One lost her family land in the communal frenzy of '89 and the other has given up food to protest AFSPA
Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine
Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine
The Parable Of The Vamp
WHAT DOES TRASHING SUNANDA PUSHKAR SAY ABOUT OUR ATTITUDES TO WOMEN, ASKS SHOMA CHAUDHURY
imageAMIDST THE immense noise of the IPL controversy, away from public view, a woman has been confronted with a deeply personal crisis: she can no longer recognise herself. A massive juggernaut has rolled over her, crushed her out of shape, and moved on without a backward glance. She has been left to cope with the painful out-of-body experience of watching the mangled remains of who she used to be. Left to muse, in private bewilderment, why her image and the person she knew herself to be no longer matched.
Sunanda Pushkar, the woman in the tableau, was not hit by some unheeding truck. She was hit by the media. As Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, the doctor parents of the slain Aarushi, know only too well, this is not the first time its happened. In its feeding frenzy for 24 /7 excitement, the media has developed a curious way of turning fathers into murderers; women into vamps. Facts, evidence, the line between public and private all the good, old-fashioned gears of journalism no longer have any place. Rash allegations are enough. The rear-view mirrors are gone. You can now recklessly ride over people and not look back.
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'Im proud of bringing up my son all by myself'
SUNANDA PUSHKAR HAS ALWAYS BEEN SELF- RELIANT. SHE HAS HELD MANY JOBS, CROSSED MANY CONTINENTS. IN THE LAST FORTNIGHT, SHE HAS WATCHED THE MEDIA MUTILATE HER RESUMÈ. NOW, IN A STIRRING INTERVIEW, SHE WRESTS BACK THE STORY OF HER TRUE SELF
Over the last two weeks then, every real and fictitious fragment of Pushkars life has been dragged onto airwaves and newsprint: Men she has and has not married; men she has and has not slept with; money she has and has not made; jobs she has and has not done. People have spoken with dripping scorn about her eye-popping life, her insatiable ambition, her work with starlets and bimbos, her vampire-like thirst and her Louis Vuitton victimhood. They have dissected her diaphanous saris and conjured clingy ones shes never worn. The general consensus has been: She isnt enough a girls girl. And for this transgression, she had to be crushed. So, overnight, Sunanda Pushkar was transformed from a living, breathing woman with a history of her own into a proxy bimbette.
What did Pushkar do to merit this public mauling? The reasons trotted out are that Pushkar is romantically involved with former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor and has therefore been given disproportionate sweat equity worth Rs 70 crore in the Kochi cricket team he helped put together. One can debate the finer points of propriety about Pushkar having equity, independently or otherwise, in a project Tharoor was closely associated with. Prima facie, it appears there was absolutely no exchange of money. Nor was there any misuse of public funds. In a world of brazen corruption then, this could only count as a minor lapse in manners. The curious thing is, the uproar over the sweat equity itself seemed misplaced. With the same reckless disregard for fact, everyone has forgotten that the offending Rs 70 crore does not exist as yet. Sweat equity is risky: There are no payments upfront. If the going is good, you take the ride; if not, theres nothing.
So, the truth is, the reasons Pushkar has been pilloried lie elsewhere. Imagine for a moment that instead of Pushkar some nephew of Tharoor had been given sweat equity. Would the media have ferreted out every last detail about his girlfriends and colour of bedsheet imagined or real? Pushkar says the last fortnight has been akin to a medieval witch hunt. She is right. A deep and unthinking misogyny has underscored all the reporting on her. Her real crime is that she is an attractive 46-year old widow, who is bright, vivacious and hot in the way only those women can be, who have a comfortable relationship with themselves; who understand that beauty does not preclude one from being kind; or protect one from sorrow. If the media had wanted to try the two for financial impropriety, it should have stuck to doing that. Instead, all of it has become an ugly spectacle about a society trying to decide what women are allowed and not allowed to be. Ambition, sass, and self-assured sexiness are clearly high on the list of Indias penal code for women. This is why Pushkar has been asked by well-wishers to stay out of view. This is why shes in the process of being tamed for Indian public life. The story of how Sunanda Pushkar has been treated then is not the story of just one woman: it is a parable about the society we are.
There are so many versions of your life floating in the media, would you like to put the facts on record first.
I dont really want to. My son and parents have already suffered enough on this. How many times I got married, who I dated what does any of that have to do with the IPL?
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Sunanda Pushkar with her now deceased second husband Sujit Menon, her father and uncles in Jammu.
Thats true, but unfortunately the absence of facts has allowed everyone to maul your image. Thereve been reports that you divorced your first husband Sanjay Raina because you fell in love with his friend Sujit Menon. Also that Sujit committed suicide because he was in financial trouble. Even if all this were true, it still wouldnt make you a bad person, but the key thing is to establish how much is truth, how much fiction.
(Sighs) You are right. Its probably important to set the record straight. My first marriage was a very dark period in my life. Everyones saying Sanjay Raina divorced me, but thats not true, I divorced him. It was a very painful relationship but I dont want to go into that. Its over; hes moved on, Ive moved on. I was 19 when I met him and very innocent. My dad was in the army and I had a very protected childhood. I was always sorry for the underdog. My family and friends used to teasingly call me Mother Teresa. I was helping flood victims in Ambala in grade six. When I was in Jesus and Mary Convent, I used to work with abandoned and physically challenged children at an ashram. There was a blind and spastic kid there who was particularly attached to me. No one wanted him because he wasnt very nice looking, but I used to bathe and feed him. Curiously, many people spoke badly of Sanjay, saying he was strange. Maybe in the beginning that is what drew me more to him.
But the marriage was a big mistake. I was totally unprepared for the worst. The media said, why should the Kochi team pick me? As a woman am I not good enough? Soon after we got engaged I told my father I wanted to break it off. I had realised Sanjay and I were very mismatched but my father wouldnt listen. For Kashmiri Pandits, if you got engaged, you had to marry; wed never had a broken marriage in the family. Mine fell apart within days. I had a really tough time getting a divorce in Delhi. It was a very lonely time. My parents didnt want me to divorce even though they knew what was going on. Looking back, I understand them now, but I felt very abandoned then.
The truth is Sujit rescued me. He gave me the strength, as a friend, to quit a very painful marriage. But he was dating another woman; I was just a friend. I got my divorce in 1988 and went off to Dubai in 1989. I married Sujit in 1991; my son Shivy was born in November 1992. If I had left Sanjay over Sujit, why would I have waited that long to marry him?
What about Sujits death? That has been turned into something very mysterious as well.
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With baby Shiv at home in Dubai
Yes, my son has had a really rough time dealing with those reports. But my husband died in an accident in Karol Bagh in March 1997. I can show you the death certificate. I had a really harrowing time finding the body and had to go from morgue to morgue searching for it. Again, it was a very dark time. Sujit was a financial consultant and he had run into some financial trouble. I disagreed with many of his business decisions at the time and after his death I got several threatening calls from his creditors. But that was less important to me than the fact that after his death, Shivy suddenly stopped talking. It was very strange, he probably got scared. He was barely four. There was so much to do papers and fresh visas to be sorted, debts to pay. So I left him with my sister-in-law and, later, my parents for a few months. I keep asking them, someone tell me what happened to him because when I went to pick up my son, he had stopped talking. I took him to Dubai but in those days there was no concept of speech therapy there. I began to look for the best affordable health care and thats how I hit upon Canada. I moved there to help my son. I had been doing pretty well at work, but I didnt have that much money to spare. I was supporting my parents, supporting my brother through engineering college, trying to pay off Sujits debts.
The media said, why should the Kochi team pick me? As a woman am I not good enough?
Why did you need to support your parents financially? Everyone says your family was very wealthy.
Yes, we were wealthy till the trouble began in Kashmir in 1989. We had orchards and a lot of land. But after 89, my family suffered like everyone else. Luckily, they were wealthy enough that they didnt have to go live in a tent. But I did help them financially to find their feet again. They couldnt afford to put their son through college you know you have those donations and capitation fees. I did all that.
Part of the muck being thrown at you for having sweat equity in the Kochi team is that you dont have professional standing that merits it, so you must be a front for Shashi Tharoor. How do you respond to this?
I cannot tell you how insulted I feel. Ive been fiercely independent and self-reliant all my life. And Ive always been proud that I have made it alone on my own terms in a mans world. And here, in one minute, without bothering to find out any facts the media just turned me into a slut, into some kind of brainless eye candy! I dont know why people find it so hard to understand this I really dont care about money in that grasping way. Yet, please dont misunderstand me. I enjoy making money, I think theres absolutely nothing wrong with a woman being ambitious. I like cars and watches but I dont need any man to get anything for me. My kick is to buy it myself. I like to earn my own keep. Id be very happy to set up home with a man I loved, but I would not marry a man just because he can buy me diamonds. Im not judgmental about women who do that, Im just saying I wouldnt. So when people say I got into all this as a front for Shashi, chasing influence and money, it savages my soul. What else can I say?
