In the lionizing – or the demonizing – of a public personality, many perceive a problem as being unique. Having a bounty on his head is a Salman Rushdie problem, for example, and not an expansive threat on human rights. In a sense, this is true: a human being was nearly murdered at Chautauqua Institution a few days ago, while all the abstract concepts around this event (hate, freedom, power) remain intact in their intangible and universal way. But the problem goes beyond him – both in the conjectural sense of what we stand to lose when we are deprived of creativity or dissent, and in the lived reality of an environment in which these are excised.

            Rushdie had been scheduled to speak at the Chautauqua Institution on August 12 on the United States as a haven for persecuted writers. The contents of his speech haven’t yet been released publicly. Books themselves are at risk in the USA, through internal bans by school districts (over 1500 titles were banned between July 2021 and March 2021, mostly on subjects such as race and queerness, as reported by the writers’ rights organisation PEN America; Rushdie is a former president of the same). But we can surmise that those who create them are safer there than in many places around the world.

Rushdie certainly felt that way, at least. This may be because government-led oppression of artists and intellectuals is not a major peril there at this time (it has been true at other times in American history, and can be true in future). That does not mean that an individual is safe from being harmed by another, as happened to the author last week. He was brutally, through fortunately not fatally, stabbed multiple times by an assailant identified as 24-year old Hadi Matar.

Rushdie experienced persecution from Islamic fundamentalists after the release of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. In a 2012 essay, book critic Madhu Jain wrote about how her review was misshapen by an editor’s choice of incendiary excerpts, which precipitated the book’s banning in India and Pakistan and the subsequent fatwa issued by Iran. Its Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was found dead under unresolved circumstances; its Italian translator Ettore Capriolo and Norwegian publisher William Nygaard faced attempted murders. The question of whether the offended read and ponder before reacting is always present. Here in India, the journalist Gauri Lankesh was murdered in 2017 by a hitman hired by Hindutva fundamentalists; the killer later admitted to not knowing who the assigned target was, and expressed regret upon learning of the value of her work.

Rushdie has been outspoken about the threat to fundamental freedoms in India, where he was born, both currently and in the past. Just before this attack on his life, he co-signed an open letter to President Droupadi Murmu on “the rapidly worsening situation for human rights in India, specifically freedom of speech and creative expression.” As always, we would do well to consider the larger picture, to not fixate on how an author was attacked where he felt most free, but on how unfree we all really are, and what to do about it.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

Someone – I’m just going to say someone because I just cannot bear to add to this person’s fame – threw a ketchup-smeared pickle slice from a McDonald’s burger up at the ceiling of an art gallery and called it Art. The acid in my belly is simply simmering. Is it envy? Is it hunger?

            With me, it’s always hunger. Though this time, it’s a little envy too (what is also called, ahem, indignation). I mean – the stars are art, the smog is art, the steam from a kettle is art, the stretchmarks on my thigh are art – but they are not Art and they are certainly not pricetagged at $10,000 New Zealand dollars.

            I don’t know if the pickle installation, currently on display at Michael Lett, a gallery in Auckland, has sold. The banana duct-taped to the wall for $120,000 US dollars at Art Basel in 2019 did sell, after all. Art pieces tend to stay up, discreetly stickered to indicate their taken status, until exhibitions are over – so not only was that banana sold, but it was also consumed post-purchase. By a performance artist (not the purchaser). With an audience, presumably applauding this high concept culinary desecration and its statement on, I dunno, futility, mortality and gastroenterology? Of course, the authentic, artistic spirit of the original banana lived on – a new one was immediately taped up. Presumably, the owners of this intangible banana routinely have the tangible bananas replaced, wherever they are displaying this Art.

            That pickle slice on the ceiling – it’s a steal, really. Someone probably bought it. Maybe someone else will risk their tummy for a ladder-related performance piece involving eating an ingredient that’s been exposed for weeks. “Someone” – you know. So many someones that this world is full of. Sigh. Also, confession: I’ve blocked the Artist’s (yeah, capital A because A is for…) name from my memory already, because why should they live rent-free in my head? I suppose to finesse my frustration better, I ought to say: art not artist, etc. Yeah. Sigh.

