Sex in the Delhi auto rickshaw

Photo by LoveLeLisa
My video to come.

A pot of millions, Delhi has over 130,000 rickshaw taxis sputtering around the city. Competition is thick like the pollution. Yet still, drivers turn customers down a lot. And many times because they don't want to drive a short distance. The longer the ride, the more likely they can hit you with a ballpark fair.

Last Sunday, I'd had it with auto drivers refusing to take me home. While standing on a corner near Khan Market, 15 minutes passed and two rickshaw drivers had stopped for me and sped off when they learned I wanted to go just around the corner. I stood on a long, dusky street. Five minutes into my wait, a skinny man with his hands behind his back walked up to me. I assumed he had a knife. So I stared him down so hard I missed an empty auto racing by. Shooooot, Delhi!

Finally, and as I started cursing out loud, a driver pulled up to me. By then, the night had totally collapsed on the city, and I was alone, trying to get a ride. The driver had a stringy head of hair that licked the skin below his hears. He was hunched over his wheel like most auto drivers are by the end of the day. He seemed too tired to say no. So I grabbed the main bar of the rickshaw and blurted my street -- Tilak Marg! And its address in Hindi.

It all appeared in slow motion -- but the driver shook his mangy bob no and pressed his gas. But I was in the mood for justice and exercise. So I took flight on foot and ran alongside the auto, holding it with my right arm. And as he sped up, I jumped into the moving auto, causing the driver to halt the auto and turn around.

That's when I went off.

"Look, there are police across the street," I pointed at the darkness. "If you don't take me to Tilak Marg, I will get them."

I couldn't even hear what he said back. So I kept yelling until the wheels started moving.

"It's the law. You take me. Now! 40 rupees!"

Right away, the driver turned in the direction of my house. Sure, I ripped a man's man-skin off. But that's what I had to do.

The whole ride, I sat up in the jittery machine in case he made a wrong turn and I had to jump out. Once we reached my destination, I gave him my money and patted him on the shoulder. I hope he learned a lesson.

****

And here is where I find my main frustration in India. I'm tired of fighting for a ride.

Like many men in this city, women with no car in Delhi have to take auto rickshaws. But being a woman in Delhi is a safety liability.

Buses, like many side streets in Delhi are clunky, horny cages of men. Every time I think about hopping on one, I see arms groping out the bus window and the warp of men turn to look at me from the bus, and I start chasing down a rickshaw.

Knowing how much people depend on them, rickshaw drivers go out of their way to mark up their fair in Delhi. The first few weeks I was in Delhi, many of them lied about the agreed-upon price at the end of the ride. I now prepare the exact change.

A popular way getting more money is to get the passenger so riled up, you know, so ready to knuckle-up, that you give an embarrassed-faced, peace-making tip having cursed the driver’s mama and kids.

Aside from the fair fights, many drivers have just been assaulting -- and only when I'm alone. One time, a driver kept slowing his car down to turn his entire body toward me and then body search me with his eyes. Another laughed wildly and every time he checked his rear view to look at me, his laughter got bigger and bigger.

Recently, I invented a cruel pose to avoid any hint that I can go for a run.

First, instead of asking the driver if he can take me, I practically bark out my destination. I then slap my hand on the central rickshaw bar connecting the front driver's seat with the passengers'.

When the driver repeats my order to confirm his trip I say yes with my best scowl, like I'm saying to-hell-with-you!

Yet still, people hear my accent and feel vibrations of a money tree. So now, I don a South African accent. All this-- the gangsta warrior dance and the fake African accent --makes me feel like a new kind of woman.

Sex in my take on Obama, written in news history

I tried and tried to resist being interviewed in India about Obama's win.

Reporters always call me when something big and black happens.

But when it comes to talking the Iraq war or the global financial crisis, then suddenly, my color and my gender disqualifies me. Which reminds me of the irony of watching the news of Obama's win on BBC TV where a table of old white men analyzed the election numbers.

Ok, who am I kidding!?

I was ecstatic to learn a reporter with the Indian Express* in Delhi wanted to talk to me about Obama! Being black in India has its perks for sure.

Chinki Sinha, the reporter, didn't quote me 100 percent-- not shocking here-- but this is what I said:

For African-American Malena K Amusa, who cast her vote at a party organised by the group Democrats Abroad, the victory was spectacular but the bigger concern is that Obama was seen more as a symbol of race rather than unity in the US. “His colour is an added bonus,” Amusa, a journalist working with a Delhi paper, said. “But the big fear now is Obama may not want to talk about racial profiling or affirmative action.

