Go, September

Sriman Aveek, who is currently interning to be a doctor, has of late become my chief supplier of books, and none of those he gives me disappoints. Stephen Alter’s book on Jim Corbett, In the Jungles of the Night, was a delight to read: he has immersed himself so deeply in the little-known details of Corbett’s life and persona that though this is a work of fiction, it could all have quite possibly happened. My only grouch would be that it ends too quickly: one mystery story, one tale of the killing of a tiger, one piece of a fictional diary, and that’s about it.

Equally gripping is the new edition of Rajmohan Gandhi’s magisterial biography of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, released this year. A fat tome that runs into 500-odd pages of small print, it is so felicitously written that it reads almost like a thriller, and having begun yesterday, I am past page 117 already. I shall probably write a review of it later on (or add to this post: keep an eye on it), but I am glad that a large and embarrassing gap in my historical knowledge is being rapidly filled. Unlike with most of the other great stalwarts of the freedom struggle, I had known too little of the Iron Man of India. But I am already bemused to have learnt that he had a sharp tongue, an acid wit, an aura of aloof superiority, and a taste for humour that sometimes bordered on the vulgar (though the author has held back samples of that from us)!

The monsoon this time, long as it has lasted, is going out with a bang. These last few days, it has been raining torrentially, so much so that my whole garden was waterlogged, and the water flooded into the space below the stairwell. Can’t remember when that sort of thing last happened. Mercifully the water drained out soon, but it was a scare, and a reminder of how so many people suffer in this country: not all of them the poorest either.

This year, for a change, I won’t be travelling anywhere far during the pujo days, so I am hoping that a sizeable number of ex-students will drop in to say hello. And also that I might be able to sleep of nights.

It has been a painful year. May the Lord help me by easing my woes in the last quarter.

Goodbye and thank you, Gloria

Gloria Steinem passed away on September 02. I wanted to pay my respects to her. Tonight it’s too late for me to stay up much longer, but I shall post this much already. This is my way of reminding myself that the rest of what I wanted to say must be written soon. The rest of you who can’t tell her from Eve might Google her up before coming back here.

(September 09): I have always been deeply persuaded by the women’s liberation movement as long as they fought against all the ugliest and stupidest kinds of oppression and deprivation, and as long as they fought for real freedom, equality and justice, especially for the poorest and least educated among them. I have read, and read about, some of the great feminists, from the time of Sita and Draupadi through Mary Wollstonecraft and J.S. Mill to Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan, along with many contemporary Indian stalwarts, some of whom I have written about with admiration and respect, not to say awe, here. Gloria Steinem was among the truly great. She left us at 92, so she was at her fighting best long before today’s young adult feminists were born, and I deeply regret that so many of them neither know about the likes of her nor about how much of their now-taken-for-granted freedoms and privileges they owe to the bitter lifelong struggles of women such as  she. She was still writing about burning issues at 90: what energy, what conviction! Though she had a low opinion of marriage and never had children, she lived a full and vigorous life, and never hated or despised men: indeed, as my newspaper obituary (The Telegraph, Sept. 04, p. 2) says, ‘she led a glittering social life and enjoyed relationships with many high-voltage men’. Also, ‘even as she personified the women’s movement, (she) defied the stereotype of women’s libbers as sexless, humourless and dateless’.      

Some of my dearest grown up female ex-students have told me that feminism today has turned into something far less honest, a far more selfish, vicious, opportunistic thing; it is (to many) no longer about freedom, equality, friendship and cooperation between the sexes any more. I have seen something of this with my own eyes, in the lives of many people around me. To a great extent, a lot of ‘feminists’ today seem to be trying very hard to prove merely that they can be just as bad, and given a chance, just as oppressive, exploitative and unfair as the worst of men can be. Some of them are quite unaware about it, and many are in furious denial. Given a different role of the dice, I’d have loved to have had a chat with Gloria about what she thought about it in the last days of her life, and whether she was just a little bit disillusioned.

I didn’t write much in detail about her life and works, but if this post makes some readers curious, I shall urge them to read up at least the Wikipedia articles about her.

P.S.: My own views on women and their rights were written down in 1995: see this. Over the last thirty odd years, I have grown sadder and less hopeful, but those views remain substantially unchanged.

P.P.S., Sept. 15: I just found out that Ms. Steinem's last interview, titled Famous Last Words, recorded not long before her death, has just been released on Netflix.