Real Troubles – S’bu and Abahlali Attacked

S'bu Zikode at Constitutional Court, May 14th 2009

Luckily work is so very busy, otherwise I’d get a free moment and be forced to dwell on the horrific fate of our friend S’bu and Raj’s Abahlali friends and colleagues.  Abahlali baseMjondolo is a shackdwellers movement in South Africa.  Our relationship with S’bu (who has lead the movement) has certainly broken any stereotypes I might have had about peoples movements, or people who live in shacks.  S’bu is a sophisticated thinker, a brilliant writer – and someone who’s been committed to the cause of the shackdwellers even after severe personal injury – he was picked up and beaten (quite randomly) by the Sydenham police last year.  Now, in this latest raid – apparently instigated by the ANC and supported by the police – they destroyed his house.  I’m hoping he, his wife and children are fine.  The settlement reports several deaths.  Although I speak of him, of course it’s the settlement that’s traumatized.  I think about a beautiful photograph in Raj’s upcoming book.  It’s a picture of Moses Mnewango pouring over council documents by candlelight in a shack, reading, studying, learning to support the fight to gain decent housing.  To move beyond the shack built on the slopes around a waste dump.  

I’ve been reading ‘The Lazarus Project’ by Alexsandaar Hemon.  Three stories intertwine – one from the turn of the 19th to 20th century, a jewish man, Lazarus, arrives at the door of a constable in Chicago and through a kind of misunderstanding is shot.  We learn about the context, the automatic slandering of the man as a ‘jewish anarchist’ and the targeting and harassment of his sister and broader community.  A second thread describes the horrors of the Bosnian/Serbian war, including the random killing of civilians and the more organized violence, as told by a photographer as he journeys back with the protagonist of the novel ‘to the homeland’, back to Sarajevo.  A sub-thread in the protagonists searching through records for the backstory to Lazarus reveals a pogrom in Moldovia.  The details of these take me back to 1984 in India.  And just when I finished the book I got a call from Raj about the Abahlali targeting and violence.  It’s very hard to wrap my head around how the proclivity to this kind of violence persists, how we can do such horrific things to each other. 

S’bu and Abahlali colleagues and friends are in the midst of a struggle.  There’s not much I can do.  Sign this petition if you know enough about the scenario that you feel comfortable in doing so.  The goal is to at least let the local ANC politicians and the police know that there’s a broad international community that knows what’s going down – they cannot keep perpetrating this violence and imagine they will go unnoticed.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.

We Know Nothing

Nothing - Nic; Photo by Jaroslaw Pocztarski

My Hero says:  My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know…”  I say, on this blog - “…goofiness is important, it reduces the probability of b.s.“   

Only difference is, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, aka “Hero”, that suggests that moment of doubt, the moment of saying “I don’t know”.   And when I say I’m trying to reduce the chance of b.s., I’m first and foremost talking of reducing my own b.s.  I suspect that’s not Taleb’s starting point.  But I’m going to fantasize that on reading this he will crack a perfect joke, take himself down a notch, and remain My Hero.

In fact, my own viewpoint aligns with My Hero’s.  That is, an awareness of ‘not knowing’ is the right starting point for much analysis or action.  Unfortunately,  being told that one doesn’t know more than one knows can seriously disturb many a machismo and ego.

I’d like to interlace Disney & that 2002 web phenomenon “Hot-or-Not”, to illustrate.  With my own perverted sense of weekend relaxation, I spent one Saturday standing outside the downtown Disney store in the rain, holding posters of Winnie (leaking paint) and protesting the sacking of sweatshop employees in Disney’s factories in Bangladesh.  It was a a complicated case.  A contractor was found to have violated some labor laws in his subcontracted factory, so Disney peremptorily closed off the contract, resulting in all the employees losing their (already miserable) jobs.   

