RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

India's Transgender Beauty Pageant

The Monkey within

There is a darkness in my soul
A deep desire to explore the boundaries of my senses
Somewhere in my senses I meet pain, despair, angst and deep sadness
somewhere in my sensing I feel this is not mine alone
sometimes I feel incapable of carrying this loaded weight
the depths of darkness can drown the worst my of sorrows
and let me lose myself in inspired depravity.
To be able to accept this duality within or without, I must begin somwhere
or so i thought innocently as I wept
I seek without for solace within to place my wrongs on rights
and find myself beating around the bush again
creating limited concepts to contain the darkness and make it seem lighter.
The hedonistic rapture of ignorance is sweet , it tastes of bliss.
Yet deep inside is an urge, the faint whispering in my soul
it is not knowledge you seek, but rather freedom from mind
place your faith in the heart and leave fear behind.

Drawn as I am to my ethereal heights
My depths of earthly desires go deeper still
For it is this connect with my mother
That supported me like no other
Grasping me in her embrace causing my heart to spill
What of this confounding darkness and desire
The free will to choose my own destruction
This flesh is weak and its lures many
Even pain finds a place in this construction
I yearn for resonance in the pits of my soul
I seek without to make me whole
I learn to encompass my new found expanse
Only to feel more deeply than ever
The peaks and troughs of every new role
Am I the birthing of a new dawn?
Or the death of another day?
Am I the peak, am I the snow
Am I the weak, the poor, the slow?
Am I that cow that withers the heat
Or the wind that causes to blow?

Boo. Who am I?

Erotica vs Pornography

The Hunger Deep

Of love in my bones
and raw emotion my teeth
fresh strawberries in the cream of pit
and honey on my toes.

Electric shivers through my being
pleasure races the spaces in between
the emptiness electrified
I experience beyond my pride
this connections to another source
unmeasured by man, an overwhelming force.

It calls to me from deep usunder
in the pit of my soul it writhes a slow dance
awaiting another victim of chance,
the one to bring on the thunder.

For one more taste of that electric bliss
therein lie many a miss
But the desire for more knows no bounds
its what makes it worth doing the rounds.

Sleep perchance to Dream

Im a dreamer, a hopless romantic, a die-hard believer in the power of love.
I dream of swimming along with dolphins
I dream of a boat they lead with me
I dream of flying with feathered friends
i dream of flight in the flick of thought.
I dream of worlds I've been before
i dream of worlds yet to explore
I dream of an arctic expanse
i dream of my molten core.
I dream of electric grids that connect us all
i dream of magnetic realms beyond the wall
I dream of hearts big as planets
i dream of worlds where peace is home
I dream of love so viscous if flows
i dream of beauty wherever i roam
I dream of all this and more
i dream my world and I'm not alone.

SEX Tourism

India has now won the illustrious title of being the worlds No. 1 tourist destination for Paedophiles, taking over from Thailand and Bali after serious crackdown on the crime there. 70,000 children a year in Mumbai alone are subject to child sexual abuse of some form or the other. (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1604938,0008.htm) Our beautiful beaches and backwaters attract alot of people, including that ugly creature the peadophile.

How long are we going to ignore the abuse of our children , the pollution of our lands , the rape of our women. Our very lives are being jeapordised by our inability to take action, we are in shock dear friends. In the words of Dr. Stephanie Mines 'We are a world in Shock'.

We have desensitised ourselves to the suffering and needs of the world around us, but watching our lowest common ideal manifest, due to our lack of involvement has led to this situation in the first place. It is time we took a hard look at the situation on our planet, in our countries and in our homes to see, are we operating out of right action or are we still in the slumber caused by deep shock? Are we perpetuating the calcified beliefs of the past or are we creating new havens for our children. Do we accept the situation we see, or are we willing to create and manifest our highest common ideal.

Sex and abuse

Boasting about sex is like talking with your mouth full, a friend’s mother once told me she only opened her mouth to change feet. Perhaps I indulge in a bit of both in my attempt to purge my sins but sixty lovers in thirty years must have some lessons inherent. And it’s this lesson I seek out over and over in every encounter with the opposite sex, some with awareness some bereft.

Why is god always present at all my most ecstatic climaxes? Some really divine phrases issue forth from my mouth during orgasm, ‘oh god! Fuck me’, would go down as blasphemous most places. But cuming from a country that offers in cultural reference the most sublime texts on the act of lovemaking, the Kamasutra, as another way of getting closer to god, I realized at some point this must be my trajectory as a soul. With references like that amongst others to be found freely in my beautifully accommodating country of many paths both spiritual and ritual, I could commune with god in any given time, space or situation. I was ecstatic; I thanked the forces that be to let me discover my spiritual roots in a nation of such multi layered social and philosophical streams of consciousness co-existing.

