Day III

I am writing this from my friends home. They have departed to work and I have free time to just lie down and write with my laptop on my lap and finish what I started. Yes, the dairy I see as a best way of recording my memories. I was too lazy last year in my US visit that I only posted first experiences. I wish I had documented some of those memories while they were fresh.

So, I am talking about 15^th of July 2013, first day of the conference. Excited, nervous at the same time. Many of the International Delegates probably arrived but we did not know anybody.  The conference organizers had emailed us to say that we need to arrive for registration for conference hall at 8.am.  But I reached there around 7.15. I tell you why. I am direction blind. I get confused with where is right, where is left, what is north, what is south, when I am in a new territory. And If I leave it till the last minute to find out, I will probably have a heart attack out of anxiety. So, I went to conference hall, said hello to a lady who had communicated with us via email since so long. Met the conference convener  Then, back I went to the dining hall, to do the obvious: have a srilankan breakfast and get that hot warm feeling of chilies in my stomach and placate that later with the cold juice: funny habit.

We were given a conference bag, book of abstract and schedule for the conference and most important of all. One of the interesting features of the conference is that when you introduce each other for the first time, name tag becomes so important. I like the way people hold their tag towards the other and show their name. So, in couple of minutes, we introduced one another. In my relatively short experiences of being in few international conferences, I have seen a pattern about how people introduce themselves. There are mainly two kinds: one who reach out, the other who wait to be reached. It is too simplistic I know, sometimes they can be identified as strategies that any people may use according to the situation. However, I like the ones who reach out rather than who wait to be reached. But several factors may shape these peoples those who "wait to be reached". First is that they are shy, they are not arrogant but just shy and modest and feel that they are not that important to get introduced to. So, they wait, until someone are interested in them and they open up. I like this category, I am not romanticizing them but over the time, they forget their inhibitions and open up. And also gender plays a big role. Though, it is generally understand that men approach women for introduction first. But in these academic settings, I have found that men hesitate a bit perhaps thinking that they are showing interest because of other things such as attraction and all that. But I do not think it is wrong unless one starts being too blatant about it. Let me talk about the second type. Second type of "waiting to be reached" are people who perceive that they are "SOMEBODY", I capitalized the word for a reason, you got a point right. They want people to come us. They wait somewhere pretending to be busy, flicking through schedule, working on their laptops or may be adjusting their ties, arranging their hair.  I honestly never go to these people.  But fortunately, at least in this conference, I did not feel we had this  kind of species. Everyone wanted to know the other, except few shy ones, but I don't blame them. I remember my early conference days. I am still overcoming that gradually, I am saying this honestly.

Ah, I probably went too long about this, did I?  So, in I went to the conference hall. There was a welcome speech by Converner of the conference. It was impressive to see they had organized so many international conference in the past and also planning to organize some more in future, it was truly impressive. They also had some great affiliations with some publishers. Then, came to most memorable event throughout whole conference: key note speech by Prof. Sanjukta Ghosh. She talked about " From Burqas to Bikini: While women's burden and Afgani women". She talked about links between feminism and imperialism. She was  a eloquent speaker. An hour long key note speech felt like few minutes. What was striking on her presentation was the media clips that she used to portray the American perceptions of Afgani women. From her presentation, she was clearly able to show feminism as "white women's burden", a belief that white woman is all free and liberated and third world women need to be liberated from their men. Sanjukta's presentation show quiet clearly that western feminists easily forget the unequal international relations and hegemony that is shaping the third world women's lives, not just the oppressive gender ideology in their community. Another interesting aspect of her presentation was American women's perception of "Burqua" as oppressive whereas several variations of "Burquas" exist. She was able to supplement with research in Afganistan and Pakistan that women wear it more as a custom than as a sign of oppression. Actually, while working among themselves, women are not that conscious about covering their head all the time. It was even more interesting when she showed the pictures of Eurpoean/American Models wearing the latest trends of fashion which had head coverings similar to that of Burqua.

For me, most significant moment of lecture was to see a certain picture.It was used in a certain context. Someday, when we meet I may tell you all about it if you are interested. 

 Later when I and Sanjukta discussed about the lecture, she was bit disappointed that no body laughed at this picture and showed any form of reaction towards it. We south asian people are closed about matters of sexuality. Showing any reaction in the conference to a picture, would have meant displaying one's promiscuity.

Then, we moved on to other presentations. Let me warn you in the beginning. I found many of the presentations too traditional, repetitive and lacking any creativity. Call me a cynic but I believe that research needs to be original and creative. I believe conference gives us opportunity top understand new perspectives and issues. But somehow many of the presentation lacked this. However, I am just going to share what I found interesting. There were couple of papers that dealt with Gender Dispreference of Girls in India. By that they meant current population imbalance in India. India has more men than women, facing an acute crisis with escalating female foetus abortions and female infanticide. I was wanting to know more than a data. I know it is important to know the magnitude of a social problem but understanding the structural causes of the problem is even more important. But somehow, I found that lacking in presentations.

Again time for Sanjukta. Her paper dealt with the Delhi protest after the Delhi rape happened. First she discussed the setting and she discussed the etymology of the several different names of the "victim".

Amanat:  Trust

Damini: Lightening

Jagriti: Awakening

Nirvaya: braveheart

It was interesting to know that the media was not allowed to name the real victim, perhaps first time in history of reporting the rape in India. It brought seriously into discussions the ethics of journalism. Still in Nepal, they are careless, they name the victim's name and address without thinking about the impact of their action on life of "survivor".

