Vasudha Nagaraj talk on the Justice Verma Committee Report

Though the Justice Verma Committee Report [pdf] (which, last I heard, the Ministry of Home Affairs had taken off their website) came out in January this year - just under a month after the Delhi rape - the thing everyone is watching is the wilfully obstuse Ordinance that the GoI might pass any day now.

Regardless, what the Committee did was remarkable.

So, for this month's talk in the Goethe Zentrum's monthly Lecture Series, they've invited AP High Court advocate, and activist Vasudha Nagaraj to tease out the implications of the Report as well as talk about the govt. Ordinance on Sexual Assault.

Date & Time: Wednesday 13 March. 6.30pm.
Location: Goethe Zentrum, Journalist Colony, Road No. 3, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad.

It's going to be a bit strange, but I'll be reading some of my poems before the talk.

Do come if you can.

Briused and humourless

I can be intemperate on my blog. I need to tell myself this before I can and even then I may not succeed.

What does this tell me about the culture of silence and niceness we - in this case I mean women, but it could be any description of person speaking out in a majority that doesn't include them - put ourselves into? Why do I play nice even when I don't have to?

Yesterday a friend sent out a mail making what was, in effect, a rape joke. I was not amused and I said so. I was told that my sensibilities were wafer thin. I said a number of things, most of them unbelievably un-ragey and moderate.

What I wanted to do was rave and rant. I wanted to use a hammer and instead used what might be called a needle. Or an unwound paper clip.

Today I feel bruised and humourless. I want my sensitivites to be wafer-thin and I wish my friend was similarly sensitive. Instead, he side-stepped. He suggested something else and said, 'is that plausible?'

No, it fucking is not. I said so. I await developments.

Elsewhere in the country, men are coming out of the woodwork to say why the Justice Verma report can't be implemented. They don't want to rethink the AFSPA. They don't want to disqualify politicians and bureaucrats who have rape charges against them. They don't want senior officers made responsible for the sexual assaults committed by the people in their charge (they like being decorative and drawing large salaries for not doing their jobs).

And in the meantime, ordinary men, people you call friends, still think rape jokes are, if not hilarious (we musn't be too sensitive) at least mildly funny.