Femininity

July 4, 2005.

This is an old story I was planning to get published in ET Travel. But these days, they have a theme for every issue. And I don't see an issue on train journeys anytime soon. Hence, and also since I can't think of writing anything fresh right now, here it is, up here (or down here if you wish), MY JOURNEY TO FEMININITY...

I'll tell you about the one F trip I had in my life— my journey to femininity. It started one fine morning when I heard my brother yelling: Hey, Rishi has become a female!

Female? Me? I was in the bath, getting ready to leave for Kerala after spending a couple of days in Mumbai. I heard whispers, followed by shouts and almost hysterical laughter. There were five of them, all my siblings. What's wrong with these guys? I checked myself in the mirror. My everything's in place. I changed and rushed out, stimulating a fresh burst of laughter. Rajan had a train ticket in his hand. He passed it to me. It read: "Lokmanyatilak T to Quilon Jn S10 24 SU F 29". That's my ticket. Oh, F!

Lalchechi, who booked the ticket and who was the only female in the gang, tried her best to look apologetic. "Rishi, I am really sorry, hee hee, it was just, hee hee, you know, hee hee hee…” She can't hold her breath anymore. "Rishichetta, why don't you go for a clean shave? Then you can get away as a woman," Navan, the youngest one, chipped in.

My train was leaving in a couple of hours. And I had to reach Thane from Borivili to board it.

There was hardly any time to brood over my just-found femininity. So we rushed through our 'for the rail' and 'for the female' toasts and set off to Thane.

At the station, there was not enough time to get the ticket corrected. So I boarded the train. Anyway, I had my I-card and other documents. Only I'd be looking like a fool in front of all those people, which, according to my see-offers, was nothing new. Hmmm.

Its hugs and kisses time yet again, then the waving — first at them, then at their waving hands above all the people on the platform, at the station, at a couple of days of fun. I'd miss them. But then, it's home, sweet home, waiting for me at the other end of the train.

I went to my seat and checked my bags to see what all had I left behind. Oh no, the Picasso pen I bought for my father is missing. Okay, I'll make them mail it. The female problem? Let the ticket checker come. After all, it's a clerical mistake. I leaned back on my seat. It was a side seat. I liked it like this. My mind went back to the last couple of days as I stared blankly into the endless procession of trees and buildings under the afternoon sun. We hardly had any sleep last night. It was a binge. And it was too good. The best was Lalchechi rushing to the door to check her own address while ordering dinner... I slowly slide into a nap.

It must be the morning's booze on top of the sleepless night, the sound and commotion that accompanied the ticket checker failed to wake me. He woke me. As usual, he was followed by a number of unconfirmed ticket holders. I told him about the mistake in my ticket. He took the ticket, checked it and declared it was not valid. "C'mon, sir, I've got enough documents to prove that I'm Rishi."

"But I cannot let a man travel with a female's ticket. TICKET, TICKET." He moved on, checking and ticking others' tickets. I followed, now wide awake but eyes still trailing the mind.

"Sir, but it's not a female's ticket. It's Rishi's ticket. Female is a silly, clerical mistake. C'mon, sir, there can't be any woman in the name of Rishi. You know that."

"I know it's a mistake. But I've to follow the rules. That's my job... Madam, aapki ticket?"

My God, what's wrong with this man? It's ridiculous. He knows it's a mistake and he can't do a thing about it! And rules? They are for checking frauds, not silly mistakes. "Sir, please, you have to help me," I’m starting to lose my temper.

"I told you I can't do anything. You have to get down with me at Panvel," he won't slow down.

What he needs is one tight slap, MTV-style. My head by now was what the earth was 20,000 years ago — a boiling planet. All the abuses in the world are at the tip of my tongue. I shouldn't have had rum in the morning. The smell must be there. Any aggressive move would be termed "drunken misbehaviour". "Sir, please, this is the 150th year of Indian Railways. (Yes, this story happened in 2002.) And your ads say customer service is your focus," I made a last plea. It was there in the newspaper. "I have to follow the rules, I told you." He wouldn’t relent. I must stop chasing this son of a rulebook. Or he'll have it. And that will be the end of my journey. What to do?

