, white uniforms. They have to pause often to respectfully edge past the strolling old men who will hardly bother to keep to one side. Manual labourers sometimes chitchat around the pond but they usually move on quickly. There are little kids being hilarious on the swings and their parents (mothers, mostly) gossiping in the corner. My favourite part is the row of benches occupied exclusively by toothless old ladies in fine silk saris (including my own paati) who silently watch over the whole scene with enlightened smiles.

At night I read, eat, sleep. Repeat.

Villawood

A friend texted me two days ago, asking if I wanted to visit Villawood detention centre with him.  Almost without a second thought, I said yes...  I was quite cavalier about it. In that moment, it was just an adventure out West, something to make me think about how much Australian politics sucks *facepalm* and then I'd come skipping merrily home.

I'm still coming to terms with the experience. Tonight is the second night in a row that I haven't been able to sleep properly because my mind's just been whirring and whirring. In the silence of the night it whirs harder and louder. It's been exacerbated tonight by the fact that I went on a picnic today to Mrs. Macqurie's Chair with my nephews and their babysitter/my friend. The bewildering contrast, between the harsh reality faced by living, breathing people in that cage and the mirthful frolicking of toddlers under the sunshine in what is arguably the most beautiful place in Sydney, is a bit much for my system to process at the moment.

Keeping in mind my limited understanding as a relative bystander, here are a few salient points that strike me:

1. Everything I've understood thus far of the situation has been filtered through the mass media. Regardless of whether their political predilections conjure images of evil "boat people" or victims withering behind bars, what they present us is essentially an abstract caricature. Given the limitations of, say, a newspaper article, this is obviously understandable... but they also get locked into our imagination as such. This might sound a bit silly, but for the first time, the realness of the situation has struck me with full force. Aylum seekers are actually real people, people who giggle at bad jokes and need to brush their teeth in the morning. One of the men I spoke to reminded me so much, in his mannerisms and speech, of one of my closest friends from school. This line from A Little Princess, one of my favourite childhood books came to mind: "it's just a coincidence that I'm not you and you're not me". My conversation with him left me feeling so bewildered and it was a strange, out-of-body experience. Thankfully not treating them as tragic victims of destiny but obviously not negating their horrific experiences, the banter was as natural and flowing as with anyone and yet, despite their genuine smiles and ours, a dark cloud perceptibly overhung us. To me, it made the whole situation even more heartbreaking, the reminder that this isn't just a grand, sweeping, Shakespearean tragedy. Regarding it as such makes it so much easier to "other" them to us and say "oh yeh, terrible situation, garn" and then just move on with our petty lives.
2. Extending on the first point, putting a real, human face to the misery humans inflict on each other has completely changed my perspective. I live in such a cottonwool world! The biggest tragedy that happens in my life, quite literally, is my mother nagging me to clean my room or having to get home before my parents become too grumbly. My greatest stress and uncertainty is what my marks are going to look like, and that's something that's almost completely in my own hands. I'm definitely not someone who wants that much but I barely have to wish for something and it's in the palm of my hand. From this standpoint, reading about things, much as it might even move me to tears, is nowhere near enough to let me properly understand any situation that is so far removed from my own. Book-learning can only ever get you so far... it's two-dimensional and such an incomplete, reductionist version of reality. Not that I'm saying that I have a perfectly clear picture of the situation with my 8 hours that I spent in there, as a guest. What I'm trying to get at is that it is so easy to forget the importance of being in touch with people, who are at the crux of the issue but I feel, are somewhat marginalised in academia and politics. Ivory towers and all.
3. My third point is going to sound incredibly cliche but that doesn't make it any less true. The entire situation is just bewilderingly ridiculous. Our behaviour as a society, towards people who ask so little, and after everything they have been through, is beyond despicable. In an industrial area that sells timber furniture we cage people who have suffered the very worst of circumstances, like livestock! These cages are ringed with barbed wire, surrounded by dust and machinery. For years, intelligent, capable men (and women, but we only met men) are made to languish in the uncertainty that they may be sent back to hell for no reason other  our pettiness. The worst of it all is what they have to do there. From what I could see, nothing! They have no purpose but to wait and that emptiness of purpose, particularly in such bleak surroundings is the most dehumanising thing I can think of in the whole world. They may have a square meal, their lives may not perpetually be in danger but I can understand people being able to maintain their sanity under tyranny and violence more easily than in a detention center. Imagine sitting in the same room you're in now for years and years, waiting, pining for basic conditions of normalcy,but a) not knowing when that will come, or b) with the very real possibility of being tossed to the lions instead. Any resolution is possible at any moment. Four years is a really freaking long time to spend like that!
   
