nafisa in kolkata

Hello!

I had my first nightmare yesterday.  In Calcutta you receive 3-5 junk phone calls advertising ringtones or toothpaste e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y.  You just have to learn to avoid numbers starting with 919.  In this nightmare I was hanging out with some Calcutta folks who one-by-one pulled me aside and told me they didn’t want to see me again.  Awww, right?  So feeling dejected and confused, I call them up to try and patch things only every time I dial a number .. an automated ringtone/toothpaste bot answers.  Yep.  The nightmare ends with me opening up my phone bill and getting smacked with a 3,000rupee+ fine.

Sort of mundane, but also how great is it to achieve the mundane here.

Another thing : the number of scraggly-old-man-fist-fights I’ve witnessed this month has multiplied!  I’ve seen various elderly men get into street scuffles with tea-vendors or bus drivers or bicyclists. What is that about?  And some middle-class bhodralok is inevitably pulled in to arbitrate.

Still not making art, still not being productive, still having intellectual diareahha, but I met a few solid people here! Started filming at work.  Got bored and registered at Etsy store for them too.

wai wai

Gender training retreat. It was a glorious, vulgar, bonding week.  Also, I have half the mind to put on a frock and rock em pigtails because I feel cough, a little infantalized at work.  The last two photos don’t help my cause.

PhDs, Peers, Political Action

Ah, I was thumbing through a book that will remain nameless (as people will be brutal and judgmental if I share) and I couldn’t stop laughing at myself for underlining very specific lines in what otherwise is a long discussion on privatization and “modernization”/industrial development in the global south:

“Empathy would lead to passion, to incandescent anger, to wild indignation, to action.  Concern, on the other hand, leads to articles, books, PhDs, fellowships.”

and it continues

”..concern has become a professional enterprise, a profitable business that’s protecting its interests like any other.”

Protest/dissent as “civilized”. You know, I was skirting around this conversation with someone just the other night, and there is no high idealism I have for well-mannered wide-eyed inquiry.  Inquiry and research never naturally lead to politicized action.  And concerning academic specialization, the conflict we all know, the reason “demystification” and epistemology is something a scholarship or $40,000USD degree gets you:

“Not explaining something is a way of wresting power and holding on to it”

“Today’s world of specialization is bizarre.  Specialists and experts end up severing the links between things, isolating them, actually creating barriers that prevent ordinary people from understanding what’s happening to them.”

Another sort of intimacy we all aim for.  The intimacy that connects oppression and structures of the world to the everyday.  God, the way my organization grapples with developing critical consciousness of the community is infinitely interesting, and uncomfortable.  There is a tension that is raised between becoming politically, socially and sexually aware of all the personal violence inflicted on you, then that familiar not-so-elegant jump from the internalized to collectivized identity or understanding how gender, class or caste operates.  We have a lot of issues regarding trauma in this regard, because a lot of the very active community leaders are survivors and their particular justice-seeking motive is often marred by an over-active personal vendetta against the state and other patriarchal symbols.  Then the issue of being critically conscious but remaining materially poor.  Institutionally, our organization too is conflicted in terms of what to focus on.  I mean I’m imposing conflict, they probably don’t see it that way.  We have two rhetorics going, one is grassroots gender-based organizing and the other is livelihood.  I’m curious to see or at least talk about how you reconcile consciousness and poverty when we have one line of ‘empowered’ women gaining access to various income opportunities, then the highly-politicized women who are not economically stable but entrenched in this invaluable work.  Work I haven’t actually ever explained in this blog but it’s mind blowing (they deal with the courts, the police, the panchayat, the political partys and challenge them with their own agenda of justice for survivors of rape, domestic abuse, dowery, forced abortion, sexual discrimination and exploitation ect.)

Very quickly, today a board member introduced herself by saying :

“When you’re 180yrs old and suffer from utter disillusionment like me, but can still be so proud of being in an organization like this..”

