Disastrous Combination...

Being in love and having writer's block. Good God, why don't you just club me over the head and/or chloroform me up, right now?

I feel like the Modernist agenda made flesh. I AM the failure of language. My ideas drift, well-fed and complacent in my head, like a blundering lot of sheep. No sheepdog of logical structural framework will surface in order to corral them into sense, into expression.

As if to ram home the insult - to thoroughly augment my distress - a multitude of memories keeps throwing itself against the straining walls of my mind. It wants out. It will not abate until I find myself, sprawled in my blanket, eyes unfocussed and mind in flight towards HIM again.

I thought that healthy love would make me feel like one of those battery-powered flashing pens; frivolous but paradoxically justified by the very fact of my frivolity. In a world of ruthless linearity would come a dancing rupture. In the cynical Eden of progression - studyworkhouseholdtaskscareerADULTHOOD! - would arrive a snake offering me the most ironically important knowledge of all. The knowledge of an event beyond my control, beyond my understanding and most thoroughly beyond my rationalisation.

Yet in my feeblest moments - I find myself naked! Robbed of my critical capacities, endowed with an art that leads me back, always to HIM. Him, him, HIM! I find myself divided into an unholy Trinity: the Admonisher, the Sufferer and the Artist. The Artist seeks to further the capital of distraction, banking as she does on the antagonism of Admonisher and Sufferer. I see the Admonisher stood over the Sufferer, curled at her feet. Here we have the classic mother-daughter dynamic in play. The elder warns the younger that great things are stake. The younger, attempting to direct her trembling lips through reluctant weeping, concedes - accepts the remark - but her heart is rebellious. It whispers its fears that the elder is perhaps not as experienced as she might like to say, that perhaps there is a certain wisdom in the foolhardy courage of inexperience that well-travelled cynicism lacks.

Schizophrenic is the experience! Surrounded on all sides by the doors of obfuscation, I knock like a game-show contestant: tentative, beating regular like a tiny, desperate heart. My own desperate intelligence is paralysed by a Freudian crisis, meeting such phrases as 'self-reflexive text', 'settled cultural authority,' 'fissiparous': to kiss or to kill? All the while, the hounds of love pursue me, waiting their chance to drag me into somnolence, overcome as Cerberus by Orpheus.

During the the day, he held me to his chest; during the nights, he pursued me like a gender-bent Actaeon - should not I be Artemis? - claiming me again, again and again. 'Enough!' I tried to scream. 'I love you!' The words refused to come in my state of animal panic. If I could, I would have supplicated him: 'O beloved, come as my handsome prince! Deliver me from the state of sleep and inexpression whence I suffer!'

Then, I recalled, Sleeping Beauty was no feminist. The spell broke, I fell back; into an affliction of the most Modernist inarticulation; my prince looming in the shadows with my fleeing last shreds of inspiration - and the tears welled in me for want of confidence.

Tradition: The Skinny

In keeping with my entirely non-existent claim to be an expert on well, pretty much everything, I am going to publish another rant (hopefully briefer than my previous ones, I hear you pant. We just can't keep up with these marathon spewings! Why, my pretties, I do apologise. I've been staying up too late and eating badly, and these are the pungent results... :-D).

So, here's the deal, as the Genie says in Disney's Aladdin while dressed as a sort of weird blue teddy-boy. Tradition is something I militate against quite frequently. Not in the fashion of a D.H. Lawrence or a Marinetti. I do go off on one about the importance of art to life, but I'm not kidding myself. I am more in line with the likes of Forster and Proust, as already stated, in that I believe we can't just break off from the past.

However, we really mustn't enshrine it either. LESSON NUMBER ONE!

We have our individual pasts, and then there is also the 'collective' past, generally expressed (or seen to be) through popular culture. We tend to see our individual pasts as branching off from the 'collective' past, often through our experiences of popular culture. In short, everyone often feels a need to watch the 'It' programme, or listen to the 'It' band of the moment, even though they might not be aware of what this entails. (I always felt very left out for not being able to watch Trigger Happy TV, but now it doesn't seem to me that I really missed out...).

Humans are social beings, innit, and that's why the collective past is important to us. It gives our lives meaning in a small way, and it gives them meaning in a much easier way than the painfully grown-up notion of our responsibility to the world as inhabitants of it that we get slapped with later on.

I mean, think of how beautifully simple it is when you can discuss Eastenders with somebody. For that brief period of time, you exist fully and purely in your satisfying and simple interaction with another person. Nothing tangible has been created, but a connection has flared, flickered and thrown the whole, creaking framework of your drudging life into a sort of glorious perspective for a while. Equally, this is a moment of real freedom, because you are not being forced to produce, nor are you at the mercy of a biological drive which demands that you compare yourself to another being, or procreate with them. 'Survival of the fittest,' 'the rat race' and 'the daily grind' all fall away for a minute and do you know what the best thing is? It's a secular connection. This is not some out-of-yourself moment of transcendance; you are fully conscious of what occurs. Now, ain't that almost spiritual?

We need to stop behaving as if this disappears altogether when we grow up, because it doesn't. Life is undoubtedly harder in adulthood than it is in childhood, but at least now we can appreciate these little moments of connection. People forget how much time you spend being bored and whiny when you're a kid... because you take all that shit for granted. Everything is easy, we are taught to expect... and therein lies the key-phrase. Taught to expect. We are also taught to expect adulthood a certain way. Can we not just get a grip, please? Not everyone's past is that amazing. I loved the books I read, but I'm pretty happy to be who I am now.

These days, because people limply accept that they will have to work forever to afford all the things they want and the lifestyle they think they deserve, we seem to be losing sight more and more of that very infantile luxury: the luxury of taking stock. That poem about how we don't have time to just exist, sums it up for me. Why on Earth can people not just drop their standards a little? You don't HAVE to have a 36-inch TV. If need be, surely you could just use your laptop instead of buying a DVD player. And just how many sofas do you need, really?

I hate to sound all poncey and spiritual, but it's true - those things won't go with you when you die. Knowing that you finally managed to get that Mercedes-Benz is REALLY going to make that passage to the Other Side so much easier, isn't it? What the fuck is wrong with people?

This is where people go badly wrong. In the hopes of having something which will defy human mortality, they cling to tradition. The idea, if you think about it, being that traditions are passed down from generation to generation. In short, they are another manifestation of the human ego's frantic need to circumvent death.

Let me put it to you people straight: YOU WILL DIE AND STOP EXISTING. Unappealing as that sounds, that's just how it is. Get it through your heads. God may or may not exist, who fuckin' KNOWS if we have an afterlife, but we are born and we die. Clinging to tradition does NOT mean you escape.

A lot of diasporans have this real anxiety about mortality, you will notice, if you speak to them about their children becoming 'Westernised' and 'losing their culture.'

Permit me to be outrageous. Mummy, Daddy, I'm afraid that Indian culture is NOT MY CULTURE. I do enjoy elements of it, but I grew up in this country. I have internalised a different set of norms, I plan on living within the social mores which I am used to, and your grief, while understandable and upsetting, is entirely deluded. I personally believe that many 1st-generation Asians are actually projecting their own insecurities onto their children. Many of them are well aware of the fact that their 'homeland' has changed almost beyond belief and that even if they were to return, they wouldn't be able to hack it. To put it bluntly, the India they knew is long dead and they have not been able to grieve and move on because they are stuck in the denial stage.

That's why I consider patriotism - the full-blown emotional strain of it that borders on chauvinism and nationalism - to be really fucking dumb. Nations are composed of people, and people change. Pretty simple, I'd think. And yet, when it's only when talking to family friends, that my mum remarks how 'They have become modern and we are old-fashioned now.' Yes. Well done. Now write it down and learn it by heart.

To return to what I was saying: Indian culture is not 'mine' and it never was. That's tantamount to throwing a book at somebody and shouting 'Why haven't you read it? It's yours!' What utter cack. If you value the dissemination of tradition above all, if the mortality of your memories and the loss of your emotional world is something that you are not adult enough to handle, then please do everyone a favour and fuck off back to where you came from. I would say, in fatalistic fashion 'Raise your kids there if it bothers you that much!' but that would contravene my beliefs about parenthood being a process of nurturing rather than of ownership.

Traditions are a big lie, because, like everything else in the world spawned of humanity, they are subject to perversion and misinterpretation. Bitch please, they do not all carry on being the same after you die. I mean, is child-marriage as common in India as it used to be? Thank Gawd, no! I am stressing this because the lie of tradition is that you are 'investing' in something that you consider to be yours, and effectively trying to overcome death in the process.

