Ramulamma & The Dora's Tools

Disclaimer: I think I'm trying to grapple with ideas and theories that may be too complex for me. Please pardon my lack of proper articulation, but I just had to write about it.

Although I've been thoroughly enjoying London thus far, it's been a few weeks and I've been feeling a little nostalgic. I do miss New York, my family, and my friends. But one thing I don't think I can get in London by myself is my familiar Telugu-New-York-ness. Going home and speaking Telugu, going to the Hindu temple in Flushing, seeing Aunties and Uncles at Indian parties, stuff like that. I don't know how to explain it exactly. I suppose it's a lack of "the usual dose" of "Teluguness" or teluguthanam in my life. I felt the same way when I was in Kerala last January. In fact, now that I think about it, it was probably my first experience in a completely non-Telugu setting. Previously, all my travels were with family or family friends who were all Telugu. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't phone very often and so I don't get to speak Telugu here in London.

Whenever I get that feeling in New York (if I don't go to Queens for a while), I go online and watch a Telugu movie. This time, I decided to watch "Osey Ramulamma", a non-Tollywood Telugu movie. I'll forewarn you: I'm not very good at narrating stories. Set in rural Telangana, the story is about a Dalit girl, Ramulamma, who is raped by the local dora or landowner/vassal. After giving birth to the baby, the dora tries to kill her. She escapes but loses her entire family. She is then taken in by a childless couple in another village. The dora of that village soon discovers her beauty and attempts to rape her. When he approaches her, Ramulamma kills him. She then learns that this dora is the son of the dora who raped her. She is forced to flee and takes up arms with the local Naxal/Maoist group. The rest of the movie is about the dora tries to kill her and how she narrowly escapes every time. Eventually, when she is to be hanged, she manages to kill the dora. However, her hanging was under the auspices of the police, so as soon as she kills him, they arrest her (again) and she is likely to be finally executed.

What struck me most about this film is that it didn't show the typical love story narrative found in Telugu movies. This is, perhaps, a good reason why I still remembered this movie ten years after I first watched it. "Osey Ramulamma" was made in 1997. To my knowledge, movies at the time and even before rarely left the forward caste wealthy perspective. Nowadays, there has been a shift to the urban middle class educated setting as seen in "Happy Days" or "Koncham Ishtam Koncham Kashtam" while still maintaining the forward caste narrative. "Osey Ramulamma" showed struggle on multiple levels: class struggle, caste struggle, and women's struggle. There are multiple references made those three struggles and identities throughout the movie - something you don't always hear in other Telugu movies.

Watching her struggles, all I could think about is Audre Lorde's quote "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Audre Lorde was a notable black lesbian feminist who challenged the first wave of feminism early on and made great strides in providing alternative radical theory and practice in combatting racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression. She wrote an essay with the title of the quote that criticized a New York University (NYU) conference on women's issues. She argued that ignoring the differences between women is not the way to real change; they need to be acknowledge and tackled. The conference was organized by white women who still adhered racism indirectly (the token inclusion of the black lesbian, etc.) In their attempts to fight for gender equality, they may achieve short term goals, but without the inclusion of all women and accepting the different women be they of color, old, poor, lesbian, trans, disabled, real change cannot be realized.

Perhaps I am taking this quote too literally in my interpretation of "Osey Ramulamma" and perhaps I didn't properly analyse the essay. But as Ramulamma continued to use violence and quite literally the master's tools (the same guns his goondas used), this quote kept running through my head. By using the same tactics as he did, Ramulamma, in her struggle against caste, class, and gender oppression, would perpetuate a system that may not have the same oppressions, but perhaps others. This is, very likely, a realize why people are disillusioned by the Maoist struggle in India right now and why the leftist agenda is cast as a fringe movement. There are inherent weaknesses in the struggle.

CCTV: We are watching you

After realizing how similar London and New York are and discovering that Queen Mary has the newest and only Masters program in Community Organising degree in the entire United Kingdom, I seriously considered the possibility of coming back here and pursuing that degree. It's only one year and half of it is fieldwork, it's significantly cheaper than private education in the states, and I would learn how to deal with and overcome oppression and marginalization in other Western nation-states and governments.

Last semester, while discussing monitoring, policing and security of public space in my Exploring Public Space class, my professor dropped the little tidbit that London is the most watched city in the world. By watched, she meant that there are more security cameras on each Londoner than any other person on earth. While that freaked me out a little bit, I didn't think much of it. Upon my arrival, I noticed a lot of signs that read "CCTV is watching you" or "CCTV in operation for your safety and security." Even then, I didn't pay much heed to them.

