Every other day, I think of things I’d like to write about, and even make a note of them dutifully - yet, time seems to race ahead of me everyday. Anyways, one of the things I was thinking about recently was, how often I hear the phrase these days, “Can’t be judgmental” or “She’s so judgmental”. It seems to be almost a self-evident sort of truth, that one shouldn’t judge.

But, when I think about it a little, I feel that it is really hard to refrain from judging - in fact, it’s practically impossible. Even the most “let-live” type person is bound to have something that they abhor, isn’t it? And aren’t there certain things that all (or most) of us would judge pretty harshly? I mean, if I came across a case of child abuse or ill-treatment of domestic workers, I’m not going to be ‘chilled out’ or put myself in the perp’s shoes and refrain from judging. Would you? I certainly judge high-earning professionals who crib about paying the maid a decent living wage.

Even on less ’serious’ issues, most of us do judge, even if the specific hot buttons vary from person to person. In my case, I can think of a few things where I am rather judgmental. I tend to feel that people who read chick-lit or praise Chetan Bhagat can’t possibly be very intelligent - although rationally, I do know that reading tastes are not a barometer of everything and also that a person could be very intelligent or skilled at some things and less so at others. I judge parents whose children are consistently bratty. I also know that I do judge less as I grow older.

For instance, in my teens, I used to judge women who quit work after motherhood as “wasting their education”. Age and the experiences of loved ones have taught me that no education is wasted, and certainly, they are no more “wasting it” than the IIT-IIM graduates who sell soap and washing powder.

What about you? What/Who do you judge? Or do you manage to stay above it all?

This is not a review, and the movie has been out on screens for a few weeks now - so, there are going to be some spoilers here.

Deivathirumagal essentially revolves around a mentally challenged single father, Krishna and his fight for custody of his daughter, Nila. One of the issues here is that despite taking up a challenging subject like mental disability the movie shies away from really looking at it. And it is not mild disability; Krishna’s mental capabilities are pegged at that of a 5-year old.

One puzzling example of this half-heartedness is when we are told that the child’s mother, who dies in childbirth, left her home because she fell in love with Krishna. Without meaning any disrespect to mentally challenged individuals, one has to ask what drives an educated women from a super-rich family, to fall in love with a poor, mentally challenged man from a rural background. By not talking disability here, I could not understand what the director, Vijay, was trying to accomplish. Was he trying to say that disability is not a barrier to love (in which case, he could have been bold enough to say that), or did he just mean what a character in the movie says, that ‘modern girls’ are simply content with a good-looking man?

Then, there is the custody battle itself. What a splendid opportunity to examine the basic question: does an individual with a severe mental disability deserve to keep custody of his child? There are no easy answers here; as the Judge says in one scene, custody is not just about who deserves what - at its core is the question of the child’s welfare.

Examining this would not have made the movie ‘boring’ or ‘art-movie-type’. One of the loveliest things about the movie was how beautifully it showed the relationship between the father and the daughter - that despite his disability, Krishna copes with bringing up Nila, with the help of the small community they live in. Nila is shown as sprightly, intelligent and empathetic - and in a believable manner, not in the annoyingly perfect kid mode that Indian movies used to revel in. Given this relationship at the heart of the movie, it would not have made the movie any less interesting if it had dared to take on the custody question directly.

Instead, Krishna’s bumbling lawyer team spends all their time attempting to hide his disability from the court. Thereby killing the entire premise of the movie that a mentally challenged individual is still capable of many beautiful things, including parenthood.

Through the movie, the audience sat in rapt attention - and although the first half had little filmi romance or action, no one seemed to be missing it. Nor did people laugh at Krishna - there was laughter, but it was with him. That is a sea change, when you consider that 10-15 years ago, a character like this would likely have been the comedian on a sidetrack.

Which is why it’s sad that the director did not think his audience would be ready to look at the question of disability upfront - Nila’s custody is ultimately resolved through an emotional route. The judge/ court realises the depth of their love for each other, but the fundamental question stays unanswered. Until Krishna returns the child himself to her maternal relatives - as if acknowledging the limitation of his claims.