I find it really funny that people give so much prominence to tradition when all it is, is habit. I could make a 'tradition' out of only bathing once a week if I wanted to... but I don't because it would be disgusting. That's why, similarly, 'traditions' based around, for example, the wearing of a certain religious symbol, or dressing in a particular manner, are often pretty stupid. Most people won't be aware of the original meaning, and many of them won't necessarily even agree, but the force of habit will hold them tight nonetheless.

Sometimes I wonder why we humans are so desperately keen to latch onto abstract notions when, much of the time, we can't be arsed to invest the time and effort to fully comprehend those abstract notions. Fucking idiots, so we are. Or are we geniuses? The whole point of making something that is so utterly abstract as to be verging on incomprehensible, is that people find it that much harder to question!

I'll finish by fielding a perhaps scandalous suggestion: maybe, oh 1st-gens, maybe your cultures are 'dying' (or so it seems to you) because you yourselves do not have sufficient awareness to teach the yoot about them properly. Or maybe they are dying because that is the natural order of things? Did I not speak earlier of 'survival of the fittest'? It can apply to the world of culture too, you know.

Personally, I believe that saying cultures are 'dying' is bullshit, especially if a lot of people are aware of their existence. A tiny mountain tribe which goes unchronicled and whose inhabitants all move away and convert to Christianity - perhaps that could be called a 'death,' but c'mon, how often does that really happen?

Another reason why I think clinging fervently to traditions is to be avoided at best is because it leads to things like the Partition of India, which involved horrific behaviour by people of all religions in the name of religion and tradition (oh, how cosily synonymous are the two on most occasions! *grimaces*). People can level all sorts of names and accusations at me, but I kind of agree with Nietzsche on this one: the world needs to indulge in a little more 'active forgetting' at times. (OBVIOUSLY some things, like the Holocaust, and indeed Partition, must never be forgotten, but they must also be remembered for the right reasons). We need to learn to let the tide of change come sweeping in, because it's always going to, whether we like it or not. Don't be making yourself look as foolish as ol' Canute did (although he did it intentionally...)!

In Praise of The Inner Life

This is rather a random, off-the-peg post that has just been inspired by my ongoing 'discussion' with Derek, over 'moral relativism', 'universal truths', 'universal values' and other such fancy-schmancy terms of which I vaguely have the outlines of an understanding. (Apologies Derek, I have been attempting to link to your blog, but Blogger gets rather unhappy about it and repeatedly refuses to let me... aha... HA! TAKE THAT! TAKE THAT! *metaphorically bounces up and down in TRIUMPH*).

Ridiculous and out-of-touch though it is going to sound (which is pretty bloody impressive considering that I am 21!), I am going to proceed to rip the shit out of the sort of people who commit honour killings. Not just those people either, but the other people who embody the various degrees leading up to the committing of such atrocities on the scale of fuckwittery.

Now, we all care what people think of us to some extent. That's part of the whole fucking deal of being yuman. We measure ourselves against other beings, and this has led to a lot of grief and schadenfreude, but it is also useful because it helps us set a (ideally) universal standard of What Is Not Acceptable. Unfortunately, this standard isn't really universal, which is why ancient taboos like incest and paedophilia still persist and why fucking honour killings happen in the first place.

Now, I know this is no solution and I'm perfectly aware that this will make me sound like an ivory-tower intellectual, but I don't care. It has to be said. I am going to speak in praise of the inner life.

The 'inner life' as I understand it, is the kind of thing championed by the likes of E.M Forster and Marcel Proust. Might I just take this opportunity to state that I have slagged off Forster here before, for which I apologise, but y'know, Howards End is pretty dense. It is also absolutely amazing. Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be E.M Forster! Er... without the homosexual upper/middle-class white male thing, of course. I've neither the money nor the time for that kind of operation ;-D.

So yeah, anyway, the 'inner life' basically involves the individual taking time to reflect on themselves and the world, maybe even seeking to make sense of a post-God world through art, and generally refusing to see and depict the world in a simple way, even if they lean towards a simplistic view themselves. Howards End is full of certain conservative leanings and idealistic tendencies that make me scoff 'Bullshit,' but it also recognises the inherent complexity of life. That, for me, makes it more than worthy of forgiveness and gives it its rightly-deserved masterpiece status. Proust and HE both acknowledge the vital importance of art and culture to life.

People sneer at these kinds of attitudes, especially in a world where there is so much poverty and studying medicine is much more likely to earn you cash than studying English. However, I feel that we are increasingly obsessed with material things these days. I'm not making a conservative value-judgement, I'm just saying how it seems to me. I can't - and wouldn't - speak for the past. When I say material, I don't just mean that we are hugely consumerist (we are!) but also that we're increasingly obsessed with the tangible.

No doubt people who've chatted with me before might have heard this from me already - I think that our culture is very visually-oriented. To give you an idea of what I'm on about, the culture of Elizabethan England was more orally-centred, being as it was a time of Shakespeare, mass-theatre and no TVs. Again, I am not exercising any judgements here - I wouldn't dare. I am simply chronicling what appears to me to be a cultural development.

This movement towards the visual is good in the sense that it demands that information be made more concise, clear and direct than ever before, which is no bad thing. However - ironically enough - this is also in some ways a downside. I often feel that because this demand comes alongside an ever-apparent awareness that there is so much going on out there that we don't know and don't understand, we end up in a dangerous position.

Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of knowledge out there, crying out for understanding, people bury themselves further in what they already know. And what they already know, subconsciously, is that visual images are quicker and easier to process than words. So, they whip out their gossip magazines (to provide one example...!) and lose themselves in the blown-up photos of unfortunate, mostly-female celebrities accompanied by tiny, almost incidental captions. I really do not think that that is an accident, btw. They know what people want, and they're going to give it to them.

Hence people bury themselves in the obvious, in the visible, and in doing so, they ostracise themselves from the 'inner life.' The inquisitivity of youth gives way to the fear and cynicism of age, and a feeling that the world is both a) moving faster than it used to and b) moving too fast for you to keep up with. DON'T LOSE YOURSELF TO IT!

Culture is the only way we can be saved from this. People need to be made to think - and I'm aware that sounds dictatorial, but I don't care. When people stop questioning, they start digging in firmly to their 'hand-me-down' beliefs (I know I've used that phrase already, and FYI, it isn't even my coinage!). They begin to vaunt tradition, and then we have a problem.

This is the problem with the sort of people who commit honour killings. They have no inner life at all. They simply inhale the bigotry of tradition handed to them, trying to create a viable identity for themselves out of the processes of fear and denial. These people take huge pride in their 'communities', as well they would. They are parasites! Separate them from their communities and they would perish, because all they are is a lower order of being, mere chimps who have programmed themselves with the guiding fist of tradition, to replicate, replicate, replicate.

These people's entire sense of self depends on how they are seen by others. They are paper beings, no real substance existing beyond the crumbs of meaning that their pathetic, trembling paws have grabbed from the mouths of others and crammed into the huge hole where a personality and a sense of self should be. Such cogs are they that they perceive the individuality of others, even of their own children as a shaming. It IS a shaming, it is a shaming of you BECAUSE YOU ARE NOTHING. You have no individuality, and this realisation of the whole mechanism, of all the other identikit cogs is your life. When you see somebody else who is threatening to escape the mechanism, who doesn't need to be a cog, your pathetic, pathetic rage and jealousy spills out until it consumes them.

I could have anyone try and justify these people to me - but wait! How dare I call them 'people'? They are murderers who have no humanity; mere automatons for whom the merest TOUCH of humanity will derail their sense of self. Snuff the spark! their Cyberman-instincts cry. It threatens me, so it must die! How DARE they try and use the excuse of 'honour'? How DARE they try and pass selfishness off as mere self-consciousness?

Then, just to rub the salt in that little bit further, they fucking well try and use religion to justify their deeds. FUCKOFF, you arrogant fucking hypocritical self-deluded bastards. It is God's right, and God's right only, to pass judgement on an individual's actions like that. Certainly not yours, and CERTAINLY not yours to choose to take the life. How fucking arrogant can you get?

The absolute worst thing for me is that many of the men who commit these atrocities do so without the knowledge or approval of their wives - so despite half the genetic material rightfully belonging to the wife (if we're going to be disgustingly crude), that being which is a part of both parents gets snuffed out regardless.

Murder is never acceptable, whatever the motive behind it, but the way these people try to bring a moral sanction to what they do means that honour killings leave a particularly bad taste in the moral mouth. Psychopaths who kill complete strangers for money are bad enough, but to add in that colossal betrayal of trust... Vah, vah. Bohat changa kita. Or, for those of you who don't speak Punjabi, 'Wow. Very well done.'

