The Taxi Takes on Terror

It’s beyond ironic to think that President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace prize. This, just as he makes the largest blunder in the history of wars and orders more troops to catapult an ongoing escalation into another decade of suffering. It has been the aggressive policies post 9/11 that have sharpened the dagger of Islamist terrorism in the World. The Iraqis, the Afghanis have already acted like a forest that is being burnt down in search of a target - sometimes a man named Bin Laden and at other times fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction. To send more troops into Afghanistan at a time when America is still struggling under economic debt is creating more enemies. In fact this time, I think Obama is creating enemies out of his own American citizens who once believed in ‘change’ and now plead for health reform and more jobs rather than America’s 6th war since the end of WW II.

Artists, writers, news anchors, journalists, filmmakers, poets, trapeze artists and anyone else with a voice and body need to have their say and speak out. The cartoon above was published on Little Alex in Wonderland along with the eloquent and incredible Noam Chomsky’s ‘take’ on ‘War, Peace and Obama’s Nobel.’ Michael Moore, the famous, talented attention grabbing documentary filmmaker wrote a letter to his president. Huffington Post carries this Open letter to President Obama.

Read it and go have a conversation with your Pakistani cab driver in New York. He’ll probably tell you he’s not planning on taking a trip back home this X’mas. Obama’s choices are creating an inferno of problems in Pakistan and the Indian sub continent. And with this surge, it’s only going to get worse I predict. Unfortunately no ‘Change’ for the better.

Today, October 2nd 2009 is the hundred and fortieth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Today I will place a flower at the feet of his wonderful statue that stands at Union Square in New York City. His legacy and life will influence the World forever. I have always been in awe of him.
Another fact which always astounded me was that at the same time in history there lived a man who managed to compel masses of people towards non violence while another being provoked them towards genocide. Mahatma Gandhi and Hitler were contemporaries. Imagine a movie with a split screen showing the peace and self will involved in non violence (ahimsa) alongside the holocaust, simultaneously in India and Germany. A horrific image that makes my heart beat faster. I wonder what it is that can drive one human being towards peace and humanity and another towards the extreme opposite? But then again, why must I look back in time with a sense of disgust and horror when the World around me still hasn’t yet blown out those demonic fires of terror and violence.

In 1950, the great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, a genius and noble being in his own right recorded an interview in his study in Princeton, New Jersey. In this United Nations radio interview he said about Mahatma Gandhi, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth. ”

These words ring like a loud Buddhist temple gong reverberating into the air for minutes. These are my favorite words about Gandhiji. They are inscribed in stone at the Gandhi museum in New Delhi. They came to my mind when I spoke to taxi drivers in Bombay. I had earlier thought of calling my project, ‘If Gandhi were a filmmaker.’ I wondered what his insights and documentary recordings would be while driving around the country. What would he make out of this fine Nation of ours that he had strived so hard to keep from partitioning into Pakistan and Hindustan.

Mumbai Taxi drivers said that if the great man had existed in today’s day and age, no one would give him the time of day. Materialistic, superficial people would laugh at his ascetic lifestyle and flimsy loin cloth and no one would heed his call to non violence and ’satyagraha.’
Taxi drivers cursed the current politicians and literally spit on them as they were driving around. They spoke of how not one politician had it in them to lead a country to Independence from 200 years of British colonialism like Gandhiji yet alone help us get out of the shackles of terrorism that India is facing now. In fact it is the people in power, they said, who have brought on these acts of terror and violence for the common Indian citizen.

I know that Mahatma Gandhi, may his ‘great soul’ rest in peace was a great champion of women’s rights and empowerment. In 1940, reviewing his twenty-five years of work in India concerning women’s role in society, he had said:
“My contribution to the great problem lies in my presenting for acceptance truth and ahimsa (non-violence) in every walk of life, whether for individuals or nations. I have hugged the hope that in this women will be the unquestioned leader and, having thus found her place in human evolution, will shed her inferiority complex.”
“…Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. And who but woman, the mother of man, shows this capacity in the largest measure?… Let her translate that love to the whole of humanity… And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man… She can become the leader in satyagraha..”

I know he would find great solace in the young breed of women taxi drivers who can be seen on the streets of Mumbai nowadays.

My first text message for today was from my friend Alci telling me about a cover story in today’s New York Times. Something about Indian women and women only compartments in trains. “Indian Women find New Peace in Rail Commute” talks about how the Indian Government has started ‘women only’ compartments in trains in the big urban cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai as a way of providing more safety to larger numbers of working women who have entered the work force in a country that is patriarchal and gender dictated in many ways.

Now I know that ‘Ladies Specials’ as they are also called have existed for a while in Mumbai local trains and some seats are even reserved for ladies in buses in different cities. When I was in Bombay I would travel by the general compartment, only if I had a male friend along and even then I got glares and stares my way. The one exception was one late night after filming when I got on and started taking pictures with my camera. I ended up making friends with two mothers and their children on their way back from a wedding which is a separate incident all together.

So to be perfectly honest this cover story on the New York Times front page comes as a surprise to me. Yes I admit that many westerners might find this story shocking and news worthy in many ways. Being victimized and asserting their rights is an issue that Indian women face on a daily basis thanks to a legacy which consists of traditions like ‘sati‘, where women would burn themselves along with their dead husbands on the funeral pyre, female infanticide and foeticide, notions of purity and pollution from the caste system that lead to maternity deaths, dowry and even dowry deaths. The fact that Indian women are empowering themselves, becoming financially independent and standing on their own two feet to get to work and earn for their family is a step that is in effect a giant leap across decades of norms and traditions. So yes I think it’s a positive step to ensure ladies have a safe commute to their workplace.
And why not?! It’s what the New York City MTA is trying to enforce through their new anti harassment ad campaign that I saw the other day in the subway. Enough ladies in New York have a hard time in public spaces and this too in a country that championed female empowerment and suffrage half a century before India even became free of the shackles of colonialism.

So I still wonder why the NYT’s put this story on it’s cover today and that too without even mentioning the efforts made by it’s own Mass Transit Authorities to ensure a peaceful commute to ladies. The ‘white man’s burden’ was what the British called their efforts to help educate and empower the masses in India. Under this guise of charity work they enacted a subtle and enslaving colonialization. Talking of the distress and oppression of women in India or Afghanistan can also be the perfect PR war cry to ensure independence to Afghanistan and its women. History has proven that women are often used as pawns in some man’s game of power politics.

Which makes me think of Sameena, a woman who plays by her own rules. She is 23 years old, Muslim and divorced her husband because he would beat her. She stands up for what she believes and wears a burkha most of the time. Except for when she sits in the front seat and drives a taxi in Mumbai. A woman that represents great independence and shatters many stereotypes in one drive. You’ll hear more from her soon.