The media has said, for Rs 70 crore, the Kochi team could have hired any foreign marketing firm, why would they pick me? Forget that no one in India seems to have understood the basics about sweat equity there is simply no 70 crore on the table, in fact not one paisa has changed hands so far, and there will be no profits for years to pay anybody but what is this attitude? As a woman I am not good enough? Some foreigner can do better than an Indian? And we call ourselves a superpower? Is this 21st century India or the British Raj?
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With her father at her wedding to Sujit at the Shiva temple in Kochi,Kerala
Could you then run us through your career graph a bit ?
When I came to Dubai for the first time I worked in tourism. I had ideas about dhow cruises and dune dinners much before Emirates Holidays even existed. Our accounts included Philippines airlines, Romanian airlines, Brazilian airlines so I had lots of corporate clients. After I married Sujit, I got into events. Someone reported that all my shows made losses. That hurt. Sujit and I did only one event together which went badly a Mammooty show which people have been writing all kinds of nonsense about. But apart from that I dont think I did any events that made a loss.
I started my own company called Expressions with four or five people. We began to do many model shows for product launches. Everyone does it now, but it was a complete trendsetter then. I did 13 shows with Hemant Trivedi, shows with Rhea Pillai, Vikram Phadnis, Aishwarya Rai. When the Gulf War started, we did big fund raisers for the We love Kuwait campaign.
After a while I got a great offer from an ad agency called Bozell Prime. I handled many big campaigns for them Wella, Hersheys, Chrysler cars. I did big multi-million dollar events for Modern Pharmaceuticals. That was the most beautiful time of my life. But after Sujit died, I gave up Bozell for Shivy. I didnt want a baby-sitter. He had gone into a complete shell and I was frightened for him and wanted to be there for him. So that last year in Dubai before I went to Canada, I worked with Ravissant.
Calling me a beautician from Dubai is not derogatory. Its just not true
In Canada, I had to start from scratch. Id literally gone there with a suitcase and my child. But you know, Shoma, I have never taken my resume and looked for a job.I have always felt I can carve a niche for myself on my own terms. Ive always been an entrepreneur that way. So for a while, I did many odds and ends. Then some friends in New York two doctors who are still among my closest family friends suggested I get into the IT sector which had just begun to boom. Everyone was looking for computer engineers from India, so we tied up with companies like Compaq and head-hunted in India for them.
After a while a friend in San Francisco alerted me that a company called Valley Resources wanted a partner. I told them I had no money to invest but they still wanted me. So, talk about sweat equity (laughs) that was my first sweat equity! It was a lot of fun and we did mighty well and made good money. I put Shivy in a private school; I bought ourselves a house; I got a BMW. And I did all this from the basement of my house. And through all that, I never used babysitters. Im proud of bringing up my son by myself. Many of my friends across the world who knew me at that time are really disheartened and outraged by the way I am being portrayed in the media.
The press has been saying you are a beautician, a spa-owner, a mystery woman from Dubai where did they get all that from?
Can you imagine! I have no idea where they got it! These reports were meant to deride me. I dont even feel theres anything derogatory about being a beautician its just that its completely not true! I ran a small jewellery shop for a while, but while they were trying to ferret fictitious details about my life, they didnt even come across that!
You know, all through my life, at different phases, things have fallen apart and each time I have just picked myself up and put the pieces back. I am a very positive person: I always say, this too shall pass. I am a great believer in Shiva and the idea of karma, so I never question and complain and ask why is this happening to me. I always tell myself that things happen to you so that you can learn from it. But this has been the biggest test I have ever faced.
Well come back to the way the press has reported on you and what impact thats had on you; and what it says about attitudes to women in India. But, first, could you finish telling us about your professional life.
Just as our IT business was booming, 9/11 happened. This hit us bad and we had to shut shop. There was four months of anxiety and no work. We were cleaned out financially. Thats when I got into Emotional Intelligence. It was the latest thing in Canada those days. I did a course and joined a company called Noble House International. We started something called Human Potential Reengineering. [sighs] We did lots of programmes for banks like Royal Bank of Canada and ABN Amro in Miami, Amsterdam and Geneva. It was fun but I was not earning enough.
The film Corporate disgusted me. Must a woman sleep around to get business?
Then in 2004, Best Homes offered to send me to Dubai to set up their operations there in real estate. If I think about it, real estate runs in my blood. More than buying and selling, I love developing properties. I love the blueprint stage, the planning and the zoning. So I came back to Dubai in August 2004 as general manager of Best Homes and worked on a big project with them.
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Pushkar celebrating Diwali with her son and friends in Toronto,Canada in 2003.
Dubai had changed completely. My friends had all become rich and powerful; there was a completely different buzz. But Shivy was not very happy and I was just planning to go back to Canada and start again, when I was offered a job by Mohamad-bin-Ghalib of Tecom to work on an International Media Production Free Zone. This was one of the most exciting projects Ive ever worked on. We had to plan publishing zones, convention centres, hotels, schools and hospitals over 44 million square feet of land. Then I was offered a position that the company usually only gives to locals I had to sell land to Gulf nationals. Everyone thought Id fail because I didnt know Arabic. But as one of my bosses said about me, She can sell sand to the Arabs and ice to the Eskimos!
Were you a sales manager there? Some press reports have been saying that you actually live to use their words in a low-class ghetto in Dubai and that Shashi was a leg up for you socially and financially. How would you speak of yourself? As middle- class, well-to-do, very well-to-do?
I think Im pretty well to do. I drive a Range Rover. My son has a driver and a Ford. I live in a decent apartment because I dont want to live in a villa and have the headache of a garden and stuff because theres just the two of us. I have a cook and a domestic help. I own two 3-bedroom apartments in Jumeirah Palm. I also own a beachside apartment in Jumeirah Beach Residence, and I have two apartments in Executive Towers. I only live in this rented apartment because its close to Shivys school and his friends live around here. I also have my house in Canada and some land in Jammu. So Im pretty alright, I think. Im pretty alright. [laughs]
Thats an understatement.
Yeah, I guess, Im okay. The part I feel really good about is that Ive done it all on my own. The only thing theyve got right about me is that I was a sales manager at Tecom. What they dont get is that this suited my entrepreneurial spirit just fine because it allowed me to get a commission over my salary.
Of all the kite flying about you in the media then, what aspect has really upset you the most? Oh God, I can so tell you that! Its been like a medieval witch hunt! Its been so misogynistic. The bizarre part is, I think its not even just to do with my being a woman, its to do with my being an attractive woman. Thats what makes it even more disgusting. Thats what really makes me sick to the core of my being. That, to so many people in this society, if you are attractive you are immediately deemed to be a loose woman.
Why are they accusing me of being a proxy for Shashi? Cant I make my own money?
What have they not said about me! I am supposed to be married to some automobile businessman in Delhi; my second husband is supposed to have committed suicide; I am supposed to have slept with god knows how many men, and I am supposed to be a tart.
I have always prioritised Shivy because he is the most important thing in my life and I have always been proud that I had made it alone, on my own terms, in a mans world, and in one minute, without checking on any facts, they have just reduced me to a slut. Just because I am an attractive working woman in a mans world.
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Sunanda Pushkar with the UAE's Minister for Foreign Trade Sheikh Lubna Al Qasimi
All my women friends in Dubai women from all across the world, Serbia, England, America, Canada are so upset. They are furious! As one of them said, we thought India is going to be a world power, but how can they be when their attitudes to women are so warped!
I have realised that women have made some inroads into politics in India, but in business? God forbid, you want to be feminine and wear nice saris or dresses into a boardroom thats totally not allowed. I saw a Hindi film called Corporate it disgusted me. A woman must sleep around with someone to get business, she cant get it otherwise? She must utilise her body and only then her brain will function. Suddenly boom! her brain is functioning because men are sleeping with her!
I have a wonderful, grown-up son a son who says that whenever he thinks of duty and integrity and honesty, he thinks of his mother. I want to ask all these people in the media, if I was sleeping around, when did I have the time to bring up my child?
Do you know that there was a report that said I went to Jitin Prasadas wedding wearing a bright-red, clingy, seethrough sari with a low cut blouse and some socialite is supposed to have sniggered that this was just not the Congress code. I wasnt even in Delhi for Jitins wedding. I went to his reception huddled inside a black sari and shawl because I was so cold. How much can the media lie?
Theres another thing I want to clarify. They are saying I have given up my shares to save Shashi Tharoor. Now, Im not even supposed to have that much agency of my own! I DID NOT give it up for Shashi Tharoor. I gave it up for exactly the reason that I said in my statement: I have no enthusiasm to work on this anymore. You tell me, Shoma, after all that has happened would you have the enthusiasm to work with the IPL? I might still do stuff for them, as I said, because I love Kerala but how can they turn around and crucify me for something I am giving up in disgust? One BJP man said that the fact I am giving it up is further proof of my corruption. I mean how much more perverse and bewildering can things get? And now I have someone impersonating me on Facebook when I dont have either a Twitter or Facebook account!
One of my bosses said about me, She can sell sand to the Arabs and ice to the Eskimos!