To quote (and possibly paraphrase?) one of my favourite Hindi songs ever: 'Insaan bano / Duniya se chale jayo' - 'Behave like men / Leave this world and be gone.'

(On a lighter note, how the hell did I end up with four followers and 880 profile views?!).

Bigotry and Suffering

So here I am, hiding out in my room upstairs, as all my family bar one sister and life-long family friends enjoy themselves downstairs. When they arrived, I actually made an effort to be sociable. We talked about university and work and my plans for next year, and I was (much to my surprise) encouraged to do a Master's and think about academia, because if you can stomach all the studying, it's a pretty comfortable life. I concurred based on what I know and paused resignedly every now and again as people talked over me, interrupted me, or rushed out before I could finish what I was saying.

(Story of my life, and now you know why I vent myself crazy on this here blog!).

I was delighted to speak to a fellow English student (well... former in her case), being as I was able to exclude my sister and brother for once. That sounds bad, but growing up in a house full of medically-oriented people has had the effect that nobody respects me at all, even though I don't exactly exaggerate the importance of what I do. My sisters, when they are both here together, talk pharmacy. My brother, trainee doc that he is, sometimes joins in and if my brother-in-law is here, they talk medicine too.

So, it was a pleasure to establish a connection of my OWN for once, and to talk about Forster, Lawrence and Huxley; to hold forth on The Trial. I don't do it to say 'Look at me, I'm so clever,' but I do enjoy talking about it because it impassions me and in this family where I am a solitary alien, I never get to enjoy that. Used as I am to being babied, bullied and bitched at, for me to be able to say what I THINK and talk about things that interest ME is a rare treat indeed.

However, as I observed in the first paragraph, even that scant moment of happiness does not remain unmitigated. It was positively annihilated, however, by what came next. We shifted rooms in order to sit in the 'back room' (the extension) and there was eating and general conversation. I groaned inwardly at the sight of all the calorific treats which are in the process of making me get fat and giving me more spots than I've ever had in my whole life. I know the latter to be true from looking at pictures of myself and also from the succession of comments from my mother and sisters. My mum in particular remarked upon it almost angrily, as though it were my fault. In her head, I'm sure it is, for some roundabout reason or another.

(One plus point of the day though - I was wearing a ribbon in my hair and for once my brother didn't call me 'Gyppo' as he usually does, but I think that was only because of the guests...).

I was focussing my energies, after consuming a suitably small amount of fried nonsense, on trying to work out the fiendishly elaborate 80s Bollywood film that my dad had on as background noise. There was a sequence where a baddie kept repeatedly being 'attacked' by a falcon which had previously stolen another man's handgun which amused me no end (more genius of the utterly WTF? category)! It didn't save me though, oh no. Not even this year would I get away without having my holidays ruined by the bigotry that is almost integral to these intimate family get-togethers.

Suddenly, before I could even get a handle on where it had sprung from, the subject of the Pakistan-India tensions caught the collective imagination. The mother of the family who are our family friends (the 'children' are my sisters' age, i.e. late 20s, so the two sisters get on with my sisters and their elder brother is just kind of there, like a pot plant) remarked on how she would love for India to simply bomb Pakistan out of existence. Her son spoke up to support her.

Then, the fun kicked off and we got into some good old-fashioned Muslim-bashing. My dad said, how could you associate with people like that when you knew that they were looking at you and deciding that you had to CONVERT in order to be their friends (um, a little exaggeration there, perhaps, Pater?). The son informed us all of how it was 'their mission' to convert the whole world to Islam. For no apparent reason, the 'girls' talked about how they had seen the roads in India lined with goats when they were there 'and we asked him why and he said because it was Eid'. Cue agitated fawning all around for the poor goats that were going to be killed!

(Just like the billions of cows that die worldwide to feed people every year, but I didn't hear any railing against that. Funny really, as this family are Hindus, I would've expected to... Perchance it was because those are not just eaten by Muslims?).

There was talk of how the Arab nations are 'uncivilised' and also of how they are 'dirty.' Bollocks! cried the ghost of GCSE history from the depths of my stomach. Absolute fucking bollocks! They were advanced in medicine long before the West got a clue, and they invented geometry! As usual, however, as one of the youngest in the room and the only person who has bothered to question any of these 'hand-me-down' opinions, I knew better than to open my mouth.

Support for the complete eradication of Pakistan gathered around the room. 'Ethnic cleansing!' my sister proclaimed jauntily. In my already-twisting guts, I felt the amorphous horror of a face trying to force itself upwards, a scream trying to make itself heard. 'These are absolute dogs' the mother of the family kept repeating. All Muslims everywhere ever were blamed for the ills of the world. It was conceded by the eldest daughter that ha, now it was the whole world at their mercy. I believe the mother said something about how 50% of the population being born in India were Muslims.

Oh-so-patriotic anxiety was expressed over poor little India being surrounded, as my pater put it, by 'Bangladesh. Muslim. Pakistan. Muslim... and there's the Muslims in India!' (I managed to refrain from pointing out that Indian Muslims have themselves condemned the Mumbai attacks). Resentment was expressed about the fact that many Indian Muslims were originally, er, not Muslim (I restrained myself from mentioning that in some cases, as with the Dalits, people have voluntarily converted to Islam because they think it will improve their lives which are rigidly bound by the caste-system promoted by... errr, Hinduism and the conservative Indian culture. Also, if people are so cut up about the fact that their families 'used to be' whatever, why not convert back to that religion?).

Pakistan was roundly and repeatedly blamed and the census opinion was that nobody within its borders should live, they should all be bombed out of existence and then the world's troubles would cease! (How I itched to remark that this wouldn't really resolve the problem of the spread of the noxious Wahabbi ideology which originates from... *gasp* SAUDI ARABIA). The 'evil Muslims' seam was rich with satisfaction waiting to be mined by the roomful of my 'nearest and dearest' (ha!), as evidenced by the fact that when my sister came back in from making tea, she went 'Aww, has the Muslim-bashing stopped? Don't start again without me!' and laughed before exiting the room.

I feel depressed and terrified when this happens to me. It also makes me very, very aware of how alone I am. Often when I was younger, I would castigate myself for these feelings. While everyone else laughed blithely, content in the glow of their reductionist bigotry, I felt my innards interlacing, a near-rigor mortis of discomfort immobilising me against the wave of hate. Why did I have to be awkward? Why couldn't I just join in the anti-Muslim fun without feeling bad? Why did I see them as people and feel it almost as much as a slight against myself, when my family - people who I KNEW to be capable of moral character in other situations - had no problem with it?

The answer, ironically enough, was because I saw myself as a Sikh. Even though I am unsure about the existence of God these days, I still see myself as so bound by Sikh philosophy that even if I wanted to, I couldn't change. Yet clearly something was wrong because my family claimed to be Sikhs too. My dad is baptised and has the 5 Ks. My siblings have been much more active 'within the community' than I ever was. Yet I used to pray regularly and I still do try to treat people equally, taking the story of Bhai Kanhaiya Ji as an influence. The Gurus might have had a historical enmity with some of the Mughal rulers, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of Sikh history will be aware of the fact that this is by no means applicable to all the Mughal rulers, let alone all Muslims, plenty of whom were devotees of the Gurus! Even Guru Gobind Singh, who created the notion of the Khalsa, to which my parents cling in keeping with 'neo-Sikhism', was saved by Muslims! (Scroll down to the final paragraph to see what I'm talking about).

I'm no longer vegetarian, even though my hair remains uncut and my kara on, but I can't believe the hypocrisy of it all. This has disturbed me ever since I became aware of it, because it made me see the futility of truth before ritual. Even though, according to the BBC's 'Sikhism at a Glance,' I am a better Sikh than my family, the fact that they observe ritual more means that they have authority in the eyes of everyone else. Pathetic. As I wrote in a poem inspired by my experiences, '‘Twas the evil in my own home / to make me doubt the existence of a God.'

Yet part of me panics when I see this. Does this mean that loads and loads of people out there think like this? How alone am I? Can the world really be full of people who are ignorant and tribalist and hateful? Whenever I used to show little signs of subversion, when I was younger, my parents always disarmed me with the warning that I should 'stick to my own kind' and when I admitted to agnosticism, one of the main weapons my mother used against me was the recommendation that I should be 'part of a group' because it's 'safer' and that way you can fight against other groups. Er... isn't that the sort of mentality that's led to the apparently ever-worsening gang-related violence on our streets?