I had struggled with the case.  There were many complexities, not least of which was the contradiction between Disney following it’s ‘ethical’ guidelines to justify a move that resulted in real terms in even more damage to the workers than the initial violation.  Was it as simple as Disney giving itself a checkmark for following it’s ’socially responsible’ principles hoping that no one dug around to see that it’s scorecard in real terms had just gone even more negative?  Or should I be considering the corporate viewpoint, of the spirit “but what’s a good well-meaning company to do?”  Sarcasm aside, though, I do have some sense of how hard it is to toe the line of a principle you’ve set yourself especially as it’s ramifications play out in a complex society.  For example in this case, was it more important for the company to send a strong message to its’ other contractors, which in the longer run would be beneficial to workers everywhere? (Just for the sake of argument – I’m not assuming that this was truly Disney’s consideration – and there are in fact some much better alternatives).

After thinking about it, I decided that even though I couldn’t balance all the possible pieces of this puzzle to land on a comprehensively supportable course of action, I should still join my couple of friends to protest Disney.   My philosophy, that we generally operate with an incomplete understanding of all the factors at play especially for distant scenarios, was a starting point.  Against this backdrop, I felt it eminently sensible to put in a pitch with what what was likely the statistically underrepresented side  – the side of the sacked workers. 

There are many such situations where I feel that supporting the underrepresented side is justified, even if the scenario seems complex, when the impact may be severe along the axes of health, food, shelter.  Disney didn’t need my help at all.  By being silent, I was in effect supporting Disney, not the workers.  Somewhere someone would adjust all the parameters and make decisions that would impact the scenario.  Me, I could do my bit to just ensure that those whose voices aren’t heard as often get a bit of support.  If you think of all the time that you’re spending not acting and contributing to the statistics (noise included) of the default, then a few times of standing in a crowd protesting the other side just can’t be wrong. 

That evening, through some random connections, I ended up hanging out with the guy who founded ‘Hot or Not’ and found myself explaining my day’s activities and my rationale.   But Hot (Not) was not only unconvinced by the rationale for my actions but also grew steadily angrier.  It became apparent to me that for someone who had just convinced himself that he was smart beyond the norm, having just recently been catapulted into sudden fame and perhaps even fortune, what I was justifying was in turn pulling the rug out from under his rationalized sense of his position in the world.  It was obviously upsetting to his sense of self that I was putting the weight of my personality behind a world view (similar to My Hero’s dare I say) where his newly proven smarts could never be sufficient or perhaps even useful.  I guess when your future wealth may depend on the profound and quantifiable metric, ‘degree of hotness’, you can’t bear to hear about how it may actually be less useful than something unassessed, something immeasurable at it’s core.

San Francisco Perfection

Last Saturday, fried from computer screen adoration (you know, when it’s you and your screen and you’re glued to each others eyes…) I finally broke free. 

It started ominously – a drive to the office to pick up papers at 7am on a Saturday morning.  But Spring was upon us and the views of the bay and city in the morning sun finally had their way with me.  I called Marco to check if he was at the Alemany Farmer’s market.  There’s no better way to start a San Francisco Saturday than at the peoples market (then; today).  But for once, Marco wasn’t going.  As I arrived at our block, I couldn’t turn towards home.  Instead, I found myself continuing to drive and ended up on Geary, racing into the Pacific Ocean.  The day only got better:

• The first peek of the Pacific from Geary, rolling downhill to Loui’s Diner and the Sutro Bath ruins. If I wasn’t in a motoring mood, eggs, steak and hash browns with a view to ochre mud stumps and a raging ocean would have been the call.
• Turn off into the park with the top open to take in the colors and smells of springtime, our brooding gnarled california trees and turning a corner, the sudden view of stoic bison, unreal in their mass and stillness.
• Over the bridge to Old Oakland.  Lemon riccotta pancakes at Cockadoodle Cafe, talk about politics surrounded by refreshing color after (it’s true) mostly white San Francisco.
• Dropping Anirvan back to Berkeley and had to extend the conversation as we often must.  But this time, a Berkeley tradition – sitting on the Shattuck median (an 8 ft mound of dirt and grass) with cars puttering by on either side, under a ‘don’t sit on median’ sign. Berkeley gets plus points for this urban rendition of hanging out in a meadow.
• Driving back into the city with a favorite view of San Francisco (from the Bay Bridge) on display for longer than usual as I crawled through Saturday afternoon traffic.
• Quick dinner at Out the Door under the SF Shopping Center with the girls and Marco to provide the sole, slammingly dressed, male counterpoint. Marco can do orange & pink, together - no more need be said.  For food, the brightest, most unexpected salad I’ve ever eaten, Grapefruit & Jicama salad.
• Mosey on over to 111 Minna for what started a little slow (it was a fundraiser for lawyers after all…) but with a favorite DJ from old times spinning dub and then the live action of Sukhawat Ali Khan and friends, it was raucous.  On this night, the art included Amal’s photographs relaying stories of taxi cab drivers. 
  Maneesh (afore-mentioned DJ) said – ‘reminds you of Azaad days, doesn’t it?’  Minna, now more standard fare as a hipster art and music joint, used to be smaller in the day, and Saturday nights often included a collective of DJs (‘Azaad’) spinning South Asian-influenced dub, beats, hip-hop, trance and drum n bass.  Took me back.  Time for a party.