I read about the profound pickle, felt all kinds of pangs and pains, then went and checked my bank statement again to see if the quarterly capitalised interest that was due days ago had come in. One keeps an eye on these things, you know – unless money is no object (or apropos nothing, nothing at all, art object). It had not. I settled in to contemplate the ceiling for a bit. I certainly felt like throwing something at it.

The installation in New Zealand is fittingly called “Pickle”; the Art Basel one was titled even more aptly, “Comedian”. The funniest thing about it is also the most terrifying: it was a ferocious success. Such effortless gains are made from deliberate spectacles, in art and in other realms. (Sigh). What else was there to do but mope a little, try to count my blessings and not my bank balance, and then – as one is always suggestible when it comes to food – order a burger. And enjoy it, because why not? Another word for pickle is “relish”, and one should take that as a verb. All is art, after all.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

A group of people who live within spying distance of a bus stand frequented by students of Trivandrum’s College of Engineering (CET), taking umbrage at the sight of young women and men spending time together, decided to take matters into their own hands. Last month, they vandalised the bench by cutting it up into three one-seaters. Is it easier to pat yourself on the back from a moral high horse, or do you lose balance and fall off?

            In an act of happy resistance, the students sat on each others’ laps on the newly severed bench and posed smilingly for social media photographs. This unique protest worked, rather splendidly. Trivandrum mayor Arya Rajendran was reportedly angered by the conservative infringement of basic liberties that the students had faced, and made swift amends. The mayor is just 23 years old, and her response demonstrates how having young people in high civic offices can bring meaningful change that is relevant to the times. Other politicians, including Kerala’s General Education Minister V. Sivankutty, also expressed their support for the students.

Moral policing events in India don’t end well that often, and it’s such a refreshing change that this story appears to have culminated happily. Trivandrum authorities have announced that this bus stop – which had previously been more of an illegally constructed shelter – will now become a full facility, as well as a “gender neutral” one. While it’s unclear what this means in this context, we can surmise that discriminatory actions such as the division of people by gender will not be tolerated as a matter of principle. Moreover, free Wi-Fi will be provided at the facility – a cheerful development, since it will encourage loitering. The concept that this is a public space, for public use, is well-promoted through this gesture.

This is especially vital because people who are not men are not often seen occupying public space at random. For instance: a woman at a bus stop isn’t idle; she is likely to be commuting from her work at an office to her work within a household. When she needs a little solitude, she is more likely to retreat to the terrace than to step out to a park alone, where inquisitive or even threatening stares will disrupt her peace and make her vigilant. Even if she was with a friend, someone in her family may ask them why they were stepping out “alone”. The allowance for leisure and personal space are intimately linked to the use of public space.

The Why Loiter? movement initiated in 2014 was a great step in asserting within the public discourse that it is not just men who have the right to enjoy or simply be present in a public space – staring at others, shooting the breeze, listening to music on their phones, doing whatever they please. What was treated and normalised as a gendered privilege was questioned, with the intent of expanding possibilities for others to experience that same right. This incident in Trivandrum will hopefully disempower those like those pesky residents near CET. Their having to put away their binoculars, or at least their bench-cutting devices, is something to celebrate.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

The language around love and abuse seems to be changing – at least in my world, as observed through algorithms. Finally – finally – it feels like the truth is being not just revealed but generously shared: about what it requires to love yourself, to love others well, to heal in the absence of love and to recognise that not everything that bears that name is love at all.

There’s a reason why these seemingly complex concepts are so effectively elucidated by counsellors, healers and other experts online. That’s because they are complex only until they are acknowledged. Then they become as simple as sunlight in the summer because, look: it’s everywhere, it’s always been there, it illuminates all one always felt but could not explain, with the clarity of day. The solutions – subjective and full of anguish – take time, but the tools feel within greater reach.

