9/11

No, this is not about terrorists. It's about a diminutive woman called Dolly, the wife of a rickshaw puller. Here she is, with a raised arm, aiming to throw a piece of brick at the police station, with a policeman in the background, half-smiling, and in a posture that reveals what he is probably thinking: mad woman, does she think she can take on the police force single-handedly?

This made front page news in a local newspaper, but I doubt if it even made it anywhere else. I turned to every news channel that are broadcast from studios in either Delhi or Bombay. Nothing. Not even BBC International News or website at any had any comments on the incident: it was 9/11, this year, anniversary of one of the biggest terrorist attacks in history, one that started a few wars, and one that has led to so much action and introspection, so many protests and regime changes, so many candle-light vigils and political rhetoric. But there's very few protests we hear of about the plight of people like Dolly, a mother who has lost her 10-year old child Rimpa about four years ago, not caught up in some spectacular mass murder, victims of which are usually remembered by thousands all over the world, the cause of their murder condemned and often the murders brought to justice on immense public demand and outcry, but in the house no. 5D in Nithari, the slaughterhouse of south Delhi, India's very own heart of darkness in this times of rapid progress and modernisation... the horror, the horror.

Like Rimpa, 19 other young girls ranging from ten to twenty two years old, many from far away Bengal villages, whose parents had migrated to the capital city in search of a better livelihood but usually ended up in abysmal living conditions of the slums and still tried their best to raise their children, working as labourers in one form of back-breaking manual labour or other on the streets, or in people's homes as domestic servants, earning a pittance to run their families and yet hoping to educate their children so they grow up to be self-sufficient citizens living a better life than their largely impoverished existence so far.

In Nithari, in the house of horrors, Pandher, a businessman, and his servant, Surender Kohli partied at nights, abducting these girls whom they subjected to unspeakable horror of abuse and killed everyone of them. To get rid of their bodies, they cold bloodedly cut them into smaller pieces and buried the remains in and around the sewers behind the house. This went on for about two years or more. The people of the slums nearby had all along complained of about fourty children and young people, mostly girls disapperaing during this same period. The police abused these poor people when they went to file complaints about their missing children. Most of them could not even manage to lodge their complaints hounded by the police's inexplicable but all too familiar behaviour towards any person who does not seem to be from a "good" family (read powerful or rich with connections). We know it is a fact that on many a night, many a police personnel, among them surely some high ranking officers enjoyed Pandher's hospitality for the evening. It is also rumoured that Pandher had political connections and I am inclined to believe it fully because who does not know what our breed of successful businessmen are like?

Initially the police and CBI were in denial about Pandher's complicity and it seemed they tried to pin the blame only on the psychopathic servant, the gruesome agent of horror who also seems to have confessed to necromancy and cannibalism. However, during the investigation there was enough evidence found in the house that pointed to a child pornography and even organ trade racket.

Earlier in February this year, both Pandher and Kohli were awarded the death sentences as is the practice for the "rarest of the rare cases" by a court in Ghaziabad, much to the embarrassment of the Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's highest organ of fighting domestic crime as many CBI officers, just as their colleagues in the police department often made statements that gave a "clean chit" to Pandher. This businessman in his fifties educated at what would be considered as elite schools and colleges, at least my the likes of Rimpa's parents, was supposedly in Australia at the time of Rimpa's murder, a fact that has not been made public so far we can see. There had been no investigation to uphold Pandher's alibi: no one from Australia has been reported to have seen Pandher during the same period. If there is indeed any such alibi in existence, the public at large has had no access to it so far.

Today his son, who claims his father was an ideal parent, is feeling greatly relieved. The reason? A higher court has acquitted Pandher, much to the dismay of the parents of the missing children, all of them like Dolly are from a strata of society who rely on day to day manual labour to make a living. Poor parents, mere labourers who might at best earn a hundred dollars a month, even they have spent the last few years paying lakhs and lakhs of rupees (one lakh = one hundred thousand, or about a one thousand dollars) in hopes of getting some justice for their brutally murdered children. Prosecution lawyers agree that this has set a precedent for the other 18 pending cases against Pandher and Kohli, and it might mean that Pandher is likely to get away with it all in those cases too owing to this major judgement.

