well a couple of days back , i was travelling in the metro and as usual the same journey is always so boring . as it goes underground so there is nothing of the outside world to see. just keep looking at the crowd rushing in and out of the train , at every station. well somtimes i am lucky enough to have a book with me , to read for those 20 minutes of the journey. a couple days back as i was just trying to get comfortable at my seat , i saw this lady sitting in front of me . she was not the most beautiful that i had seen , nor did she do something as such. she was just sitting relaxed , maybe thinking about something, unarguably she is elder to me. i was staring at her and at times she was staring at me . ofcourse not many faces were ther in the compartmen tto look at. maybe we cud have had a long chat but there was somthing that was not allowing us to talk . but we didnt have one. now why is there a "but" here ? what is the rational behinfd it ?
all of a sudden a thought struck my mind , that i dunno y i just wanted to talk to her. and then started a big argument in my mind that , why cant we just go on to talk ith strangers , specially of opposite sex and generally why does the term opposite sex come between two people. it just kept coming to me everytime i had nothing to do in the past 2 days. i thought that well may be the opp. sex thing comes from the fact that the way guys and gals grow up is quite different and thus one always considers that the other sex is not gonna talk take thing the same way as i do . well pondering over it again i think that this a bigger problem in Indian society. as a child in india a small kid is always reminded about their gender and thus the fact that they should act accordingly in public.
a boy is said that there are certain things that are girlie and thus shud not be done by him. and then ther is this usual talking between his mother and her friends, neighbourhood housewives, and they too are talking about the customes and taboos that are lumped on the Indian women in the society. and thus this is the picture that sets in a boys mind . he is always made tro be felt superior to girls and thus gradually starts to have an inferriority feeling towards females. they are taught that they are the main member of the family as they have to bear the burden of running the household in the future . they are never allowed to do household work while their female siblings do so.
as for girls well they do live a life subdued by their male siblings . I needn't hesitate even a little to say how much India hates their girl child . i suppose that the number of female foeticide case must be the largest in India . (way to go India , i just hope that the generation of today gets out of this sick practice.) . they are taught to do household work and , are seldom to excel in studies or rather in anything that generally men do(atleast are traditionally done by males in India) . so this is how it all starts and that too dosent seem to have a rartional behind them.
now quite often do i hear my mother and my elder sister talking about people they meet and observing them and trying to interpret evry small action or words sais. their funda is that girls have to be more observant in all the places. i usually give a damn to all this talks and generally keep myself busy with something else , but what i read in quite a few blogs associated with the The Blank Noise Project blogathon -- issue on eveteasing has given me a new light into this matter. like there are quite a few female bloggers that have written a about there experiences in public and thus it really comes as a surprise to me that how can some men be so shameless , or how dumb do they expect women to be that they would not understand what is going around. or else how confidant they are that they will get away with it coz the lady wudnt dare to make a noise. during the course i also realised that how a lady wud feel when guys stare at her for no reason , like when i am with my groups of friends , well most of them i seeare staring at girls passing by. i always thought that what a wierd timepass they have , but now i realise that maybe it is not just wierd , but it cud be something more disgusting that might be going through their minds.
eve teasing is an issue and not just an issue but a big question mark over what men want. like common let me tell you something . i joined this yahoo group a few days back and they were discussing the possibility that prostitution be legalised in India on the basis that this wud help people satisfy their sexual need and wud reduce extra-maritial affairs and also rape cases in India . well my reaction to it is simple that if a noation with the second highest population in the world is feeling sexually deprived then there is certainly some soul searching to be done.
case study:
The actions of a few...
This incident happened a couple of months ago to a young German friend of mine.
Nat, as I call her, was pursuing a course in Management in Europe and as part of her course stipulations was required to work on a Live project with some corporate. Thats what bought to her India and my company and that was how we met.
Now during her stay in Mumbai, she was put up at the company guesthouse - a flat in South Mumbai - and that was where this ridiculous incident happened.
One morning someone rang her doorbell and left a note behind.
Scrawled on the note was the following proposition -
"Would you like to have sex with me?"
The note was thrown was promptly crumpled and thrown away...but only to replaced the next morning by another.
"Would you like to have Oral sex?"
The second note found itself consigned to the same fate as the first but the pervert was not one to be easily dissuaded and the next morning...
"Just write YES or NO and leave the note outside"
The culprit turned out to be a young 18 or 19 year old guy living next door and was caught red handed as he rang the bell the next morning to deliver yet another note.
White skin must be easy...perhaps thats what the guy thought.
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This is not a collection of X-rated stories and nor will any portion of it titillate you.
Why am I writing this...even I have no clue......these are just things that happened to me.
Perhaps the title is a gimmick or maybe it is not......read this entry and you could decide for yourself.
The City of Angels
It was a boring Monday morning and I was making my way to office.
There was a light drizzle and since I did not particularly relish the thought of getting to office soaking wet, I was forced to take the sheltered route of the shaded promenade that abutted the road.
The whole path was lined with vendors and hawkers peddling everything from postcards to high-end electronics. In fact I had even heard rumors that if you knew the right place you could even find such exotic products as a "libido enhancing chewing gum" or even the Spanish Fly. Now since I did not feel a particularly pressing need for any of these I continued to dodge my way through the crowds.
