T R I B A L

     I was....

T imeless, until the time machine was invented, 

R easonable, until the reason was invented,

I  ndependent, until the dependency was invented,

B are-sufficient, until the acquisition was invented,

A ccommodating, until the individuality was invented,

     But today I am....

L ost, until my lost pieces are recollected   

Skit for the Staff to perform on Children’s Day

It consists of 2 scenes. Scene 1 is about two children preparing to go to school. Scene 2 is a general classroom, class teacher, students, and parents waiting outside the class

Characters:

Class Teacher

4 Students (naughty, funny, sweety, grumpy)

4 Mothers

Scene 1:

[Student 1 (the naughty one) and Mother 1 on the stage, getting ready to go to school, at home]

Mom 1:  Son, do you know what day is today?

Son 1: Aaaaaaaa! (Pause and think) Today is the Restlemania. Today is John Zena’s day. Today John Zena will come and fight Rey Mysterio dushung, dushung, dushung! (will show the fighting action with hands)

Mom 1: (after watching the son in dismay and thought) What? Mania? I will throw that TV out. Otherwise, I will have to take you to the asylum, and not to the school. Come let’s go..It’s already late to School.

[Both of them exit, and from the other side Mom 2 appears, son 2 (the funny one) is behind the curtain]  

Mom 2: Son, are you ready?

Son 2: I don’t

Mom 2: ‘I don’t’ nahi beta, ‘I can’t’

Son 2: Thank you Mommy! I can’t 

Mom 2: (To the audience) We can’t correct today’s children. (To Son) It’s already late…hurry up!! You want to wait outside the class room by going late?

(Son 2 appears crying)

Son 2: No mommy!! I Can’t! (Then pauses, stops crying, twisting the body says) But….. if you promise that you will give me a chocolate, then I’ll go………promise?

Mom 2: Ok ok…come now! (Drags the son and exits)

Scene 2:

(At one end of the stage, a class room, and on the other, mothers awaiting their children’s return after school)

Class Teacher: Good Morning Children!

All Children: (Each in his own style) Good Morning Teacher!

Class Teacher: What is today?

All Children: Today is Monday, 14^th of November, 2011

Class Teacher: Very Good! And what day is today?

All Children: (In the same tone and style as previous) Today is Monday, 14^th of November, 2011

Class Teacher: (Frustrated, yet calm) Today……

Student 3: (she is interrupted by the sweet and good student) Teacher! Home work!

Class Teacher: (Forgetting what she wanted to say) Oh! Homework about the places around the world? How many of you had done it? Raise your hand! (All except student 4 put their hand up)

Student 4: (The Grumpy one, gets up and interrupts the teacher) Teacher….(Shows his small finger)

Class Teacher: Not now! Sit Down! (sees the students have their hands up) Ok students. Tell me what places in the world are these…. (Students are eager to answer). UP?

Student 3: Uttar Pradesh

Class Teacher: Very Good! MP?              

Student 1: Madhya Pradesh

Class teacher: Very Good! UK?

Student 3: Uttar Kerala

Class Teacher: (Fighting her laughter and dismay) What? Wrong Answer! Who knows it right? (looks around) You? (points out to the good student- Student 3)

 
Student 3: United Kingdom.

Class Teacher: Very Good! It is the right answer! For that you deserve a sabash card. Here take this. (and gives a way a card)

Student 2: (Rebels against the answer and cries out to Mommy) Mommy! Mommy! He don’t know, she too don’t know! (and runs out to Mom 2, and mom 2 come to the front, and both meet in the centre of the stage)

Mom 2: ‘He, she, it don’t’ nahi beta, ‘he doesn’t’, ‘she doesn’t’, and it doesn’t.

Student 2: Thank You mommy! (And starts winning again) He doesn’t know! She doesn’t know! It doesn’t know

Mom 2: Doesn’t know what?

Student 2: Mommy, if UP is Uttar Predesh, MP is Madhya Pradesh, UK should be Uttar Kerala na?

Mom 2: (To the audience) Today’s children are far advanced. (And to the son) You are right son! He is also right!

Son 2: Teacher?

Mom 2: She is also right! (at the end of it they hear the teachers voice, calling out for student 2)

Class Teacher: Take this Sabash Card! And you too! (and gives out to all, and says to them and the audience) You know children, today is your day. Today is World’s Children’s Day. Children like you are the future of this world. No matter what you are, how sweet, grumpy, naughty, and cranky you are, you are precious in the Eyes of God. For God, every child is special, and every child is Unique. So we have a reason to celebrate today, right?

Student 4: Teacher, I want to join the choir!

Class Teacher: Very Good! Let’s all join and sing, because we have a reason to celebrate.

All Students: (stand up in one line, puts their hands on one another’s shoulders, and march singing…..) We are jolly good fellows,

                We are jolly good fellows,

                We are jolly good fellows,

                B’cos God Loves us.

                God loves us //

                We are jolly good fellows……. (Exit)         

Psalmist's God....