This is another 9/11. It's horror beyond belief that continues beyond the initial relevation. Not only the basest form of criminal activity has come to light in this nation's capital, the political will is that of denial, and of shielding the rich and powerful. It is a well known fact how politicians can influence the judiciary besides the corrupt elements of the judiciary itself. No doubt that they have let time to pass so the public forgets about the horrific case, and they were awaiting the day when those poor people will also give up, or be driven away merely because they have no more money, or no more will to keep fighting through a costly and expensive legal system. These are the same people whom the police harassed when they approached the police many times before the murders were out. At first the authorities refused to take any complaints, then later, when the murders were exposed by a citizen's welfare committee, they tried to take the credit of discovering the bodies.

I wonder if the courts took cognizance of the fact that many people of the neighbourhood often saw police personnel and other guests visiting Pandher's house late at night, the coming and goings of call girls, and above all, the unmistakable foul stench emanating from the hydrants in the rear of the property? It is just impossible to believe it was all the handiwork of an illiterate village manservant dubbed as a "psychopath" by the investigation;did he also know how to use webcams and laptop computers to record pornography? Where did he acquire such skillful techniques of surgically removing organs and dismembering bodies of the victims, putting them in plastic bags and dumping them in shallow holes around the sewers? Is it possible that without the house owner's full support and approval, he abducted young children and call girls and finished them off, ripped open them to extract their organs, make pornographic films and even indulged in necromantic acts and cannibalism for so long?

And what about Pandher himself who seems to have often travelled abroad to Australia, what business did he have that took him there? What kind of business man was he anyway? Why did Pandher's family never live with him, the ideal parent his son claims that he is? And why are the police and CBI protecting this man, and why has a higher court acquitted him even after all evidence brought to court has already once succeeded convincingly to uphold his complicity? Is the true reason the existence of are many more actors in this gruesome tale, actors who are placed high in the police and political establishment? How else could anyone so openly allow such an activity to take place right in the middle of a densely populated city? There's no doubt that the truth is perhaps much more horrible than what has been revealed so far. Perhaps they are letting off Pandher fearing that if he is convicted and awarded death penalty, he might reveal the names of many more people with nothing else to lose any more. Names which might shake up the current establishment to its very roots. To my mind, I can find no other explanation as to why anyone can do what he and his servant did right in the middle of the city with almost full impunity until citizens took the law in their own hands to force a search without warrant.

This nightmarish incident has brought to light the tragedy of a country that has been hijacked not only by corruption and greed, but a society which is infected with a kind of indifference that will allow almost any act of violence and suppression without being shocking to its people who keep accepting the day to day dehumanisation and lack of ethical behaviour as the reality, the way of the world. Terror as we know it is sometimes far more horrible than hijacked planes and tragic collapse of buildings brought about by dramatic acts of violence perpetrated by some remote fanatic cult. The terror we live in is all around us, in minds and hearts of some very ordinary people, people who otherwise are known as civilised and respectable, educated in the best of the country's institutions, role models for the young and just another gentleman from a good neighbourhood.

Read more
Latest story about Pandher's acquittal (incident on 9/11):
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090912/jsp/frontpage/story_11484856.jsp

http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/11/hc-sets-pandher-free-in-nithari-case.htm

2006 serial murder investigation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Noida_serial_murder_investigation

Crematorium: as told to me by Gopal

Who is Gopal? Just a father of a little girl, working as unskilled/semi-skilled labour at a small motor repairing shop. I think his work involves cleaning the motors and oiling them. He is in his early forties. Education up to standard 10 (but never passed secondary school leaving examination). He is the third of five brothers. He also works for our company as a night watchman. He earns double the money sleeping at my office (about $50-$70) while earning about $25-30 in his primary job at the mechanic's where he has been working for more than a 12 years now. He has to work there 6 days a week from 10 AM to 9:30 PM (about 11 and half hours). On Sundays, he is usually asked to work from 11 AM to 4 PM (5 hours) for which he is sometimes promised a bonus, but sometimes has to do with nothing anyway. At my company, we had supported his daughter's education for about a year or more providing him with $50 extra each month as part of the EduAid program. However, in these bad times, we have had to stop the program but we want to revive that as soon as we can. We allow Gopal to go sleep at home once a week on weekends. But ideally, he should get more nights back at home. His house roofing is made of asbestos, a banned carcinogenic substance but somehow widely used by the urban poor and sometimes in the countryside.