That has got to be the best intro I’ve ever heard.  Everyone at work as been really wonderful and have been not so subtle in inviting me to extend my fellowship, and to do my higher study (hehhehheh, little do they know..) using Jeevika.  So options?  Continue doing what started doing (..move to brooklyn, read books and organize around racial and economic justice), get a research degree and become totally inaccessible for 4years only to ‘return’ with another mask (plop myself in Dhaka or West Bengal, get loads of money to consult and launch an introspective-but-productive oddesy on identity-globalizationa-violence), suck-it-up and get professional degree just to keep doing what i’m doing (be in bigger apartment in brooklyn but eating the organic shit), or all of the above. EVERYTHING IN OTHER WORDS.

Back to where I started.

rediscover my mojo

“lots of little ideas percolating. not yet. still mush. all i know is i have to start ripping these chains, or rather all the dog collars i inherited from the american school system soon. i mean it was great, lots of gold, but goddamn it’s really time for praxis. i dont want to hate myself, or resign or fear. we are too effing bright, i know this.”

Wait, I wrote that?  This was around the time we started practicing the play. HAHAHA.

Another inspiring thing from the recent past:

(my lovely nashers/youth I worked with last summer for feminist org. during art class photo shoot.  <what a lovely sentence.)

The Professionalization of Passion

I need to start talking. I only work out my life through conversation.  But no one here knows that.  Haha.  I wasn’t excited the same way with people.  At the same time I have to recognize all these intimacy-cravings.  I get excited talking to my mother.  I am happy about that.  I’ve also been sending crazy emails to friends back home, thanks for reading /responding loves.

Muriel was a great kick in the mouth.  I said I came here to make decisions about my direction.  Muriel came back from her time in Thailand with such transformation and perspective and the cynicism I love.  She said something to the effect of, why on earth force yourself to make decisions in the eye of the storm.  This is such a transmutation of space, my identity as contested and unstable as it is in the U.S. dissolves after boarder crossing.  It’s a little bizarre to carry around such solid resolve to make “choices” here.  It’ll all come. In time.

I am not scrutinized here.  I wrote about this before, but I don’t need to be so possessive about my politics and opinions.  I have more moving room.

Muriel also mentioned that our elevated status, as “fellow”, really fucks with our moral compasses.  I know girl, I know.  &she sort of fed me back my own medicine.  Abstraction is a good thing.  Since when did theory ever match perfectly to material experiences.

Part of the conflict is that I am not a student here.  I really do work 6 days a week. I have things due, responsibilities, I don’t have the same leisure or thinking space to indulge and explore the same way that I would if I were on a research scholarship.  I get tired.  I am tired after a two hour commute!  All I want to do is eat some spinach and tinker with my computer.  Oooffph.

I also don’t like to always talk about my work!  I can’t!  I’m here all the freaking time in the office or in strategy meetings or on the field.  I don’t like summarizing all this shit for people on command, or at all.  So I come off as boring.  The professionalization of a passion is so devastating. HAHAHAAHAHA.

Also, in case my father is reading this: I am the queen of hyperboly.  Please, just read it like poetry.

Another thing is, I could get a job here. Easily.  My work friends are really well connected in the right way.  I hadn’t even realized it but I’ve hanging out with Sappho folks, the one queer/Lesbian organization in Calcutta.  I was so turned off earlier this year in all the networking situations.  I don’t want to work for a damn bank or MFI.  That’s one decision for you.

I feel better.  Ah!

here’s some photos in an otherwise super-indulgent text post.

all i do is drink chai and eat kati rolls.

here’s that elephant foot i mentioned.

half thought conversations I had today

There is a marked difference between what you prioritize, how you process and really the behavior-language that connotes which group you are/are not a part of in the nonacademic setting.  Simply being woman /ally /of color whatever, and the enormous project of explaining or Presenting your reality upon meeting other people who are outside of it is so laborious. It’s important to maintain this identity, which I might see as much more solid than need be, but it becomes pretty um, clownish .. if you do it in a circle that has little context of what that identity means.

I can’t quite seem to hold an intelligent conversation here. I don’t know if it’s because I’m scared out of my boots, becaues I hate mastabatory politics or because I’m lazy.  Maybe because of shellshock over everyday violence?  All I know is I am blocked.  I can’t seem to communicate or want to communicate much in Kolkata.  It’s a little intellectually devastating in fact.