I have to say the conjecturing about you has been shameful.
(Starting to cry) I have always thought of myself as a kind, proud, honest and ethical person. I cant recognise what they have turned me into publicly. In my family, everyone calls me Didi even my father because I am the person everyone turns to for help. I was always the boy in the family. I never even had a doll as a child. So even now, though this is my worst fall, I am not asking why all of this has happened to me. I am sure there is a larger lesson to be learnt and I am sure I am going to grow from this. And mark my words, I will grow, I will come out of this a bigger and better person. I can feel it in my bones. Im sure Ive made mistakes in my life; Im just a regular human being. But I keep telling myself, I must be a good person because, god knows, I have brought up a good child.
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Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar at a New Delhi book launch in March. GETTY IMAGES
Lets talk about Shashi Tharoor and the IPL. How did you meet? How did the IPL thing come about? What is the sweat equity everyone is in a tizzy about?
I dont really want to talk about Shashi because everything I say will have some repercussion for him. He is a public figure, I am not. But I met him about two years ago through a friend called Sunny Varkey, and we got along immediately. We are certainly close now, but that closeness only developed less than five months ago. I am very proud to know him because, most of all, he is a good and honest man.
As far as the IPL goes, again the media has twisted my words. I have known Karim and Ali Murani since 1998, since we were all in the events business. Over the years they have become close friends. When they took on KKR, I was generally throwing ideas at them about how they should market and package the team. Ali liked my ideas enough to ask me to come down to Bombay to discuss working for them the Muranis, not KKR itself. The conversation was serious enough for me to fly down to Mumbai, but Shivy was still in school so we all just let it slide. But thats how I first got to know about the IPL.
As far as the sweat equity for the Kochi team goes, I am genuinely bewildered by the allegations of corruption. I did agree to offer my skills as a marketing consultant. I have a knack for it. I also helped them raise a lot of money. But theres been absolutely no exchange of money between us. I dont even have the shares. Its more like a promissory note with absolutely no guarantee that the shares will amount to anything. People are calling me and saying why did you give up the Rs 70 crore? What Rs 70 crore? Its not there! I havent earned it as yet, theres no surety I ever will. People have been throwing up fantastical numbers what no one seems to understand is that all of it is notional. I am told Mumbai Indians made a loss of 40 odd crore last season, so theres a huge risk involved. Theres no money upfront.
And again, why are they accusing me of being a proxy for Shashi? Thats so insulting. Cant I make my own money? He has not been corrupt for so many years for which I am proud to be his friend why would he be corrupt now? Just look around you in India and see the corruption in government, in industry, in every crevice of public life and they call this corruption! Indians couldnt handle a man who is not corrupt so you tainted him and literally made him look corrupt so that he had to leave government and not embarrass his party! [laughs]
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CALM BEFORE THE STORM Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar
My faith in India is so shaken. Shashi and others keep telling me not to say this, but I dont know Shoma why shouldnt I say it? I am shocked at the way events unfurled. It had no basis in truth. There was no intention of even getting to the truth. Why has the media taken this beyond the realm of reality. I cant understand it!
There were three people in politics that really created hope for millions of Indians across the world that even clean men can join politics Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor. I know that when Shashi entered politics, many Indians felt, oh, if he can, even we can. Otherwise Indian politics was always thought of as such a dirty game. But Shashi has been hounded out for now ironically for not being dirty enough. In just the cricket scene I know how much corruption is floating about, but the big powerful men will get away, and Shashi has been made a sacrifice. Was Shashi given a fair hearing? The media made sure he couldnt get one. As I said, it was a medieval witch hunt in every way.
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Irom And The Iron In Indias Soul
IROM SHARMILAS STORY SHOULD BE PART OF UNIVERSAL FOLKLORE. IN THE TENTH YEAR OF HER EPIC FAST, SHOMA CHAUDHURY TELLS YOU WHY
Extraordinaire Sharmila says its her bounden duty to protest in the most peaceful way
SOMETIMES, TO accentuate the intransigence of the present, one must revisit the past. So first, a flashback.
The year is 2006. An ordinary November evening in Delhi. A slow, halting voice breaks into your consciousness. How shall I explain? It is not a punishment, but my bounden duty A haunting phrase in a haunting voice, made slow with pain yet magnetic in its moral force. My bounden duty. What could be bounden duty in an India bursting with the excitements of its economic boom?
You are tempted to walk away. You are busy and the voice is not violent in its beckoning. But then an image starts to take shape. A frail, fair woman on a hospital bed. A tousled head of jet black curls. A plastic tube thrust into the nose. Slim, clean hands. Intent, almond eyes. And the halting, haunting voice. Speaking of bounden duty.
Thats when the enormous story of Irom Sharmila first begins to seep in. You are in the presence of someone historic. Someone absolutely unparalleled in the history of political protest anywhere in the world, ever. Yet you have been oblivious of her. A hundred TV channels. An unprecedented age of media. Yet you have been oblivious of her.
In 2006, Irom Sharmila had not eaten anything, or drunk a single drop of water for six years. She was being forcibly kept alive by a drip thrust down her nose by the Indian State. For six years, nothing solid had entered her body; not a drop of water had touched her lips. She had stopped combing her hair. She cleaned her teeth with dry cotton and her lips with dry spirit so she would not sully her fast. Her body was wasted inside. Her menstrual cycles had stopped. Yet she was resolute. Whenever she could, she removed the tube from her nose. It was her bounden duty, she said, to make her voice heard in the most reasonable and peaceful way.
Yet both Indian citizens and the Indian State were oblivious to her.
The humbling power of Sharmilas story lies in her untutored beginnings. There is no rhetoric, no cliched heat of heroism
That was three years ago. On November 5 this year, Irom Sharmila entered the tenth year of her superhuman fast protesting the indefensible Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that has been imposed in Manipur and most of the Northeast since 1980. The Act allows the army to use force, arrest or shoot anyone on the mere suspicion that someone has committed or was about to commit a cognisable offence. The Act further prohibits any legal or judicial proceedings against army personnel without the sanction of the Central Government.
Draconian in letter, the Act has been even more draconian in spirit. Since it was imposed, by official admission, thousands of people have been killed by State forces in Manipur. (In just 2009, the officially admitted number stands at 265. Human rights activists say it is above 300, which averages out at one or two extrajudicial killings every day.) Rather than curb insurgent groups, the Act has engendered a seething resentment across the land, and fostered new militancies. When the Act came into force in 1980, there were only four insurgent groups in Manipur. Today, there are 40. And Manipur has become a macabre society, a mess of corruptions: insurgents, cops and politicians all hand in glove, and innocent citizens in between.
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True Gandhian For ten years, nothing solid nor a drop of water has entered Sharmilas body
Photo: LAKSHMAN
A FEW YEARs ago, an unedited CD began doing the rounds in civil society circles. It showed footage of humiliating army brutality and public rage. Images of young children, students, working-class mothers and grandmothers taking to the streets, being teargassed and shot at. Images of men made to lie down while the army shot at the ground inches above their heads. With each passing day, the stories gathered fury. Disappeared boys, raped women. Human life stripped of its most essential commodity: dignity.
For young Irom Sharmila, things came to a head on November 2, 2000. A day earlier, an insurgent group had bombed an Assam Rifles column. The enraged battalion retaliated by gunning down 10 innocent civilians at a bus-stand in Malom. The local papers published brutal pictures of the bodies the next day, including one of a 62-year old woman, Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. Extraordinarily stirred, on November 4, Sharmila, then only 28, began her fast.
Sprawled in an icy white hospital corridor that cold November evening in Delhi three years ago, Singhajit, Sharmilas 48-year-old elder brother, had said half-laughing, How we reach here? In the echo chamber of that plangent question had lain the incredible story of Sharmila and her journey. Much of that story needed to be intuited. Its tensile strength, its intense, almost preternatural act of imagination were not on easy display. The faraway hut in Imphal where it began. The capital city now and the might of the State ranged against them. The sister jailed inside her tiny hospital room, the brother outside with nothing but the clothes on his back, neither versed in English or Hindi. The posse of policemen at the door.
Menghaobi, the people of Manipur call her, The Fair One. Youngest daughter of an illiterate Grade IV worker in a veterinary hospital in Imphal, Sharmila was always a solitary child, the backbencher, the listener. Eight siblings had come before her. By the time she was born, her mother Irom Shakhi, 44, was dry. When dusk fell, and Manipur lay in darkness, Sharmila used to start to cry. The mother Shakhi had to tend to their tiny provision store, so Singhajit would cradle his baby sister in his arms and take her to any mother he could find to suckle her. She has always had extraordinary will. Maybe that is what made her different, Singhajit says. Maybe this is her service to all her mothers.
There was something achingly poignant about this wise, rugged man on the sidelines loyal co-warrior who gives the fight invisible breath, middle-aged brother who gave up his job to look after his sister outside the door, family man who relies on the Rs 120 a day his wife makes from weaving so he can stand steadfast by his sister.
