On book buying

Ralph Bergengren:

My Pop is always buying books
So that Mom says his study looks
Just like an old bookstore. The bookshelves are so full and tall,
They hide the paper on the wall,
And there are books just everywhere,
On table, window-seat, and chair,
And books right on the floor.

And every little while he buys
More books, and brings them home and tries
To find a place where they will fit,
And has an awful time of it.

Once, when I asked him why he got
So many books, he said, "Why not?"
I've puzzled over that a lot.

Karen Anand's Simple Cooking series: recipe

It's fun hanging out with Karen Anand. She turns the tables by taking the editor out to dinner at Sakura, where the chef does incredible things with Kobe beef, and tries to impress her with a slightly unfortunate okra mousse. Her Simple Cooking series--Simple Cooking for the Desperate Housewife, Simple Cooking for the Sweet Tooth, Simple Cooking for the Single Person, Simple Cooking with Soups, Starters and Salads, and Simple Cooking for the Vegetarian Gourmet--seems to appeal to the new Indian palate.



From Karen Anand's Simple Cooking for the Vegetarian Gourmet:

Grilled Pears with Raisins:

1/3 cup seedless raisins
1/4 cup apple juice
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
6 firm but ripe USA pears
4 tbsp butter, melted
Vegetable oil for brushing grill

In a small bowl, combine raisins, apple juice and pepper. Allow the raisins to marinate until ready to serve.

Peel pears and cut in half lengthwise. Use a paring knife or melon scoop to remove the core, leaving a small hole.

Arrange pears in a shallow dish and brush all over with melted butter.

Preheat grill to high when ready to serve.

Brush grill grate with vegetable oil. Place the pears, cut side up, in a single layer directly under the grill just until grill marks appear on them, about 3 minutes.

Brush pears with any remaining butter, turn over and grill until tender but firm, about 3-4 minutes longer.

Spoon soaked raisins over pears and serve warm.

Variation: Sprinkle pears with mixed spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg) and serve with a dollop of your favourite ice cream.

Nalini Jameela, sex worker

"I never thought I'd take up sex work as my means of livelihood... But once I got into it, I decided to stand firm, to face all the problems and dangers with courage... My early life had been so difficult, so painful, that I rarely took the time to look good. But once I became a sex worker, I had to pay attention to my body... I felt more cheerful, confident and active... My daily routine became more disciplined."

This is my first meeting with Nalini Jameela, and though I've read her memoir, Autobiography of a Sex Worker, with an editor's eye, I don't know what to expect.

Over the next three days, she and I spend time together, as she patiently allows herself to be hustled from one media interview to another. The media wants to know whether she doesn't think sex work is demeaning. No more than domestic work, where you deal with the filthy sediment of peoples' lives, their dirty dishes and clothes, she says. The media wants to know why she wouldn't give up sex work now that she's seen as an activist and a writer. Because it's what I do; and I get better rates now that people are reading my book, she says. The media wants to know whether she's a feminist. No, she says, she just believes that women should be allowed to make a living any which way they can without being harassed by the police.

She wears crisp cotton saris, waits anxiously for calls from her granddaughter, who's unwell back in Trivandrum. The calls come in on her cellphone, where she's stuck a glittering heart over the light; when her phone rings, it projects little rainbow hearts onto the wall. At dinner, after interviews, I see her stop and reach out to touch champa flowers, jasmine; she's unimpressed with the expensive, scentless orchid on our table. She has excellent manners, an old-fashioned courtesy rare among authors, and a quiet dignity in the face of the rudest or most insensitive questions. Sometimes, Nalini retreats deep into herself, and then she's unreachable; gone out, back later. Sometimes, she's larger than life--she knows how to command a stage, how to use bawdy humour, how to flirt with the editor's bemused but secretly pleased husband, how to flash her dynamite, mischievous, trademark smile.

She doesn't complain about the back-to-back, interview-and-discussion schedule; she manages to sneak in a little shopping, for cosmetics, and we discuss the merits of different skin creams, giggling like teenagers. Later, Nalini tells me how she looked up the history of the words they use for "prostitute" in Malayalam, how the line between an apsara and a vaishya is a thin, man-made one. She tells the cluster of fascinated readers at The Bookshop how a sex worker must be seductress and nurse to her client, but it also becomes clear that she sees the details of her job as boring, part of the average working day, as mundane as the filing and typing an office clerk might do.

I see her off at the airport, a small, neat figure with jasmine in her hair, making her way through the English-speaking world in Malayalam and Tamil, the woman who's fought so hard for the right to call herself "Nalini Jameela, sex worker", and to say it with pride.

Reviews and articles:

Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, Indian Express:
"...Beneath the calm surface of the prose, there is a quiet anger against the hypocrisy of a system that criminalises sex work and punishes the sex worker while letting off the client; against the new misogyny that comes masked as moral outrage against sex workers..."

Marginalien, in her blog 'Yes':
Jameela's life and the lives of the huge majority of those amongst whom she lives -- not just sex-workers, but the tradesmen, the rickshawallas, the policemen, the small hoteliers -- are marked by unrelenting insecurity, hampered by such extremes of heartlessness that it is really difficult to understand how they can bear to face up to their realities...

From Jabberwock:


Jameela’s casual acceptance of sex as a service she provides to meet “men’s needs” has the effect of deglamorizing sex, turning it into something banal and quotidian (which means this is as far from erotic writing as it’s possible to get). The accent in “sex work” is firmly on “work”; prostitution is treated as a branch of domestic labour.
More at: The Hindu; MSN India; China Daily; Tehelka.