            A few weeks ago, I wrote in this space about limerence – an acute state of longing into which those who have not been safely loved often escape. A few months ago, I wrote here about broken mirrors – about how we cannot see ourselves as we are if those around us hold up distorted reflections of who they prefer us to be or have judged us as. The emerging, easily digestible yet profound conversation around love and abuse, combined with my commitment to heal through various therapeutic modalities, have helped me reframe my life, and understand myself.

            Equally powerfully, age-old, untrue tenets about love – broadly, love of all kinds, beginning with the familial and extending into the romantic and social – are also being dismantled.

Here’s just one example of a fallacy that, when challenged, seeds deep inner change and facilitates healing. Who has not been told at some point: “No one can love you until you love yourself”? Now, with newfound lucidity, such dangerous lies, which blame the unloved or the traumatised, are finally being called out for what they are: propaganda in service of those who do the damage.

In actuality, if a person has been raised unlovingly, they are wired to receive only more unlove through life, because they either recognise or reject new experiences based on the blueprint they were given. Note that I say receive, not attract – nobody magnetizes pain, as compassionless theories disguised as spiritual ones assert.

Self-worth is not fundamental. It is inculcated through being raised with love. Self-respect and self-love, which are distinct but connected, also originate in upbringing. All are reinforced through experience; their antipodes are reinforced too.

Despite my sense of the change, I cannot speak for the world at large, and whether it is truly opening to such transformations. But in my own life and in the lives of others I can see the ripple effect of radically relearning this: there is nothing wrong with us intrinsically, but there is something wrong with what was instilled in us about what care, belonging and relationships are, should be or can be. With the succour of discovering that we were good enough all along comes the desire to be even better. Who do we want to become, as we remake our lives – painfully, patiently?

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in July 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

When I first encountered the word “limerence”, I equated it with a crush or infatuation – some small, sweet thing. It was a word I tried on for size for certain unsettling feelings that occasionally stirred in me. At almost 37, I have not fallen in love in my 30s, not even once – a feat for the perennially single and poetically-bent. But in limerence – sure.

            Later, when I discovered the vocabulary that helped me frame what I had suffered from for my whole life, and was healing from anew, the word took profound significance. In the language of experts who work on complex PTSD and narcissistic family systems of abuse, “limerence” is a toxic experience that adult survivors often have in the romantic and sexual realms. I first came across it in this connotation through Anna Runkle (aka “Crappy Childhood Fairy”).

Limerence is an intense, unfounded longing for an unavailable person. It is neither romantic nor whimsical, but is powerful, painful and sometimes bittersweetly beautiful. It is a state of mind that is ultimately harmful to the person experiencing it, and potentially harmful to the object of their affection.

I learned of a related concept, “euphoric recall”, through Dr. Ramani Durvasula, probably the world’s most popular expert on the subject of narcissistic abuse. This is when we erase our painful memories, instead elevating selective glimpses or incidents of tenderness or potential, self-flagellating by skewing our own realities.

The deep-rooted cause of limerence is yearning for the family that one deserves, which is transferred onto others. Its trauma-informed application has helped me understand my romantic personality, and the disappointments and devastations I was wired for.

I have begun to see better some of the darker valleys of my heart because of the illuminative power of having the right concepts. I see how, then or now, it was not that lover or that leaver I ached for, but perhaps for my little sister to care about me, my uncle to support me, my mother to be more like the imaginary figment I needed her to be and less like who – or what – she is. I have been limerent for familial love, and projected that onto those I desired romantically or sexually. Grieving my father’s demise brought severe bouts with euphoric recall, from which I would repeatedly talk myself down with the facts. But my cognition has changed now.

