My cousin, pursuing her Masters degree, lives in a PG accommodation in a posh sector of Noida. The other night her room-mate was not feeling well and they stepped out on a scooty to get the required medicine. It was around 10 pm that time. They caught the eye of a gang of guys hanging out in the market. Now these guys accosted them and offered “friendship”. The girls declined and the guys chased after them in their car saying, “we just wanna talk to you”. Luckily the market is near their home and they reached their destination before the guys could catch them and any untoward incident could happen.
She decided to reach out for help, spoke to a senior in college, whose father is in the UP police. But the advise she got shocked her. “If something happens, nobody is going to help you. Its election time in UP early next year and the instructions are not to register any molestation related FIRs. The authorities have been given a free hand to make sure that the girls keep quiet. If any girl insists on filing a report, use any means possible to threaten her and her family. No one will go after the boys. So just avoid going out at night.”
Shocking statement! The senior was probably just giving some practical advice but then I recalled UP Minister Azam Khan’s comment on the infamous Bulandshar gang rape some time back. To be precise in July this year, a family travelling from Noida to Bulandshahr at night, was stopped on the highway by an armed gang. They dragged the woman and her 14-year old daughter to the fields and raped them till wee hours of morning. Instead of condemning the incident and assuring the victim of swift justice, the Minister had said that the government needs to investigate whether this was a political conspiracy by its opponents.
The lives and rights of girls are so insignificant and miniscule in the larger scheme of things in our society. “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.” These words by African American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who belongs to Nigeria are so apt and so true for us in India.
Our boys are taught that libido is a male thing and they are allowed if not encouraged to have experience in the matters of bees and birds before they settle down for and with one girl. And girls… girls are not supposed to have libido at least not good girls.
They are taught that good girls safeguard their virginity till marriage and that their virginity is the most important gift that they can give their husbands. So really how is this supposed to work? All these boys who want to have the “experience”, where are they supposed to get the experience from and with whom?
Since the girls are supposed to hold on to their virginity, poor boys have no choice but to resort to forcing themselves upon unwilling girls, stalking them, raping them and in some cases even killing them for fear of getting caught.
Our culture teaches girls to cover their legs and arms and show as little skin as possible for the very sight of bare flesh can lead men astray and incite them to commit heinous crimes…crimes for which girls are responsible…cause it is the girls who showed off skin in the first place and asked for it, right?
The holy dip at Haridwar
I was truly amazed therefore when I had a chance to visit Haridwar and take a dip in the holy Ganges. No doubt the sheer, gushing waters of the mighty river as they swirl and twirl, bounded by cemented ghats on both sides is a magnificent sight in itself. If it were not for the number of Pandits who offer to help you donate offerings which could reach your ancestors in the heaven above, it would actually be peaceful to just sit and let the flowing Ganges take all your troubles, aches and problems away in its journey towards the plains.
Men and women of all ages – young, old and middle aged reach the ghat for a holy dip, to wash away all the sins (and start all over again with a clean slate). No one thinks anything about undressing and jumping into the river. Men in their undies and ladies in the bare minimum clothing bathe in the Ganges with gay abandon, without a hint of self-consciousness. Almost everybody is behaving like a little kid who gets an opportunity to bathe in the garden with a hose pipe. For somebody who does not have a religious bent of mind, there are a lot of wet bodies, boobs and bums on display, not all of them shapely but on display nevertheless.
If a foreigner were to start the journey to discover India from Haridwar, they might just get the idea that we Indians have a very open culture. They would see men and women bathing side by side and no discrimination in the form of separate ghats for women and men. Of course once the bathing is done and they step onto the roads of India, it would not take them much time to discover the dichotomy that exists in the Indian society.