    Asylum seekers are victims, not criminals! Need I mention the UNHCR convention? Ok, say that you do achieve that freedom, you've already lost all those years in the cage and probably several more before that while fleeing... so the best years of your life are gone. Lots of asylum seekers have PTSD. With BOTH major parties treating you like a political football (to quote dude on QandA), being villainsed and stigmatised in this way must make it nigh on impossible to try attain normalcy. If politicians are so concerned about jumping the "queue", why don't they try and make sure it actually EXISTS. Make it accessible! I could rave on and on about this, but I shall stop now.

My mind is boggled anew that I really live in a society that lets this happen, that I know so many people who encourage it. If you've mentioned this to me before, please know that in that moment I wanted to scratch your eyes out... even if I love you otherwise. I really, really don't understand this side of the story, the lack of empathy or the miserliness. Are people actually evil? Why do you think they are any less productive members of society than anyone else? Why does this xenophobia flare up so strongly against people who are already destitute? Why did my parents have any more right coming here because they could pay for the airfare? The points above are just the things that have struck me as some of the concrete truths that frame the issue, but there are a million other confusions that continue to swill around my skull, that I struggle to even thread in words.

I am definitely, definitely going back.

PS: Just noticed the number of times I used the word "bewildered" in this! Not going to edit it out, because really I am just very, very bewildered.

If you're interested: http://www.therefugeeartproject.com/

ON RELIGION

"Left" in this post refers to the broad section of people who aren't Liberal voters (or anything even crazier than that) so basically everyone on my newsfeed is about to hate me.
Cheers :)

I'm a little angry right now. Facebook is usually full of crap but maybe I'm on an edge from other stuff  and this just has pushed me over. I'm actually so agitated that I'm having trouble even typing.

This does not happen often. 

I don't understand how so many leftist people justify their anti-religious bigotry to themselves. Coming from a corner that generally promotes love, tolerance and not demeaning people based on their sexuality or race ot gender or anything else, it boggles the mind. I'm sick of seeing my newsfeed flooded with people labelling religion as the "opiate of the masses", and God as a fictitious creature for the mentally deficient. The snideness and contempt is disgusting. It's disrespect on the most basic level, not even veiled like in the case of casual racism/sexism. HOW do they reconcile themselves to this inconsistence! What is going through someone's mind when they post this crap, in perfect knowledge that it's going to be appearing on the newsfeed of people that have actually told them they are of faith? It's so callous.

I'm starting to think that their selectiveness exposes that their moral compass only becomes relevant if it happens to be a "fashionably" leftist issue at that moment in time. In the long run, this is destructive! Universal love and tolerance is fucking UNIVERSAL, not dependent on whether you agree. I'm not denying your right not to believe in God or publicly state that is the case. I definitely wouldn't, given that I used to be atheist myself, for a while. I have a problem with the treatment of people of faith as if they have half a brain.

I'm trying to smother my anger and look at it from their level. I think the reason that people act this way is because of an incomplete, two-dimensional unerstanding of what religion is. You're only looking at structures that have oppressed people and started wars. Religion is not a monolihic institution. Sure, it has been used to suppress people, to start wars. To close off excellent ideas. But! Did you know, religion is a force that has shaped the lives of people over many millenia so it actually spans a LOT OF THINGS. Some things start somewhere, branch off into completely different directions which curl and tangle over each other. New branches sprout, others deaden and drop off. It is so ridiculous to reduce something that has seeped deeply into the lives of people, into different dimensions of their existence, in this way. To conflate ALL of religion with this thin slice of destructiveness and totally marginalise how much meaning it has for so many people, is ridiculous. Has it occurred to you that this negative reductionism is EXACTLY what fuels the kinds of bigotry that you typically stand up against?

There are as many religions as there are people. Religion is the framework that we use to try and reach God. It is made up of people. People are crazy. Hence, religion is sometimes flawed, but that doesn't invalidate it altogether. I’m not sure where I read this analogy, but it's excellent. Take religion as being represented by a banana. The most important part of the banana is the flesh inside, the core, but we’re all paying attention to the peel, the symbolism and ritualism that surrounds it. The reason we even gave God a name and face at all is just to make him easier to relate to and less abstract and... mystical.

Angry rant is over but I think I'll keep going.

All religious texts, while they may be rooted in divine inspiration, have also been filtered through the pen (quill, whatever) of a man and it is important to exercise some discernment. How do you judge what to ignore? It's a difficult, complex question, but I think if they disregard the value of universal compassion (INCLUDING THE NATURAL WORLD!) and mutual respect in any way, or are predominantly destructive/suppressive then they should be dropped. Yes your book has a lot of good things in it, but it isn't a substitute for a brain!

manifesto!