Now, in a convoluted way, my mother has a point because Sikhism is about fighting for the rights of the downtrodden and standing up for the oppressed - but I don't see what reason Sikhs have to be playing the 'victim' card as my parents so often like to do. Average Muslims could if they wanted to, but a lot of them just want to get on with their lives. I can't let that go unsaid, because I refuse to stop seeing the fact of people's humanity in favour of other categories. Does that make me a fool? And still the question circulates in my mind: who's the real Sikh here?

The Littlest Love Letter

Er - blame Girls Aloud for this.

DRAMA! Will anybody work out the 'sting in the tail' of my poem? Stay tuned to the comments section to find out!

The Littlest Love Letter

I saw you turn your head away on the street.

The bubbles of laughter worked their way

Rhythmically to the surface, the ground seemingly no match

For your feet, as you tottered and bounced with mirth.

Wind tossing your hair everywhere as though it were

Handfuls of cocoa powder exploding about your cheeks –

For you were long gone into the minute private sphere

Of your feverishly-active imagination; hopeful

Gaze recording an entirely separate vision

To the bemused strollers fading tonelessly away

Beside you, deep jade showing here and there,

Against your almond-milk face as it hid amongst your hair –

Such vocal eyes you had! The pebbled glint of curiosity

Speaks from them; not a hint of malice, but the black

Fringing of your lashes suggested childishness

As you giggled, and the fading pink of your mouth

Seemed to touch your cheeks, and I wanted to kiss you,

I wanted to fold my arms around the body

That seemed so much smaller and more graceful

When seen in his eyes than when I saw it,

Loaded with conflict, in the mirror each day.

Sarah Palin Offers An Uneasy Glimpse of The Future...

Taken from here. Good Lord.

'I see you as president.' 'Maybe in eight years,' says Sarah Palin

• The Guardian, Tuesday 4 November 2008
• Article history

This is an edited transcript of Saturday's conversation between Sarah Palin and comedian Marc-Antoine Audette of Montreal radio station CKOI, posing as Nicolas Sarkozy.

SP: This is Sarah ...

MAA: This is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking, how are you?

SP: Oh, so good. It's so good to hear you. Thank you for calling us.

MAA: Oh, it's a pleasure.

SP: Thank you sir, we have such great respect for you, John McCain and I. We love you! And thank you for taking a few minutes to talk to me.

MAA: I follow your campaigns closely with my special American adviser Johnny Hallyday [a French singer], you know?

SP: Yes! Good ...

MAA: You know I see you as a president one day, you too.

SP: Maybe in eight years.

MAA: Well, I hope for you. You know, we have a lot in common because personally one of my favourite activities is to hunt, too.

SP: Oh, very good. We should go hunting together.

MAA: Exactly, we could go try hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that. Like we say in French, on pourrait tuer des bébés phoques, aussi [we could kill baby seals, too].

SP: Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way.

MAA: I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun. I'd really love to go, as long as we don't bring Vice-President Cheney.

SP: No, I'll be a careful shot, yes.

MAA: Yes, you know we have a lot in common also, except that from my house I can see Belgium. That's kind of less interesting than you.

SP: Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes.

MAA: Some people said in the last days, and I thought that was mean, that you weren't experienced enough in foreign relations and you know that's completely false. That's the thing that I said to my great friend, the prime minister of Canada, Stef Carse [a Canadian singer].

SP: Well, he's doing fine, too, and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.

MAA: I was wondering because you are so next to him, one of my good friends also, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr Richard Z Sirois [a Canadian comedian], have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?

SP: I haven't seen him at one of the rallies but it's been great working with the Canadian officials in my role as governor . . . You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife. Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.

MAA: Thank you very much. You know my wife Carla would love to meet you . . . even though she was a bit jealous that I was supposed to speak to you today.

SP: Well, give her a big hug from me.

MAA: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she's so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.

SP: Oh my goodness, I didn't know that.

MAA: Yes, in French it's called De Rouge à Lèvre sur un Cochon [Lipstick on a Pig], or if you prefer in English, Joe the Plumber [sings] it's his life . . . I don't quite understand the phenomenon Joe the Plumber. That's not your husband, right?

SP: That's not my husband but he's a normal American who just works hard and doesn't want the government to take his money.

MAA: Yes, yes, I understand we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit.

SP: Right, that's what it's all about, the middle class and government needing to work for them. You're a very good example for us here ...

MAA: I must say Governor Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life. You know Hustler's Nailin' Paylin?

SP: Oh, good, thank you, yes.

MAA: That was really edgy.

SP: Well, good.

MAA: I really loved you and I must say something also, governor, you've been pranked by the Masked Avengers. We are two comedians from Montreal.

SP: Oh, have we been pranked? And what radio station is this?

MAA: CKOI in Montreal.

SP: In Montreal? Tell me the radio station call letters.

MAA: CK ... hello?

Headscarves and Turbans

Quite some time ago, I said that I would reveal what I thought about girls who wear headscarves (at my university). I'm not going to focus just on the laydeez though - the menz will also be getting a bit of a rollicking.

It must be said that I am not targeting all girls in headscarves either. Just a lot of them.

It has struck me recently that there is so much fundamental dishonesty in the world. That sounds really naive, but I don't mean it in some 'child-opening-eyes-to-harsh-reality' way. I mean it in the sense that it is stunning how much of human existence can essentially be boiled down to power struggles - people trying to claim authority over each other. Yet a lot of the time the subject of the power struggles is often misunderstood or misrepresented, and hence those arguing over it are, if you will, arguing over something that does not actually exist. They are trying to generate authenticity out of inauthenticity, and in the process basing themselves and what they stand for - their identities - around a lie.

Let us invoke a 'trendy' example here: Islam and the arguments between Sunnis and Shias, or between Wahabbis and pretty much every other type of Muslim (:-D). It's not just Islam though that has this problem - pretty much every religion based around a text of some sort has this problem to some extent.

If you haven't already, look at my blog header. It is a quote from that wonderfully disturbed man, Franz Kafka. I am not, and did not, choose that in order to come across as intellectual (ffs, I read the book for a university course... I'm not the sort of person who reads 'classics' for fun unless they're relatively humorous. Yes, yes, I know. Sacrilege!). I chose it because it struck me as so very true. Thanks to ol' man Nietzsche and others of his ilk, I've come to rethink what that means. Now, when I think something is 'true,' what I really mean, I suppose is that for me, it is very applicable.

'The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.' I would gladly renounce all hope of ever being a real writer if I could produce such a phrase. Staggeringly obvious, but like the most accurate observations, it needs to be pointed out to us. I can't help thinking that if only more people kept this in mind, the world could well become a more sensible place. I'm not a fucking 'punk rocker with flowers in my hair' nor am I wishing for 'world peace' like a beauty pageant contestant, I just wish for a little more pensiveness, please.

Once something has been printed/published - that is IT. It takes on a life of its own. To borrow a Freudian term, it becomes 'uncanny.' I was thinking about it and I surmised at first that perhaps at the heart of our power struggles lies the desire to 'be or beat' the author. Maybe the power struggles are nothing but an expression of collective frustration at the fact that the author has 'got one' over us and an unconscious acknowledgement that we would like to be in their position. I mean, look at the way educational progress works. We do not learn and learn - the aim of accumulating knowledge is to reach the position of knowledge-provider ourselves in most instances. Think of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and how much it applies to all of humanity; all our learning is but an attempt to take a swipe at God.

However, the printed text will survive after its author's death. It will outlive them, and even in their own lifetime, it will defy them. All their manicured intent will not be able to forge a 'pure' work that has only one understanding to it. Some critics and reviewers will see what they were aiming to do in their work; others will draw entirely new strains of meaning from it. It is their legacy; much as other people have children.

People like to think that their children, sharing their genetic matter as they do, will turn out to be, if not carbon copies, at least startling likenesses of the originals. Not so! as anyone with half a brain knows. Works of art are no less wayward. They must be as receptive to the egos of others as they are to the ego of their creator; otherwise they will not survive over time.

Therein lies an irony: you work and work and create yourself a monument, yet after all your efforts it defies you. It refuses to behave as told, to conform exactly. It is 'uncanny,' because as soon as it leaves your mind and becomes apparent, it takes on an authority of its own and perhaps even robs you of your authorial authority. You can't tell it what to do. Nobody can tell it what to do - and then the problems start because it tells others what to do.

People are base, lowly creatures fashioned out of clay who fail to do justice to that glorious organ in their heads that rules them. If ever there was a 'God,' it ought to be the human brain. Look at what the human brain can do! However, if we can't even respect the capacities of our own brains, then we haven't got much chance of remembering that texts are living things. They don't belong to the author any more than they belong to the reader; they live in the middle ground between intent and interpretation and we would do well to remember this and get the hell over ourselves.

So. Intro over.