Part of it, is that my body reacts in complete asymmetry to my thoughts. Lately I can’t seem to think at all.

Also, I am in India, but i’m in this white space. Its not typical white space. But I do want to translate outside of my bubble activist circle.  I find it hard to keep motivated when i have no one to be accountable to (read:POCS!).


all of this omitting any serious reflection on sexuality:

On one hand, getting affection and feeling socially comfortable is great.  Having it on a consistent basis so that it doesn’t feel like an exchange of commodities or that you feel like you’re compromising too much is even better.  I do think that the more I experiment with feeling well-adjusted, experiencing, interacting, is all in an effort to get my head back attached to my body.  It’s a slow process because i’m thick and dumb in this area.


I keep asking different people how they are keeping themselves awake?  Does reading or school or ideas have weight for them?  I certainly am having a lot of difficulty keeping myself critically engaged, never mind my lack of intellectual direction or ache for collaborative spaces and the warm blanket of a school (read: validation, congratulations, a shit).


I am pretty comfortable shirking responsibility and in a sense, my sexuality, in my current incarnation.  I am quite the bachaa this year (baby) in the way I carry myself.  It’s performance and also an attempt to eek out a particular space in this community and work.  I’m not Woman here, I’m student-Girl-friend here.

I think I’m dealing with MINDLESSNESS.

Lok: ayo
me: hey!  derek, i MISS you
Lok: do you really or is it the thing to be said these days
me: no, i sort of do. and your darkness. haha
Lok: my darkness? haha. what does that mean
me: i guess its relative to the folks i’m around today. dont take it to heart if you dont want.
Lok: haha i mean are you referencing skin tone or my cynicism. harrummm?
me: the latter for sure. ***
me: you pale motherfucker

*** in retrospect, BOTH! Oh, god, both.

…..

Lok: you were right btw.  about una
me: what about her?
Lok: one quarter of english graduate study and everything una said now makes perfect sense
in the sense that i can trace it to someone else. hahaha
me:  aaaaaaah. love! is it empowering or fueling some deep seeded shame
Lok: it demystifies both the process of knowledge production and graduate study and academic work in general
me: academia cum marketing?
Lok: eh more like everybody’s building on somebody’s work
but surriously
im developing a serious affinity (hard-on?) for cultural studies
me: fuck yea. hardons are called for in this area
Lok: its like a big fuck you to canonization and disciplines
me: i like how youre directing your rebellion these days
Lok: haha what rebellion
im in grad school for chrissakes

… something about gun trotting rednecks and being too skinny…

Lok: what have you been up to
me: shit. read my livejournal. i’ve been up to no good brother.
falling flat on my face and excelling in all the professional shit
i hang out with more white folks in kal than i ever have in nyc
some i really relate to
perhaps because of circumstances
defering grad school one more year
maybe i’ll catch you on a lecture from the audience
Lok: mmmmm
dont’ do history
surrioiusly
Lok: mhm
we’re discussing escape routes
from a foucauldian paranoia and a marxist overdetermination
it deals with our current predicament of resistance
me: ive been talking about how to integrate mental health services for survivors in a community organizing programme withotu makign footsoldiers.
Lok: mmm
Lok: that’s tricky terrain
me: whats the predicament of resistance. in n.america?
Lok: we recognize the limitations of strikes, trade unions, and middle-class and petit-bourgeois fixation on rights and representation and we’re all clamoring for an escape from the trap of visibility despite its increasing emphasis of visibility with web 2.0 with facebook, twitter, and godfucknows
me: google wave!
Lok: the very fact that we can call ourselves marxists, m-l-m
trots
third wave feminists
and not get thrown in jail, censored or shot
a containment and translation of a rhetoric espoused in the 60’s
me: are you bleeding into explicit talks on imperialism too?
Lok: *revolutionary/radical rhetoric
what do you mean
me: i just wanted to know the geographic parameters of this conversation. doesnt the rhetoric change if you do? just asking. if its a conversation on teh contemporary left
know what i mean?
either way keep going. whatever.
Lok: mmm
it extends mostly to europe and america
at the moment
i just know that what ive been reading has been resonating with my criticisms of protest culture
and the nature of naming something as containment
in lieu of a imperceptible politics