Sutro Bath Ruins. Photo by: the tahoe guy

Coffee Cart Days

Bostoners had Cheers, or at least TV-watchers had Norm. I and a few other lucky ones had Lydia, Ricardo, and ‘the coffee cart’. They’ve now left. I’m still here. In memory of what to me now was an Oakland institution. Small enough to know everyone’s names, a welcome stop on the way to BART and work, it always put my mind in another space where it was okay to take a few minutes to loiter, chat, commiserate, catch up. Kathy and Chris. Julio. Endo. Theresa. The man with the snazzy neckties. The woman that called in her orders of nonfat vanilla flavored drinks. The Mexican Chocolate I never tried. Ricardo’s famous latte with designer ‘hearts’ swirled on top. Walking in one day to notice Raj’s CV on the counter (“What a talented guy!”) Jaunts to the coffee cart with mummy and papa to introduce them to the gang. I’ll miss it all – but hopefully this sets the stage for the next exciting phase for Lydia and Ricardo, away from the heartaches and stress of entrepreneurial life, and towards some stability and security.

Sundowners, books & a party

We will be hosting a party at Ike’s bookstore in Durban to celebrate our matrimonials in South Africa.

Ike’s is on the second floor of a two-story colonial building, with shelves of books all over, books laid out on tables, many old and rare, especially from/about countries and lands in Africa. It’s not packed with serpentine towers of books facing you at every step, like bookstores in Mumbai or Delhi, but has broad walkways and much mulling space between bookcases. There’s a little room off the main one, with a lovely old table and nicer bookshelves with some of the more precious finds. But the best part is stepping out of the large french doors onto the balcony that encircles the store. There, there’s ample room for a sofa, chairs, table – calling out for marrying the cocktail hour with a good sunset, conversation or perhaps that simplest of pleasures – reading a good book. Very civilized.

Bulla & Everyone Else

Everyone sings in India. Birj mentioned this in passing. I had forgotten it. This is the song, he said, that all the kids on the streets were singing when I was last there.

Friday morning, I put on Rabbi in the car. Bulla streams out as the sun glances off downtown San Francisco. I’m approaching the city, on the bay bridge. Rabbi’s sound, Bulleh Shah’s words, kids with nothing who keep singing the words of a Sufi poet from the mid-18th century.

Nor did I create the difference of faith
Nor did I create adam-eve
Nor did I name myself
Beginning or end I know just the self
Do not acknowledge duality
There’s none wiser than I
Who is this Bulla Shah
Bulla! I know not who I am

A Day in the Life

Ishmael Reed and Esther Dyson co-star in Bay Area afternoon.

An African American produces a play that provides a lens into the internal dynamics of a modern-day Pakistani-American family. The play is directed by the producer’s Jewish wife. A talk about the future stars a tech doyen – a woman. She is accompanied at the talk by another woman – her mother, Verena – a mathematician who has to work to ensure we don’t forget the boy in the family, who, by the way is an accomplished historian and writer. Ishmael Reed and Esther Dyson starred in my Saturday afternoon, casually defying expectations and stereotypes. I did not construct the afternoon – it just happened as it does, in the Bayosphere. Read the rest on my bayosphere blog.