There are many kinds of people who go to the crematorium. Some observe silence, others don't. Some create trouble amongst themselves, they feel restless, while others are silent and grave.

Sometimes, some make the acquaintance of someone they had never met before. Sometimes, they ask each other, "what happened?", "how do you know the deceased?", "how did they die?", or "did the deceased person commit suicide?"

Then these acquaintances can lead to more intimacy or friendship. It may also happen that those who are rough and intoxicated, make trouble and leave without doing what needs to be done, while others in the same group do what they came for.

Sometimes, someone says something which is possibly an expression of their inner pain, and if others find the comment objectionable, which happens often, it causes ruptures,... it can also lead to old relationships to break down. Later what happens to those relationships cannot be predicted easily without following the lives of those people concerned over the next few weeks or months, even years.

The cremation process takes a certain amount of time: the time taken to burn a dead human body. It can be 45 minutes to about one hour and ten minutes. There's also a question of whether an electric crematorium is used; traditional wooden funeral pyres are different.

Then, as it is well known and observed in the Hindu religion that the navel cannot be burnt or it does not get burned into ashes, and therefore it is extracted and embedded in a clod of earth. In my experience, I have seen they use two earthen bowl-like dishes and put some mud in one of the dishes. Then they put the unburnt navel in the mud, and then they also put certain objects like small sea-shells ("koris", once upon a time used as currency like coins), and cover the mud-filled navel dish with the other empty one.

This is done always by a male member of the family, usually a son or brother. The rule is that it is usually the eldest or the youngest. If there are no male members (sons or brothers), then females may do this task.

Then all these objects with the navel are usually buried in the banks of a nearby pond. The better option is of course to bury it on the banks of the river Ganges if possible. In some cases the ashes and the navel (all the remains) are thrown into the river Yamuna or Ganges.

After the burial, the two or three people who perform these tasks return to the crematorium. Others might have been waiting for them to come back. Now they take a large earthen pot, the one that is used to pour water on the funeral pyre after the body is burnt in order to put the flames out. All the people who came for the funeral are asked to proceed to the exit. Just before that, every member of the family is supposed to pour a bit of the water from the pot on the ashes to "cool" off the funeral pyre. Then the funeral priests then permit the people to leave and they command that when the earthen pot is to finally broken, no one should look back again at the remains, and they should leave.

The pot is then supposed to be broken by a close person of the deceased, again usually the son or the brother. It is said that from that moment onwards he needs to be looked after and supported for a whole year by someone close in the family, someone who should always keep an eye on him in order to protect him. At night, if he needs to go to the toilet, he should be accompanied by someone close who may wait on him outside. This is because the deceased may exert some influence on him, and something bad or unfortunate may happen to him.

Then the funeral party returns home. On the way back, this party is usually given some kind of refreshments, usually sweets, or whatever is possible or can be afforded, even a drink of tea. The members of the funeral party are supposed to take a bath in a pond or anywhere possible, usually outdoors. They should take a dip in the pond or river, or bathe with their clothes on, but nowadays some people do not always follow the rules and excuse themselves by saying that they will do it elsewhere, and go home.

The ones who stay on after the bath return to the home of the deceased. An iron implement such as a kitchen implement like a "bothi"* (a cutting/chopping sickle-like tool with support stands so that it can be placed on the floor, held on steady with one leg while using both free hands to chop or cut vegetables before cooking) is brought out. A small fire is lit with some straw or leaves usually in the porch, if there is one, or in an empty corner in the house. Some "neem" leaves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neem) are also gathered along with some sugary candies or sweetmeats. The members of the funeral party then go on to touch the fire with their bare hands, then touch the "bothi" or any other iron tool. Then they chew a bitter "neem" leaf or two for a while and spit it away. In the end, they eat a sugar candy or some sweetmeats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetmeat).

