August 28: Day 1 of my fast, day 186 of our chain.

//18 ÇHD lawyers were accused of being members of the leftist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), through the Progressive Lawyer association. The lawyers were sentenced to a total of 159 years in prison in the trial. Without reviewing a lawyers’ appeal, the court upheld the sentences in October 2019. Timtik and Aytaç Ünsal, another lawyer sentenced, started a hunger strike in January and February this year.//

Why did Ebru Timtik fast to her death? Because the alternative for her would have been to kill everything that was “alive” inside of her to continue living under a repressive, authoritarian regime…

We seem to be sliding towards the same hell hole, in India, in the US, all over the world. Because we’d rather defend the habits of our small, insular worlds than adapt and embrace a world much bigger and richer than our limited imaginations would allow. By accepting unfamiliar people and ideas into our hearts and minds, by letting our curiosity and humanity exceed our baseless doubts and irrational fears. Let us slow down, step back, turn around – before we cause, in our ignorance and shortsightedness, so much destruction that it becomes impossible to escape its myriad aftereffects…

India, let our collective 5-day fasts suffice! Don’t push us to the extreme that the heroic Ebru Timtik had to contend with. In memory of Ebru Timtik, I dedicate my fast today to five lawyers in India who have dauntlessly fought to defend our constitutional rights and democratic freedoms:

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Shahid Azmi, Justice Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Prashant Bhushan.

#FastForPrashant #SaveOurJudiciary #SaveAmbedkarsLegacy http://m.bianet.org/english/human-rights/229812-lawyer-ebru-timtik-dies-on-238th-day-of-death-fast?fbclid=IwAR2mmm2rJzSCN84su3r8X4o3-cLPzopciscn_8_sm75J5US8maWiWybDqGI

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

August 29: Day 2 of my fast, day 187 of our chain.

Today, a conversation with other chain fasters prompted me to share a personal story with you. As many of my older FB friends may remember, I spent January-April 2010 in India, before moving from Europe to the U.S. I had just completed my PhD and a year as a postdoc, and wanted a chance to give back a bit to the country of my birth before jet-setting to an altogether new continent in pursuit of a career. Also, as a mother to a 3-year old, I was fascinated by how much children learn through play, and wanted to share the benefits of my parenting insights with more children than just my own.

So, thanks to the benevolence of the managing committee of an orphanage close to my parents’ home in Mumbai, I was allowed to visit the children there every day. During my time there, the home had 120 children between the official ages of 6-12 (though some kids arrived earlier and some stayed on longer). I took three batches of 20 kids everyday in 2-hour sessions each, so that in 4 weekdays I got to see each of them twice. My initial plan was to just play with them – mostly age-appropriate board games, which I felt would prepare the kids to strategically navigate the challenges life invariably was going to throw at them.

When I started, I had just two sets of memory games my mother-in-law had found at a flea market in Bonn. One of them – with pictures of animals in their natural habitats – was especially loved by all the children. Most of all, they were fascinated by a picture of a baby seal on an ice slab, similar to the one in the attached picture. In the very first week of my play sessions, a group of kids asked me in wide-eyed wonder: “Didi, these seals couldn’t live in India, could they? They seem to live in the snow, and India is too hot for snow… Are these pictures of Pakistan?” The premise of the question baffled me – the world, for most of these kids, was limited to just India and Pakistan. Or whatever impression of the two countries they could glean from Bollywood, politicians’ speeches, and the most-watched cricket matches.

The next day, I went out to buy a pair of globes for the kids: my plan was to show them how much bigger the world was than just India and Pakistan, and for good measure, I brought along a flashlight to demonstrate how the Sun’s light, which fell on India directly, only reached the poles at a very slant angle, making them a lot colder. Some of the kids listened intently, others couldn’t wait to get their hands on the globes and spin them as vigorously as they could. But that was the whole reason I had brought two of them, and not just one. Eventually, they wanted me to show them where I used to live in Europe, where India was, where the U.S. was, where Mumbai was. When they figured out that the globe included every place on Earth, they wanted me to show them Chinchpokli, where their old granny lived, and Thane, and Goregaon…

The concept of scale required more than a verbal explanation. The next day I came armed with four newly-bought wall maps: of the World, of India, of Maharashtra, and of Mumbai. Now I could show them how the 3D globe that we lived on could be represented as a 2D map of the world. And how – zooming in from the World to India to Maharashtra to Mumbai – you had to get closer and closer to see places in greater detail. And finally, as a reward, we were actually able to locate the smallest places – from Chinchpokli to Goregaon.