Dizzy with Muezzins in Calcutta

The chairs were wooden. The stage was rudimentary. We sat under blurred Calcutta skies. But the sounds were heavenly.

Dizzy Gillespie was throwing his trumpet’s innovations to the self-professed cultural capital of India, Calcutta. Jazz. It may have been music, but for me it was everything – everything that was different from my teenage perception of straitjacket India and our old masters, stodgy rule-ridden backward and aristocratic England. Instead, it was America.

And all this before the real hallelujah moment.

A pause. The next number’s coming soon. The trumpet is at Gillespie’s lips. When suddenly another sound fills the air. It’s the muezzins from Calcutta minarets hailing prayer-time for the city’s Muslims. Clashing sensibilities – how dare our native sounds interrupt this 1st world gift!

But Gillespie, my American hero, is not thrown. Gillespie, he pauses, trumpet to lips, allowing his craven audience a moment to distance it self from coarser instant reactions. We begin to hear the muezzins anew. As mostly non-muslims, the sounds finally take on a haloed tone, framed as they are this evening by a foreign meter and a foreign man. As always in India, if the Western master honors, so do the colonial servants.

The muezzins’ melodies tail off. (Had I never noticed before that muezzins’ called out together, their voices interlacing in what seemed, through my overblown teenage imagination, to be in fact – Jazz?) And as the audience slowly readjusts, my American hero’s innovations take off. Gillespie takes the muezzins’ lead, picking up their melody, then taking it away to somewhere else.

And what an amazing place that was. The ascendance of America for me, was confirmed. Where else, I asked, who else, could produce this strange and wonderful music in this unpredictable manner. Who else could produce this ability to be so fluid with boundaries, driven only by the sense of possibility, and creating something unconscionably new.

[Post script: Of course, today I know that my foreign inability to parse out the different Americas allowed me to lump this uniquely African American musical tradition with it's built-in openness and innovation, with a monolithic perception of America. ]

Tomb’s Day

Artist: Atul Dodiya
I saw a show of Dodiya’s in Mumbai many years ago – that show was one that reimagined Gandhi. This piece though reimagines my head and points a laser-focused light right at it’s most discombobulated moments.

Gandhi, Truth & Me

“What I want to achieve – what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years – is self realization … I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end. But as I have all along believed that what is possible for one is possible for all, my experiments have not been conducted in the closet, but in the open; and I do not think that this fact detracts from their spiritual value. …

… Far be it from me to claim any degree of perfection for these experiments. I claim for them nothing more than does a scientist, who, though he conducts his experiments with the utmost accuracy, forethought and minuteness, never claims any finality about his conclusions, but keeps an open mind regarding them. I have gone through deep self-introspection, searched myself through and through, and examined and analysed every psychological situation. Yet I am far from claiming any finality or infallibility about my conclusions…”

- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the introduction to “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”.

There is a lot that both amazes and disturbs in stories of the Mahatma (“often the title has deeply pained me”). But of every person, time and situation there is something to be taken and to be learned. Gandhi as scientist, and as artist – this is what I take from him.

“I am not a seer or a guru of non-violence. I am an artist of non-violence” *

Gandhi’s science in entirety is not mine. His vision is one of ‘the truth’, the one truth, in his words “the Absolute Truth, the Eternal Principle, that is God”.

I veer away from that philosophy of truth, and indeed of science where one is continually on the path to achieving this singular thing. I see that there is a beauty in this vision, indeed, an inspiration in it – as well as a potent balm for the realities of our conflicted and seemingly patternless lives. So I see and appreciate the role of this version of “Truth” in guiding us down the paths on which we choose to embark and even in the “doing” of science, full of uncertainty and noise as it is.

But moving away from that utilitarian perspective on truth, I think science is about a continual progression of guestimates. How unassuring that sounds! In this view, we do well at any one point – any spatio-temporal moment – to make educated guesses; the more ‘educated’ the more successfully they can contribute to predictions for the state of some future window or for a differently positioned window in time and space.

* (as published in Dodiya’s monograph for his Gandhi show)