Ten years on, her fast is unparalleled in the history of political protest. If this will not make us pause, nothing will
It was a month and a half since Singhajit had managed to smuggle Sharmila out of Manipur with the help of two activist friends, Babloo Loitangbam and Kangleipal. For six years, Sharmila had been under arrest, isolated in a single room in JN Hospital in Imphal. Each time she was released, she would yank the tube out of her nose and continue her fast. Three days later, on the verge of death, she would be arrested again for attempt to commit suicide. And the cycle would begin again. But six years of jail and fasting and forced nasal feeds had yielded little in Manipur. The war needed to be shifted to Delhi.
ARRIVING IN DELHI on October 3, 2006, brother and sister camped in Jantar Mantar for three days that hopeful altar of Indian democracy. Typically, the media responded with cynical disinterest. Then the State swooped down in a midnight raid and arrested her for attempting suicide and whisked her off to AIIMS. She wrote three passionate letters to the Prime Minister, President, and Home Minister. She got no answer. If she had hijacked a plane, perhaps the State would have responded with quicker concession.
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Tehelka expose The killing of Sanjit in a fake encounter by commandos, caught on camera
We are in the middle of the battle now, Singhajit had said in that hospital corridor. We have to face trouble, we have to fight to the end even if it means my sisters death. But if she had told me before she began, I would never have let her start on this fast. I would never have let her do this to her body. We had to learn so much first. How to talk; how to negotiate we knew nothing. We were just poor people.
But, in a sense, the humbling power of Sharmilas story lies in her untutored beginnings. She is not a front for any large, coordinated political movement. And if you were looking for charismatic rhetoric or the clichéd heat of heroism, you would have been disappointed by the quiet woman in Room 57 in the New Private Ward of AIIMS in New Delhi. That 34-yearolds satyagraha was not an intellectual construct. It was a deep human response to the cycle of death and violence she saw around her almost a spiritual intuition. I was shocked by the dead bodies of Malom on the front page, Sharmila had said in her clear, halting voice. I was on my way to a peace rally but I realised there was no means to stop further violations by the armed forces. So I decided to fast.
On November 4, 2000, Sharmila had sought her mother, Irom Shakhis blessing. You will win your goal, Shakhi had said, then stoically turned away. Since then, though Sharmila has been incarcerated in Imphal within walking distance of her mother, the two have never met.
Whats the use? Im weak-hearted. If I see her, I will cry, Shakhi says in a film on Sharmila made by Delhi-based filmmaker Kavita Joshi, tears streaming down her face. I have decided that until her wish is fulfilled, I wont meet her because that will weaken her resolve If we dont get food, how we toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep. With the little fluid they inject into her, how hard must her days and nights be If this Act could just be removed even for five days, I would feed her rice water spoon by spoon. After that, even if she dies, we will be content, for my Sharmila will have fulfilled her wish.
This brave, illiterate woman is the closest Sharmila comes to an intimation of god. It is the shrine from which she draws strength. Ask her how hard it is for her not to meet her mother and she says, Not very hard, and pauses. Because, how shall I explain it, we all come here with a task to do. And we come here alone.
For the rest, she practices four to five hours of yoga a day self-taught to help maintain the balance between my body and mind. Doctors will tell you Sharmilas fast is a medical miracle. It is humbling to even approximate her condition. But Sharmila never concedes any bodily discomfort. I am normal. I am normal, she smiles. I am not inflicting anything on my body. It is not a punishment. It is my bounden duty. I dont know what lies in my future; that is Gods will. I have only learnt from my experience that punctuality, discipline and great enthusiasm can make you achieve a lot. The words easy to dismiss as uninspiring clichés take on a heroic charge when she utters them.
For three long years later, nothing has changed. The trip to Delhi yielded nothing. As Sharmila enters the tenth year of her fast, she still lies incarcerated like some petty criminal in a ****** room in an Imphal hospital. The State allows her no casual visitors, except occasionally, her brother even though there is no legal rationale for this. (Even Mahasweta Devi was not allowed to see her a few weeks ago.) She craves company and books the biographies of Gandhi and Mandela; the illusion of a brotherhood. Yet, her great almost inhuman hope and optimism continues undiminished.
But the brothers frustration is as potent. The failure of the nation to recognise Irom Sharmilas historic satyagraha is a symptom of every lethargy that is eroding the Northeast. She had already been fasting against AFSPA for four years when the Assam Rifles arrested Thangjam Manorama Devi, a 32-year-old woman, allegedly a member of the banned Peoples Liberation Army. Her body was found dumped in Imphal a day later, marked with terrible signs of torture and ****. Manipur came to a spontaneous boil. Five days later, on July 15, 2004, pushing the boundaries of human expression, 30 ordinary women demonstrated naked in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters at Kangla Fort. Ordinary mothers and grandmothers eking out a hard life. Indian Army, **** us too, they screamed. The State responded by jailing all of them for three months.
Every commission set up by the government since then has added to these injuries. The report of the Justice Upendra Commission, instituted after the Manorama killing, was never made public. In November 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to review the AFSPA. Its recommendations came in a dangerously forked tongue. While it suggested the repeal of the AFSPA, it also suggested transfering its most draconian powers to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Every official response is marked with this determination to be uncreative. The then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee had rejected the withdrawal or significant dilution of the Act on the grounds that it is not possible for the armed forces to function in disturbed areas without such powers.
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Manorama mothers Manipuri women pushed to the brink after the horrific **** of Manorama Devi
Photo: UB PHOTO
Curiously, it took Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to raise proportionate heat on Irom Sharmila, on a trip to India in 2006. If Sharmila dies, Parliament is directly responsible, she thundered at a gathering of journalists. If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, the military is responsible If she dies, the executive, the PM and President are responsible for doing nothing If she dies, each one of you journalists is responsible because you did not do your duty
Yet, three years later, nothing has changed. After the boundless, despairing anger of the Manorama Mothers, the government did roll back the AFSPA from some districts of Imphal city. But the viral has transmitted itself elsewhere. Today, the Manipur police commandoes have taken off where the army left off: the brutal provisions of AFSPA have become accepted State culture. There is a phrase for it: the culture of impunity. On July 23 this year, Sanjit, a young former insurgent was shot dead by the police in a crowded market, in broad daylight, in one of Imphals busiest markets. An innocent by-stander Rabina Devi, five months pregnant, caught a bullet in her head and fell down dead as well. Her two-year old son, Russell was with her. Several others were wounded.
But for an anonymous photographer who captured the sequence of Sanjits murder, both these deaths would have become just another statistic: two of the 265 killed this year. But the photographs published in TEHELKA offered damning proof. Manipur came to a boil again.
Four months later, peoples anger refuses to subside. With typical ham-handedness, Chief Minister Ibobi Singh first tried to brazen his way through. On the day of Sanjits murder, he claimed in the Assembly that his cops had shot an insurgent in a cross-fire. Later, confronted by TEHELKAS story, he admitted he had been misled by his officers and was forced to set up a judicial enquiry. However, both he and Manipur DGP Joy Kumar continue to claim that TEHELKAs story is a fabrication.
Still, hope sputters in small measure. Over the past few months, as protests have raged across the state, dozens of civil rights activ ists have been frivolously arrested under the draconian National Security Act. Among these was a reputed environmental activist, Jiten Yumnam. On November 23, an independent Citizens Fact Finding Team released a report called Democracy Encountered: Rights Violations in Manipur and made a presentation to the Central Home Ministry. A day later, Home Secretary Gopal Pillai informed KS Subramanian, a former IPS officer and a member of the fact-finding team, that the ministry had revoked detention under the NSA for ten people, including Jiten. In another tenuously hopeful sign, Home Minister P Chidambaram has said on record in another TEHELKA interview that he has recommended several amendments in AFSPA to make it more humane and accountable. These amendments are waiting Cabinet approval.
IN A COMPLEX world, often the solution to a problem lies in an inspired, unilateral act of leadership. An act that intuits the moral heart of a question and proceeds to do what is right without precondition. Sharmila Iroms epic fast is such an act. It reaffirms the idea of a just and civilized society. It refuses to be brutalized in the face of grave and relentless brutality. Her plea is simple: repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. It is unworthy of the idea of the Indian State the founding fathers bequeathed us. It is anti-human.
It is true Manipur is a fractured and violent society today. But the solution to that can only lie in another inspired, unilateral act of leadership: this time on the part of the State. Eschew pragmatism, embrace the moral act: repeal AFSPA. There will be space beyond to untangle the rest.
But unfortunately, even as the entire country laces up to mark the first anniversary of Mumbai 26/11 a horrific act of extreme violence and retaliation, we continue to be oblivious of the young woman who responded to extreme violence with extreme peace.
It is a parable for our times. If the story of Irom Sharmila does not make us pause, nothing will. It is a story of extraordinariness. Extraordinary will. Extraordinary simplicity. Extraordinary hope. It is impossible to get yourself heard in our busy age of information overload. But if the story of Irom Sharmila will not make us pause, nothing will.
Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine
Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine
The Parable Of The Vamp
WHAT DOES TRASHING SUNANDA PUSHKAR SAY ABOUT OUR ATTITUDES TO WOMEN, ASKS SHOMA CHAUDHURY
imageAMIDST THE immense noise of the IPL controversy, away from public view, a woman has been confronted with a deeply personal crisis: she can no longer recognise herself. A massive juggernaut has rolled over her, crushed her out of shape, and moved on without a backward glance. She has been left to cope with the painful out-of-body experience of watching the mangled remains of who she used to be. Left to muse, in private bewilderment, why her image and the person she knew herself to be no longer matched.
Sunanda Pushkar, the woman in the tableau, was not hit by some unheeding truck. She was hit by the media. As Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, the doctor parents of the slain Aarushi, know only too well, this is not the first time its happened. In its feeding frenzy for 24 /7 excitement, the media has developed a curious way of turning fathers into murderers; women into vamps. Facts, evidence, the line between public and private all the good, old-fashioned gears of journalism no longer have any place. Rash allegations are enough. The rear-view mirrors are gone. You can now recklessly ride over people and not look back.
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'Im proud of bringing up my son all by myself'
SUNANDA PUSHKAR HAS ALWAYS BEEN SELF- RELIANT. SHE HAS HELD MANY JOBS, CROSSED MANY CONTINENTS. IN THE LAST FORTNIGHT, SHE HAS WATCHED THE MEDIA MUTILATE HER RESUMÈ. NOW, IN A STIRRING INTERVIEW, SHE WRESTS BACK THE STORY OF HER TRUE SELF
Over the last two weeks then, every real and fictitious fragment of Pushkars life has been dragged onto airwaves and newsprint: Men she has and has not married; men she has and has not slept with; money she has and has not made; jobs she has and has not done. People have spoken with dripping scorn about her eye-popping life, her insatiable ambition, her work with starlets and bimbos, her vampire-like thirst and her Louis Vuitton victimhood. They have dissected her diaphanous saris and conjured clingy ones shes never worn. The general consensus has been: She isnt enough a girls girl. And for this transgression, she had to be crushed. So, overnight, Sunanda Pushkar was transformed from a living, breathing woman with a history of her own into a proxy bimbette.
What did Pushkar do to merit this public mauling? The reasons trotted out are that Pushkar is romantically involved with former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor and has therefore been given disproportionate sweat equity worth Rs 70 crore in the Kochi cricket team he helped put together. One can debate the finer points of propriety about Pushkar having equity, independently or otherwise, in a project Tharoor was closely associated with. Prima facie, it appears there was absolutely no exchange of money. Nor was there any misuse of public funds. In a world of brazen corruption then, this could only count as a minor lapse in manners. The curious thing is, the uproar over the sweat equity itself seemed misplaced. With the same reckless disregard for fact, everyone has forgotten that the offending Rs 70 crore does not exist as yet. Sweat equity is risky: There are no payments upfront. If the going is good, you take the ride; if not, theres nothing.
So, the truth is, the reasons Pushkar has been pilloried lie elsewhere. Imagine for a moment that instead of Pushkar some nephew of Tharoor had been given sweat equity. Would the media have ferreted out every last detail about his girlfriends and colour of bedsheet imagined or real? Pushkar says the last fortnight has been akin to a medieval witch hunt. She is right. A deep and unthinking misogyny has underscored all the reporting on her. Her real crime is that she is an attractive 46-year old widow, who is bright, vivacious and hot in the way only those women can be, who have a comfortable relationship with themselves; who understand that beauty does not preclude one from being kind; or protect one from sorrow. If the media had wanted to try the two for financial impropriety, it should have stuck to doing that. Instead, all of it has become an ugly spectacle about a society trying to decide what women are allowed and not allowed to be. Ambition, sass, and self-assured sexiness are clearly high on the list of Indias penal code for women. This is why Pushkar has been asked by well-wishers to stay out of view. This is why shes in the process of being tamed for Indian public life. The story of how Sunanda Pushkar has been treated then is not the story of just one woman: it is a parable about the society we are.
There are so many versions of your life floating in the media, would you like to put the facts on record first.
I dont really want to. My son and parents have already suffered enough on this. How many times I got married, who I dated what does any of that have to do with the IPL?
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Sunanda Pushkar with her now deceased second husband Sujit Menon, her father and uncles in Jammu.
Thats true, but unfortunately the absence of facts has allowed everyone to maul your image. Thereve been reports that you divorced your first husband Sanjay Raina because you fell in love with his friend Sujit Menon. Also that Sujit committed suicide because he was in financial trouble. Even if all this were true, it still wouldnt make you a bad person, but the key thing is to establish how much is truth, how much fiction.
(Sighs) You are right. Its probably important to set the record straight. My first marriage was a very dark period in my life. Everyones saying Sanjay Raina divorced me, but thats not true, I divorced him. It was a very painful relationship but I dont want to go into that. Its over; hes moved on, Ive moved on. I was 19 when I met him and very innocent. My dad was in the army and I had a very protected childhood. I was always sorry for the underdog. My family and friends used to teasingly call me Mother Teresa. I was helping flood victims in Ambala in grade six. When I was in Jesus and Mary Convent, I used to work with abandoned and physically challenged children at an ashram. There was a blind and spastic kid there who was particularly attached to me. No one wanted him because he wasnt very nice looking, but I used to bathe and feed him. Curiously, many people spoke badly of Sanjay, saying he was strange. Maybe in the beginning that is what drew me more to him.
But the marriage was a big mistake. I was totally unprepared for the worst. The media said, why should the Kochi team pick me? As a woman am I not good enough? Soon after we got engaged I told my father I wanted to break it off. I had realised Sanjay and I were very mismatched but my father wouldnt listen. For Kashmiri Pandits, if you got engaged, you had to marry; wed never had a broken marriage in the family. Mine fell apart within days. I had a really tough time getting a divorce in Delhi. It was a very lonely time. My parents didnt want me to divorce even though they knew what was going on. Looking back, I understand them now, but I felt very abandoned then.
The truth is Sujit rescued me. He gave me the strength, as a friend, to quit a very painful marriage. But he was dating another woman; I was just a friend. I got my divorce in 1988 and went off to Dubai in 1989. I married Sujit in 1991; my son Shivy was born in November 1992. If I had left Sanjay over Sujit, why would I have waited that long to marry him?
What about Sujits death? That has been turned into something very mysterious as well.
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With baby Shiv at home in Dubai
Yes, my son has had a really rough time dealing with those reports. But my husband died in an accident in Karol Bagh in March 1997. I can show you the death certificate. I had a really harrowing time finding the body and had to go from morgue to morgue searching for it. Again, it was a very dark time. Sujit was a financial consultant and he had run into some financial trouble. I disagreed with many of his business decisions at the time and after his death I got several threatening calls from his creditors. But that was less important to me than the fact that after his death, Shivy suddenly stopped talking. It was very strange, he probably got scared. He was barely four. There was so much to do papers and fresh visas to be sorted, debts to pay. So I left him with my sister-in-law and, later, my parents for a few months. I keep asking them, someone tell me what happened to him because when I went to pick up my son, he had stopped talking. I took him to Dubai but in those days there was no concept of speech therapy there. I began to look for the best affordable health care and thats how I hit upon Canada. I moved there to help my son. I had been doing pretty well at work, but I didnt have that much money to spare. I was supporting my parents, supporting my brother through engineering college, trying to pay off Sujits debts.
The media said, why should the Kochi team pick me? As a woman am I not good enough?
Why did you need to support your parents financially? Everyone says your family was very wealthy.
Yes, we were wealthy till the trouble began in Kashmir in 1989. We had orchards and a lot of land. But after 89, my family suffered like everyone else. Luckily, they were wealthy enough that they didnt have to go live in a tent. But I did help them financially to find their feet again. They couldnt afford to put their son through college you know you have those donations and capitation fees. I did all that.
Part of the muck being thrown at you for having sweat equity in the Kochi team is that you dont have professional standing that merits it, so you must be a front for Shashi Tharoor. How do you respond to this?
I cannot tell you how insulted I feel. Ive been fiercely independent and self-reliant all my life. And Ive always been proud that I have made it alone on my own terms in a mans world. And here, in one minute, without bothering to find out any facts the media just turned me into a slut, into some kind of brainless eye candy! I dont know why people find it so hard to understand this I really dont care about money in that grasping way. Yet, please dont misunderstand me. I enjoy making money, I think theres absolutely nothing wrong with a woman being ambitious. I like cars and watches but I dont need any man to get anything for me. My kick is to buy it myself. I like to earn my own keep. Id be very happy to set up home with a man I loved, but I would not marry a man just because he can buy me diamonds. Im not judgmental about women who do that, Im just saying I wouldnt. So when people say I got into all this as a front for Shashi, chasing influence and money, it savages my soul. What else can I say?