What with this insecurity that surrounds texts, religious and otherwise, people need SOMETHING to cling to. Enter ritual and symbolism. What yuman beans really like, is habit and routine. I think it is hardwired into our biology, but I'm not certain. Even those who seek variety need this to some extent in order to be less aware of the passage of time and our mortality.

I don't really approve of the laziness that induces us to cling to things out of sentimentality in such a way, but I understand why people do and I understand how terrifying it can be to suddenly let slip a whole set of beliefs, no matter how half-baked, and have to start again with a blank canvas on the world. I'd venture to say here that while liberation is generally good, it definitely ain't easy yo.

All this is why, when I see girls at my uni wafting about in their hijabs, I feel... ambiguous. Depending on what they look like, my thoughts tend to run thus: either 'Oh' or 'How fuckin' stupid. What a fuckin' stupid shame.' Quite often the former runs into the latter. If the girl in question looks like a fully-paid up devout Muslim: baggily covered, has a hint of a moustache (sorry ladies, but if you do, you do) and is bare-faced (and quite often looks dead-eyed, although I'm sure I do too), I think to myself that I don't really know how much of a believer she is. Maybe she wants to do her eyebrows and wear lipgloss, but maybe she can't. Maybe she really DOES believe that she is the Satan-sin of Temptation personified and/or see the gaze of others as a threat - if so, that's a damn shame.

However, when I see what my friend Ala (and others) have described as 'muhajababes' (oh go on, read Ala's post, it's short, concisely-written and well-explained!), I just think: 'How fuckin' stupid. What a fuckin' stupid shame' because it is a stupid shame. They are a visual lie to me. Here are girls who want to be regular girls, wearing make-up and tight clothes and accessorising fit to outshine even the scantiest-clad girl - and suddenly a hijab obscures their hair and neck. The pointlessness of it is what always astounds me. Human sexuality cannot be regulated. People always try and do so; in some respects (i.e. paedophilia, incest, etc.) this is laudable. In many ways, it's also quite a hopeless exercise, like trying to rid the world of all its rats. Purge in one place, and there will be an upsurge elsewhere.

When I see these girls, or boys with turbans which hide their cut hair - or they have carefully shaved and groomed beards - I find it stupid and dishonest. Some of them will perhaps want to continue as they are, no doubt. However, I want to shake a lot of these people and ask them to think and sleep on it a bit. What kind of ludicrousness is that? Evidently they are doing it so that their parents and relatives can look upon them and see the symbol, see the visual affirmation of faith.

(I once saw a woman on the Tube who had short hair - neck-length, tons of make-up on and I don't know whether her eyebrows were partially drawn on or what, but I noticed she had a very fucking big tattoo of a khanda on her forearm. I have no idea whether she was wearing a kara or not, but I don't remember seeing one...)

Yet, like texts, the person may well be trapped in the middle - caught between the symbol and those that demand it. They may think the symbol is a concession to their parents/relatives; in fact, the parents/relatives tend to see it as a promise and a testimony. It tells them that you have faith and locks you in to their system of belief, and if you don't, it's a lie - once again - that everything is hinging on. Take a stand! Don't let yourself be suffocated by something that you thought you were in control of!

Then again, some people are so unable to handle the abstract as the abstract that they will literalise everything. They are people with no imagination and no inquisitivity, and they will not accept the view of sexuality I have just mentioned. They will cry vermin and keep stamping until there is blood. Their failure to accept the fact of sexuality's omnipresence will result in them turning, like so many desperately unimaginative bastards, to murdering their children in that most well-known of rituals, the 'honour' killing. The term 'control killing' as has been proposed, is much better. See, 'control killing' makes me think of Rentokil, which makes me think of vermin, which leads me back to my metaphor. Such bastards - being as they are, probably consumed with personal guilt and shame for whatever reasons - will seize upon the separate existence and snuff out its life in a pathetic and futile attempt to protect their lie.

Lo, we have returned to the power struggles of which I spoke at the beginning, and so it is that books are burned and women are killed for the sake of people's authority. Shame on you. Grow the fuck up. If you were truly people of religion and honour, you would accept that all things belong to God, and that ultimately it is only God's decision to exercise judgement. Monica Ali - an author who faced the threat of book-burning in this day and age - helped in the production of this post, pointing out as she did via Brick Lane that it really is not just fear, but also laziness, that drives people to stay with a certain ideology. I mean, ferChrissakes, the main character is not afraid to have an affair, even though she hasn't guts enough to stop praying despite not really seeming to believe in religion! A special mention must also go to Marcel Proust, upon whom I had to write a 2, 500 word essay, which I did 2, 000 words of in one day. Thank you.Thank you very fucking much.

The moral of the rant may be that art of all kinds and children are much more alike than you ever wanted to realise, and that you don't own nuttin'. Don't let this capitalist, property-appropriating world fool you, y'hear? ;-D As if the recent recession and allegations of fraud didn't make that clear enough already. As an absolute genius of a man once said: 'Money ain't got no owners; only spenders.'

To finish in an Omar-ian vein: MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR, YO!

Reader, I... Met His Parents

So. Given that my life has been nothing short of terrifying recently (chronically miscalculated my student loan and thought I was going to die, penniless and half-eaten by an Alsatian as combined work and poverty pressures induced my heart to burst like a tomato in the microwave)... I thought I would go for the best form of catharsis there is available: 'publicly' embarrassing myself on my public blog. See now, this wouldn't be real humiliation, I told myself, since virtually no-one reads this anyway. The 3 people who happen to follow probably know enough about me to divine that I am a huge embarrassing mess of a laydee anyway. Well, as huge as you can be at almost 5'4'' (almost! almost! Talk about being cut to the quick! 'So that I may calculate your BMI, please tell me: are you 5'4''? You look like a 5'4''' *shamefacedly* 'No, I am afraid I am 5'.37''...').

You - people who have read any recent posts - will know that I am in love with a man (scandale! you cry derisively. As if we thought you were in fact in love with an oversized cucumber!). Not just any man, however. He has sort of a 'web presence' like myself, and so I threatened to very slightly roll back the sunroof of anonymity last time. However, I got an email about it, so he will now be referred to as 'The Libertarian.' He jokingly referred to himself as 'im upstairs' once, I believe, but I know that I for one may confuse this with God, so for now he is, very simply, The Libertarian or TL if I'm feeling very slovenly.

Anyway, The Libertarian is very, very good to me. He is, in fact, so good to me that I was terrified he was actually a hologram for the first month of our relationship and I occasionally woke up afraid that he would have disappeared from my side like a hallucination (usually to be greeted by the halcyon view of his back while he slept peacefully...). He brought me a rose on our second 'real date' - which he carried intact from effectively one side of the city to another for about 2 hours or something. He took me to a formal dinner at his alma mater and introduced me to one of his best friends. While this was occurring, he got slightly tipsy and preceded to grin at everyone around him, especially me, squeezing me close to him affectionately and rubbing my arm. The next day, he showed me around the town there, refusing as always to let me carry my own bag and insisting on taking a picture of me, be-shawled, because I looked 'so cute.'

I could see, very early on, that I was going to fall in love with him. I could see it coming like Michael Jackson can see facial collapse coming. I reacted badly when I realised I loved him, managing to scare him in the process. Romance-novel-esque as it is, it became clear to me that I'm really not used to being treated well, and I don't trust it, tragic as that sounds. He is determined to make being treated well the norm for me, and I thought I might almost be getting there, but today came a warning.

I went to his house to help him ice Christmas cookies with his mum, and had a very good time doing so, because I tend towards the artistic and got carried away doing elaborate decorations, like a randomly-shaped cookie which I turned into a little Christmas scene with two tiny carollers, two giant musical notes, a bell and some snow. I received many compliments from the pair of them, and then his mum went out to get some things. A fair few hours later, as I was preparing to leave, she said she had a present for me (!!) and it turned out to be a cookie-icing book, with all sorts of elaborate designs and suggestions.

Now that threw me off balance enough as it was, but then she joked about how it would help me when I 'start my business' and said that 'you have a real talent there.' TL agreed with her and smiled at me while holding my hand. We flipped through the book together, commenting on the various designs. They kept being very encouraging and kind, and I felt like I had just swallowed a brick, all wibbly and sure that my face or voice would soon slip out of my control.

Soon afterwards I left - and made it back home without bawling my eyes out. However, the whole episode made me wonder when I am ever going to get used to this whole 'people being genuinely nice to me' business. I just can't get my head around it. Compliments are not compliments to me - they are spiked apples, which I scan for concealed razors. Kindness is a Venus flytrap, waiting for me to hover over it so that it can snatch me into the black depths of its jaws and rip me to shreds.