            The truth is that one longs for unavailable people because one is themselves also, actually, unavailable. The emotional bandwidth it takes to survive abuse and its after-effects leave very little left for deep engagement. Limerence means you never have to do the work; you just daydream. Euphoric recall means your pain addiction keeps being fulfilled (there is much relatable, digestible expert information on the neuroscience of abuse available on social media). Seeing these dangerous traits in myself is liberating. It doesn’t absolve anyone I have ever loved or been limerent over of their roles in the hurt I had known. But it takes away my illusions and delusions – and lets me see what’s really in front of me, and clears my vision of both the past and the path ahead.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in July 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

The Supreme Court of India is currently considering listing, in a plea for an urgent hearing, an abortion case. The plea is being made as the Delhi High Court rejected the plaintiff’s request to allow her to terminate her pregnancy, despite recently having crossed the 20-week mark beyond which abortion for unmarried women is not permitted in India. The Delhi HC’s division bench reportedly chided the plaintiff: “Give the child to somebody in adoption. Why are you killing the child?”

            These are sentiments expressed by those who hold anti-abortion views (they are mostly not “pro-life”, for their concern for living beings – as corroborated by complementary views on childcare, religious fundamentalism, guns, the environment and so on, depending on where they are – usually ends upon birth) everywhere. Similar statements were widely shared by those who celebrated when the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the landmark 1971 Roe vs Wade case last month, almost instantly revoking abortion access across some parts of the country, with more to be lost.

Here in India, some feel that reproductive rights are safeguarded in comparison to recent developments in the USA. This is not entirely true. The case presently being considered by the SC of India – one in which every week matters – is an example. Although the plaintiff’s personal reasons for seeking to terminate the pregnancy have been covered in the media, I’ve purposely omitted them because every reason why an individual wants to have an abortion is reason enough. All of them are deserving.

Abortion is legally available in India not because of feminist or human rights principles, but because of eugenics, population control and other factors to do with an overarching system driven by repressive, not just regressive, beliefs. While sex-selective abortion is supposedly illegal, in practice, the space for female foeticide clearly exists, as long as medical practitioners offer the relevant information. In that particular grey area is the need to distinguish between those who are coerced to abort girls and those whose misogyny prevents them from raising girls well.

So much – too much – comes down to the power that medical practitioners have, and the decisions they make about whether a patient’s freedoms and choices are respected or otherwise. A few weeks ago, an uninformative and judgmental Twitter thread by a gynaecologist telling patients that questioning the longstanding shorthand of “Are you married?” is just privileged woke posturing went viral. It went viral because it distressed many people, whose memories of terrible experiences of moral policing, body shaming, misdiagnoses, under-diagnoses and malpractice at the hands of Indian doctors were triggered by the blatant medical gaslighting on display.

Reproductive health is a particularly sensitive area for it is so closely linked with sexuality – which terrifies the conservative. Should the SC of India take up the plea to allow the medical termination that the Delhi HC didn’t, the case will challenge the ban on abortions after 20 weeks if the pregnant person is not married. It could expand access to abortion as a human right, and any expansion of human rights is welcome – especially here, and in all other places where they seem to be shrinking.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in July 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” goes an iconic quote from the Dark Knight film trilogy – so aphoristic that many scarcely believe it originated in a modern film, and not in an ancient treatise on war or life.

            But even the dead are certainly not exempt from falls from grace. It’s just surprising sometimes who gets depedestalised. Last week, around her birth anniversary, a Twitter thread positing that Frida Kahlo had been a white cultural appropriator went viral. Comments on it showed that this happens annually, i.e. there are people out there who keep trying to get her cancelled on her birthday (how sweet).  Of course, it’s not the deceased person in question who is actually being cancelled, but those who imbibe her work and continue to be inspired by her. Kahlo is known for having battled unthinkable pain and choosing to thrive anyway, and for creating paintings that were testimonies to an unusual life.

As many pointed out, the facts were rather lacking in the attack. Kahlo was half-mestiza, through her mother, and half German Jew, through her father. Her maternal lineage was of mixed Spanish and indigenous origin, like most Mexican people. Her work acknowledged all facets of her ancestry, with a natural inclination for the culture and location she was raised in. Not all of her politics or life choices could stand the test of time: for example, she supported Josef Stalin, and her marriage was rife with severely toxic elements. Relevant to the Tweetstorm in question, she had class power that allowed her to enjoy elements of indigenous artistry, in her wardrobe and in her décor. That she and Diego Rivera, her spouse, possibly helped to visibilise native culture and thereby influenced preservation or artisans’ revenue may or may not be a qualifying factor.