If I get down, at best they'll reimburse the ticket fare. Travelling all the way back to Borivili with these two sacks of bags! And even if I manage it, I won't get a confirmed ticket for at least the next couple of days. I can't cut short my Kerala stay; no way! All I have is just a week. So?

What if I say I'm a woman? That I went to Mumbai for a sex-change operation. That the moustache and beard will go only after a couple of weeks. That I'll charge him with sexual harassment… I was considering the options I had, and most of them were funny to imagine. I couldn’t help laughing a bit.

Why not do it? After all, I am a feminist sympathiser. Come to think of it, I may even have more so-called feminine characteristics than masculine ones. Why, sitting here and smiling secretly over possible conversations with the ticket checker right now, instead of chasing him desperately and offering a bribe—which may probably settle the matter—can be seen as feminine.

I was thinking away to femininity when the ticket checker returned to me. He offered me a berth in the Tatkal coach. But I had to shell out the full charge with some fine for ticketless journey. By now, I was positively feminine, if you consider a safety-first approach frailty and feminine. I went for it.

But I was fuming. My already tight budget for the trip would now be tighter. I noted down the s.o.r ticket checker’s name and vowed to take up the matter with the railways or approach the consumer court. But on the third day of my landing in Kerala I met with an accident and broke my leg. When one can't pee without somebody's help, one looks for support, not vengeance. And I thought about marriage, for the first time since my college girlfriend's wedding years ago.

It's over four years since then and it's the fourth year of my marriage. My F trip hardly ever came to my mind until the other day when I went to book tickets for our vacation. There was this man who returned to the counter after collecting his ticket--it had F against his name. He had to cancel the ticket and take a new one. Poor thing, missed the train to femininity!

A midnight SOS: How fishermen became Kerala’s new army

(published in the economic times on september 1, 2018)

The fishermen of Kerala have been hailed as the heroes for having swung into action and saved hundreds of lives in the state’s worst floods in a century. Here's how it all began...

In the afternoon on August 15, 2018, Kollam district collector S Karthikeyan received a call from his counterpart in Pathanamthitta, P B Nooh. He requested five dinghies to be sent from rescue operations in flooded areas in his district.

It had been raining incessantly for several days all over Kerala. Most of the reservoirs in the state had to be opened in the previous couple of days, leading to floods along most rivers, lakes and low-lying areas. And things were getting much worse than feared.

Now, the few dinghies of the Kollam municipality were already engaged in rescue mission within the district. So, Karthikeyan told Nooh he could possibly arrange some fishermen’s rafts. They were not sure how much it would help, but given the lack of options they decided to give it a try.

The Kollam collector immediately called up a few fishermen’s societies and asked if they could spare some small boats for rescue operations. Most fishermen no longer use the traditional small boat to go fishing in the sea. Instead, the society representatives suggested sending the slightly larger single-engine boats that they use these days. So, at around 4 in the evening, two boats with some fishermen were sent to Pathanamthitta on a trial basis.

Heavy rains and large-scale rescue and relief operations continued across the state.

At around 10 in the night when Karthikeyan was having his dinner, he got another call from Nooh. It was an SOS to send more fishing boats. Only these boats were now able to do the rescuing in flooded areas. Dinghies and rectangular boats of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were largely ineffective, because the water level had increased significantly in several areas along the Pampa river and its tributaries, and there were strong currents.

“We were prepared for floods, but nobody expected rivers to flow on towns,” Karthikeyan told ET.

He called an emergency meeting with office bearers of various fishermen’s societies in the town. He assured them that even a scratch on their boats would be taken care of by the government. The fishermen readily agreed to send boats for rescue work.

The problem was, everybody was sleeping. It was past 12 in the night…fishermen who actually work in boats were sleeping in their homes, and there were no trucks to ferry their boats to Pathanamthitta.

“So we started making mike announcements in colonies, seeking volunteers,” Karthikeyan said. He also contacted some truck owners. Within 2-3 hours, about 200 fishermen had gathered near Kollam port, and several trucks reached there with tanks full.