Actually. How pertinent.
I am always treading on contradictions.  A little unrelated to the conversation above, here’s what I still do:  I simplify graduate studies as a deliberate step in my own self-development away from very particular things I hold significant including modes of production.  Like political action, like community organizing, like attempting to not elevate myself too high.  If I write it, I know I’ll regret it and get into another conversation about subject-hood that isn’t entirely relevant here.  Doh.  It’s silly. I know.  Then there’s the issue of proponentism.  If I become happy, and an intellectual producer in the sense of participating, publishing, epistemology.. I’d just rather focus for now on being informed by these debates in my strange and sometimes quiet attempts at practicing theory.  This fellowship, at least in the beginning, being one of them.

In summary, join google wave!

the duchess and the chocolatair (ohno! a personal post)

Ooof. That was a tough week. Always been prone to melancholia. Nothing particularly new. I still need to go for a walk. Walk it off, walk it off.. The eternal gym teacher fix-all.

Yesterday I was trying to watch meteors in a.. I guess, high class boarding house. There is an old duchess who lives there and is flat-mates with our friend the chocolatair. This all sounds very literary, right? The apartment our friend stays in is pre-furnished and hoards all sorts of dusty books and orientalist miscellanea as well as an …. elephant’s foot. An elephant died by the train tracks, and they sawed off one of its legs and preserved it as a show piece. The chocolatair by the way, is a wonderful person.

[if i had photos I would insert the elephants foot here]

I think I need to withdraw from folks. The most laborious thing in the universe is having to introduce myself over and over and over again because of course, everyone here is new. I like work. A lot. Intensely these days. But I’m so disinterested in myself and the thumbnailing process when I’m interacting after work. I don’t meet anyone earnestly, I don’t think I ever have. I’m used to making friends through shared and coded language. Which has the effect of fast forwarding small talk and thrusting a hand straight into the person’s internal life from the beginning. I like the mutual accession that passes between people, saying something like ‘getting here (as in: who I am today) was hard and deliberate, so yes, it is nice to meet you’. I appreciate people. I mean at the end of the day, I just like being in politisized communities, I like when folks are down. And there is infinite diversity after making these friends, tiers of intimacy ect, all of that. Calcutta isn’t like that. In fact, I bet I seem boring to folks here because I find the simple things laborious. Effort. That’s a big one.

Apparently I’m also ridiculously difficult to read, and angry of course, can’t forget the angry. It’s certainly fair to say I’m not a person who makes pleasure their principal motivation in life. Instead I have a methodology and an energy that comes with it, in the way that I problematize the world and produce responses. I mean that’s when there is love. When I’m processing, it’s both a validation of where I’ve come from and who I am. I have to be playing or attacking or eating ideas and spaces, I have to be in this dynamic form, to be happy and healthy.

I feel like I have existential diarrhea here. I can have very full, tactile, heavy nights. But I’m not able to hold on to any of it. I feel like there’s not enough of me here. Really, I feel my presence getting dimmer. I know the solution, I should just read more books and go to grad school and start some shit.

The other thing is, the dynamism that I will shortly try to recapture by feeding myself more substance instead of the shit-fodder I am stuck with now, will become pretty alienating pretty fast. The shit-fodder zone I’m in right now is social and buzzing and I get to encounter elephant feet and mashis in peacock mumus and terraces ect.

But I’m letting the shit-fodder zone become a distraction.  & its succeeding in alienating me from being in Calcutta. I think it’s time to withdraw from all my current stimulants and you know, walk it out.

Another fantasy that I totally lived happened this morning. I was eating tea and toast and reading the Adventures of Feluda in the paper! When these things happen, I like to stop and recognize them. I was reading Feluda damnit!! I am after-all an American living in Calcutta. And it made me think of early Baldwin writing about how being bastard of the West, which is so esoteric now. We’re not bastards or calibans. Particularly when you complicate it as a South Asian American.