In short, I love him but I'm just so goddarn AFRAID to have faith that it might be OK. That I might NOT end up eroded and cynical again. I didn't even get dumped last time round - it was me who left - but that didn't stop it from being a thoroughly painful experience which made me get the way I am now. TL and I have fought once, and we made up within an hour, but the feeling I got was so strong that I will never forget it. In the brief stretch of time when I believed we were 'over,' I had a terrible pain in my chest and I felt sort of numb inside my head. I was travelling to Waterloo and when I got there, I burst into tears. What worried me was that I didn't feel surprised. I felt resigned. Something was always going to go wrong, and now it had. Oh, well done me, I had vindicated myself.

I need to lose that feeling. Not so that every hint of friction comes as a huge, unsettling shock, but just so that I am not looking to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'You want to be careful that in worrying about not being too clingy, you don't drive him away,' my wise friend told me. Indeed, and I don't want to feel that my unfortunate childhood has laid some inescapable curse on me.

Yet, the free, relaxed, equal nature of TL's interaction with his family hurt me. I would say, 'for want of a better word,' if it were true, but - it did. It hurt me. I have been unable to shake off the feeling, despite my horror of marriage and lack of sentimentality about love, that this is the 'One.' I don't believe in 'the One' because there are many compatible people out there, but I do believe there's probably likely to be a 'One' you're more able to marry than the others, and oh boy are the warning klaxons sounding about TL. He has the same feelings about me, he says, but I am his first love, so... eh.

Looking at his family does not make me jealous, but it does make me feel aware of how inadequate my own relationship with my family is, even though there's not a lot I can do about that. It makes me want to be part of his future even more, to be part of that small but intimate family circle. Yet I have stop thinking as if it were certain with him... I need to CHILLTHEFUCKOUT and for some reason I just can't. It is what I have always wanted, being dangled cruelly in front of me. This is where, if I were certain of 'im upstairs', I might raise my two fingers skywards and cry 'Feck you.'

Down With Anti-Intellectualism!

Down with anti-intellectualism! Down with anti-intellectualism! I have been reading some things online which have moved me to issue this war-cry.

We live in an age of MASS INFORMATION, I think you will agree. The Internet is a waterfall of differing accounts, of video and audio clips, blog posts and news articles. Waterfalls enrich and keep the supply of water coming steadily. However, if they flood, there will be deaths by drowning as the water overcomes all.

Now my alarmist metaphor might be a touch, well, alarmist, but the point stands. The Internet is a huge and wonderful thing. Some people don't like the notion that putting your data out there into cyberspace might mean that you never get it back, but life is full of risks and gambles, and for what you get in return, it is a glorious system.

The problem then, lies not with the Internet, but with us. Fucking lazy-ass humanity. We are an ineffectual lot, aren't we? We want to leap straight to the end-product of everything without making the journey. Did nobody ever tell us that it's not the winning but the participation that counts? Evidently not, and that is why we idolise Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - we like the notion of a string of successive victories. We don't like to think about the work that goes into producing those victories and the long hard slog that results in a brief shining moment of sporting history at Wimbledon. Between the titles, a person's life is lived in single-minded devotion to training and fitness, a special diet and upon hearing that, we recoil in horror. It doesn't fit with the glamour of the brief shining moment.

To return to the Internet though - we fail to do it justice. We do not look upon it as a tumbling stream of water which could be combed into little rivulets to make it more comprehensible. Instead, we see a river bursting its banks and run, panicking, towards the opinion-ghettoes of the blogosphere or tabloid papers' websites, hiding out among those who share our views, be they justified, informed, articulate or not.

And Jesus fuckin' H. Christ, if you're looking at the Mail website or similar (which I categorically refuse to link to), it's a depressing sight. Don't be fooled - the Guardian's Comment Is Free is similarly packed to the cyber-rafters with morons, tunnel-visionaries and smart-arses. Trollish figures turn up everywhere, desecrating all our pathetic notions of humans as 'superior animals.' On the Web, it would seem, Darwin's rules don't apply. It's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the stupidest.

Now, I know that people will be inclined towards sites that express their own views - that's perfectly natural. It is honestly sad though, to see how commentators pop up on Pickled Politics, for example, with the sole purpose of trying to be the sole right-wing maverick or whatever (I'm looking at you, Ashik!) and the numbskulls inhabiting the comments box on Guido Fawkes' blog are legendary among those with even a cursory awareness of the UK political blogosphere (that bloody word again!).

It is not about debate, it is not about legitimate criticism or disagreement, but about pathetic self-affirmation at the expense of others: I R A REBEL WOZ ERE, pretty much. Then you have Liberal Conspiracy, where the debates can descend into the most minutely finicky semantic wrestling, essentially to the point where people might as well be saying: 'You said X' and are responded to thus 'No, I said Y! YOU think I said X because that's what YOU think is right, but I think Y is right and I KNOW I'm right anyway'.

Let us move beyond words for a minute, I'm asking you. Let's break this fucking Great British tendency to complain and sound off about things, especially when we know next to nothing about them, because that's what is expected of us. The Web is a giant, giant place. Crawl out from under your tiny, little rock and actually open your eyes a little. Read articles - actually read them. Then try forming some thoughts.

I often castigate myself in the presence of people who write for a living, such as at yesterday's PP meet-up, because I can't always express myself particularly well. In fact, I'm even worse in person than in writing or print, or whatever. My tongue quivers hesitantly at the back of my throat as my brain swells dangerously, like a hen about to produce an egg. No egg is produced however - instead I get lots of strands that explode messily out, out of my mouth. Yet I do not feel shame about this. Why should I?

I talk to other people and I try to make sense of myself in the process, and that is what life should be about. Society is not something we can make disappear as if by magic, so trying to actually interact with it and the world around us might help. I am proud at the very least that I listen and take things in and try to collate grand ideas in my tiny little head. So many of us when we're forced to 'grow up' have moments where we extol the virtues of childhood. Conservatives in particular often seem to be the sort of people who wish they could 'go back' to that time (and I don't mean that in any good way whatsoever), whereas far-leftists often come off like that sulky, cynical smartarse in your sixth-form that everyone fancies for two years and then when you start uni you realise he was a total ass.

Yet it doesn't have to be so painful, it doesn't have to be all about loss. Just like the Internet should not be a series of adjacent ghettoes. It's called the fucking World Wide Web after all - a web is made of connecting threads. Let's learn a lesson from childhood in a constructive way for once, and apply the principle of homo viator. Life is a journey and when you decide to stop seeing it as a learning experience, you might as well jump in the coffin and let 'em beam you up Scotty. Or not, because you won't be going anywhere, just stagnating in the cesspit of your lazy ignorance.

There is a fine line between ignorance and bigotry and I think that a great majority of people are very much on the side of the former. So let's try and remedy that shall we? I was talking to my boyfriend and suggested that, given that the trend for reality TV does not seem to be weakening (X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, etc.), why not take something along the lines of Secret Millionaire, Faking It and Wife Swap? Except that it must expressly be people of different races and classes. Put them in each other's shoes for a week, no holds barred (unless you're forcing a vegetarian to eat meat or whatever) and then see what they learn from it.

I would be loath to suggest something like this as I am no fan of reality TV but as my eminently sensible fella pointed out (I am actually looking forward to when I can legitimately refer to him as my 'partner'), you can't force people to do things because they'll hate it. So, given that there's a recession on - coax 'em with fame (if not money)! Generate more cheap entertainment, and do it for a good cause! I think that it should be as full-on an experience as possible, and for this reason, only the 'younger generation' should be involved, not older people. We don't want anyone having a meltdown! If it was up to me, I'd force my male cousins and brother to see what it's like for a girl brought over from India - or force them to have an extensive interview with a prostitute.

The reason that specifically comes to mind is because an (unwanted) conversation with my 14-year-old American cousin made my blood boil. He said he wants to date but remain a virgin till his wedding night (ha! Yeah right) and that he wants a virgin wife. Now, if they're both virgins, that's fair enough, I suppose. However, I'm taking this to mean that he wants to marry a woman with next to no sexual experience, while having sexual experience. When I remarked how appalling this was, amounting as it does to rape as pointed out by Jai on PP (see comment #155!), he went 'Yeah, but I think your brother and male cousin (names have been omitted) would agree with me.'

Ooooh, I BET they would! I bet they would! My wrath was about run seriously unchecked, and I hammered out something along the lines of 'Of course they would, because you're all men.' What a terrible thing to say. I was angry, but it was because they were Asian boys, growing up in a sexist, patriarchal world where every move for women is simply countered with another backslide. Not because they were male - it's never as simple as our generalisations would have us believe. So you're letting your daughters work? Excellent, because no boy in his right mind wants a gold-digger! Don't think you're going to get off the house-work though, beta, what do you think this is, India? We haven't got time to sit around all day! Do your job and come home and take care of dinner!