Over the four months I spent with them, the kids and I built a great rapport with each other – they knew they could ask me anything. The home management graciously provided a whole room for my activities with the kids, and soon, it became packed with games and toys, maps and books. The kids’ school teachers started reporting unprecedented good behavior in school as well as improved performance. We played and read together, but we also scrubbed and cleaned together – their dining area once had to be spruced up for visitors from abroad – it took us two whole days. When I was leaving, many kids said that they loved me for not just “teaching at them” but helping them with the dirty work too.

The most astounding moment came towards the end of my stay. I had bought several copies of a few beautifully illustrated books on insects and birds, and the latter also showed the annual migratory routes of each bird species. I stepped into our room, one day, to find a group of girls and boys charting out these migratory patterns on our world map! When I came in, they proudly illustrated to me the differences between the migratory routes of different species! My jaw hung in disbelief – these were the same kids who, when I first met them, struggled to imagine a world beyond India and Pakistan!!

These were the same kids I was told were “different” before I started spending time with them. I did not know then what that meant. Eventually, I learned that this was code for “lesser kids”. Because they were born on the streets, because they were the children of prostitutes, because they came from sub-optimal family backgrounds. But during my time with them, I found no reason to believe they were any different from my own very cherished child. When I fight for the future of India, I fight for those kids who changed my life forever. I don’t know where they are – all 120 of them – but I fear for them, and that fear haunts my dreams.

I wonder: how many poor Indian kids have known nothing other than being treated with unreasonable contempt and disrespect? How many of us – adult Indians – have grown up believing we are unworthy for the way we were treated as children? Why? What does it cost our society to treat one another with unconditional dignity and respect? The stability of our petty social hierarchies? The persistence of the caste system?

Do we ever stop to think about the exorbitant cost of our petty meanness? Not just to those we bully but even to ourselves? Instead of correcting our past mistakes, our politicians today are actually securing party tickets and winning elections on the basis of their ruthless bigotry and violent cruelty to others.

Nelson Mandela said: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” What does this reveal about the soul of India today?

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

August 30: Day 3 of my fast, day 188 of our chain:

My story for today is sadder, less comfortable than the one I told yesterday. It is, in fact, a confession.

I took introductory computer lessons during my summer vacation after 10th grade. Every session was made up of an hour of instruction, followed by an hour of hands-on exercises on an actual terminal. It was 1993, the pre-Windows era, and the lessons taught us to understand binary data, the basic architecture of a computer, and we were taught MS-DOS, Lotus spreadsheets, and D-base as a data query system. I seemed to learn quickly, so the owner/instructor of this Computer Training Center “encouraged” me to volunteer to help out during the hands-on sessions after he was done instructing. I didn’t have much else to do, and found computers more fun than tennis, the other activity I was pursuing that summer, only to humiliate myself with my horrible skills every time I stepped on court. So far so good.

By the end of that summer, our instructor was rolling out a relatively pricey C++ programming course. He didn’t want too many 15-year old kids to flood his class, so he set up the following criteria: participants without a bachelor’s degree could participate by invitation only, those with a bachelor’s degree were welcome to join without any limitations. I was invited to join, but my mom thought I should take a break from computers, so I refused. One afternoon, I was sitting in class with the instructor, explaining why I couldn’t continue, while he kept trying to convince me I should. That’s when a man, another student, walked into the classroom. He had just completed his BCom, had the money for the fees and desperately wanted to join this class. I could tell from his voice that this wasn’t the first time he was having this conversation with the instructor. Soon the man was pleading, sweating profusely in spite of the air conditioning, almost in tears.

The instructor remained unmoved. He simply asked the man to leave. After the man left, I asked why he couldn’t join the course. He met all the qualification criteria, after all. The instructor said something to the effect of: “Programming needs brains. He just doesn’t have what it takes”. I remember feeling a momentary tinge of pride, because the implication was of course that I, a bumbling 15-year old, was considered smarter than a grown man. What deliverance from my weekly humiliations on the tennis court!

But I knew something wasn’t quite right. The man was certainly not any less brainy than the others. I knew him from the hands-on sessions, and he never needed a lot of help. The only thing that really set him apart was that he was a Muslim. I don’t clearly remember his name anymore, but I’ll call him Khalid.

My fleeting moment of gleeful pride eventually turned into a lifetime of shame and regret. I wonder what Khalid’s moment of forced capitulation did to him…

I never learned what systemic discrimination felt like until I encountered my own share outside of my sheltered life in India. It felt like trying to walk through a cold, hard wall, day after day, with subhuman rewards for superhuman efforts. Though I suspect, the discrimination I faced might have been of a gentler variety than what Khalid had to put up with…

I think a bit of Khalid when I hear “Love Jihad”.