So, each group based on their own perception of the struggle of the victim gave her a symbolic inspirational name. Each name portrays the different reality. But with all these names, the one I most feel close to is "Jagriti" and "Nirvaya". I have my own reasons, I will perhaps ponder on later about the emotional impact of these names on my psyche.

She also talked about several other false name and pictures that appeared claiming to be the "Delhi rape victim", particularly in social media. This was another form of oppression of these unknown women whose pictures were splashed all over in social media and countless sharing in people's facebook walls.

She also had done content analysis and observation of the protest happening in Delhi. She had collected some very touching and striking pictures of the protestors. Her analysis focused on contents of the placards on the posters.

While saying all these, what strikes my mind is that, why was "Delhi protest" so strong. The first thing that came to my mind with Sanjukta's presentation is that, the "victim" represented the middle class girl who had dreams of completing her education, becoming a professional and then marrying some nice man and have children. So, many people, particularly middle class and high class suddenly realized that their "daughters" and "wives" and "mothers" are at risk.  Suddenly the violence in "public sphere" became the focus of the activism, which I think is very important. But the problem with this is sometimes, it makes us think that dangers is all out there in public sphere, we tend to forget what is happening inside home. Look at any research report on violence against home, the most important sites of violence is home: a place of protection, love and care". Then, second are other institutions such as schools, workplace where girls/women are with someone they trust and know. So, with these kinds of protest, a fear of "unknown stranger late at night in open public space" becomes a face of the most dangerous violator. But the reality is women are mostly violated by people they know, trust, love and care for. How to address this contradictions and I asked the same question to Sanjukta and she answered it quiet well.

So, there were more presentations later on. Presentations on women street vendors, on representations of patriarchy in hindi cinema and so on. The one that was interesting and funny was by ……………….who did content analysis on 200 quotes on gender written by both men and women. Some of the quotes are very funny on surface level but as you go on thinking and pondering, they are very sexist. It is creating negative ideology about gender. I post some of the quotes here. During her presentation, one could see that there were more men than women who wrote these quotes. And definitely, I am not prejudiced or anything but I like women's better, anyway. One of the presenter from Pakistan, she presented about situation of women journalists in Pakistan. Based on her presentation, one could see that Journalism predominantly still remains a male professional based on ideology of masculinity.

In between all these talks we had a lunch break and I enjoyed taking to delegates and get to know what other is doing. Conference is opportunity to meet interesting people, each of them doing something interesting in their own field. Some of my very good friends now dispersed in different parts of the world are the ones whom I met in conference like this. Based on our similar nature and interest or sometimes different we continue to keep in touch via email, now facebook and keep each other posted on what we are doing. Then, sometime in far distant future, after couple of years we meet somewhere, sometimes in the middle, new place all together or sometimes in Nepal or sometimes in their own country. So, that is my reward or perk of being in academia. I get to travel now and then, meet some great people and continue to be connected and again meet them and catch up. I have not earned much  money being in this profession but I am rich, very rich because I have these wonderful friends now in different parts of the world. I know they will give me a space somewhere in this house to sleep, eat, play with their children and to learn more about them and their world and their work.

In the evening, conference organizers took us to a Seylinco Building in a restaurant named Akasa Kade. It was a beautiful restaurant nearby the beach. We walked all the way from the hotel for about 15 minutes, chatting and talking with each other. Now, there is another free advice for conference goers. It is free advice: Take it or leave it, as Rancho says in three idiots. If you are travelling with your own national group, please communicate among yourself that it is important that you talk and communicate with other people in the conference. Particularly, South Asian people are too much immersed in their own group to reach out to other interesting people out there. I call it ghettoization, living in one's own  Ghetto or world and not reaching out to other people. It is very important however to communicate to your group that they do not misunderstand you as "ignoring and bypassing" them. You can also encourage them to make new friends and talk to new a person, that is the whole point of the conference. If you are always together with your friend from same nationality, when do you get opportunity to know other people?

So, I drifted again on a advice lane, Sorry. It must be something to do with being a teacher, one unwittingly started using these advisory tone. But please do understand that we teachers do not do it to prove that "we know better" but to share something about what we know and definitely it is not a bad thing, or is it. I don't know.

So, we were on this restaurant. It was nice, really nice. And the first thing that greeted us was a sound. We turned back towards the sound thinking some kind of musical performance was going on. But no, a chef was cutting something with a large knife. Oh, I forgot to take a picture of this probably. One of the popular food in Srilanka is Pittue. Pittu is made from Paratha, it can be vegetable or meat paratha. After the paratha is cooked, it is cut into fine pieces by the knife in very high speed. It is really yummy, try it with Seeni Sambol ( onion deep fried with different spices with sugar and salt). The Food was great, especially fish lovers can get wide variety of fish curry.  As expected, the food was great with high level of chillii, which I was more or less accustomed to. But I guess, the Akasha Kade Hotel had at least 2 times hotter food than Grand Oriental. Few of our friends, who were not used to hot food, liked it too much. So, they kept on eating small portion taking long breaths with tears in their eyes. It was funny to watch that. But then, there was a joke. I mean, you take the hot food and like it at the moment when you are eating it. But when you go to Toilet next morning, ahh well, that is different story.

After the wonderful dinner with great people, we started walking back to the hotel. Few of them wanted to go to the beach. Those who finished their presentation could easily go of course with the free mind. Me and another friend from Bangladesh, decided to go straight back to the hotel to prepare for the presentation. When, I was back in room, I realized I was actually very tired. I had my slides ready anyway. I just wanted to prepare what I wanted to speak, I wanted to move few slides here and then. But that will have to be done tomorrow morning itself. Then, off I drifted to sleep, exciting about another exciting adventure and experience  in Colombo.