I am very much in agreement with Halima and Germaine Greer: there's no point trying to bring equality into an unequal world. I have resolved not to fall into the trap of ideology; if ever I have sprogs, I will lead by example and let them take the model of my own relationship rather than trying to ram my beliefs down their throat. Children are not stupid, but they need to see a total role-reversal in order to have any concept of going against the system. My man grew up in a household where the relationship between his parents is very respectful and equal and to add to that, his mother cleans while his dad cooks. Not a highly conventional arrangement, I think you'll agree. Plus, his dad spent a lot of time with him and he has never wanted for a male role model. When I compare this to what I saw in MY upbringing, I am a tiny bit jealous. However, I have ended up with the product of that healthy and admirable relationship, so I can't complain now, can I? :-D Ain't life grand.

P.S.: Has anybody else guessed who my boyfriend is? A couple of people developed suspicions which turned out to be correct. I have kept his identity completely secret so as to respect his privacy (and mine!) but most of my readers know who he is and I have referred to him previously, but I tried to be surreptitious about it... I don't know if I should just refer to him directly occasionally, because I really don't want to repeat history by going down the 'My boyfriend this' 'My boyfriend that' de-humanising route again...

Marriage: Legalised Prostitution?

I have been moved to consider this topic by a thread on PP which invoked Germaine Greer and her views on marriage. Watch out: I'm about to get quote-happy:

I am a Bollywood romantic at heart, bt just saying while we all talk about forced marriages and arranged marriages and what have you - there is a view on marriage itself that’s worth chatting about when we want to discuss gender relations!

But yeah, I’ve seen too many relationships where men are still more dominant and once kids come into the equation - we go back to hunter/gatherer mode immediately . Unless society is structurally changed this will always be the case. This is what Greer meant perhaps when she says..we are still wondering whether women want to be equal with men in an unchanged world ( which is her idea of hell) , or whether to fundamentally to change the world. Unless we fundamentially change structures - we’re always going to find many marriages as legalised prostitution.

You know it was only recently that in UK law it was OK for a man to have forced sex with his wife and for it not t be considered rape. This is no longer the case- but the law changed in the last 10 years I recall (or something). This tells you something about marriage and men’s property rights to women!

Greer would also argue it’s women’s dependency and need for men that entails the prostitutions - not just the economics but the emotional need. Whereas most men don’t seem to be as dependent on women emotionally - or at least they can close off, box off from women until they meet the special someone. There’s a biological trick there somewhere i suppose, women might be able to do this until a certain point when they might want kiddies - and can’t be as emotinally carefree..

The really lovely thing is that I’ve grown up with the best role model men /brothers you can imagine - even with their idiosyncracies to want to ‘protect’ us .. so even with my friends who will say men are this and that , i am usually the one that will say - ah, but not all men, touch wood, i’ve been lucky to be influenced by good, strong male role models.

i guess greer would propose equal pay as the first option which we don’t have at the moment, and changing society’s expectations that women/mothers will be the primar nurturers. But i don’t know how far Greer went on this - i personally think as long as women face the reproductive challenge more, we’ll always face the same inequalities.. there’s a joke at work about some of my female colleagues, it goes like this: ‘what’s so and so doing these days with their career?’ and the answer will be, ’she’s on the baby - track’ not the career track - see what i mean? Having children takes women’s career’s back considerably but it doesn’t have the same impact on men, unless they are the primary carers and nurturers.

I think we’re looking at changing reproductive roles - or finding technogical leaps here, to get to where Greer might suggest we go. This is quite scary and radicaal - and not sure how far science would progress with this. Margerat Atwood has some interesting gothic fantasies on this sort of thing.

Most women when they have a child will go part time work, and if they haven’t gone part-time, they will most certainly do this by child number 2 - unless her partner assumes the primary carer role.

All cherry-picked from halima, one of the better commenters on the site (although there are many).

See, I agree with this, but not completely. The fact that I've found a wonderful man who has no objection to helping out with housework and no control-freak tendencies over how to approach housework, has made me less cynical about the prospect of finding someone 'marriageable' for me.

Confession time: I have never been particularly comfortable with the idea of marriage, on many levels. Firstly, because I believe that many, many people 'settle' rather than choosing somebody who they actually connect with fully (in all fairness, it's hard to tell, especially if your serious-relationship experience is limited). Looking at this from a common-sense perspective, this is disastrous because when they meet somebody who they DO connect with fully, the shit gon' hit the fan, one way or another. I am speaking from experience here...

Secondly, because I was brought up with a very Indian view of marriage, as having to submit completely to your husband's family. 'Nuff said...

Finally, because - strange though it might sound - I feel that marriage is somewhat unnatural. It feels to me like society's demand to scoop up individuals and place them on a little shelf of 'respectability', proclaiming them bound together forever, amen. Feelings change, and people fall out of love, and especially if they have 'settled' (remember, like I said, it's difficult to be sure sometimes!), marriage is going to exacerbate an already ugly situation, because then you have to get divorced.

This seems like inviting trouble to me - if you're happy with somebody, why do you have to make a show of it? Can't you just live together, or - if you really must - hit the registry office?

However, this feeling of mine is again tied very much to the Indian notion of marriage-as-a-spectacle. I have always felt that this turning of marriage into an exhibition was actually a tacit threat to the bride and groom: here you are, you're being made into an example of a success story and now you BETTER bloody well stay together. As if making a very public showcase and celebration of their togetherness will safeguard against potential marital problems. It's also often a sort of pay-off to the bride to compensate her for the fact that she's probably going to be pretty bloody unhappy for at least the first year of her marriage (if not longer), as she forces herself to adjust to the quirks of her groom and his family.

Though there may not be a dowry for most (hopefully all?) British Asian families nowadays, I have always had the sneaking suspicion that the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding is simply its modern equivalent. I really don't agree with it - if you really want to cling to tradition, have the bride's family pay for the religious ceremony and the groom's pay for the party. Ideally, it'd be an equal split.

'But the woman is going into the man's house,' traditionalists cry. 'They'll be looking after her for the rest of her life - why should they pay towards the wedding as well?'

Symbolism, darlings - it's all about the symbolism. The big, big, BIG problem for me is the way the process is STILL about the transfer of a woman as though she were property. We need to divest the process of all the signs of this and start letting it be what it should be: a union between two people which is occurring with the full awareness and consent of both.

So - no more of this 'passing from one family to another.' I find this one of the most ridiculous notions there is. Yesterday my mother wept at me, saying how I was the only daughter she still had any control over, because the other two were under the control of their husbands now. I managed to sufficiently unstiffen myself in her embrace, and barely resisted pointing out that she had repeated to both my sisters that they should follow the desires of their husbands and that they should spend time with their husbands' families because 'they are your family now.' It wasn't exactly a gentle dismissal - it was a rebuff, a rejection. I know she 'meant well' but this is proof that 'meaning well' is often fucking bullshit.

During the religious ceremony, you (the woman) have to follow your husband around the Holy Book and after it's all over, he comes to get you from your maternal home. There are also a couple of traditions where the (usually younger) female relatives of the bride demand money from him in return for letting him enter (when he first arrives for the religious ceremony) or for returning his shoes.

Though I might sound like a killjoy, I couldn't help seeing all this as further commodifying the bride, turning her into an expensive gift purchased from her family by the groom's family. When you consider that virtually all Asian marriages are engineered with some sort of social-climbing in mind for both families, it just makes it worse. I have taken part in this; I have laughed alongside as we demanded £50 each. It's not the worst aspect, but slotted in beside all the others, it doesn't look too guilt-free a pleasure either.

Let's kill the notion of big, elaborate weddings before anything else, I say. I have never seen the appeal of being woken at 5 and then paraded, exhausted and emotional, before the eyes of people I don't really know or care about, but who have been invited because they invited us to a wedding of theirs once, while being hissed at to 'watch your lehnga (skirt)' or 'pull your top up.'

I am really really cranky when I haven't slept enough. I'd end up being a nightmarish bride, giving people murderous looks as my blood-sugar levels crashed, scowling when they told me I looked beautiful, tripping over my lehnga as I followed my groom around the Guru Granth Sahib. As I bent to bow before the holy book and he smiled radiantly at me, I would be ludicrously intent on preventing any part of me getting caught on the rest of me, thinking (in a thick Scottish accent): 'YOU. It's yer fookin' falt I'm doin' this! Why do ye git off wit' wrapping some fabric round yer heid while I have to be a woman? And I want tae be the one carryin' the sword!'