As I walked on, I noticed these young men standing at the sidelines, eyes keenly watching each and every person passing by. One of them caught my glance and for a moment our eyes locked. A twinkle appeared in his eyes.
"Shit!", I told myself, "Big mistake!"
The guy sidled up to me, even as I walked on ignoring his presence, and began to throw a flurry of words at me
"Sir.....CDs....Sex.....Blue film.....triple X...."
I turned around and looked at him with an expression of disgust that said "Hey you just desecrated my carefully preserved piety", and walked away.
A little distance away I found another peddler with a customer. A nervous middle-aged man nervously inspecting the stack of cds presented to him, his eyes constantly shifting to see if someone was watching his shady transaction.
I remembered something I had seen on a news channel recently. The issue being discussed was the free availability of porn and the police's attempts at controlling it. The presenter raved and ranted about how porn was destroying the Indian culture and corrupting the youth.
“It was strange”, I thought to myself as I watched the peddler and his customer...... “if people did not want to see this kind of stuff how come there were so many people selling them in the first place.”
Maybe before we look at issues of “immorality” and “corruption of society” we need to accept the fact that we are a sex-starved nation, repressed by the taboo associated with the word "sex".
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The Man inside the cage
I was perhaps in my 6th or seventh grade when this incident happened.
My skills in math had always been a matter of concern to my parents and perhaps the reason, why each afternoon I would find myself grumpily trudging for extra tuitions.
On one such afternoon as I was walking down the road, I heard someone beckoning to me. It was hot and the street was empty. I looked around and saw a man waving to me from the balcony of ground floor apartment.
I thought the man needed some help....perhaps something that he needed to fetch. So like the helpful young boy I went up to him. I could not see the man clearly as the room seemed dark from outside and besides he stood behind iron grills. I came close and asked him how I could help him.
But the next thing I knew, my hand was being pulled inside the grill and stroked against something (yuck!). And as he did so he asked me to come inside his place. His dirty disgusting voice still rings clear in my head.
I was terrified.....and pulled my hand free and ran out of his disgusting presence….
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What they did not know
He was quite a known figure at school and also I guess in the local community.
Frequently he was found outside the school doing some odd job or the other. Most mornings he would place himself on the school road regulating traffic and ensuring that the kids got themselves around safely.
But few knew that the man had a penchant for young boys.
And one of his faves was a good friend of mine.
He tried every trick in the book to lure him...
"I got a stack of porn magazines at home.....why don’t you come home and I could show them to you"
"....there is this spot on my terrace from where you can see a woman bathing...."
Fortunately for my friend....better sense prevailed.
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The Boy upstairs
The flat above my house was an empty one and the owners would perpetually give the flat out for rent to some family or the other.
And every time a new family would arrive I would watch with great interest to see if there was some cute girl around.
But alas most of the times this exercise ended in disappointment.
Anyways so once the flat came to be occupied by a family of three including their son who was about a year or two younger to me.
The boy and me kind of became friends.
His family belonged to a religious community that was known for its rigorous practices and code of conduct. The killing of any living being even an insect was considered a sin. So much so that the boy would never step into my kitchen because we cooked meat. In fact this was his first time hanging out with someone who was outside his religion. And his parents encouraged him to spend time with me because they felt it would help improve his broken English.
Anyways one morning while he was hanging around my place he came across a pic of a rather skimpily dressed model in a magazine. Immediately he began to complain about how disgusted he was about what he just saw.
I found his attitude rather strange and a little too prudish for his age, but I shrugged it off.
But in the days that came I would actually find him almost searching out pics and telling me how skimpily dressed the models or females were.
At first the tone was lamenting but soon enough there was a tinge of unabashed appreciation. And then before I knew it.....it seemed his only purpose in life was to very gleefully find sexy pics to show me and talk about them.
In fact once I remember him calling out to me from the window of his house. I went to my balcony and looked up with disbelief as he flashed some pic he had been "lucky" enough to find in one of the newspapers that came to his place.
Was he a pervert......I guess not.....perhaps it was just the craze of the fact that he could actually express himself on something that was completely taboo in his community.
The boy and his family moved on as did most of the tenants who came by.
The last I heard of him.....his parents were planning to change his name by adding an extra "e" or an "i" to better his fortunes in life.
Who knows…..
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the above are all extracts from the blog of alex . alas he is not blogging for a monthe now or else i wud have liked to read his take on this subject.
clearly as a guy when i write on this issue it boggles my mind that how so many men (ofcourse there are so many of them , which is why so many case can be seen written in the blog-o-sphere) thinkand behave in such a manner . eve-teasing is just a prelude to greiver crimes like rape and molestation. how can man be so inhumane to destroy a girls whole life(especially in India with si many social taboos) just for satisfying his lusty desires . what does he get , just a few momnets of fantasy and for that he is ready to completely ruin a life , someone who is more potent of delivering for the society(ofcousre with such sheap thoughts a guys can be called mentally stable).
now when i think of the fact that i was staring at that lady in the train it just makes me feel sick that how cud i do such a thing and how much uncomfortable i cud have made her feel...
now i would take the oppertunity to wish each and every women a proud international womens day , and would like to tell them how much i admire them for how they live with dignity even when such practices carry on around them. i really feel sorry for whatever happens around and pledge to take evasive action against whosoever I find misbehaving with women.(finally i find myself understanding enough to decide what should be done when).
blog-a-thon 2006