At the crematorium, there are some people who perform puja ("worshiping rituals") to the Goddess Kali (the black woman incarnation of Shiva the destroyer's wife, Parvati).

There are also the "tantrics" who like to hang around the crematorium and meditate there.

Now Gopal is feeling sleepy... end of narration.

My notes:
Kali went into a mad frenzy of bloodbath when, at an ancient unspecified era the world was being dominated by evil men. In her frenzy she lost her powers of judgment and began killing even the good and virtuous. And she used their severed heads joined together to make a garland in her orgy of mass murder, while remaining fully nude. Shiva went down to earth and laid himself at her feet. She stepped on him, and then realised immediately she had placed her feet on her husband, her Lord, her Master. She came to her senses and realising that she had committed a sin (stepping on her master, not the killings, mind you!), she felt embarrassed and stuck her red blood stained tongue out, a gesture commonly associated with the realisation of guilt.)

---

* References to "bothi" in different contexts (search by the word bothi in the links below):
i. Variation: http://www.bongcookbook.com/2008/03/boti-unique-cutting-instrument.html
ii. Ancient history: http://www.panhwar.com/Article31.htm
iii. In Bengali culture: https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/sasialit/2007-April.txt

Educating to kill?

I have been holding back on this one for a long time now. Sometimes the words come gushing out, in anger and in pain, and sometimes, no matter how I feel about it, it refuses to make sense even though it stares right into my face.

The "largest" democracy in the world is going in for the polls. In an article "THE CROWN IN THE GUTTER, - In India, democracy creates its own royals" written by an eminent journalist from South Asia, Sunanda Dutta-Roy clearly distinguishes between "western-style" and "eastern-style" democracies:

The elections seem to have little bearing on the nitty-gritty of government. Voters and their representatives enter into a different compact in the West where democracy is equated with good governance. Our monarchical ethos places elected representatives above accountability.

If you look at the spectacle of India going to polls, you might perceive that it is no better than a bunch of feudal lords of the new age and their affiliates stage-managing a great ritual for the confused billions who have trouble making ends meet or even secure a square meal a day. In this frenzy, I am trying to hear the voices, I, who come from a relatively privileged middle class with some education to speak of, the manifestos of the left, right and centrists: I am trying hear what they are talking about and what they are thinking of doing about education.

Every day I open the newspaper and news article after news article tell me about five year olds raped and killed, ten year olds fatally wounded and left standing in forty degree heat with bricks on their shoulders until they collapse and never recover from life support and comma... every day there are stories of "teachers" abusing students at every level, every age, physically and mentally.

In his blog post "Educating to failure?", Peter Kenny, a well-renowned Australian educator notes:

‘Training to failure’ is a common term used often when referring to weight training. The controversial method of training basically promotes athletes to increase repetitions of lifting weights until the muscles fail and the athlete cannot lift again until rested. This, it is thought, promotes muscle growth and increases stamina and strength.

The same day little ten-year-old Sanno died, a young man aspiring to be a software engineer with a Bachelor's degree on Technology hung himself from the ceiling, yet another casualty of an education system which has systematically turned people into confused, scared and obedient corporate slave workers in a country that prides itself as the cradle of the Eastern civilisation and the land of spirituality. Poor soul was not a rebel, he did not blame the corporate body whose tough training program is perhaps designed to "cut the flab" of trainees on the bench in these times of global recession. He was a follower, and in his six-page suicide note, he blamed himself as a failure.

Again, I will quote Peter who puts it succinctly into perspective in the very first few lines of his post:

Standardized tests, benchmarks, high stakes testing and the external pressures placed on both student and teacher by Governments (eager to quote a ‘value added’ for political gain), Organizations, media and some curriculums corrupt the minds of our youth and eliminate the art of critical analysis, creativity in thought and entrepreneurial endeavor.