By five in the morning, nine boats – seven from Vaddy, near Kollam port, and two from Neendakara, the other big port in the city some 10 km away – left for Pathanamthitta. Another 35 boats were sent by 10 in the morning. By the night on August 16, some 120 fishing boats from Kollam were engaged in rescue operations in Pathanamthitta.

By that time, other places like Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam, too, had started sending fishing rafts to Pathanamthitta. Television channels had already picked up the story, and the Pathanamthitta collector had sent an SOS to the chief minister’s office.

The jury is still out on the reasons for the devastating floods in Kerala, billed as the worst in more than a century. A proper flood warning system and better management of water levels in reservoirs might have lessened its impact significantly. There might have been several slips, and there may still be issues in relief camps and in rehabilitating people. But what is undeniable is that Kerala pulled off a near-impossible rescue operation across the state, with everybody from top bureaucrats and armed forces to local communities and mobile-wielding youngsters chipping in.

It was an operation where everybody was a hero, be it an army man or a policeman saving many lives, or just a common man who gave shelter to others and shared whatever food and drinking water they had. But one group that everybody now hails as the new heroes of Kerala is the fishermen who rushed in and threw themselves into the swirling waters to save people who they had never met.

A video clip of Jaisal KP, a fisherman from Malappuram, going on all fours in knee-deep flood waters to let women step on his back to get into a rescue boat is one unforgettable image that has gone viral on social media all over the world.

As many as 952 fishing boats and more than 4,500 fishermen from coastal areas of Kerala rescued at least 65,000 people, mainly in Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Thrissur and Ernakulam districts, between August 15 and August 19.

According to a rough estimate by Pathanamthitta collector Nooh, out of all the people rescued in the district, 70% were saved by fishermen, 15% by NDRF and forces, and 15% by the locals.

“Once they landed there, fishermen took the responsibility and started saving people stuck at homes on their own. They did not wait for any instruction from anybody,” Kollam collector Karthikeyan said.

That was crucial — taking things in their hands.

Who else could take decisions as fast as those who have fought with the sea their entire life?

CALLING THE SHOTS

When ‘Treesa’ reached a temporary camp behind Aranmula Engineering College in Pathanamthitta in the evening of August 16, a crowd of more than 900 people there wanted to know only one thing — is there food on the boat?

Treesa had just six food packs left on board. The situation was desperate. There was not enough time for the boat to go back to Thekkemala – the nearest place where vehicles with wheels could still run on roads – and fetch food back to the camp.

Joy Marian Fernandez, who was steering Treesa, asked if there was any grocery shop nearby that may not have submerged. Anitha, a village officer coordinating from the camp, said there was a two-storey government-owned ‘Maveli’ grocery store some 3 km away. Her husband joined the four-member rescue team of Joy, his cousin Jose, and local policemen Sajith and Udayachandran. They broke the locks of the shop’s second-floor shutters with a big bolt cutter they had kept to cut power lines and cables blocking their way. All the stock in the store had already been shifted to the second floor. But water had reached up to their ankles even on the second floor by now. They ferried several sacks of rice, cooking oil and other groceries to the Thekkemala base —a service station turned into relief camp.

The camp in-charge, Joji, hurriedly made arrangements for taking all the stock left in the store to other relief camps in the vicinity, because food and other relief materials had not yet started arriving in a big way.

Pampa river had by now eaten up the vast stretch of land between Thekkemala and Chengannur, some 12 km away. Small hillocks looked like tiny islands. Buildings on those higher grounds – mostly churches and temples – had been converted into shelters. Boats mostly took people rescued from houses and terraces to these shelters to save on time and rescue more people. They also brought food, relief materials and medicines to these camps.

It was not just about the boats though.

“If not for those local policemen, we fishermen could not have saved even 40% of the people,” said Joy, sitting on a plastic chair in the small veranda of his modest house along one of the many narrow bylanes at Vaddy, a fishermen’s village near Kollam port. “They knew the roads and bylanes, otherwise we couldn’t have reached even half the houses.”

If they had to follow roads and streets to reach people stuck at homes in residential areas, there were also stretches where roads ran up to higher areas. So they had cross paddy fields and sometimes even the gushing river to reach areas such as Malakkara, Kozhippalam and Arattupuzha.