“We are wary that he is such a president of the people that he may not focus on race specific policies.”

But Amusa is happy she played a role, howsoever small, in creating history and though she missed being in the US, she celebrated in Delhi. “The elections proved that if you are Democrat, you cannot win without African-American voters,” she said.

As Johnson said, though much has changed over the years, the black community has struggled with stereotypes, prejudices and oppression. “Maybe with Obama, all that will change,” he said.

*I initially called Chinki's paper the "Financial Express." That's wrong. She works for the "Indian Express."

Sex in Obam-ica to India to God

It was Wednesday morning in Mumbai when I nearly jumped out of my drawers to celebrate the news of America's new president Barack Obama.

Being far from home, from St. Louis and New York and being a part of Obama's monumental win was so aching, and still very beautiful.

The people I work with in India are remarkably sensitive to my home-lust and to the importance of my being black and electing the first-world's first black American.

And many of them shared their excitement with me, the best they could. One cook in the Mumbai guest house grabbed me with his great smile and said: "Big history made today!"

As much as that history was Obama's, that history was also mine and his -- and our undeclared campaign to relate to each other.

Lucky for the world, Obama and every day people coming together, and not McDonalds, is our generation's best example of a globalized earth that despite the reality of social divisions, desires deeply to celebrate life and understanding.

Most thrilling, the crazed election celebrations are turning Obama into a God.

Working up a new calling, Obama inspires us to re-envision a human religion based on the ethical pursuit of excellence and goodness.

This can happen. It has already.

Oooobamen!

--Malena

Sex in the Diwali Dance Off

Here's the world premier of my first Delhi documentary -- about my road to competing in my newspaper's annual Diwali dance competition!

This is what happens when a hand shake holds the promise of a life-changing collabortation!



--Malena!

Sex in the Presidential Election voting party

I still find it hard to believe, but last Tuesday Oct. 21, a gaggle of Americans in India got together at this sea food place in Lodi Garden, Delhi to cast our absentee, long-distance ballots for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama -- the tall, mocha, and wholesome man we all want to triumph in this year's Presidential Election.

Aside from the Wow-gloss of dropping my second major election vote in India, I was surprised how much I miss Americans... especially our dorky small talk... ahhh, you know the kind that swings from self-deprecation in one breath to self-referential adulation in the next. It's the sort of short-hand talk that gives waaay to many personal, juicy details, then sobers up to talk politics and careers.

Allow me this one generalization, pleaase! But everyday Americans are so loud, so front-porch story-tellers, and we wrap our humor around our disgraces. And it's something I think I can't live without, having been in India and grown tired of the manners culture here among middle-class Indians.

Middle-class Indians, like the ones working at my newspaper remind me so much of everyday Africans. In a greeting, you gotta step through so many formalities before you start talking about the dirt. Meeting an Indian or an African, (and again, my analysis only works if you appreciate the value of some-truth-based stereotypes)-- you can bank on the following questions:

What are you studying?

How do you like Indian/African food? Is it too spicy for you?

How do you like Delhi/ eerr say Dakar?

What do your parents do? Where are they from?

Are you married?

Of course Americans also bounce through scripts, but it's rare you'll find the conversation I had with one respectfully employed American at the party, on the first talk with an Indian in Delhi.

Me: Oh so you visited Mumbai, I hear the city is so much fun!

The American: Yeh! On my first time there I went to a G-rated brothel.

Me: You went to a brothel? What?! Wait, what's a G-rated brothel!?!

The American: I know man! See you go in, and the girls line up with their backs to you, then they take turns turning around to smile at you. Then, they'll walk up to you to talk if they want.

Me: And you pay for this?

The American: Yeh, some guys get off on just the flirt!

Me: Wooooow...

The American guy's friend: Oh man, I totally forgot, we can go to a strip club in India! Man, let's go to a strip club!

Me: Hahahahahahah... so what are you guys doing here again?

The American: We just started a solar paneling business. It's our first couple weeks in India and we're excited to be here.

Ah, I love the smell of self-asserting irreverence and I-don't-give-a-hoot-what-you-think (as long as I'm not doing harm to the world), and especially at an election party...

Go-Bama!

Sex in the camel ride to Times of India

It was the second week ya'll...and I rode a camel to work!!

Camels aren't even indigenous to India. But a camel herder can spin a dazzling rupee offering magic camel rides, especially now during India's big holiday season.