Kahlo was flawed. The same can be said for anyone – anyone at all. But her positive impact on millions who are encouraged by her inner strength is not propaganda or hype. Still, because we cannot convince those in our circles not to support the dictators of today, because we are alarmed either for ourselves or for loved ones whose lives we view at close quarters to learn how extraordinarily difficult it is to exit abusive relationships, because we too adore pretty things and have privileged guilt – we pick a target and throw stones.

A few days later, I saw something much worse: the person being called out was Anne Frank.

Frank – who died in a concentration camp at age 15 after two years hiding from the fascist Nazi German state in a concealed annexe, during which she kept a diary that found great posthumous value – apparently had “white privilege”.

This time, I didn’t even bother to enter the rabbit hole of the so-called discourse.

I’ll say it again: a sense of powerlessness, or unresolved feelings of personal disharmony that manifest as parts of our public personalities, because of which we project onto people who are either on our side or are no threat, are not substitutes for the messy, compassionate experience of navigating or creating change that matters.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in July 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

Last week, a video emerged of two people – reportedly, a husband and a wife – who had been embracing in the Sarayu river when onlookers began to hit the man, then dragged them both out of the water. Their affectionate behaviour with one another was considered offensive by the crowd.

            The Sarayu is a tributary of the Ganga, considered by many Hindus to be the most sacred of rivers. The incident took place in Ayodhya, a holy and highly contentious location. But no matter where this had happened, the mob’s reaction would be familiar. Moral policing of people’s desires and relationships is not new in India. There is a spectrum of such repressive violence: from right-wing thugs who physically attack couples and women on Valentine’s Day to landlords who refuse tenants who are not married heterosexuals. But even for the latter category: their neighbours are more likely to be offended by sounds of pleasure coming out of their windows than by sounds of battery. Moral policing requires that one interfere and create strife when joy or love are observed, and stay out of it silently when abuse or distress are witnessed.

On some level, it is as though the couple standing in the river – and anyone who has ever been morally policed – was attacked because they displayed something other than unhappiness, and the profound unhappiness at the heart of this society is glimpsed again in that reaction.

This week, some of my father’s ashes will finally be immersed in the Ganga, as per his own wishes. He was among the victims of devastating third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India – believed to be inflicted on the country largely through election campaigning. This is the same river in which, just over a year ago and the height of the pandemic, unclaimed bodies numbering in the hundreds if not more were found floating.

Those corpses had been people who could not have the dignity of final rites, for reasons we can surmise range from penury, to loss or illness of all kin during that brutal collective crisis, to the sheer overwhelm experienced by cremation ground workers. This year, a contradictory narrative has come up: that the burial of bodies near a ghat of the Ganga, and subsequent low water levels that expose them, were the reason for this disturbing phenomenon. This is supposedly an ancient custom, but one which strangely enough was not offered as an explanation in 2021, when macabre visuals were widely shared internationally. Custom alone does not explain the numbers either, even if they are only the officially reported ones. In a time where any narrative can be given mileage if a powerful hand wishes to promote it, true stories are frequently buried or sunk, and take a long time to re-emerge – if ever.

So much worse happens in a holy river than a kiss. How quickly all is forgotten, and forgiven, when it comes to the sins of those in power. Imagine if the moral righteousness that makes people interfere in the personal lives of others – that deep misery that disguises itself as rectitude – was used instead to hold to account the powerful.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in July 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

It’s not often that remarks in a student newspaper go viral. The very first set of questions posed to writer Sarah Underwood in her interview with one called Felix was “Did you read The Odyssey? And if so, when?” Who knows why the publication made an enquiry that most writers worth their salt would find insulting, but they were on to something. Underwood had not read Homer’s Odyssey, the Greek classic that has been translated and retold many times by many voices, when she wrote a novel that drew from it. In her own words: “I actually started and finished writing without sitting down and reading the whole thing.” An author behaving with the blasé confidence of a highly opinionated and highly ignorant book-influencer – you can imagine what ensued.