And there were all kinds of obstructions, Joy said. There were cables and electricity lines that boatmen had to cut to make way, submerged walls and fences that they ran into every now and then, furniture pieces and dead animals floating on the water, and snakes hanging on to tree branches, walls and gates, he said.

His daughter Mary Rose, a second-year BSc nursing student, served us tea. Breeze coming from the sea was cool and comforting on a sunny afternoon. Vague growling of the sea crashing on shores hung in the air. The sea was much calmer now. It had not rained for more than a week.

Kerala has begun its long journey to recovery. In Kollam, perhaps the least affected place, life has almost got back to normal. The hangover is still very much there, though.

FAITH IN PEOPLE

From August 16 to 18, traffic was often stopped on roads here to give way to big fleets of 10, 20, even 50 trucks loaded with boats from Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram rushing to flooded areas of Pathanamthitta for rescue operations.

Jacob John’s ‘Saint Antony’s’ was part of a 28-boat fleet from Vaddy to Chengannur on August 17.

Jacob, who operated on Chengannur side of the Pampa river, said truck drivers took as much risk as fishermen, riding on flooded roads and bridges. For every boat that took part in the mission, there was a truck that carried it. Jacob remembers parts of roads where truck wheels were completely submerged. They had to change routes more than once, before they managed to reach Parumala church in Thiruvalla – which was turned into a relief camp and a base for bringing relief materials, as wheeled vehicles could reach one side of the church, and boats could ply from the other side.

Jacob and his four friends on the boat saved about 1,000 people in two days mostly in Pandanad area, where water had reached up to half of the second floor of several buildings. It was a mad rush to save lives. “The engine was crashing into walls and all, but we just sped through all that, we wanted to save as many people as possible,” he said.

People all around were as selfless. When Jacob and his team went to pick up a small group sitting on a terrace, they told them there was another family nearby that needed help more urgently. One of the boys got into the boat and led them to a house where there were three small children, two young women and an old couple waiting desperately for help on the terrace.

So how did they make out if there were people inside houses? “We got a kolambi (traditional cone-shaped loudspeaker) and called out, ‘Is there anybody, brothers and sisters? Please come out or call out’,” Jacob said.

He stays in a tiny two-room apartment on the first floor of a residential building right across the road from Kollam harbour. It was built by the government at the same location after Jacob and his neighbours lost their houses in the devastating tsunami in 2004. It was a raw flat then. Jacob got done the flooring and wall tiling and other fixtures “one at a time”. “I have got two girls, sir, I need to take care of them,” he said. Joshna and Jisna, studying in class eighth and sixth, were busy showing me pictures of “papa on TV” on his mobile. Perhaps he need not worry too much. Now there may be people who come forward when he needs help.

Jiji Philip, a financial professional in Dubai, said he and his family owe their lives to fishermen who rescued them from their home in Chengannur when they had lost hope after spending two nights on the second floor without electricity or charge in their mobiles, and with hardly any food and drinking water. “When the fishermen were hit by the tsunami and cyclones I didn’t care, I never went looking how they are doing. And now, when I was caught in a near-death situation, it was fishermen who came to save me and my family,” he said. “They are the real heroes.”

Perhaps a blessing in disguise in Kerala’s worst floods is that humanity came to the fore. The entire population faced it together and stepped in to help.

“The only way an emergency of this magnitude could have dealt with was complete cooperation from all the stakeholders. And that is exactly what happened,” Kollam collector Karthikeyan said. “The government alone could not have done much.”

He said the administration had sought help from almost all the departments, and several organisation and individuals, and every one of them cooperated without raising a question – truck owners, hospitals, doctors, everybody. All the government departments and employees worked round the clock. The entire Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) and PWD employees are now engaged in repairing work in affected districts.

The challenge ahead is enormous. The state will need thousands of crores of rupees to repair its infrastructure and get back on its feet. But there is hope.

“The biggest insurance we now have is the faith in people,” says Karthikeyan. “There is a confidence that people will help and contribute.”

Ends

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/a-midnight-sos-that-was-answered-by-fishermen-in-kerala/articleshow/65630836.cms?from=mdr