I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me for not being able to feel love for the gods. Mostly at that time my representations of god were an idol or image of either one of the Sikh gurus or any one of the pantheon of Hindu deities. Not that I had a very religiously inclined family but even the ultra modern of the time had a tendency to worship, while some were rediscovering it like my mother. I had a strange reaction when I entered holy spaces, I felt disconnected somehow, not welcome or wanted because I never had any holy thoughts while I was in there. I looked hard for signs I might be missing, when I went to a temple or gurudwara, I was desperate to make this connection I saw on the faces of a million pious people at various locales. I was taught to worship at an early age, like most, I was taught the respects due and protocols of ritual and religion. Luckily for me I got an exposure to more than just Hinduism and Sikhism, my family had Christian and Muslim friends as well, so I got my peek into the rituals and ideas of other faiths. In time however my interest in religion and faith faded into a disgust at the propagation methods and discrimination found in organized religion on a mass scale. A lady in a temple once told me that the holy water turns back if a woman with her periods enters the temple, I had not even begun my period at the time, but I felt the fear and shame anyhow.

I started out my life with a large dose of sexuality infused at an early age, for one I was an only child and left alone with servants a lot and for another I always looked older than my actual age (thankfully this process has recently reversed). While being left alone with servants or other kids may not be the problem in itself, a lack of much adult attention or guidance early on can set oneself up for some hard learning later. That this was my choice of earthly situation I can see or operate from today at thirty plus! But it took a fair amount of hits before I missed the point all together; there were hidden voices even as a child that mentioned such things to me.

Today I can allow the outrage to vent itself, for along with the all destructive rage is a deep desire to change this pattern of acceptance. For years I intellectualized the process and put a lid on my rage for fear of its outcome (for it is blinding this rage, it wants to kill, maim and destroy the perpetrators of such injustice). For years I sought to forgive and forget the heinous actions of the unaware, battered men I encountered, for years I swallowed the pain and covered it with a blanket of excuses for the perpetrators of sexual deviance, finding ways to forgive them, understanding that they too must have been battered in some way to seek such expression of their sexuality. Today I am the mother of a girl child and the very thought of something like that happening to her sends me into a deep outrage, if I ever found someone messing with my child he/she would have to die (yes that is the extent of my rage).

I thought it was extremely dangerous of Oliver Stone to have made ‘Natural Born Killers’ for it brought out this rage in full glare, it fueled that deep desire for revenge and justice in such an aggressive tone, I wanted to kill with the same randomness as Mickey and Mallory. I resonated with the rage expressed in that film to such a degree I was afraid of myself and proceeded to seek psychological help. At the time I felt it was irresponsible of a filmmaker to bring out such emotions, if I was subject to the outpouring of emotion at watching a film what was it going to do to millions who saw this film, without the strength to see their own destructive emotions, they would take the lives of their fathers and mothers in the same was Mallory did. In a world already steeped in pain and destruction what good will more do, even if it was a way of seeking justice.

That was in 1992, the same year I got in touch with organizations like RAHI and Sakshi, working to spread awareness about these very issues. Through RAHI, I was able to put in words the outrage I felt, I was given terms like CSA (child sexual abuse) and explained the patterns of such victims and suddenly my whole life made sense. I was absolved of my guilt and shame by being able to place blame but that didn’t get me out of victim mode, no it made me more of a victim of societies blundering cover ups. I am thirty one today and my family still seeks to forget and cover up the acts of yesteryears that made me what I am today. Expecting me to grow up and forgive my brothers, uncles and servants for the acts I was made to commit as a child. I learnt to take responsibility for my feelings and learnt to hide them well, recently having thought I had reached a place of forgiveness I even befriended my step brother again, in hope of healing a fractured relationship I longed for, in hope of finally having a brother in the truest sense of the word. Alas I found recently that in fact I had not been able to heal that relationship, I found other brothers and beautiful men who upheld with integrity their act of providing me brotherly love these were my brothers and friends, people I found later in life who reminded me there was such a thing as pure brotherly love. I thank them today for restoring my faith in humankind, in love and in friendship beyond ties of family and blood.

I read somewhere that sometimes our blood families are only our karmic lessons and part of our past to resolve, it has certainly been this way for me. For I have found love and acceptance not in my family and blood kin, but amongst the people that served my family, among the beggars on the street, among the villagers I stayed with when I traveled to the mountains, among the poor and needy of my beautiful country, that still uphold such values as love and caring. I learnt to love from them. From my maid Parvati who tirelessly brought up five children after the death of a husband who beat her when he was alive, but she would never say a word against him. She worked as a labourer in Calcutta for many years before finding a domestic job and eventually coming to Delhi and finding us many years later, she has been in our family for ten years now and I feel more connected to her than my own mother. From my sisters on the street who in spite of being battered, raped and struggling financially still find the values to teach their children, still believe in god and love.