The point is, I’d rather be eating cereal and reading Feluda comics all day, than … what i’ve been doing.

eh

i love the mundane. once in a while i get a kati roll from Sanjays and a diet coke from the bodega next door. “bodega” b/c i don’t know what to call them here. i actually get the diet coke every other day and the guy pulls out a cold one before i ask. i used to do this ritual at a shop a block away and now when I pass by, I lower my coke so they don’t label me traitor.

today was my first rally.  my ngo is a part of maitree, the regional network of women’s autonomous movements. which sounds nice, i don’t know the extent of their politics really.  all i know is i like mira-di who organizes Rapid Response Training or community prevention and response to incidents of rape, domestic abuse and cases of violence against women.  they seem like a hip network of older ladies and they don’t seem to be state sponsored feminists so this is a little something something to get into.

the rally was in response to a recent case of a member of the women’s rights community torturing her domestic worker, who is also a child.  <awkward sentence. there’re legal proceedings that have been making the news lately so today was an awarness ralley for domestic workers rights and demanding increased visibilty + stronger anti-child labor policies.

I was trying to explain a police state and the amount of permits and paperwork needed to get some breathing room from the NYPD.  They were like, yeah, you just gotta be sweet and write a vauge letter to the police about women’s rights or something or the other and they’ll give you a platform.  Heck yeaaa.

The format was pretty off putting.  I walked over and it felt like a political party rally.  Eh.  My boss kicked ass though, and ripped up the stage when she got the mic.  They were like, nafisa, want to sing or say something on behalf of justice for domestic workers?  I was like, mm. nah.  ah, some typical issues came up.  like it was pretty foot-soldier-y.  yikes.  i’m going to be crucified for writing this blog.

oh also, we had to bounce mad early because of the the SUCI party, socialist unity center of india, who was totally encroaching on our space.  the funny thing was, the call-back/chant we used to end the meeting was immideatly appropraited by party women on an adjacent stage. they took our mommentum like pros. ha. smart.

Kaj

craftin’ about gendered exploitation ya’ll!

Why yes, we’re playing Human Barometer.

Theater ice breakers.

Well hell.  Suddenly I have work up to my ears.  & I am shaking with excitement!

This will be the post that answers What An AIF Clinton Fellow Actually Does.

…In the most roundabout way possible.

In general I have dozens of tasks to do for our income gen. projects (IGPs) and women’s empowerment.  Making brochures for our export clients, researching contemporary women’s history for publications, creating the NGO logo, setting up the location of trainings … and oh yeah , I was scratching at some issues earlier about writing the Fair Trade tags ….

Clearly, I can come off as a whiner (my last post) and this is sort of the silly contextual issues I was talking to friends about before leaving the U.S.  As a typical (blaaarg I said it) lefty woman of color from NYC, because lets be honest there is a scene and it’s small, it completely makes sense to hone how you verbalize your criticism as if it were choreography.  Why? Because of the very visible privileged liberals that WOCs deal with on a daily basis through work, school and I guess socially if folks choose.  It is also second nature to feel contradicted, ridiculed and silenced when trying to reveal gendering and racialising processes.  By the way, there are no soap boxes where I live in.  I am talking about when your co-worker who has been given the responsibility of mentoring the only Asian American kid in your program comes up to you in the morning to complain about how he can’t believe that Asian divers, from Chinatown not Jackson Heights Nafisa, passed their driving tests.  Do you stare blankly and continue reading your Gwendolyn Brooks or do you sharpen yourself to handle the “interventions” that are demanded of you.

Anyway.  The liberals who run the show in NYC are exactly that: in NYC.  The choreography that you crafted between the very small corridor differentiating yourself from the ANGRY BLACK WOMAN and the ‘eloquent’ woc is collapsed and inverted here.

Instead of verbalizing dissent and participating in movements, I think the important shift in practicing politics in India has first to do with a shift in your evaluation and crit process.  Of course right?  The second part, participating in a movement, I am really not arrogant (eep!) enough to do right now.  I have so much on my plate that throwing myself into student and community politics when I really don’t have the capacity to invest in long term or even time to become deeply embedded in the theory or issues seems unfair and privileged.  I love to observe and support, but Calcutta (at least this time around) is not a place I can start trouble.  But then again, I guess I’m talking about really specific visible struggles.

