Women.
I’ve been reading a lot of magazines and blogs lately and I came across many articles/sites on feminism. Jasmine’s Blank Noise Project, I must say, is worth more than just a visit here. All the fuss and the parliamentary drama about reservation for women in the parliament, has been as entertaining as thought-provoking. Tehelka featured an interview with Renuka Chowdhary, where her sentiments were voiced aloud when she said that women’s reservation is a ‘process of educating men.’ I, for one, think that the women’s reservation bill is completely baseless and the women who have what it takes to get elected to the parliament, eventually will. But the question is- how many of the already well-established women MPs have done anything for the women of this nation? The political party seems to influence our women MPs more than the actual issue itself.
Being the AP(=Aand Pakaav) guy as I am, I have a habit of getting into long conversations with the auto rajas of Namma Bengaluru. Roughly an hour ago we were stuck in a traffic jam and I noticed that the bikes ahead of us had young women riding them. On the right was a taxi driven by a woman and to the left another woman-driven car. The autowallah started cursing the traffic problem in Bengaluru and his fate of being an auto driver in a city like this, probably in hopes of asking for more money when I get down and actually getting it out of my sympathy towards him. His complaining did not end there :
Auto Raja : Saaaar…aenidu…..phullu hudgire gaadi bidtaa iddare eegeega….heegaadre namma deshada gati aenu saaaar?
Me : Hudgino Hudgano gaadige hege gottagatte annaa? Gaadige tondare illade iddaga namagyake tenshannu?
Auto Raja : Neeven hudgir supportarra? Ondu maat heltini keli : Nimma hudgina heege tirgadakke bidbedi saar. Namma brotherru kooda heege.Aeno computer kelsa madtaane. Hadinaaru saavira sambala baratte. Avana hendteegoo ashte barodu. Naanyake mane kelasa maadli anta keltale yamma. Aenulitu avana gandastana? Hengsige idu shobhe kodalla alva saaaar ? Nangoo eradu henn-makkalu iddare. Avaroo odbeku antare. Odstini no praablem aadre odi odi heege ( pointing to the women around us) aadre yaaru saar maduve aagovru?
Me : Maduve yaake beku saar ? Tamma kaala mele taavu nillabeka athava yaaro kudka gandana mane kelasa maadbeka?
Translation :
Auto Raja : Sir..What is this? Girls are driving all the vehicles these days. What will happen to our country if this continues?
Me: Why should we bother when the vehicles themselves don’t care if it’s a girl or not?
Auto Raja: Are you a supporter of girls? I’ll tell you one thing-don’t let your girl roam around like this. My brother is like this only. He does some computer-related work. Earns 16,000 a month. So does his wife. She says she alone shouldn’t do work around the house. What remains of my brother’s masculinity? I have two girl children too. They say they too want to study. I am ready to send them for education. But if they become like these girls(pointing to the women around) after studying, who will marry them?
Me: Why is marriage necessary? Do you want them to stand on their own feet or do chores in some drunk husband’s household?
Auto Raja: I don’t know all that. I know I am right. You will realize it too after a few years.
The blog entry on Saxicola Ruberta’s blog here got me thinking. As a young, educated (?) man, how am I a part of this huge problem? Does studying in a college of national repute mean we’re more civilized and understand this problem better? I beg to differ. The condition of girls in our college is common knowledge to any NITKian. Saxicola Ruberta’s article confirms that the problem exists in NIT, Surat too. The so called ‘open-mindedness’ that is supposed to have arrived with the IT revolution in Bengaluru seems to be limited to certain sections of the society. God knows how much of this ‘openness’ is actually equality.
Pucca Hindutva activists(the political stereotype) try to be pro-women when they stop the ‘exploitation’ of women like bar dancers and cheerleaders by ruining their means of livelihood, but come home to women in ghoongaths not allowed to go outside( I personally know many such people). Rape is ok. Molestation is not a problem. Eve-teasing is fun. But women earning their livelihood on their own will is a heinous act? What logic is that!