My thought on the subject deepened when I was walking along Old River Lea, one of the back water canals of East London. It was a Thursday morning, around 10AM and I was photographing the graffiti by the river. Other than the occasional bicycler passing me by on the path, I was alone. About fifteen to twenty minutes into my walk, a motorboat with two "official looking" men came up the canal. They were sporting yellow vests and had some gadget of sorts. To me, it looked like a camera at the time.

Again, I didn't think much of it. (I need to do more thinking, more often!) I kept walking and taking pictures. Then I noticed that they kept pace with me and whenever I stopped, they did too. It struck me after the third or forth time this happened that they could be from the government. After all, with the number of CCTVs around, I'm sure everyone's activities are easily traceable. Here I was, a brown man walking along the canal taking pictures. In the current political climate, being brown itself is reason enough for suspicion. What if they thought I was planting a bomb in the canal? What if they thought I was trying to sabotage the Olympic stadium? My thoughts jumped to all different directions. Needless to say, I was a little freaked out.

Eventually, I walked to a ramp that connected to a walkway leading back to the regular streets. As I was leaving the path, I realized that these men were probably from the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) or whatever body that manages the canal system. I saw them interacting with the other LVRPA employees by the walkway. Still, they did follow my movements until I left the canal. Still, there are cameras everywhere. Still, there was the possibility that they could have found me on CCTV and followed me...if they had wanted to.

My point isn't to further expose my over dramatic nature; many of you are familiar with it already. No, perhaps this incident was purely in my head. But that doesn't change the facts that I had mentioned in the last sentences of the previous paragraph. The cameras are everywhere. And a quick look at crime statistics in the United Kingdom shows that it does not experience significantly less crime than other parts of the world. It is, in fact, right up there with the United States. No, I won't cite the statistics because statistics are merely a form of malleable rhetoric; you can do a quick google search if you want to. Baseless security measures such as cameras, gates, and state organised policing have been proven ineffective against preventing crime. In 2003, Setha Low, a professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center-City University of New York (CUNY), clearly proved in her book Behind the Gates that there isn't significantly less crime in gated communities compared to non-gated communities.

However, those are quantative, numerical arguments. I asked my newfound friend, Hannah from Amsterdam, how safe she felt in London. She said she felt safe with the cameras. Then I asked her how safe she felt in London vis-a-vis Amsterdam. Then she said that she felt safer in Amsterdam even though there are far fewer cameras. Why? Because she knew the place. So on an individual level, it's the personal knowledge of the person that helps ensure safety; of course, this is just one of the ways.

We then have some things left to consider: Why all these cameras? Where do the feeds go to? Who watches them and why? What do they do with the information? I, obvsiouly, have my own conspiracy theory-like notions of why. I acknowledge that this account is incomplete in terms of delineating the history of British CCTV and reviewing notable controversies, but I digress. I'll leave you with one of Banksy's most famous works. Google Image "CCTV" and you get this image multiple times.

Photo Credit: Daily Mail, UK

Crossing the Road

Crossing the road has been quite the ordeal here. At first, I couldn't seem to understand why. India has the same "opposite" side driving, and I've gone, on average, every other year of my life. And my sense of right and left is pretty weak. The streets in London are different than anything I've seen before. The street corners are fenced off and you can only walk through a certain opening. They even have painted signs on the ground before the curb "Look Right -->" or "<-- Look Left". Analysing all that, it then struck me that in India, I was looking every which way before crossing the street; you never know what's going to come up at you. Meanwhile, the orderliness in England was allowing me a laxed sense of alertness.

They don't say look both ways before crossing the road for nothing!

Construction Workers

With the 2012 Olympics set to happen in East London, the area is a buzz with construction activity. Obviously, gentrification is in full tow. Tall glass buildings amidst old brick houses are not uncommon. I even ate a cute cafe called the Counter Cafe, a recently opened hipster cafe set in an (post) industrial neighborhood - not unlike Red Hook. Elsewhere, "to let" signs abound. The word "regeneration" is in frequent use by the university, local residents, organizations, and other stake holders.

What struck me most about this situation is that the construction men were mostly, if not all, white! Blue collar labor is white in this country. Imagine that. Coming from America where most of our construction workers are Latino, this was quite the shock. The only large immigrant population I see around here are the Banglas, but they are not present in the construction work force.

Like the United States, the United Kingdom undoubtedly has its own racial and ethnic tensions to deal with (i.e. Islamophobia, etc.), however, what does the absence of immigrants in such a typically blue collar field say about the labor force and racism? More on that as I learn more.