 I have around a week till my exams are finished. I had plans to intern with Navdanya, Vandana Shiva's seed farm but because the people that work there are inefficient turds so that ain't happening no mo'. My heart shattered into itty bitty pieces when this realisation dawned on me. Here is the exact image from my pipe dreams of how I'd spend my days:

It resonated with me in every way possible: it's quiet, removed from my life, I love mountains, the institution itself is spectacular and corresponds in every way with my own ethical and philosophical (Gandhi-esque) convictions.

BUT NOW I'm a bit shitty at Destiny for having dangled the dream before my nose, then cruelly snatching it away. I'm going to make believe that I'm there, sit in my room this summer with some chai and this picture in front of me,

and read books.

And paint.

This post is rambling and silly. It's about two excellent days I've spent in the recent past that have just been so refreshing after endless essay-writing in the last month.

On Thursday I spent the day with a girl who lives down my street and among many fascinating things, we spent a lot of time discussing art. I guess I talk about art with a lot of my friends but I've finally found someone whose sensibilities completely resonate with my own and more importantly, we spent lots of time discussing art making. It was a good day.

 The day following that, after not finishing my essay (again) I went to Chanel's spectacular Little Black Jacket exhibition with Annie. We wandered through the Rocks markets, bought some strange macarons and cake. The bar we were going to for Dasha's birthday was full so we ended up in the Lansdowne (classy, eh? but FUN!), where we had dinner and drinks. In search of dessert, we gallivanted around Newtown where I nearly got run over by an ambulance (oh the irony!) decided on gelato and for lack of anything better to do, went to sit in Victoria Park. At this point Dasha and Saro disappeared somewhere. It was midnight and we lay down tired, giggling, gossiping, arguing for around twenty minutes about stupid things. It was so exhilarating! One of  the many jewels that studded our conversation:

J: see that huge star there?

A: that's a lamp post.

In retrospect, this is not really so funny but for some reason, at the time it was. We laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. At one point it wasn't even about the joke any more, so much as laughing at ourselves for laughing so long. We had sparklers left over from the cake, got over-excited and pretended to be Harry Potter characters, scarily all knew the lines exactly. It was great. We also pretended to be fairies running and twirling, nearly setting fire to ourselves because we were a little inebriated after all.

 Then I went home.

End of story, didn't really have a point eh. Yes, it did!! It's made me want to paint again for the first time in more than a year! yay! I'm going to paint that very scene.

time passed, fast

LAST DAY OF UNDERGRAD B.P.E.S.S. I know I have honours next year to look forward to but it won't have the same space for the juvenile thrills of passing inane unfunny notes in lectures or occasionally skipping tutes to peruse bookshops in Newtown by myself. Life is good now and I don't like change!

Everyone doing an arts degree complains at some point that wider society doesn't understand its value. If you think you have it bad, try studying social sciences with Indian family and Indian family friends who can't acknowledge the legitimacy of anything outside science/medicine/engineering/accounting (the last one grudgingly). Anyone who knows me well enough would agree that the thought of me dedicating my life to any one of those is quite laughable. So I do laugh it off... and am amused, more than anything else at any standard Indian gathering when X uncle asks me what I do and my response makes him almost visibly recoil. His expression is strained as he tries to grapple with the strangeness of what I've just told him and for some reason, of all the words in the title (bachelor, political, economic, social, sciences) only one sticks out.
"So... you're... going to be a politician?!?!?!?!" I can almost see the cogs in his mind creeeaaaking to a halt as he decides that I'm not going to be a good person to introduce to his son after all.

Which is a good thing.

I've never really tried to defend myself and typically just go along with the jokes, which are unoriginal and pathetic.. something about being homeless and/or a cardboard box. To me the answer is so mind-numbingly obvious, like the equivalent of trying to prove that oranges aren't square. I mean, imagine if we really lived on a planet populated by just accountants and engineers and scientists! These vocations may help to make the world "efficient" but not functional. The social sciences, as far as I can see, are essentially the study of what holds the fabric of society together and hey maybe I'm biased, but that seems to me like a pretty damn important thing. Human society is not comprised of atomised, rational individuals and the spaces between us aren't just filled with gadgets, bank loans and roads/bridges. Nothing in your life is apolitical. Besides this, an arts degree teaches you how to think, for God's sake, why is that so underrated? I found this yesterday and it blows my mind:

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about ‘the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.’