Still, I was shocked to see the camel guys creep up behind us on my walk to work and instantly I felt riding one would be my closest chance to fulling my childhood dream of riding big bird...lol,



*SANY0016 from http://digitalindia.vox.com/

Elsa, the beautiful journalist joining me on the ride, is my Delhi crime buddy. When we roll together, we always get on top of things -- while trying to get to the bottom of others. Our handsome reporter diva Michelle shot the footage (which also includes a school of children racing out to gallop with us, and later, hitting fashion model poses with the camel playing backdrop!)

Elsa tells the hilarious story about the rattling ride at her sweet site Digital India.

Ah! And Later peeps, I'll have a whole talk about transporation in Delhi -- its the most diverse in the world I think, and it's deep ya'll, how people get around here.

;:)
--Malena

Sex in the Delhi Fashion Week -- OMG! India's 1st Black model

Dark skin is a curse in Indian society.

But tonight, the crowds attending Dheli Fashion week were put under the spell, and it was sexiest curse this country has seen.

Laimi, a twiggy, midnight-toned model from Namibia just made her second run on the catwalk as the first black woman to crunch the fashion carpet in a major fashion week in India.

And get this: her effortless pump down the runway was only outbeat by another black model, Millen, a Tanzanian Goddess. Watch them warm up for a set organized by the rock-n-roll Namibian Jan. When Laimi pulls out the smile -- you can see why she's put up front.



Laimi was prepping for a set designed by Tarun Tahiliani when we met. Confident about her first-ever status, Laimi talked about her hope for African girls. She wants to show them they can only assess their success once they've tried succeeding. For this, Laimi said she wants to be Africa's top model. And who can blame her. Her black-crystal stare could freeze a lot of competition. And it has.

Sitting with her, I felt the chill. Her beauty was so divinely composed, an adrogenous mirage.

But also, what really frosted our encounter was the feeling that I was looking in the mirror.

Like Liami -- I am a Black-to-India first.

I am the first black American journalist to work for the largest business paper in Asia.

And too often, it's easy to feel like I'm the only black woman in Delhi.

When Indians see me, they just don't stare. They imprint a tattoo of their curiosity on my body. The everyday Indian knows that Africans live in Delhi, but they don't work or communicate with these Africans.

Walking around Delhi, I feel like a visual-wiki for Indians, where they gain a quick glance at what black people are all about. So accordingly, I walk tall, erect, and hard.

Maybe that explains why Laimi and the South African model Millen performed so radiantly-- I mean so drastically better than the other models, that the catwalk looked more like a walk-off between Tyra Banks and her newbie understudies on America's Next Top Model.

Fittingly, the designer Tahiliani chose Liami and Millen to execute an exercise in futurism. India can't survive on the world market clinging to its most damning social signage: NO DARK PEOPLE ALLOWED.

Tahiliani is a balding, middle-aged designer but his perspective on color is neither balding or middle-aged.

Tahiliani said the privilege of lightness --and Indians' skin-whitening fetish --is all wrong.

What's fascinating about the fashion world is that it understands that to make a political point, you just can't trump the right notes.

You got to show bodies in action.

The challenge of India -- and this is across industries -- is how it'll embody, not just talk up, its claim to modernity and its call for equality.

This fashion week is the slickest progress I've seen since I got here.

Front-staging black models in bright, contrasting colors is not only daring, it could have been a career disaster here in India. The risk is a rare, but righteous one.

Yet and still, I am a tad skeptical.

A big part of me is tired of black bodies forming parts of political speech. I'm tired of us being used as symbols of this and that. As representations rather than representatives.

The talk I had with Liami was telling. So engrossed by her presence here, I doted on her symbolic value, the frame of her purpose here, and not the textures of her canvas.

When really, by the end, all I wanted to ask was...so, how do you like India?


****** PART 11 ****** For readers like Brittanie who are obsessed with Fashion *****

Delhi Fashion Week is a rebel splinter faction of India's Fashion Week, the 11-year-old event that features name-drop-able designers, but overall, fashion that hard appeals to India's sari sensibilities.

A sari is a traditional wrap around dress worn by women and of course, cross-dressers. I met one on the side of the road and he begged me for money.

Saris are utilitious outer-wear, but after seeing nearly every woman outside the office wear one, the sari wears thin on uniqueness and thick on India's obsession with tradition.

I haven't figured why --in their words-- a bunch of designers decided to form a separate coalition.

I'm working on this story.

--

COME BACK for VIDEO!!

Annnnd, for my extended talk on saris.