Traditional saree-clad women find it wrong when another woman wears the kind of clothes that they broadly classify as ‘jeans-tshirt.' It is a woman who teaches her daughter to worship her husband and serve him all her life. I know a case when a friend was ‘eve-teased’ by one of her family friends. The girl’s mother blamed the girl for wearing ‘t-shirt-jeans’ and asked her to avoid him while the father wanted to confront the person for saying the downright dirty things he did. The general mentality is that it is for the girl to avoid such things and it is in the nature of men to be like that.
As a man, I do feel like turning around and checking out the hot girl who just passed by. I know it is the same with my friends(a generalization, actually.Depends on the orientation). But knowing how she would feel, I choose not to turn. As a board in Bocha Grande in Koramangala says : "Use your conscience.Look. Dont Letch." Men should take responsibility and learn some public manners and stop blaming it on the girls’ dresses or their own ‘nature.’
Equality, I feel, should start at home. Parents should start treating the male child and the girl child equally. A mother should empower her daughter to stand up for herself in cases of misbehavior(and otherwise too) and give the necessary moral support. Boys should be taught to respect women for who they are and their fathers should set examples for them(many married men when with their wife and kids stare continuously at my women friends. Happens all the time!)
A few things you can do to start the process of change on a large scale :
1) When someone ‘eve-teases’ you, confront the man. Lynch the bastard in public. It is very insulting for a man when this happens.(check out Blank Noise Project's Action Heroes here)
2) Stop taking you-are-a-girl shit from your close ones. Particularly your mother.
3) Do you want your daughters to live in societies like this one, too? If you don’t, then get rid of the leave-it-yaar-it-is-common mentality and stand up for yourself. Be it your teachers, classmates, relatives or any passer-by on the street. People will not care about what happens to you unless you do. Such things will continue if you don’t protest.( A few of us offered to help a girl, a friend, when ‘something wrong’ happened with her and she refused saying she doesn’t want it to be big news. We can’t help it Ma’m if you don’t care about it yourself. It will happen again in the future when we won’t be around to help and everyone will know then that you won’t do anything about it.)
Revolutions don’t happen in the newspapers or on the television. If your life should change, you should be the one to start with. Trust me, there are enough sensible men alive in India today to support.
4) Ask your friends to read this blog entry and link me in your page ( just kidding ;) )
There's a long way to go.
Once again, kudos to Jasmine and group’s Blank Noise Project.
Back.
It's been almost a year that I wrote my last post.
A really long time, I know.
Somehow, a blog entry after a year feels like a big thing - not as much as new years or your birthday-but big enough to look back on the year spent and plan for life ahead.
To call last year an academic disaster would be an understatement. My liver and lungs were pitched against my father's will to send money to put them to test. Socially, I was reduced to the level of the company I kept, and eventually that started influencing the way I thought and lived.
But I feel this year has taught me a lot of lessons- about handling people, managing time, what to do and more importantly-what not to. For one, I found out who my real friends were. I do not wish to write more of the year ill-spent as I am already over it and I'm spending my time in a fruitful manner, or so to speak.
Now that I'm entering the final year of my professional course and 'placements' are around the corner, its high time I think of what I want out of life.
I dont want to be an engineer in the core sector. No. All the machinery and the dust make me sick. I wouldn't want to work in an IT company. The air-conditioned offices and tight schedules have almost the same aforementioned effect on me. I am good at numbers but I wouldn't want to spend my life looking up at boards, speculating.
All the above traditional career options for a fresh engineer are thus ruled out.
Should I study further, and if yes, what?
Write GATE and study at IISc? No. I can get a university in the US ten times better for ten times lesser effort. Masters abroad seems to be the right option given my research experience. but then again, the question boils down to 'do I really wanna do it?' and I don't seem to have any definite answer.
I'm too far behind in the CAT race or the rat race or whatever they call it, and moreover, not interested too.
Given my current fitness condition and past record, sports seem to be out of the question. Other exotic career options like Wildlife Photography and Film-Making seem difficult to start.
I feel a large number of us, if not all, at some point in our lives, stand at crossroads like this and ask ourself, as I now do ....
"What do I really want to do?"
