It’s been since 1989 in one of the upper end high middle class towers in Mumbai, where I have resided on and off over the years, that I have shared a sort of secret laugh with the first and oldest employee of the building Salim, who works as the man about any job to do with water, electricity and repair, all three which need constant attention.

More recently the one to have joined us in our little secret is Shukla, the operator of the elevator.

Two sophisticated elevators in the 17 story high-rise are reserved for residents/owners and their guests only, and a service lift on the side, less defined in terms of sophistication is meant for the house keepers/workers (servants, because that is how they are still referred to by almost every Indian on planet earth till date), drivers and pets, primarily dogs, which need to be taken downstairs for walks with regularity.

I have always had a dog, the present one is Charlie, a big black awesome and handsome schizophrenic, mostly calm and composed, a cross between a Labrador and a German-Shepherd.

It’s often, being in a city like Mumbai, that one or the other elevator is out of order and a manic repair job is being conducted on it to ease the pressure on the other two which get clogged for use by the huge number of users.

However, the servants being secondary class, have to wait out their turn if it is the service elevator which is out of order, and then comes the turn of the walkers with their dogs, who are third in line. There is always a queue of dogs with their keepers/walkers in waiting at such times.

 

If a servant in a mad rush requests the operators to take them up to their homes where their bosses might be impatiently waiting for them, there is a protest from the Sir/s and Madam/s to which the operators obviously cringe, because they also belong to the same class as the servants. Rebellion often encourages them to allow servants to use the sophisticated elevators even when the service lifts are in form, that is if there is no Sahib or Memsahib (Sir or Madam) watching or in it.

More often than not, the servants and the dogs are both left with no choice but to go climbing up the stairs with their walkers, even if their destinations are, ten, fifteen or sometimes seventeen floors up.

So the little secret Shukla, Salim and I share, is a smile when we see a scramble towards the functioning elevators and the protests when a servant or a walker with a dog try take precedence over the Sir/s and Madam/s. We share a shrug at the sheer stupidity of it, and a nod of acceptance of accomplice. When nobody is looking and I, not the walker, am with my dog, Shukla quietly lets me take the sophisticated elevator up with Charlie in it.

He even permits my servants to go up or come down with me in the elevators meant for the Sirs and Madams at times, because they know I have no issues with being in the same space as my workers or my pets.

The other day, about a week ago, both the sophisticated elevators meant for the Sir/s, Madam/s and their children and guests, went out of service, which is rare, and the entire population of the building and those visiting, were left to manage with only one service elevator.

There was a big crowd of owners/residents, servants, drivers and dogs in waiting every time the elevator descended to take in the next lot. I decided to be wicked and asked for everyone to get into a queue, and the owners/residents sheepishly followed my advice and fell in line with the servants, dogs and their walkers, out of embarrassment. Then finally, when our turn came and when we got into the service elevator, we were an amalgamation of dogs, walkers, servants, drivers, owners/residents, some ten of us, including Salim, Shukla, two dogs and I.

When the lift began to ascend, I said, in Hindi, ‘Chalo, ab kutte, naukar aur Sir aur Madam log, sab ek jagah mein aa gaye’ (“Great, now the dogs, servants and bosses are all belong to one place”), to which the servants, drivers, Shukla and Salim all burst out laughing and the two bosses, one Sir and one Madam, cringing in the corners because they couldn’t stand being in the same space as the dogs and the servants, gave me dirty looks and exchanged glances with each other.

The reason why I am telling you this story is, because ‘we’, belong to the ‘upper-most middle class’ and live in the biggest, most modern metropolis going to seed, in our country.

We discriminate. We hate. We subscribe to inequity.

We’re educated. We’re forward. We’re the contemporary citizenry of our nation.

The reason why I’m telling you this story is because it is time we look within and identify where we fault ourselves. It’s time we first make corrections in the discourse, in where we live and in our surroundings.

Because no amount of complaining, cribbing, accusing and pointing fingers at the political class, the governance and mal-functioning administration of our state and country, is going to show us the light or give us the confidence to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the developed world if we don’t recognize and accept where the problem really lies and we don’t accept that each one of us who live in India are equal.

THE THIRD EYE is a project launched by ACEE (Asian Centre for Entertainment Education) in partnership with HH&S (Hollywood, Health & Society), a program at the Norman Lear Center, USC, Annenberg, to provide a FREE-ON-DEMAND-SERVICE to the creative communities of the business of media and entertainment in India, that of bringing experts into writing rooms, experts in touch with creators, who can  provide factual and accurate information to storylines across all that media which captivates huge audiences, and all that entertainment which has the ability to transform the lives of viewers, and those people in those places of our India where  63% of the population lives without electricity, 85000 villages live in the dark.

India is a nation which trusts its storytellers, and it trusts that the stories which they tell will give the required impetus to their environment for change, that the stories that they tell will set standards for life, that they will lead them towards enlightenment and knowledge.

Night before last, on a hugely popular Bigg Boss 7, viewed by multiples of millions, when the host Salman Khan told inmate Apurva Agnihotri that when his wife Shilpa takes up for him and defends him aggressively, it makes him look weak, a debate ensued on my face book page. Some felt that it was travesty, while others thought that the program is such crap, that it is not worth discussing.

However, what cannot be denied is the fact that it enjoys a massive viewership across all demographics, but primarily in those segments of the pie which look up to the host as their hero, an icon. They are the audiences which wear clothes like him, walk like him, talk like him, and share the same attitude as him because they believe that he stands for what they should like to be.

If Salman Khan believes that having a woman defend his man makes a man look weak, then God help the women in this country because Salman Khan, the superstar just endorsed the aggression of their male counterparts, who already widely believe that a woman needs to be kept in her place.

It becomes all the more important that the icon be guided by the makers and the script about his sensitivities’ towards genders and equality which he portrays, in the programs.

We live in a country which has the highest number of rapes, molestations and that has an unbelievable capacity to stay complacent and silent over the hundreds of deaths of girls, some even before they are born, every single week.

We live in a country which believes that women are lesser than men.

While going to print, in the very next episode of Bigg Boss 7, when Shilpa asked her husband Apurva to put his hair in a particular way, Salman Khan quipped, ‘mein hota toh maar daalta’ (If it was me on the other side I would’ve killed the wife).

The good news is that now there is a dog, a beauty, a Golden Retriever, in the house!

So is there sensitivity towards the dog/s, on the cards?