The media has said, for Rs 70 crore, the Kochi team could have hired any foreign marketing firm, why would they pick me? Forget that no one in India seems to have understood the basics about sweat equity there is simply no 70 crore on the table, in fact not one paisa has changed hands so far, and there will be no profits for years to pay anybody but what is this attitude? As a woman I am not good enough? Some foreigner can do better than an Indian? And we call ourselves a superpower? Is this 21st century India or the British Raj?
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With her father at her wedding to Sujit at the Shiva temple in Kochi,Kerala
Could you then run us through your career graph a bit ?
When I came to Dubai for the first time I worked in tourism. I had ideas about dhow cruises and dune dinners much before Emirates Holidays even existed. Our accounts included Philippines airlines, Romanian airlines, Brazilian airlines so I had lots of corporate clients. After I married Sujit, I got into events. Someone reported that all my shows made losses. That hurt. Sujit and I did only one event together which went badly a Mammooty show which people have been writing all kinds of nonsense about. But apart from that I dont think I did any events that made a loss.
I started my own company called Expressions with four or five people. We began to do many model shows for product launches. Everyone does it now, but it was a complete trendsetter then. I did 13 shows with Hemant Trivedi, shows with Rhea Pillai, Vikram Phadnis, Aishwarya Rai. When the Gulf War started, we did big fund raisers for the We love Kuwait campaign.
After a while I got a great offer from an ad agency called Bozell Prime. I handled many big campaigns for them Wella, Hersheys, Chrysler cars. I did big multi-million dollar events for Modern Pharmaceuticals. That was the most beautiful time of my life. But after Sujit died, I gave up Bozell for Shivy. I didnt want a baby-sitter. He had gone into a complete shell and I was frightened for him and wanted to be there for him. So that last year in Dubai before I went to Canada, I worked with Ravissant.
Calling me a beautician from Dubai is not derogatory. Its just not true
In Canada, I had to start from scratch. Id literally gone there with a suitcase and my child. But you know, Shoma, I have never taken my resume and looked for a job.I have always felt I can carve a niche for myself on my own terms. Ive always been an entrepreneur that way. So for a while, I did many odds and ends. Then some friends in New York two doctors who are still among my closest family friends suggested I get into the IT sector which had just begun to boom. Everyone was looking for computer engineers from India, so we tied up with companies like Compaq and head-hunted in India for them.
After a while a friend in San Francisco alerted me that a company called Valley Resources wanted a partner. I told them I had no money to invest but they still wanted me. So, talk about sweat equity (laughs) that was my first sweat equity! It was a lot of fun and we did mighty well and made good money. I put Shivy in a private school; I bought ourselves a house; I got a BMW. And I did all this from the basement of my house. And through all that, I never used babysitters. Im proud of bringing up my son by myself. Many of my friends across the world who knew me at that time are really disheartened and outraged by the way I am being portrayed in the media.
The press has been saying you are a beautician, a spa-owner, a mystery woman from Dubai where did they get all that from?
Can you imagine! I have no idea where they got it! These reports were meant to deride me. I dont even feel theres anything derogatory about being a beautician its just that its completely not true! I ran a small jewellery shop for a while, but while they were trying to ferret fictitious details about my life, they didnt even come across that!
You know, all through my life, at different phases, things have fallen apart and each time I have just picked myself up and put the pieces back. I am a very positive person: I always say, this too shall pass. I am a great believer in Shiva and the idea of karma, so I never question and complain and ask why is this happening to me. I always tell myself that things happen to you so that you can learn from it. But this has been the biggest test I have ever faced.
Well come back to the way the press has reported on you and what impact thats had on you; and what it says about attitudes to women in India. But, first, could you finish telling us about your professional life.
Just as our IT business was booming, 9/11 happened. This hit us bad and we had to shut shop. There was four months of anxiety and no work. We were cleaned out financially. Thats when I got into Emotional Intelligence. It was the latest thing in Canada those days. I did a course and joined a company called Noble House International. We started something called Human Potential Reengineering. [sighs] We did lots of programmes for banks like Royal Bank of Canada and ABN Amro in Miami, Amsterdam and Geneva. It was fun but I was not earning enough.
The film Corporate disgusted me. Must a woman sleep around to get business?
Then in 2004, Best Homes offered to send me to Dubai to set up their operations there in real estate. If I think about it, real estate runs in my blood. More than buying and selling, I love developing properties. I love the blueprint stage, the planning and the zoning. So I came back to Dubai in August 2004 as general manager of Best Homes and worked on a big project with them.
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Pushkar celebrating Diwali with her son and friends in Toronto,Canada in 2003.
Dubai had changed completely. My friends had all become rich and powerful; there was a completely different buzz. But Shivy was not very happy and I was just planning to go back to Canada and start again, when I was offered a job by Mohamad-bin-Ghalib of Tecom to work on an International Media Production Free Zone. This was one of the most exciting projects Ive ever worked on. We had to plan publishing zones, convention centres, hotels, schools and hospitals over 44 million square feet of land. Then I was offered a position that the company usually only gives to locals I had to sell land to Gulf nationals. Everyone thought Id fail because I didnt know Arabic. But as one of my bosses said about me, She can sell sand to the Arabs and ice to the Eskimos!
Were you a sales manager there? Some press reports have been saying that you actually live to use their words in a low-class ghetto in Dubai and that Shashi was a leg up for you socially and financially. How would you speak of yourself? As middle- class, well-to-do, very well-to-do?
I think Im pretty well to do. I drive a Range Rover. My son has a driver and a Ford. I live in a decent apartment because I dont want to live in a villa and have the headache of a garden and stuff because theres just the two of us. I have a cook and a domestic help. I own two 3-bedroom apartments in Jumeirah Palm. I also own a beachside apartment in Jumeirah Beach Residence, and I have two apartments in Executive Towers. I only live in this rented apartment because its close to Shivys school and his friends live around here. I also have my house in Canada and some land in Jammu. So Im pretty alright, I think. Im pretty alright. [laughs]
Thats an understatement.
Yeah, I guess, Im okay. The part I feel really good about is that Ive done it all on my own. The only thing theyve got right about me is that I was a sales manager at Tecom. What they dont get is that this suited my entrepreneurial spirit just fine because it allowed me to get a commission over my salary.
Of all the kite flying about you in the media then, what aspect has really upset you the most? Oh God, I can so tell you that! Its been like a medieval witch hunt! Its been so misogynistic. The bizarre part is, I think its not even just to do with my being a woman, its to do with my being an attractive woman. Thats what makes it even more disgusting. Thats what really makes me sick to the core of my being. That, to so many people in this society, if you are attractive you are immediately deemed to be a loose woman.
Why are they accusing me of being a proxy for Shashi? Cant I make my own money?
What have they not said about me! I am supposed to be married to some automobile businessman in Delhi; my second husband is supposed to have committed suicide; I am supposed to have slept with god knows how many men, and I am supposed to be a tart.
I have always prioritised Shivy because he is the most important thing in my life and I have always been proud that I had made it alone, on my own terms, in a mans world, and in one minute, without checking on any facts, they have just reduced me to a slut. Just because I am an attractive working woman in a mans world.
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Sunanda Pushkar with the UAE's Minister for Foreign Trade Sheikh Lubna Al Qasimi
All my women friends in Dubai women from all across the world, Serbia, England, America, Canada are so upset. They are furious! As one of them said, we thought India is going to be a world power, but how can they be when their attitudes to women are so warped!
I have realised that women have made some inroads into politics in India, but in business? God forbid, you want to be feminine and wear nice saris or dresses into a boardroom thats totally not allowed. I saw a Hindi film called Corporate it disgusted me. A woman must sleep around with someone to get business, she cant get it otherwise? She must utilise her body and only then her brain will function. Suddenly boom! her brain is functioning because men are sleeping with her!
I have a wonderful, grown-up son a son who says that whenever he thinks of duty and integrity and honesty, he thinks of his mother. I want to ask all these people in the media, if I was sleeping around, when did I have the time to bring up my child?
Do you know that there was a report that said I went to Jitin Prasadas wedding wearing a bright-red, clingy, seethrough sari with a low cut blouse and some socialite is supposed to have sniggered that this was just not the Congress code. I wasnt even in Delhi for Jitins wedding. I went to his reception huddled inside a black sari and shawl because I was so cold. How much can the media lie?
Theres another thing I want to clarify. They are saying I have given up my shares to save Shashi Tharoor. Now, Im not even supposed to have that much agency of my own! I DID NOT give it up for Shashi Tharoor. I gave it up for exactly the reason that I said in my statement: I have no enthusiasm to work on this anymore. You tell me, Shoma, after all that has happened would you have the enthusiasm to work with the IPL? I might still do stuff for them, as I said, because I love Kerala but how can they turn around and crucify me for something I am giving up in disgust? One BJP man said that the fact I am giving it up is further proof of my corruption. I mean how much more perverse and bewildering can things get? And now I have someone impersonating me on Facebook when I dont have either a Twitter or Facebook account!
One of my bosses said about me, She can sell sand to the Arabs and ice to the Eskimos!
I have to say the conjecturing about you has been shameful.