Online books “discourse” on any given week is messy and drama-filled – but now and then, there’s consensus. Writers, readers and scholars are suitably aghast by Underwood’s nonchalance. They are agitated that she got her foot into the infamously bolted doorways of publishing without trying too much, when great efforts fail; they are also agitated by an uncaring work ethic and the implications of the same.

Classical scholar Olivia Waite warned in a brief Twitter thread that “…if you aren’t careful with your sources, you’re going to let in white supremacy”, talking about how Nazis have drawn from Scandinavian, Greek and Roman mythologies and that these stories have been used in skewed agendas. The uses of mythology in grandiose narrativization – and the incredibly violent consequences of these – are certainly not unfamiliar in India, either.

Inspecting any belief about collective consciousness will often show that we usually know less than we think we know, and that what we do know is widely divergent, based on our internal desires and principles as influenced by larger currents and exposure.

When it comes to stories that inform the collective consciousness, recorded text does not have greater weightage than oral narrative. But we think it must. In India, this is especially true of epics. As many scholars and storytellers say, the Ramayana in one’s head is a mix of Doodarshan’s televised serial and Tulsidas’ religious scripture, not the text attributed to Valmiki, yet most do not trace or make these distinctions.

There’s an argument to be made that Underwood chose a subversive method of approaching a text she says she found impenetrable, drawing from it without deferring to it. In its own irreverent way, Underwood’s honesty is refreshing – even as the chagrin of those who are under-recognized for their work and gatekept out of opportunities is utterly valid.

I would be open to reading Underwood’s queer feminist imagining of The Odyssey. As a writer, one who spends extensive time in research, I scoff. But as a reader, one who just wants to enjoy a story, I shrug. There are translators, notably of poetry, who don’t even know the source language, but whose work I’ve admired. Admittedly, there are multiple levels of problematic engagement in all these things: among the publishing industry, literary circles, creators and readerships. But that’s also part of the pleasure of literature: something to chew on, even at leisure.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in June 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

James Patterson, a 75-year old Caucasian man who is the world’s bestselling author – whose name is a book-churning brand, within which his ideas and plots are fleshed out and crafted by credited ghostwriters – has said that he thinks that older, male, white writers have trouble finding work or getting published. He has called this “another form of racism”.

            Yes, this again. This boring, factually inaccurate and commonplace opinion, which plenty of data conclusively counters.

In The New Yorker’s piece about him that came out early this week, book columnist Laura Miller explores how the detective in Patterson’s major debut novel was initially conceived as a woman, but he decided to write the character as a man instead. Specifically, an African-American man. The article quotes a line from the book, in which the detective’s grandmother tells him, “I do not trust most white people. I would like to, but I can’t. Most of them have no respect for us.”

(Why am I quoting an article about a book rather than the book itself? Dear reader, here’s where I confess that I’ve never read a James Patterson and never-say-never for the future, but there are so many other books in the world and so little time…)

We can presume that Patterson wrote that line himself, having considered perspectives and experiences unlike his own, because that was in his debut. That was before his name became a 300-book brand, bells and all, when his writing was probably all his. That novel, Along Came A Spider, was such a hit that it became a 28-book series and a film, starring Morgan Freeman as the detective Alex Cross. It gave Patterson fame, wealth and career longevity – a combination most authors seldom achieve. Nearly three decades of such success don’t seem to have had a mind-opening effect about structural oppression at large or about the realities of the publishing and entertainment industries in particular.