No, I will not go and vote in this elections whether it makes a difference or not. No matter how much TV ads or electoral advocates like "jagore.com" ("wakeup".com) try to entice me into participating in the Great Indian Democractic Process. I will strain my ears and look out for the day when our political class give up their power or use it right from the grassroot level to the crème de la crème institutes and educate the future generations to learn how to learn , and not turn into violent, aggressive, self-serving and competitive individuals who continue to rape, kill and plunder, with their hands or their means, this land, this nation and this earth we live on.

The latent violence in our society is manifest in our speech, our body language, our actions and what we do to earn a living or consider pleasurable. Rahul Guha Roy, a musician gets into the "psycho" headspace of the young man who put a bullet between the eyes a young lady, right where Indian women stick their bindis, in a farm house at Meherauli (south of Delhi) . This young man, son of a politician, "well-educated", went out that night like so many others for a night out. He is just a conformist in a society shaped by politicians and leaders, and an education system, which once served to create "colonial" masters, and now creates glorified clerical jobs outsourced from another part of the globe where, now, people are just beginning to come in terms of the word called "globalisation".

Where does all this violence come from? Ashoka fought a bitter war at Kalinga centuries ago and then, horrified by the violence, he denounced war and all forms of violence and built the largest ever known empire founded through peace and diplomacy, and the unifying mission of Buddhist spirituality. In more modern times Churchill called Gandhi the naked fakir who, in his loin cloth and diet of little else than goat milk, moved masses to ask the colonialists to quit India in no uncertain terms. From the east, another man, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose led a troop of irregulars at the head of the Japanese army advancing towards India through Burma only to be massacred by the Allies as late as 1945. With that every Indian young man's Garibaldi-influenced dreams of fighting an armed battle for freedom ended even before it begun.

Our feudalist mindset continues, and is all pervasive. The education system we patronise continues - the education that teaches you to be a machine to kill, or be on the side which kills the most. "Spare the rod, and spoil the child": even our best teachers wanted to be figures of authority, they were the good cop and the bad cop rolled in one. Every Indian child goes through a systematic inhumane series of rituals every morning from the prayer assembly to period after period of unconnected classroom tasks. They get scolded, slapped, beaten up, turned out of the room, humiliated and told they are not good enough. Never good enough.

It is precisely this experience in the growing years that rob them of their innocence, and their natural curiosity, the positive little risks taking attitude invaluable for learning life lessons, and turn many of them into adults with very little values to speak of.

Friday the 13th, 2009

Yesterday I went on a bike ride to a friend's workplace about 15 kilometres from the city limits east of Science city. A relatively newly built road in a much better condition than most of the other city roads in Calcutta, it starts from below the bridge over the dirty canal at Dhapa. My friend Sudip works at a leather designing and training institute originally set up by UNIDO about 12 years ago. Now they have moved to their brand new double-storied campus equipped with "state-of-the-art" leather designing and manufacturing machines (German Adler, Italian Atom, ...) which my friend showed off to me gleefully like a child given unlimited access to a wonderland.


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Earlier Ms. Kumar, the head of the Institute under whose leadership Freya has come so far where other such projects have closed down, showed me around the facility. From the terrace we could look at the vast expanse of plots where some leather manufacturing companies have already started operations whereas others are at various stages of construction. Had it not been for the recent economic downturn, she said, this place would have been full of operational leather processing and production units by now. We were looking at the Bantala Leather Park, an area specially earmarked as one of Calcutta's first special economic zones exclusively reserved for it's long flourishing leather export industry.

On our way through gateway no.1, the first thing that greeted me was the unmistakable smell of tanneries, the smell we were so used to around the Tangra and Dhapa region when driving past them on the way to Salt Lake or the airport until mid-nineties. Wait a minute? This SEZ (special economic zone) was supposed to be "clean" and "environment friendly" ... that was the point of it, after all.

A little down the road inside the SEZ, a canal filled with water no doubt made toxic by the clearly visible floating waste from new tanneries came into view. Sudip remarked that the waste treatment plant set up by the SEZ authorities was not functional and already people were beginning to show some concern. Not far away a brand new building dominated the north-eastern horizon. A tech company, Mahindratech, here in the a leather SEZ! I think techies will need to get used to the smell too unless that treatment plant starts operating properly soon.