CNN-IBN's interview with Nalini Jameela.

Autobiography of a Sex Worker: Excerpt

"Memory, Alive and Clear": Excerpts from an interview with Nalini Jameela

Interviewed by J. Devika, translator.


J. Devika: "I am a sex worker among the intellectuals" -- that is how you described yourself recently, in response to a barbed comment that 'Nalini is now the intellectual among sex workers' -- is that a comment on your life after the publication of your autobiography in Malayalam?

Nalini Jameela: Well, my response was intended as a protest against a certain way of labeling that irritated me no end. If you remember, I had made a short film a while ago. What did many people say? 'A sex worker has made this film', or 'a village bumpkin has made this film', or 'an uneducated person…', and so on. It was not even 'a woman has made this film'! When they say that 'a sex worker has made this film', they try to define me only as a sex worker. This was my way of throwing their phrases back at them.

After the publication of my book (in Malayalam), I found that this sort of labeling became worse, especially within Kerala. Outside, however, I have gained a lot of respect. I have been working recently in Mysore and Andhra Pradesh--in both places I was treated well, on equal footing with doctors, for example. Many years ago, when I was part of Jwalamukhi, the sex workers' organization, everybody was fond of me. Of course, those days I was in the position of someone who needed 'rescuing'! As long as you are in a place where you’re asking for help, constantly crying, "save me, help me!" people care about you. The minute you pick yourself up and stop crying for help, the sympathy stops flowing! In fact the crying gives them a kick--they don't like it when you stop giving them that pleasure! If you keep on crying, many will rush to your rescue--but that's just for a short while....

J Devika: The shift from being an abused daughter-in-law to being a full-time sex worker must have been a significant one in your life -- could you tell me more about that?

Nalini Jameela: To tell you the truth, I didn't think of it at all. I had to go along with someone, he would pay me, and that was the end of it. I never thought I'd take up sex work as my means of livelihood. Never thought I'd fall into it, but I did. It wasn't a well-thought-out decision. But once I got into it, I decided to stand firm, to face all the problems and dangers with courage. And I hoped to rise above all my troubles some day. I often see young sex workers who are beautiful, but bowed and bent because they bear the huge burden of guilt. These are the young women who are most vulnerable to exploitation. I tell them, once you get into this, it is important to pick yourself up. Stop pitying yourself, hold your head high; tell yourself, “This is where I am” and get a hold on your situation if you don’t want to be exploited.

Sex work changed my day-to-day life in many ways. My early life had been so difficult, so painful, that I rarely took the time to look good. But once I became a sex worker, I had to pay attention to my body. I began to dress well. That made me feel good--and gave me the confidence to accompany anyone, however high his status might have been! Paying attention to my body certainly helped me--I felt more cheerful, confident and more active. I saw that I could actually make an impression on a man. That doesn't mean making a client of him, getting him into bed--it means that you exert an influence on people. The man is aware of your presence; he can’t ignore you.

My daily routine became more disciplined. In the company house you have to wake up early at dawn, bathe and dress so that you look fresh when clients come. At a later stage, when I met clients in hotels near temples, again, I had to be an early riser. In those places, you have to leave your hotel room at five in the morning to create the impression that you’re going to the temple for the early morning puja.

It was hard to stay in touch with the few close women friends I had before I became a sex worker. Their husbands didn't want us to meet, but when they came to town, to see a movie, for instance, and passed by the places where I waited for clients, they would secretly get away to talk to me. Inevitably, at some point, they would ask me why I had to do this thing, and whether I couldn't give it up. That came out of distress—I was missing from their lives. They were also concerned that these men were 'doing things' to me. I would console them: they didn’t have to worry about me, because I had good friends, and well, the 'things' that my clients did to me were almost the same as the 'things' their husbands did to them!

J Devika: One of the most powerful aspects of your story is the way in which it highlights how, for marginalized women, the moral distinctions made between sex work, housework, and paid work are quite irrelevant…

Nalini Jameela: Let me tell you, people do all kinds of work in order to survive. The struggle to survive is largely the woman's burden—she’s the one who has to find money for the children’s upbringing, for health expenses, for parents. This applies to rich and the poor alike, though rich women may have more resources. But if your life is a struggle to survive and to support others, then you won't be concerned with whether the work you can get is dignified or not.

In order to find work and to keep a job, you have to please many people. A woman is expected to offer her body—many women have nothing else. And then she doesn’t care about being the faithful wife. And 'dignified work'--like domestic work--is quite 'dirty' too, you have to clean up other people's messes, wash their dirty clothes. Nor is that the end of it. Men in homes where women work as domestic workers aren’t concerned about this being ‘dignified’ work—many of them will pressure the woman working in their homes to do 'undignified' things! They are like snakes that lie in wait for the frogs, absolutely still--the frogs hop around, unaware, and are swallowed by the snakes in a flash!

It's not as if elite women don't know this; but it is convenient for them not to recognize this. They have much to gain if the divide between 'dignified' them and undignified' us stays intact. However, my coworkers in the sex workers' organization know that the divide is very thin.

One must emphasize the meaninglessness of this divide over and over again, in different ways. Recently at a meeting, I was asked by a young woman journalist whether sex workers weren't harassed in the course of their work. This was what I said to her: there are two ways you can pluck a ripe mango. You can either strike it down the hard way, with a stone, or you can pluck it softly, handle it gently. In the end, the mango will be eaten, anyway! Getting married is no safeguard against violence, even though the common consensus is that one can bear violence from a husband, but not violence from a client.