And I submit that this is what the real, no-bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.

The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

The real value of a real education [has] almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

This is water

-David Foster Wallace

That said, if I were to sum up all I've learnt in the last three years, all I know for sure is this: People are shit. We're all going to die. Maybe in light of the former, the latter isn't such a bad thing. Maybe I would be better off with a commerce degree after all...

PS scenario with X uncle has actually happened. Sometimes he's an aunty

about to EXPLODE from cutesy

HillsBus again ft. hippies

The last post (read that first if you haven't) seemed to interest a lot of people and provided fodder for more conversation on the bus, which in turn, is feeding back into this...

First, a glorious text I was sent about a week ago:

Somebody on hillsbus was eating mandarin pieces with toothpicks as chopsticks :///

Then she went to the back of the bus and lay down to sleep with her ass in my face.

Rai and I caught the same 620X last Friday with the horrible man who starred in the previous post. His reaction to us was ambiguous, not sure whether he was intimidated or trying to be intimidating. I was reeeeally tempted to sit directly behind him again, to pick up the threads of the conversation where we had left off last. It didn't happen, I am a spineless worm.

I've had many interesting bus conversations since I wrote here last, but none have have stuck in my mind and continued to whirl around as much as this one with Simran. It was a while ago so it's a little blurry how much of this was actually spoken and how much was tacked on later in my imagination when I replayed it in my head.

After some random banter, we somehow landed on the topic of cultural sensitivity and what a warped idea of it most people seem to have. The fact that I'm Indian does not mean I want to talk to you about butter chicken. I mean, I especially don't want to, being vegetarian and all. Nor does it (or our films or yoga, or henna) constitute any significant part of "Indianness". Exoticising a culture by stripping it down to gimmicky, superficial things like this is demeaning. You're reducing it to something that's really two-dimensional and ultimately, not as legitimately "real" as Western culture.

If you're reading this and cringing at the fact that you've done this around me, just take this as something to keep in mind. Some of my favourite people in the world are guilty of it all the time. I don't really begrudge them because it's obviously not something that people do malevolently, so much as for a conversation filler. Besides which, that may be the depth of your knowledge on the culture (disturbing) so it's not like you have anywhere else to start (just don't) 

Anyway, then we moved on to discuss stupid Tree of Life salesgirls in bindis and harem pants. I actually love that shop, their cotton dresses are just luverly... but occasionally when I walk in, I cringe a little at these girls who think that, in donning the clothes that they do, they somehow are a greater authority than me on my own culture. Yes, that's actually how a few of them act. You might think I'm being excessively bitchy here, but it's a lot more sinister than it seems at first glance.

Mainstream society abstracts stuff from its original context, shakes it around, completely confuddles what it really "is" and then imposes the reinterpretation on the people it really belongs to, often as a frivolous, disposable trend. I read something years ago about how destructive this has been with naive Americans. It just isn't nice to hijack and trivialise things like that... ESPECIALLY when it comes to religion. Ganesh and Saraswati are NOT funky trinkets to hang around your neck. The Swastika... let's not even go there.

This brings me to the hippies. Most people are surprised when I say I dislike them. Though I agree with the ideas they theoretically espouse, what did they actually do, apart from strum and smoke pot? Not a lot. (rhyming! heh I am so clever)

When we were in India earlier this year, my family took a short trip to Haridwar and Rishikesh, two important places of pilgrimage. Rishikesh, a town at the foothills of the Himalayas was beautiful. The Ganges were amazingly blue (it's still pristine at this point, gets messed up further South) and it made me feel all floaty and happy. Until I saw the scraggly hippies scattered along the pavement, nursing bongs and putting lots of effort into looking as nonchalant as possible. I know it's a totally irrational but something flared up inside me and I got really, really mad. The sanctity of the place was being tainted by some complete wankers who were so goddamn smug and self-important just because they were in the "East", had dreadlocks and stupid "om" pendants.

 

kk I love the Beatles, but.

All in all, what an I saying? I don't mean to imply in any way that white people should completely stop interacting with other cultures for fear of corrupting them. All I ask is a little more respect and some acknowledgement that some things run deeper than you can understand or even perceive. Another person's culture is not something you can just slip on, and it is no less meaningful or sophisticated than yours. Also, India's only an example I took to illustrate something that's universal. 

I'm all hyped up and kind of tempted to rewrite the first part of this for Honi or something because I really wish more people were aware... but you know. Most prob. won't :)

P.S. Don't take this too seriously, it's just a delirious 2:00 am rant. I am prone to exaggerationz