(Starting to cry) I have always thought of myself as a kind, proud, honest and ethical person. I cant recognise what they have turned me into publicly. In my family, everyone calls me Didi even my father because I am the person everyone turns to for help. I was always the boy in the family. I never even had a doll as a child. So even now, though this is my worst fall, I am not asking why all of this has happened to me. I am sure there is a larger lesson to be learnt and I am sure I am going to grow from this. And mark my words, I will grow, I will come out of this a bigger and better person. I can feel it in my bones. Im sure Ive made mistakes in my life; Im just a regular human being. But I keep telling myself, I must be a good person because, god knows, I have brought up a good child.
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Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar at a New Delhi book launch in March. GETTY IMAGES
Lets talk about Shashi Tharoor and the IPL. How did you meet? How did the IPL thing come about? What is the sweat equity everyone is in a tizzy about?
I dont really want to talk about Shashi because everything I say will have some repercussion for him. He is a public figure, I am not. But I met him about two years ago through a friend called Sunny Varkey, and we got along immediately. We are certainly close now, but that closeness only developed less than five months ago. I am very proud to know him because, most of all, he is a good and honest man.
As far as the IPL goes, again the media has twisted my words. I have known Karim and Ali Murani since 1998, since we were all in the events business. Over the years they have become close friends. When they took on KKR, I was generally throwing ideas at them about how they should market and package the team. Ali liked my ideas enough to ask me to come down to Bombay to discuss working for them the Muranis, not KKR itself. The conversation was serious enough for me to fly down to Mumbai, but Shivy was still in school so we all just let it slide. But thats how I first got to know about the IPL.
As far as the sweat equity for the Kochi team goes, I am genuinely bewildered by the allegations of corruption. I did agree to offer my skills as a marketing consultant. I have a knack for it. I also helped them raise a lot of money. But theres been absolutely no exchange of money between us. I dont even have the shares. Its more like a promissory note with absolutely no guarantee that the shares will amount to anything. People are calling me and saying why did you give up the Rs 70 crore? What Rs 70 crore? Its not there! I havent earned it as yet, theres no surety I ever will. People have been throwing up fantastical numbers what no one seems to understand is that all of it is notional. I am told Mumbai Indians made a loss of 40 odd crore last season, so theres a huge risk involved. Theres no money upfront.
And again, why are they accusing me of being a proxy for Shashi? Thats so insulting. Cant I make my own money? He has not been corrupt for so many years for which I am proud to be his friend why would he be corrupt now? Just look around you in India and see the corruption in government, in industry, in every crevice of public life and they call this corruption! Indians couldnt handle a man who is not corrupt so you tainted him and literally made him look corrupt so that he had to leave government and not embarrass his party! [laughs]
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CALM BEFORE THE STORM Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar
My faith in India is so shaken. Shashi and others keep telling me not to say this, but I dont know Shoma why shouldnt I say it? I am shocked at the way events unfurled. It had no basis in truth. There was no intention of even getting to the truth. Why has the media taken this beyond the realm of reality. I cant understand it!
There were three people in politics that really created hope for millions of Indians across the world that even clean men can join politics Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor. I know that when Shashi entered politics, many Indians felt, oh, if he can, even we can. Otherwise Indian politics was always thought of as such a dirty game. But Shashi has been hounded out for now ironically for not being dirty enough. In just the cricket scene I know how much corruption is floating about, but the big powerful men will get away, and Shashi has been made a sacrifice. Was Shashi given a fair hearing? The media made sure he couldnt get one. As I said, it was a medieval witch hunt in every way.
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Irom And The Iron In Indias Soul
IROM SHARMILAS STORY SHOULD BE PART OF UNIVERSAL FOLKLORE. IN THE TENTH YEAR OF HER EPIC FAST, SHOMA CHAUDHURY TELLS YOU WHY
Extraordinaire Sharmila says its her bounden duty to protest in the most peaceful way
SOMETIMES, TO accentuate the intransigence of the present, one must revisit the past. So first, a flashback.
The year is 2006. An ordinary November evening in Delhi. A slow, halting voice breaks into your consciousness. How shall I explain? It is not a punishment, but my bounden duty A haunting phrase in a haunting voice, made slow with pain yet magnetic in its moral force. My bounden duty. What could be bounden duty in an India bursting with the excitements of its economic boom?
You are tempted to walk away. You are busy and the voice is not violent in its beckoning. But then an image starts to take shape. A frail, fair woman on a hospital bed. A tousled head of jet black curls. A plastic tube thrust into the nose. Slim, clean hands. Intent, almond eyes. And the halting, haunting voice. Speaking of bounden duty.
Thats when the enormous story of Irom Sharmila first begins to seep in. You are in the presence of someone historic. Someone absolutely unparalleled in the history of political protest anywhere in the world, ever. Yet you have been oblivious of her. A hundred TV channels. An unprecedented age of media. Yet you have been oblivious of her.
In 2006, Irom Sharmila had not eaten anything, or drunk a single drop of water for six years. She was being forcibly kept alive by a drip thrust down her nose by the Indian State. For six years, nothing solid had entered her body; not a drop of water had touched her lips. She had stopped combing her hair. She cleaned her teeth with dry cotton and her lips with dry spirit so she would not sully her fast. Her body was wasted inside. Her menstrual cycles had stopped. Yet she was resolute. Whenever she could, she removed the tube from her nose. It was her bounden duty, she said, to make her voice heard in the most reasonable and peaceful way.
Yet both Indian citizens and the Indian State were oblivious to her.
The humbling power of Sharmilas story lies in her untutored beginnings. There is no rhetoric, no cliched heat of heroism
That was three years ago. On November 5 this year, Irom Sharmila entered the tenth year of her superhuman fast protesting the indefensible Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that has been imposed in Manipur and most of the Northeast since 1980. The Act allows the army to use force, arrest or shoot anyone on the mere suspicion that someone has committed or was about to commit a cognisable offence. The Act further prohibits any legal or judicial proceedings against army personnel without the sanction of the Central Government.
Draconian in letter, the Act has been even more draconian in spirit. Since it was imposed, by official admission, thousands of people have been killed by State forces in Manipur. (In just 2009, the officially admitted number stands at 265. Human rights activists say it is above 300, which averages out at one or two extrajudicial killings every day.) Rather than curb insurgent groups, the Act has engendered a seething resentment across the land, and fostered new militancies. When the Act came into force in 1980, there were only four insurgent groups in Manipur. Today, there are 40. And Manipur has become a macabre society, a mess of corruptions: insurgents, cops and politicians all hand in glove, and innocent citizens in between.
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True Gandhian For ten years, nothing solid nor a drop of water has entered Sharmilas body
Photo: LAKSHMAN
A FEW YEARs ago, an unedited CD began doing the rounds in civil society circles. It showed footage of humiliating army brutality and public rage. Images of young children, students, working-class mothers and grandmothers taking to the streets, being teargassed and shot at. Images of men made to lie down while the army shot at the ground inches above their heads. With each passing day, the stories gathered fury. Disappeared boys, raped women. Human life stripped of its most essential commodity: dignity.
For young Irom Sharmila, things came to a head on November 2, 2000. A day earlier, an insurgent group had bombed an Assam Rifles column. The enraged battalion retaliated by gunning down 10 innocent civilians at a bus-stand in Malom. The local papers published brutal pictures of the bodies the next day, including one of a 62-year old woman, Leisangbam Ibetomi, and 18-year old Sinam Chandramani, a 1988 National Child Bravery Award winner. Extraordinarily stirred, on November 4, Sharmila, then only 28, began her fast.
Sprawled in an icy white hospital corridor that cold November evening in Delhi three years ago, Singhajit, Sharmilas 48-year-old elder brother, had said half-laughing, How we reach here? In the echo chamber of that plangent question had lain the incredible story of Sharmila and her journey. Much of that story needed to be intuited. Its tensile strength, its intense, almost preternatural act of imagination were not on easy display. The faraway hut in Imphal where it began. The capital city now and the might of the State ranged against them. The sister jailed inside her tiny hospital room, the brother outside with nothing but the clothes on his back, neither versed in English or Hindi. The posse of policemen at the door.
Menghaobi, the people of Manipur call her, The Fair One. Youngest daughter of an illiterate Grade IV worker in a veterinary hospital in Imphal, Sharmila was always a solitary child, the backbencher, the listener. Eight siblings had come before her. By the time she was born, her mother Irom Shakhi, 44, was dry. When dusk fell, and Manipur lay in darkness, Sharmila used to start to cry. The mother Shakhi had to tend to their tiny provision store, so Singhajit would cradle his baby sister in his arms and take her to any mother he could find to suckle her. She has always had extraordinary will. Maybe that is what made her different, Singhajit says. Maybe this is her service to all her mothers.
There was something achingly poignant about this wise, rugged man on the sidelines loyal co-warrior who gives the fight invisible breath, middle-aged brother who gave up his job to look after his sister outside the door, family man who relies on the Rs 120 a day his wife makes from weaving so he can stand steadfast by his sister.