A milestone we came across on the road about a few kilometres from Calcutta said the village of Basanti was 83 kilometres down the road. Basanti is the one of the "gateways" to Sunderbans where tourists often travel to in hopes of seeing the famous Royal Bengal Tiger, or at least a crocodile or two. The well-maintained road is just a two lane stretch lined with lamp posts on one side which mostly don't work in the evening. I couldn't help but compare our very own SEZ with those I visited in Tianjin or in the outskirts of Suzhou and Wuxi in China. It's hard to call our infrastructure anything but an excuse for real development. In China, even in Vietnam, road space is at least four times of what we have here in our version of SEZ. And at night road lighting and traffic signals do work.

This road, I wouldn't want to travel everyday: the way the public and private buses rushed past us, I think it would be a miracle if one did not meet with at least one accident or a few close shaves every other day. Sudip's phone rang once during the trip and he stopped to take the call, a little irritated having to take off his helmet and fish out the phone from his bag. Can't blame the wife though calling to find out if we had reached safely. Just before that we had encountered a Calcutta tramways road hog of a bus driver deliberately running us out of the asphalted road area as it sped in the opposite direction.

In broad daylight, a stretch of the road had all the lamp-posts fitted with high powered sodium vapour lights left on. Sudip thought it was inefficiency and callousness. Someone leaves the street lights on every morning for the rest of the day, but in the evening, every other lamp does not work. I have a better explanation. The lights are left on during the day time deliberately.

The reason? Power consumption levels are being deliberately recorded as two or three times higher than what it should be. No doubt later, that excess power can be sold off illegally every month through illegal connections. Yet another brilliant scheme by some bureaucrats and their staff on ground in the power department.

That however does not explain the non-functional units at night. Maybe, just may be they are being reported as non-functional deliberately so replacement quotas are also higher than real figures in the official records. No prizes for guessing where the "non-functional" equipment will end up later, and who will be slightly richer from taxpayers' money.

Back in office, I got a mail from Greenpeace: activists roughened up by goons in Orissa. They want people to phone Mr. Ratan Tata and ask him why such an incident happened in a port owned by the industrialist. A port whose operations are dangerous and life-threatening for the last few surviving Oliver Ridley turtles found in the Orissa coastline. For a moment I was tempted to try my luck at phoning Mr. Tata himself and asking him if he cares at all. Then again this is the same man who wanted to set up the now infamous "cheapest-car-in-the-world" Nano production unit in Singur, a village almost about the same distance from Calcutta as Bantala.

Opposition to land acquisition from farmers made it impossible ultimately. But only after much politics of propaganda and misinformation besides the killing of many people including a sixteen year old girl, Tapashi who was horribly raped and set on fire. West Bengal earned yet another "D" in investment-friendliness. And Ratan Tata went west to Narendra Modi's Gujarat to set up the Nano plant saying goodbye to our "Marxist" government and joining hands with the most extreme right-wing leader of them all. Goons, they said, goons who beat you up and leave you to die if you dare to take on the establishment.

I was wondering about how the government had acquired the land at Bantala? This also seemed to be fertile agricultural land. What happened here? My mother told me about a girl who worked as domestic help in one of our relatives house came from that area. Their family got money for their land, even a concrete one-room house in their village. Some family members even got jobs in the SEZ.

The Leather park's polluted water will now make it's way south to the marshy Sunberbans and no one knows what effect it will have on the ecosystem there. This much is certain, it will not be for the better. Sudip told me about workers from villages in Sunderbans who come to work at the leather complex. He got this one from one of them he had given a lift to the park gates on his bike one day: Two workers had not shown up for work that morning. They were attacked and killed, probably eaten alive by a man-eating tiger which strayed near their village. Forest department officials shot the man-eater with enough tranquillizer darts that it would not ever wake up again. Normally the Royal Bengal tiger is not a man-eater. Only when it is wounded or sick, does it turn to easy (really slow-moving) prey: human beings. I really hope the toxic water does not pollute the tigers' habitat and make the last few surviving members of the species too weak to hunt their natural prey.