Patterson is the spotlight right now because he had an eponymous autobiography released earlier this month. His objectionable comments were made during publicity rounds for the same. But even when he not in the spotlight, he is everywhere. His name and co-authored work, that is. Stacked on bookshelves, wavy-paged in bathroom storage, by the glow of the e-reader device, up there on the silver screen, on frequent loan at the library…

There is probably nothing that raking up controversy will give him that he doesn’t already have, materialistically speaking. Brandishing the bogeyman of reverse racism isn’t all that he has done in recent interviews. It seems that aside from lamenting about how he thinks white men get the raw end of the stick, Patterson was also disappointed that noted sexual predator and auteur Woody Allen’s memoir was dropped by their shared publisher, even though it was picked up by another one. There are free speech arguments that may apply here, but they don’t detract from the fact that Allen was an irrelevant but incendiary topic, one that Patterson decided to bring up arbitrarily. What was Patterson’s intended outcome from all this? It’s a mystery indeed – perhaps something for his ghostwriters to cleverly spell out between the lines…

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in June 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

Layer’r, an Indian brand that makes body sprays, has come under fire for two advertisements for a product named Shot. In both, a woman is alarmed by a small group of men who discuss “taking a shot”. The implication is that she will be sexually assaulted; she is relieved to discover they are talking about a deodorant. These advertisements have since been banned. While many say they promote rape culture, my take is that they contribute to it. They normalise rape “jokes” again, after years of sensitisation through the efforts of many. The element of playing on the woman’s fear – a fear that would not be used nonchalantly in a commercial by anyone who has experienced it – is also deeply disturbing.

            There has been speculation about why the agency behind these has not yet been named (and subsequently shamed). Some allege that the industry has been purposely tight-lipped. To this I add a theory, which comes from many years of having worked in that field and having a long list of woes about it. I suggest that the creative input came from the client directly, with execution being left to the agency. Those within the agency, whose salaries depend on it, quietly and perhaps resentfully completed the assignment. Someone with a fair amount of leveraging power made a request that credits not be shared when the ads went online, as is the norm.

            This theory implies that capitalism, rather than gender insensitivity, was the organising principle behind the Layer’r Shot ads. Would an agency, or the individuals within an agency, have just been able to say No? Nope. Not usually, and especially not in this economy. Integrity is a series of constant choices and navigations, with compromises that sometimes cannot be avoided in the real world. It is different from a high horse, which is nothing but a privilege.

            This is not to let anyone off the hook about how these distasteful commercials were ideated, created and broadcast. This is only to say that not enough people along that chain of command had the will, the ethical compass and the power to stop it from happening. The advertisements are just the outcome, not the problem. They were released after mandatory approvals. These would have been given by authorities who could have, but chose not to, do things differently.

            The brand is responsible, make no mistake. In Layer’r’s apology statement announcing the withdrawal of the two advertisements, they say, “… we never intended to hurt anyone’s sentiments or feelings or outrage any women’s modesty or promote any sort of culture, as wrongly perceived by some.” This part makes it clear that the apology did not come from reflection. The archaic idea of “outraging women’s modesty” is the first clue, the decision not to name “rape culture” outright the second, and “wrongly perceived” is the clincher. The advertisements were absolutely, without a doubt, about rape – a subject the brand found fit to joke about. That was the brand’s intention, not a wrong perception by viewers.

            But really – in this heatwave, why even advertise? They were probably doing just fine sales-wise before they “shot” themselves in the foot.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in June 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

The Supreme Court of India has passed an order that recognises sex work by consenting adults as a profession, effectively creating a legal safeguard from harassment, police and client brutality, arbitrary arrests and so on. Rehabilitation programmes will thereby only be for those who were trafficked, minors or those who want to voluntarily participate in them. Operating brothels remains illegal, thus affording sex workers protection that does not extend to those who profit from them. This order came after long-term lobbying by those within the industry.

            Consent to being in sex work is not straightforward, and mostly only means that one has not been trafficked. It is true that a range of socio-political and socio-cultural variables, from economic issues to caste, partially diminish the ability to knowledgably and freely consent to entering or remaining in the profession. This problematic factor has resulted in critique from quarters who believe that decriminalisation will lead to further exploitation rather than empowerment, and may create acceptance for an industry that is fundamentally inequitable and unsafe. However, associations within the industry have actively campaigned for legal changes that may create better labour or living conditions for them. Their experiences, and the mandates that emerge from them, must be treated with more importance than the well-meaning but incomplete ideas of those of us who do not know the on-ground reality.