“MY SEARCH IN PHILOSOPHY”

A REFLECION BASED ON MY SEARCH FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

The Psalm 8: 3-4, in the Holy Bible, says……

“When I look at the heavens,

The works of your fingers,

The moon and the stars you created,

What are human beings,

That you are mindful of them;

Mortals that you care for them? “

         

          Six years ago, before entering into the Society of Jesus, this passage stood for the philosophy of both my grandmother and I (and I am sure it does till date), and convinced ourselves of the existence of God. That is, she converted the psalmist’s eternal question mark into an affirmative assertion, and believed in a blissful presence of God with the hope that he thinks of us or certainty. And this simple faith was the same faith which brought me to the Society six years ago.

However, six years have passed by, today, as a scholastic in the Society of Jesus, the very same perennial question mark of the psalmist has begun to appear even bigger and larger on my face. So I question; ‘Does God really care for me?’ ‘Does God really care for the world he created?’ ‘If yes, then why is this suffering all around, along the street I travel, in my ministry place, and in the vicinity of my stay, state, country; and different forms of it-killing, hunger, corruption, environment crisis, so on and so forth?’

It is not that these questions did not exist six years ago when I was my grandmother before entering the Society. Perhaps, only the degree and intensity of them occurring are higher than then, today. Then, why is this transition of perception within me?

The possible answer I find to console me of this dichotomy of perception over the half a dozen years is that, my faith has grown from simple to rational. All the more, today, as a scholastic and a philosopher (not to say I am a Scholastic Philosopher, rather scholastic in Philosophy), I find myself in a stage of formation where ideas of Aristotle hitting at he in every dimensions possible – dimension of God, world, man, and being as being, just to mention a few. It seems Aristotle himself had grappled with the same questions which I fight today.    Does God really care for the world He created, the human beings He bestowed reign upon?

For Aristotle, God is pure act, and He exists of necessity. He cannot “Not Be”. Moreover, since the contemplation is the best act of all acts, the Perfect One engages in incessant thinking, and His thinking is thinking on thinking. The thought He thinks of is He Himself, because, the perfect one cannot think of anything less perfect, since one thinks of something, only when he/she lacks that object (living, non-living, thoughts, or spiritual) of contemplation, or lack the perfection of it. Thus, by principle, God can’t think of anything other than Himself, because, He would then engage in thinking of imperfect things as if He already lacks them, or is in need of fulfillment of it. Thus, Aristotle’s God is someone who is wrapped up in Himself, and thus the former names the latter as “Thought Thinking Thought.” Now, can such a “Thought Thinking Thought” would care to think of imperfect and corporeal world of ours, mortal beings like us, and our suffering? Oops! My poor grandmom! How I wish she knew these facts! Had she read at least this much of Aristotle, she would not have been tempted to be ignorantly convinced of a selfish god with this blissful hope of hers that He really cares for her.

                       Thus, the psalmist’s question which is now is mine as well,

“What are human beings,

That you are mindful of them;

Mortals that you care for them? “

                                                                                                             begins to appear ever more deeper, bigger, as well as substantially worth exploring an answer, not only for the gratification of one’s spiritual quench, but also for the consolation of one’s perspective towards life and all that it entails; joy and suffering, good and evil, dream and reality, faith and reason, etc.

Thus, this God of Aristotle, “The God of Philosophers,” is going to be my perennial search, in loving to seek and search wisdom in a path many travelled, yet few found. He is the God who seem to be giving me not go-ahead approval, or ready-made answers, but one who questions the existing path, means, aim, and comfort of my journey, the life, and my vocation (the journey within the journey) as a Jesuit.

Thus, who is this god to me right now? As of now, this God of my Grandmother, and that of Aristotle is both “My ANSWER and My QUESTION” as well.

Is It My Fault The Way I Am?

An Inquiry into the Crisis of Sex-Gender Identity

        The humanity is being recognized as male and female forming the norms of a society regarded as normal. But, there is another vast gray circle created by nature, and ignored by society as abnormal. Thus, one may ask the question, “WHO AM I?” This essay is an attempt to answer two key questions;

I.      Who are we that we call ourselves as normal and human, and someone else who is different from us as abnormal and less(er) human?

II.    If I show you my identity, will you take away my dignity/rights?

The question “WHO AM I?” is not a mere spiritual question of a soul searching for perfection, or a psychological inquiry of a self-actualizing mind, but an existential panic of a being searching for his/her identity. This can be very nauseating when ones search for it ends up in despair or falls into the drain of determinism. The question is ‘What is What?’ ‘Sex or Gender?’ Which comes First? “Chick or Egg?”

The question “WHO AM I?” has the potential within it that enables the inquirer to search and achieve what one desires for, for one’s self-satisfaction. But there is one thing that the seeker is only capable of searching but not very much changing it to one’s full satisfaction which, in fact, changes and creates havoc in the person disoriented with this question. This is the sex-gender identity.