I think a bit of Khalid when I hear “Corona Jihad”.

I think a lot of Khalid when I hear “Education Jihad”.

If I meet Khalid again, I will stand by him. And I won’t let anyone drive him away from what he rightfully deserves. Not without a fight.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

August 31: Day 4 of my fast, day 189 of our chain.

I don’t have a story to tell today. There is one, the one I told Meraj, Rajashik and Ali, when they came to my home on February 25, to get me to stop my fast. But that one I’ll save for tomorrow. Today, my mind is still, and I’ll take the liberty of letting it be. Today, I’ll refrain from sharing clever commentary or sharp observations. Today, I’ll just listen to the world around me, taking it in as it is. Nonetheless, I continue to resist tyranny and demand accountability from our elected leaders, today and everyday.

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah

September 1: Day 5 of my fast, day 190 of our chain.

As I promised yesterday, today I’ll tell the story I shared with Meraj, Rajashik and Ali, when they rushed to my home on February 25, to get me to stop my fast. They wanted me to stop because they cared for me, and they also had doubts and disagreements about my method. Then I told them my story:

It was April. Prime mango season. The mango peels in the enormous mound of garbage piling in the front yard of our tenement home attracted thick swarms of flies. Our home was in the middle of a row of such tenement complexes along one side of a big playground. The other three sides were lined with neat, beautiful apartment buildings, but lacking a regular garbage disposal service, their inhabitants felt entitled to come and dump their garbage in the tenement yards. Most of all ours, which looked shabbiest of them all (my family owned the building, so the condition of the place was entirely our fault).

When I was just finishing 9th grade, a neighborhood boy three years older than me became severely ill with typhoid in the middle of his 12th grade exams. He was bright, and dreamed of a promising future, but had to sit these exams – which most of us considered the most important exams of our lives – under a temperature of 104F! Looking out the window, I lamented our terrible lack of hygiene to my mother, and was livid at neighbors who treated us like a community garbage dump, and even more so at certain members of my family who neither got their own act together nor let others take charge.

My mother’s reaction was simple. She said: “Instead of blaming the world for things you find wrong, why don’t you do something about it yourself? Go take a bucket, and a pair of dustpans, and go remove the garbage yourself!” I wasn’t sure she was serious. “Where would I take the garbage?”, I asked, “And how long can I keep doing it? People have been throwing their garbage here forever – they won’t stop!” “Carry the bucket to the municipal garbage dump (about 200 m from our home),” she replied. “Keep doing that until you have cleaned up all the garbage for the day. And if you really care for cleanliness, do it everyday. Just don’t blame others. If you want change, *you* have to stand for it.”

And so, one day in April 1992, I started taking out the whole neighborhood’s garbage. The day I started, I walked back and forth between our home and the municipal dump nearly 20 times, each time holding a bucketful of garbage weighing 10-15 kg and smelling like a sewer. Our neighbors still threw their garbage out – they didn’t have a lot of choice. Our family had a whole storey to ourselves, but the tenants lived in one-room homes, and garbage bins weren’t so practical in 300 sq.ft. homes shared sometimes by 6-8 family members. I kept picking up the garbage everyday, and the space got a lot cleaner than I’d ever seen it. I did this every single day for a whole year – come rain or shine – and when it was time for my own important 10th grade exams, I was no longer worried about coming down with a terrible disease. I eventually went out to vacation with cousins, and that’s when my parents hired help to take the garbage out everyday. Thankfully, he never had to clear 20 bucketfuls, and our house had long ceased to attract for the whole neighborhood’s garbage.

The hardest part of this was not the heavy buckets of filth, but the rolled eyes and the averted looks of neighbors, the neighboring kid who once snidely asked me “Yeh social work kar rahi hain kya?!” and close friends who were convinced I was crazy. My parents had to take quite some heat too, for allowing their daughter to do a “bhangi’s dirty work.”

I agree my mom was different from most moms. I’ve only ever loved her for that and considered myself very lucky to be her daughter. What I learned in those non-stop 365 days of garbage-picking is priceless: it weaned me off helpless resignation for life. It weaned me off blaming others for life. It taught me that if I wanted change, I had to first be it.

This was the story that gave Meraj, Rajashik, and Ali a change of heart. They decided not to get me to break my fast, but that they’d join it as well. This is how #ChainFastingForPeace was born ❤

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #ResignAmitShah