(I would, you know).

I say all this, yet I know that I am going to be made to get married (I think that might be responsible for exponentially increasing my resentment...). Why? I'll tell you why - because it has suddenly got through to me recently that the 'life partner' of my choosing never will be (and never would have been) to my parents' preference. I mean, I've hardly turned out how I should've, so why on Earth is my partner going to be any better?

Blindingly obvious, you might say - not so! When one has no cause to think about these things, one doesn't. Insulated in a little cloud of denial, I la-la-ed along, but as of August, I am increasingly realistic about what my future might look like. Plus, I met and fell head-over-heels in love with a man who is even more 'wrong' than the previous one, but who treats me like a goddess and who I have actually found myself compromising with. See that? Not sacrificing - compromising. Bloody miracle, I thought.

Anyway, seeing as how I am going to make my parents unhappy no matter what, I am seeking to 'compromise' by letting them have their way on the marriage front. Also, I'm hoping to get money off of people in exchange for doing things the traditional way. I have however already specified to my mother that I do not want anything fancy and that no, I am not saving for it, because I don't want the damn thing. My parents will want to invite tons of pointless people, so THEY can cover the costs!

I agree with Greer and halima: there is no point in seeking equality in a world which remains weighted against women. You have to change people's habits and perceptions to make a difference. So I say:

- More paternity leave for dads. As well as this, employers should actively encourage fathers to take leave and care for their children. In the current system, it gets taken for granted that women will be the ones leaving for this reason, and so they become disposable in a way that men aren't. I say, FUCK DAT!

- A reassessment of the importance of parenthood. This will no doubt sound bizarre, especially after what I just said, but I'm trying to say that we should stop being so child-centred and encourage parents to have a bit of time on their own. I think young mothers really need this. Granted, you love your children and you get the protective, possessive instinct, but there has to be some perspective.

I think parenthood needs to be 'secularised' a bit more. You still get it being seen very much in a religious or divine light, and that's bad, because it's ultimately a human function that needs to be open to criticism like everything else.

Everyone probably wants kids at some point, but really, they're not the be-all and end-all of existence (you could always choose art instead!). The problem is that you are expected to become automatically selfless once you pop 'em out, but... individuals are individuals. We all need our own space and time alone. Giving yourself entirely to your children, especially if you're of an independent cast of mind, is disastrous. You're probably going to want them to be just like you, and fill all the opportunities you missed, and well... need I go any further? It'll all turn on itself ironically to the point where their existence is constantly undermined with guilt because they can see that you have given everything up for them and you're not happy. They're not stupid and yes, I do speak again from experience!

Of course, this is only possible if both parents are pulling their weight.

- A child should always have two parents. I'm not dissing single parents here, simply stating a fact: one parent is going to get utterly overwhelmed it's not fair. What I'm really trying to say is: let's have more gay couples adopting! People start carping on about gender role models and whatever; I say, if it's a boy with two mums, give him a godfather or uncle he can depend on and you're cool.

None of this 'There must a mother and a father' crap. It's not insurance against future troubles; if you want particularly painful proof of that, ask the daughters of the British Josef Fritzl. Those who try to claim that gender roles are somehow divinely enshrined might like to know that no, bitch, actually it's down to BIOLOGY. It's hardwired into us to find certain things attractive and others not so much. Like long hair on girls for men. Still, most people tend to think of themselves as more than a collection of dumb cells, so - NEXT!

- Split the housework fairly. Some women, like Carol McGiffin, will be happy to do a greater part and leave certain tasks that they don't enjoy to their partners. Others will want it to be equally split. I myself believe it should be equal. We tend to be creatures of habit, and if your husband gets used to doing less, you're going to have a fight on your hands in future when you want to take a break.

If both of you have your preferred tasks, then roll with it that way. I prefer to cook, for example, and my man prefers the washing up. Neither of us has a problem with the other's position, but we know what we prefer (and he does it so fast! Two plates and cutlery washed in two minutes). He also helps me chop things when I'm cooking, which saves us both time. :D

- Indian mothers, break the cycle. Stop asking your daughters to make sacrifices and start asking them to make compromises instead. For every girl who is supported to the hilt by her parents in this way, we have one less woman circulating in the 'abuser-abused' hell of post-marital relations.

Two things must change:

1) The age disrespect. In Indian culture, if you're younger, you have no authority to comment on things. Even if what you are saying is relevant and mature, you'll often be ignored because you don't have 'experience' (apparently being a bit older is all you need to make you au fait with the ways of the entire world). This creates a culture where debate is smothered, deference is idealised and abuse of authority is all too possible. When this is combined with the element of near-Freudian competition for the son between his wife and her mother-in-law, you get a situation where the same noxious traditions are perpetuated and one or two people can ruin the lives of an entire family.

No more! If you treat your children with respect, we can put a stop to the thinking that goes 'Now I'm an adult - my turn to treat younger people like crap.'

2) The idolising of male children. When I see this happening, it fills me with disgust. I want to slap fawning mothers around the face and cry: 'Look at your son. How DARE you be proud that he survived at university, when so many people's daughters have not only survived, but excelled themselves, cooking proper meals and managing to maintain basic standards of hygiene?'

People like my mother try and excuse what they do on the grounds of 'Boys are less mature than girls.' DEFEATIST BULLSHIT! Circulate a lie long enough, and it will become truth, as has happened here. My brother is studying to become a doctor and I have no idea what I'll end up as - maybe a teacher. However, he sponges off my parents, can't even feed himself and is incapable of realising even when he has to do chores for his own sake. I can cook, I always try to spend my own money and I respond to my mum's attempts to guilt me into doing more, by *gasp* doing more. It is manifestly unjust, but it is never going to change, because my mum will go on parroting the same crap at me.

It's pitiful actually, because when I point out the unpleasant truth to her, she looks at me and then starts asking ME to be authoritative. If she's smarting over him not calling home enough, I have to talk to him. Why? 'He listens to you.'

I have just realised how utterly ridiculous the situation has become. My parents have spoilt my brother so much and placed him above all of us girls so much, that he is now above the very female who gave birth to him. FAIL.

While it's true that women fulfill at least one function that their partners can't (breast-feeding), that should mean there is even more of a drive to balance out the inequality. Boys need their fathers. Not that girls don't, but we have seen the effects when boys don't have a stable father-figure to teach them respect for women. They trickle out into the sea of misogyny coursing through most cultures and societies, and get lost.

Let's have paternity/maternity leave turned into more of a 'lifestyle choice', please! ESPECIALLY for those with more than one child. The parents should take it in turns to spend time with the children, and hopefully they will have extended family on hand to give them couple time together.

I also feel that women should stop being forced to choose between their career and their kids. I agree with Lynn Barber who thinks that we shouldn't favour older mothers and for all the people collectively going 'Well, WTF?!' I think that maybe we should have a system like this:

Early childhood - Both parents present, but mother's presence greater (as is biologically required).

6+ - Both parents contribute in equal measure.

I propose we take Anna Ford's advice: stop being such ageist bastards and start having a slightly older workforce. I feel that husbands should take over as women get into, oh, I don't know, their 30s so that the women can go back to work and get back into a career first. Then the husband can follow. I mean, what's the problem? We're always being told how men improve with age (like George Clooney, for example), but somehow the same isn't applied to women. So why don't we take that as law, then, eh? If men really do improve with age, then they can go back into work later. Maybe have one partner work 3 days a week one week, and then swap it round the next? Why not?

Youth is overrated and I'm none too sure why on Earth we're all so obsessed with it these days. I mean, sure, fear of mortality and all that, but wtf is up with all this need for people to have 'achieved something' by the time they're 20 or whatever? Precocity needs the weight of experience, and that's why so much modern pop music isn't as good as it could be, for one. Indie bands in particular rarely seem to make it to a second album, and often even when they do, it's worse than the already-weak debut. Stop expecting classics at the drop of a hat, you impatient bastards! Classics take time! What really saddens me is that you don't even seem to get the 'great album/good-to-mediocre album' pattern any more; usually it's '65% good to 35% shit' and then '55% good to 45% wtf?!'.

The best performers tend to be those who've had time and freedom to develop. That's why, while the hype manufacturers crow about Adeles and Duffys and whoever-the-fuck-elses, I will wait quietly for another gem from Amy Winehouse (3 years between albums! And she's 25 now! SHOCK) or Róisín Murphy (two years AND SHE'S 35! Cue fainting fits).

We aren't idiots, us yoot, but we aren't visionaries either. TIME is the necessary ingredient as always. So please, popular media, stop writing us off and we'll get back to you.

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