Despite the debates that exist in literature regarding the sex-role distinction, the common agreement is such that while sex is a biological construct, gender is a social construct. As a biological construct, sex is determined, and one hardly has any choice in it when born. Moreover, it is needless to say that that what is determined will continue to play a deterministic role just as in the case of ‘death’. So is sex, the determined nature of a person. It is determined such that it teaches how a person should dress, walk, talk, sit, play, so and so forth, and relate to people both of same determinism and of opposite in nature.

Determined by the sex, or the biological construction of one’s genitalia, gender is what distinguishes between a he-goat and a she-goat, between a male-dog and a female-dog. The word male/female and he/she are human constructs and used for human beings, and attributed to non-human species analogously. This, in short, is the ‘gender’ that determines how a penis or a virgina should behave in society.  Thus, it is the society that determines how it should treats she-goat and a female-dog as opposed to he-goat and a male-dog. If the society is so concerned of the beings inferior to humankind, how much more it should care for the superiors? Thus, while sex is biologically determined, gender is socially determined.

Thus, sex-gender identity and associated crisis, each taken separately, is a unity that should be understood as the two sides of the same coin, each having a dualistic function. It is dualistic because, it is a struggle both to maintain one’s sex-gender unity as well as to claim one’s identity associated with it, both within and between. It is within because, it is a unity or congruence that is sought after within an individual between biological determinism and social determinism; or biological construct and social construct; or biological sex and social gender. It is between when the same dichotic relationship persists between an individual and society. Hence the sex-gender identity crisis, when such relationships go haywire, absurd, blur, ambiguous, or absent. Can a person, deviated from this unity, irrespective of the reason, be it personal preference, or hormonal aberration, or any other, have an independent existence of one’s own regardless of the societal demands? If so, then will such a person have an equal share of the dignity and rights enjoyed by all those who succumb to the above conventional unity?

As for the question of independent existence, the answer is quite simple. Even though it is the normal convention and the expectation of society that a human being should be born with two hands, two feet, and two eyes, it is still accommodating the ones born with one hand, one leg, totally blind, etc., and they exist on their own, irrespective of societal regards, and often with the help from society, as it is the case with the majority of the cases. If such a societal stance is true for such physical aberrations, then why not it is true for the lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgenders or hermaphrodites (known as HIJRAS in India) who are considered abnormal as well as a deviation and aberration from the so-called normal and conventional? Thus, the question here is not at all about the existence as such, but how that existence is looked at and interpreted; as a threat, advantage, misery, sinful, impure, and the list will go endless. Thus, who are we that we call ourselves as normal and human, and someone else who is different from us as abnormal and less(er) human?

The underlying question here is, ‘who decides what is normal, pure, conventional, and conforming?’ ‘Is it the majority of the populace who adhere to such stance”, or “can that be a single lesbian, gay, bisexual, or a transgender out there (or put them together), who pints at the so-called normal majority and say, “we are normal, and you are abnormal”?, and “what if this  claim is right, because the history says that there was a single person named Galileo Galilee who, unlike Nicolaus Copernicicus and Johannes Kepler, stopped proposing heliocentricity as a scientific theory alone, but proclaimed it as a truth, when the conventional elite world and the conforming populace believed otherwise?” Mind you, this so-called abnormal single soul was proved to be right later on, and the blissful ignorance of the so-called normal(s) was illumined by that abnormal light that stood alone for its conviction and claimed the same. Will such a light, whether solitary or united, be treated with respect and dignity when its flames are alive and they claim its identity?

The Principle 3 of The Yogyakarta Principles[i], on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, states, "Person of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities shall enjoy legal capacity in all aspects of life. Each person's self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality, and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity, and freedom". Moreover, the Principle 18 of it states, "Notwithstanding any classifications to the contrary, a person's sexual orientation and gender identity are not, in and of themselves, a medical condition, and are not to be treated, cured or suppressed." According to these Principles, any gender identity of a transsexual or transgendered person is neither a "disorder" nor a “mental illness”, thereby making the diagnosis of "gender identity disorder" irrelevant and contradictory.

To conclude on a personal note, a certain Mrs. Pereira (The proper name is not mentioned here deliberately), a Male-To- Female (MTF) Hijra herself, didn’t want Hijras to be addressed as ‘HE’, ‘HIM’, or by any other male-depicting salutations. Neither did she want such a person referred to as ‘IT’, or any other form of IT’s associations, since the word ‘Eunuch’ is an insult as well as a public barricade that prevents transgenderism entering into the mainstream by labeling it as a ‘symptom’, ‘unnatural’, “abnormal’, and ‘forever an impossible fantasy’. Thus she asked me, “I was born just like you to a heterosexual father and mother. I dreamt of great things, and to become great just like you, and I do dream still. But then, why can’t you accept the way I am? Is it my fault the way I am? Is it so difficult for you to integrate me into the mainstream and grant my rights? Shall I ask you to do something easier then? Will you at least stop looking at me the way you used to do, after this interview?”[ii]

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[i]  In 2006, in response to well-documented patterns of abuse, a distinguished group of international human rights experts met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to outline a set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. The result was the Yogyakarta Principles.

   <http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org>

[ii] From my Field work at Humsafar Trust, Santacruz, Mumbai, in year 2011