            It helps to remember that whether or not one falls on the right side of history is not always likely to be known in one’s lifetime. To understand this, we could look to a set of significant 20^th century legal changes in particular – which also had public opinion on sexuality in their moral and ideological underpinnings – that look very different now than they must have then. These were the Devadasi Acts in various states and territories of India, which criminalised hereditary artistic communities.

In Tamil Nadu, renowned changemakers like Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy and Periyar campaigned for the abolition of hereditary arts systems (in Dr. Reddy’s case, her proximity to the subject was closer, as her mother was from one such community). At the time, this was viewed as a welcome development that would free people from bondage and sexual exploitation within temples. Its actual corollary was major cultural erasure, appropriation, stigma and penury that affected many – with repercussions for generations. The Bharatanatyam dancer Nrithya Pillai, who is from a hereditary arts lineage, writes and speaks extensively on this subject.

The recognition of sex work as a profession in India in 2022 is fundamentally about human dignity and human rights, and is a labour reform issue. In that sense, it is functionally ethical in a way that lofty but unlived ideas are not. This applies whether objections come from conservative quarters uncomfortable with sexuality or from liberal quarters who believe the industry’s eradication on feminist, anti-caste and overall progressive grounds is possible. It isn’t – not any time soon. Sex work is commonly known as the world’s oldest profession for a reason: it has always been a reality. This being a fact, making lived experiences safer for those within the field is more important than making comfortable those who are not in it.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in June 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

That social media platforms became increasingly inauthentic once individual and corporate brand-building and monetisation became driving factors behind them is something that most users know. That resisting these platforms is also difficult, for a wide gamut of reasons both professional and personal, is another thing that most users know. When we think of social media, we generally imagine the top three – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – and indeed they do frequently prove the above accusations true. There are others, and BeReal – a France-based app that was released in 2020 and has recently become popular in other places – is one among them. It is supposed to be the “anti-Instagram”. It may have been influenced by an app called Minutiae, which was launched in 2017 (this platform’s founder certainly alleges the same).

            BeReal’s premise is that every day, at a different time but simultaneously for all users, a notification pops up – it’s time to post. Users have a two-minute window within which they must post two images, one using the selfie camera and one using the back camera. The idea is to show slices of the ordinary, without preparation, explanation or curation.

Perhaps apps like BeReal and Minutiae allow one to mull the details of one’s own life, but there’s the question of why anyone else needs to be virtually invited into those details. What value do these glimpses provide that distinguishes them from the judgment or coveting that other, more deliberated, glimpses create? Minutiae’s branding talks about how the mundane may be extraordinary in the future, i.e. historical significance. Fair enough: floppy disks and CDs that were commonplace two decades ago are vintage and even unrecognisable to children today. But the idea then would be that one generates an archive, rather than live in the moment – a problem shared by most if not all social media platforms.

A vast and growing number of users disagree, of course. As with all such platforms, novelty, boredom, voyeurism, curiosity, enjoyment and other factors have drawn many in, and amongst these collective factors will be myriad personal variables about what is derived from one’s participation.

That so much of the content we consume and produce is not a reflection of our real selves doesn’t have to mean that our actual lives need to be processed or documented or released for consumption – at least not in immediate ways. There is something to be said for percolation and the way it helps to create tangible and intangible things of lasting value. That said, if broadcasting visuals of an arbitrary moment each day assists someone’s personal growth in some way, a way that’s different from what all other platforms provide, more power to that.

But I’m not wired like that, and I know it. This is not a review of BeReal because I’m almost definitely never going to download it or anything like it. I don’t think I’m missing out because on-demand pause-and-performance isn’t mindfulness, and viewing others doing the same isn’t connection. Real life may not always happen off social media, but it is always richer, more complex and more interesting than either a snapshot or a snap judgment of one can be.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in May 2022. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.