In a way, the director plays it safe - yes, a mentally challenged parent has a right to be a parent (and here he milks our tears by playing up their love), but no, he doesn’t really, as Krishna himself seems to acknowledge in the end.

The Sprint of the Blackbuck, a collection of writings on wildlife and conservation in South India, selected from The Blackbuck, the quarterly journal of the Madras Naturalists’ Society, is one such effort. Edited by Theodore Baskaran , himself a well-known writer on environmental issues, it is an excellent collection, that can be enjoyed equally by the layperson and someone more steeped in the academic/scientific discourse on wildlife and conservation.

Divided into 4 sections - Wildlife, Habitats, Conservation and Documenting Wildlife - it covers many different issues and perspectives. Some of the best pieces in the collection, such as M. Krishnan’s Nilgiri Langur in Mundanthurai Sanctuary, cover beautifully the intersection between a particular species, a habitat and it’s response to human-engineered conflict. Indeed, all of M. Krishnan’s writings included in Sprint of the Blackbuck are notable for the love of wildlife evident in the writing, the attention to detail and the manner in which scientific concepts such as adaptation are explained so lucidly. (Next on my reading list is Mazhaikalamum Kuyilosaiyum, a collection of M. Krishnan’s writings on the environment, in Tamizh).

Some of the best pieces of the collection are also to be found in the Habitat section, evocative writings on animals in different environments. One grouse I had with the book is that while the pieces have been picked from 25 years of The Blackbuck journal, the original dates of publishing have not been mentioned along with each piece. This is a drawback for most pieces, but especially for those in the Habitat and Conservation sections - while reading about the scrub jungle on the edge of Chennai or an experiment in conservation at Rishi Valley, it is important to know what period these descriptions refer to.

Another drawback is the absence of good-quality photographs, but this presumably, is a budget constraint. If not, it would have been good to see photographs at least for those pieces where one species of deer or monkey is compared to another, and the layperson does not really know the difference between these.

In all other respects, The Sprint of the Blackbuck makes for excellent reading and will open your mind to thinking of the environment and conservation efforts in a more inclusive manner.

- The Adult Indian Woman - on the lack of autonomy for young Indians, and especially for young women

- Freedom from Fashion - on whether fashion diktats can be stifling, and the veil liberating

- And, The Other Woman, review of an anthology of 16 stories revolving around the subject.

Happy Reading, and hope to be back here soon!

Strangely, both were inspired by events on Twitter, where I am spending some time to maintain the Women’s Web profile. The first was on an incident of under-age driving - when popular blogger Kiruba tweeted about letting his under-10 year olds drive. The second is really close to my heart; it’s about the abuse thrown at women who dare to be visible in public - do have a look, and if you are on twitter, FB or social media, please show your support in any way you can.

In other news, Women’s Web has completed a year. Strangely enough, there was no specific launch date, although the first bunch of articles went up early April 2010. Work has been so busy that I never even realised that a year was up until the end of April! It’s been a challenging year - a year of finding out how little I know about running an online publication - but it’s been extremely exciting too, and I wouldn’t have given up the experience for anything!

When I received the copy of HUSH that I had ordered online, at first, it seemed like there was more packaging material than book. HUSH is a slim book indeed, but weighty nonetheless. A graphic novel that takes on a troubling and uncomfortable subject that most people would prefer not to think about - child sexual abuse.

With absolutely no text, and very few images, this graphic novel by Pratheek Thomas and Rajiv Eipe tells the story of a girl in a seemingly normal urban family, which really isn’t normal at all. While I am not going to divulge the details of the story, suffice to say that the book makes a strong impression. A couple of things stood out for me.