Ten years on, her fast is unparalleled in the history of political protest. If this will not make us pause, nothing will
It was a month and a half since Singhajit had managed to smuggle Sharmila out of Manipur with the help of two activist friends, Babloo Loitangbam and Kangleipal. For six years, Sharmila had been under arrest, isolated in a single room in JN Hospital in Imphal. Each time she was released, she would yank the tube out of her nose and continue her fast. Three days later, on the verge of death, she would be arrested again for attempt to commit suicide. And the cycle would begin again. But six years of jail and fasting and forced nasal feeds had yielded little in Manipur. The war needed to be shifted to Delhi.
ARRIVING IN DELHI on October 3, 2006, brother and sister camped in Jantar Mantar for three days that hopeful altar of Indian democracy. Typically, the media responded with cynical disinterest. Then the State swooped down in a midnight raid and arrested her for attempting suicide and whisked her off to AIIMS. She wrote three passionate letters to the Prime Minister, President, and Home Minister. She got no answer. If she had hijacked a plane, perhaps the State would have responded with quicker concession.
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Tehelka expose The killing of Sanjit in a fake encounter by commandos, caught on camera
We are in the middle of the battle now, Singhajit had said in that hospital corridor. We have to face trouble, we have to fight to the end even if it means my sisters death. But if she had told me before she began, I would never have let her start on this fast. I would never have let her do this to her body. We had to learn so much first. How to talk; how to negotiate we knew nothing. We were just poor people.
But, in a sense, the humbling power of Sharmilas story lies in her untutored beginnings. She is not a front for any large, coordinated political movement. And if you were looking for charismatic rhetoric or the clichéd heat of heroism, you would have been disappointed by the quiet woman in Room 57 in the New Private Ward of AIIMS in New Delhi. That 34-yearolds satyagraha was not an intellectual construct. It was a deep human response to the cycle of death and violence she saw around her almost a spiritual intuition. I was shocked by the dead bodies of Malom on the front page, Sharmila had said in her clear, halting voice. I was on my way to a peace rally but I realised there was no means to stop further violations by the armed forces. So I decided to fast.
On November 4, 2000, Sharmila had sought her mother, Irom Shakhis blessing. You will win your goal, Shakhi had said, then stoically turned away. Since then, though Sharmila has been incarcerated in Imphal within walking distance of her mother, the two have never met.
Whats the use? Im weak-hearted. If I see her, I will cry, Shakhi says in a film on Sharmila made by Delhi-based filmmaker Kavita Joshi, tears streaming down her face. I have decided that until her wish is fulfilled, I wont meet her because that will weaken her resolve If we dont get food, how we toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep. With the little fluid they inject into her, how hard must her days and nights be If this Act could just be removed even for five days, I would feed her rice water spoon by spoon. After that, even if she dies, we will be content, for my Sharmila will have fulfilled her wish.
This brave, illiterate woman is the closest Sharmila comes to an intimation of god. It is the shrine from which she draws strength. Ask her how hard it is for her not to meet her mother and she says, Not very hard, and pauses. Because, how shall I explain it, we all come here with a task to do. And we come here alone.
For the rest, she practices four to five hours of yoga a day self-taught to help maintain the balance between my body and mind. Doctors will tell you Sharmilas fast is a medical miracle. It is humbling to even approximate her condition. But Sharmila never concedes any bodily discomfort. I am normal. I am normal, she smiles. I am not inflicting anything on my body. It is not a punishment. It is my bounden duty. I dont know what lies in my future; that is Gods will. I have only learnt from my experience that punctuality, discipline and great enthusiasm can make you achieve a lot. The words easy to dismiss as uninspiring clichés take on a heroic charge when she utters them.
For three long years later, nothing has changed. The trip to Delhi yielded nothing. As Sharmila enters the tenth year of her fast, she still lies incarcerated like some petty criminal in a ****** room in an Imphal hospital. The State allows her no casual visitors, except occasionally, her brother even though there is no legal rationale for this. (Even Mahasweta Devi was not allowed to see her a few weeks ago.) She craves company and books the biographies of Gandhi and Mandela; the illusion of a brotherhood. Yet, her great almost inhuman hope and optimism continues undiminished.
But the brothers frustration is as potent. The failure of the nation to recognise Irom Sharmilas historic satyagraha is a symptom of every lethargy that is eroding the Northeast. She had already been fasting against AFSPA for four years when the Assam Rifles arrested Thangjam Manorama Devi, a 32-year-old woman, allegedly a member of the banned Peoples Liberation Army. Her body was found dumped in Imphal a day later, marked with terrible signs of torture and ****. Manipur came to a spontaneous boil. Five days later, on July 15, 2004, pushing the boundaries of human expression, 30 ordinary women demonstrated naked in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters at Kangla Fort. Ordinary mothers and grandmothers eking out a hard life. Indian Army, **** us too, they screamed. The State responded by jailing all of them for three months.
Every commission set up by the government since then has added to these injuries. The report of the Justice Upendra Commission, instituted after the Manorama killing, was never made public. In November 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to review the AFSPA. Its recommendations came in a dangerously forked tongue. While it suggested the repeal of the AFSPA, it also suggested transfering its most draconian powers to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Every official response is marked with this determination to be uncreative. The then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee had rejected the withdrawal or significant dilution of the Act on the grounds that it is not possible for the armed forces to function in disturbed areas without such powers.
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Manorama mothers Manipuri women pushed to the brink after the horrific **** of Manorama Devi
Photo: UB PHOTO
Curiously, it took Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi to raise proportionate heat on Irom Sharmila, on a trip to India in 2006. If Sharmila dies, Parliament is directly responsible, she thundered at a gathering of journalists. If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, the military is responsible If she dies, the executive, the PM and President are responsible for doing nothing If she dies, each one of you journalists is responsible because you did not do your duty
Yet, three years later, nothing has changed. After the boundless, despairing anger of the Manorama Mothers, the government did roll back the AFSPA from some districts of Imphal city. But the viral has transmitted itself elsewhere. Today, the Manipur police commandoes have taken off where the army left off: the brutal provisions of AFSPA have become accepted State culture. There is a phrase for it: the culture of impunity. On July 23 this year, Sanjit, a young former insurgent was shot dead by the police in a crowded market, in broad daylight, in one of Imphals busiest markets. An innocent by-stander Rabina Devi, five months pregnant, caught a bullet in her head and fell down dead as well. Her two-year old son, Russell was with her. Several others were wounded.
But for an anonymous photographer who captured the sequence of Sanjits murder, both these deaths would have become just another statistic: two of the 265 killed this year. But the photographs published in TEHELKA offered damning proof. Manipur came to a boil again.
Four months later, peoples anger refuses to subside. With typical ham-handedness, Chief Minister Ibobi Singh first tried to brazen his way through. On the day of Sanjits murder, he claimed in the Assembly that his cops had shot an insurgent in a cross-fire. Later, confronted by TEHELKAS story, he admitted he had been misled by his officers and was forced to set up a judicial enquiry. However, both he and Manipur DGP Joy Kumar continue to claim that TEHELKAs story is a fabrication.
Still, hope sputters in small measure. Over the past few months, as protests have raged across the state, dozens of civil rights activ ists have been frivolously arrested under the draconian National Security Act. Among these was a reputed environmental activist, Jiten Yumnam. On November 23, an independent Citizens Fact Finding Team released a report called Democracy Encountered: Rights Violations in Manipur and made a presentation to the Central Home Ministry. A day later, Home Secretary Gopal Pillai informed KS Subramanian, a former IPS officer and a member of the fact-finding team, that the ministry had revoked detention under the NSA for ten people, including Jiten. In another tenuously hopeful sign, Home Minister P Chidambaram has said on record in another TEHELKA interview that he has recommended several amendments in AFSPA to make it more humane and accountable. These amendments are waiting Cabinet approval.
IN A COMPLEX world, often the solution to a problem lies in an inspired, unilateral act of leadership. An act that intuits the moral heart of a question and proceeds to do what is right without precondition. Sharmila Iroms epic fast is such an act. It reaffirms the idea of a just and civilized society. It refuses to be brutalized in the face of grave and relentless brutality. Her plea is simple: repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. It is unworthy of the idea of the Indian State the founding fathers bequeathed us. It is anti-human.
It is true Manipur is a fractured and violent society today. But the solution to that can only lie in another inspired, unilateral act of leadership: this time on the part of the State. Eschew pragmatism, embrace the moral act: repeal AFSPA. There will be space beyond to untangle the rest.
But unfortunately, even as the entire country laces up to mark the first anniversary of Mumbai 26/11 a horrific act of extreme violence and retaliation, we continue to be oblivious of the young woman who responded to extreme violence with extreme peace.
It is a parable for our times. If the story of Irom Sharmila does not make us pause, nothing will. It is a story of extraordinariness. Extraordinary will. Extraordinary simplicity. Extraordinary hope. It is impossible to get yourself heard in our busy age of information overload. But if the story of Irom Sharmila will not make us pause, nothing will.