This distinction by the way is huge.  I know that personally I am into avoiding dealing with personalities and micropolitics of an activist community like in nyc while i’m here.  I just don’t want to meet a bunch of radical middle class kids.  But then again a fellow last year was an organizer of the first Chennai Pride Parade.  I don’t know him or his background, if he was already working in the community or took the initiative to seek out the community, let alone who the community is ect.  But it’s pretty incredible to be able to have the space and time to participate.  Power to him.  I’m pretty busy and happy with the friction of doing community work through my NGO.  This community is not made of my peers, which right now is enough material to keep me preoccupied on about what is solidarity and praxis.

Mmm, gotta love that intergenerational bonding.

impromptu dance break!

What I am getting at is I do have the same issues with micro-credit and Fair Trade.  But now that I’m on the other end of the spectrum, organizing the women we glibly referred to as ‘the little brown hands’ phenomenon.  &I mean we had little brown hands so our entirely self-centered suffering/profiting by association has nothing to do with anything here, the very characterization of the community is racially triangulated through the American lense…  so duh, all of this shifts when you’re feet touch Indian ground.

Whatever. There’s no end to material on this.

ANYWAY.  What sort of work am I doing here:

-  I am shooting and editing a film for SRI agriculture to use during rural outreach and for documentation (this is a pretty big project.  I’m editing down some existing WB state produced films, creating a totally new doc made of footage from last years harvest and this upcoming years.  The second video is Jeevika-specific and can be used both in the field and during national symposiums or the regional SRI network)

- some ambitious grant writing

- my regular micro credit operation manual writing

- SRI field eval and case studies, which are actually being implemented!  So exciting

- strategy and curriculum building for our gender and empowerment projects

I am pretty psyched about being given responsibility and guess what, they are all deliverable!

Recently, and largely by accident, I was able to join the team that planned and facilitated a workshop on women and labor (social + reproductive + productive).  It was almost exactly like youth work in NYC except the STRATEGY SESSION WAS SO easy and positive, and something I can’t remember happening since college.

A lot of us have facilitated community meetings, workshops and classes right?  My last job I had to do all of this in a pretty terrible institutional setting and all the dynamism and creativity was sucked dry.  My ass got burned too as in the vice principal of one of the schools I worked at really threw a fit.  That’s what happens when you talk with young people about Sean Bell and the systemic implications of power, identity and violence.  &when they recognize and implicate themselves, as in reading the everyday violence that happens on their own bodies and not just out there in the world in the news to “lazy / criminal” black people … not us. WELL THEN … then you have the beginnings of critical consciousness and that’s probably the most dangerous thing in the whole damn world.

Sorry.  So I was able to sit down with the most incredible women to swiftly and deftly create this all-day workshop.  One was a painter, one was a designer, one a mental health ngo head / psychologist, my awesome boss, another was an Ashoka fellow who created rapid response training for women to respond to crisis situations like rape / domestic violence / police violence.

It was positive.  It was progressive.  It was easy.

I’m writing the report of how the workshop went after this post so here are some photos.

ENJOY!

super relaxed, safe space, strategy session.

crappy attempt at a made-for-a-broschure photo

the labor theory of value and liberal purses

Can we have a milking contest?

Who can milk the most sympathy from a 6 line sentance for fair trade products?  The following details should be included:

name: J—vika D-v-lopm-nt Soci-ty
community: marginalised women, west bengal india
type: kantha

the less detail / more implied gong noises the better.

These intricate hand stitched cards are made by women from the J—VIKA D-v-lopm-nt Soci-ty in West Bengal, India.  J—VIKA means livelihood in sanskrit and comes from the root meaning “source of life”.  We promote sustainable income generation projects, vocational skills training and production centered activities that improve the social status of rural women in West Bengal. Your purchase helps sustain J—vika’s work while keeping the traditional Bengali art of Kantha stitch alive.  Contact us for more information on J—vika or to place an order of our other products.   Thank you!

That sort of blows, but I would like to remind everyone that this is precisely how I got into college.

Can someone blow this paragraph out of the water.  It’s fun, try it.

by the way, I buy fair trade all the time. especially in dhaka. how about that.  and like jess mentioned last night, despite all of this, having local production centers is better than pushing urban migration for a data entry job 3 hours away.