One was the helplessness of children - not just in the context of abuse but in general. For adults who have the care of children, I can understand how frustrating their behaviour can sometimes be - the yelling, the tantrums, the way they sometimes can embarrass parents - and yet, how frustrating must it be for a child to constantly be told not to do something or not follow all their natural instincts. (This post - “Respect” is worth reading in that context). In one of the panels in HUSH, a little girl cowers in the Principal’s room, and while I don’t think it was meant to indicate sexual abuse, the question of power and the use of fear to control children loomed large. If we teach children to fear adults and that good behaviour always means saying Yes, how can we teach them at the same time to say No?

A while after reading the book, another thing that really stays in the mind is the vivid expressiveness of all the characters’ faces in the book - and especially, of the anger that an abused child feels. HUSH does its close-ups superbly; in fact, in many places, it feels uncomfortable, as though one is personally part of a system that has failed this child - such is the anger in her eyes that glare at you.

Which can only be a good thing - it’s time more of us took responsibility for looking out for children we come in contact with, and not necessarily only one’s own kids.

What do you think? By ceding the ‘big issues’ such as politics, science, law or technology to men, are we doing ourselves a disservice? I am in two minds - on the one hand, one cannot say that the personal is unimportant, and men can definitely do better at articulation in that space; however, one cannot say either that politics or technology is unimportant - these things drive change and will shape the way the world looks 10 years from now. Are we not interested or just not interested enough to focus on them single-mindedly, or are there female bloggers and writers in this area that have been missed? (I am talking Indian specifically).

Go read and do share your comments. It is a post that a lot of thought has gone into, and I think, a topic much worth discussing.

A large plot of land next to our house is lying vacant and this is is a haven for many of the smaller species. It has already been identified for building by a flat developer. I can’t help feeling sad about this, and indeed, many of us love to wax eloquent about the forests being destroyed for development, ecosystems being wiped out and so on - but what we do not realise is that the ecosystem does not exist in a remote forest comfortably away from us. Our backyards and cities are also part of an ecosystem and we are all complicit in driving away every other species from it except - homo sapiens.

We are the ones who buy the flats - for which the land is cleared.

We are the ones who use mobile phones - and their towers that drive birds away.

We are the ones that want a ‘lakeside’ property - where access is denied to fishermen who have used the lake for generations because we don’t want ‘outsiders’, especially poorly dressed ones, in ‘our’ neighbourhood.

And we are the ones breeding in numbers our country cannot sustain. Yes, you and me, netizens may protest that we don’t have more than 2 kids each, but even then, ours will be the kids that eat more processed food, use and throw electronic items every year, want larger houses with more privacy for everyone and 24 hour ACs to shut out the heat - in short, consume energy and resources like an American does today.

Those metals and minerals have to come from somewhere, don’t they? And while we protest the jungles being cleared for the bauxite mining and the coal plant, we can’t live without the things they make! We protest the process, but clamour for its results. Most politicians know this, which is why no one (ok, make that few, out of some respect for Jairam Ramesh) takes environmental objections seriously.

I don’t know really what the solution is. Live more simply, yes - but easier said than done? Honestly, it is difficult to weigh the consequences of each and every small decision. Should I gift this friend’s child yet another cheap plastic china-made toy made probably with toxic materials? Or an ‘authentic’ wooden toy that still needed some part of a tree? Or is there something more sustainable? Do I need one more outfit? If I were to be absolutely honest, I ‘need’ very little of what I have. Yet, it is all very exhausting and rarely do I continue this chain of thought to any logical end.

I did buy recently Ramachandra Guha’s ‘How much should a person consume‘, and I’m hoping that it will set me thinking a little more deeply on the subject and perhaps act on it, even if in my own small way.

What do you think? How much should a person really consume?

This year, the 100th year of celebrating Women’s Day, we can all celebrate women by bringing to light the stories of women that we know.

That’s what the FemInspiration contest is all about. If you haven’t seen it already, check it out!

How can I support FemInspiration?

1. By participating and adding your voice to the cause of celebrating women (on your blog or on FB - please go to the contest URL for details)
2. By spreading the word to others who may like to participate

Looking forward to hear all your stories soon!