Why are you looking at me
Around a year back, while coming back home late one evening, I was groped by a man who immediately disappeared when I turned around in fright.
Too scared to say anything I ran home.
Another time I was followed home by another man. I quickly ducked into Shoppers Stop and called my dad to come and pick me up.
A third time I noticed a man openly gawking, turning back every two minutes to see where I was, gaping lewdly at my body.
I disappeared into a hospital, waiting for him to go before I dared to step out.
I've been groped in buses, whistled at while riding, been called everything from 'baby,' 'sweety,' 'lover,' and 'jaaneman.'
I kept silent.
Today I learnt how wrong, stupid, and dumb I was to submit to my fear.
While I stood with other women like me, while I stood at signals, looking men in the eye, daring them to look back at me, something strange happened.
Every man I looked at would NOT look at me. Every man whose eyes I met tryed to intimidate me, tried to supress me.
I din't back down.
And he would lower his eyes and go on his way.
It's only when we keep quiet, it's only when we show our fear that men continue: eve-teasing, street-harassment, their usual shenanigans. But when you look back at them, when you stare right back at them, they don't take it as an invitation, they don't think we're reciprocating.
They get the message. They get the vibes.
Back off!
All it takes is a little courage.
This audio clip says it all really.
(Blank Noise)
(X posted at Misfits)
Rather late, but I've been stewing about this for a while....
DMK won.
Spells the end of my respect for the tamilians.
And the Congress.
Over the past two years, ever since Congress became ruling party, I have been watching out for mistakes. I have never been a big fan of the Congress, I don't know why but I haven't. Everything is just too slick with them and most of the time I think they're cashing on to the advantage of having such greats like Nehru and others at the helm of the party in times gone.
However, I was reluctantly impressed with them. Their policies have been fair, to the most part and although it seems to me that Manmohan Singh is sticking too close to the Bush Administration, which pisses me off to no end, I still haven't found much to complain about.
Until now. DMK won because they promised color televisions to all those who don't have any. DMK won because they promised two acres of land to all the landless in Tamil Nadu. DMK won by bribing, coaxing and promising recklessly.
And the Congress backed them! In the first week after elections, Karunanidhi announced decrease in rice prices from 3.50 Rs to 2 Rs, costing the government crores of money. Other such decreases have already taken effect.
Isn't there something in the constitution which forbids tactics like this? Isn't there something there that disallows using bribes to get votes?
DMK has always been a rather unsavoury party. During last assembly elections, DMK party workers stole into polling booths late after everyone else was done with voting, and using the names of people who din't vote, they cast their votes for the DMK. And now they've done this. DOn't people have any sense?
I listened to Chidambaram defending the actions of the DMK and couldn't help feeling sick and disgusted!
On the other hand, Jayalalitha has once again been gaining my reluctant admiration. I know she's corrupt, I know she's ruthless. But she kept the state together. She handled post-tsunami TN admirably and I'll never forget the decree that every house in Chennai implement rain-water harvesting machines. That year, it din't just rain, it rained cats and dogs. Chennai's inafamous water problem became negligible.
Politics in this country is a dirty business. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother!
Another Announcement
The unseemly and ignominious death of Arth
Don't worry. I'm not off the website scene yet.
I'm now, officially, on the web atleast, a
Misfit.Which had Wordpress installed on it. JOY!
So. You can find me there from now on :D
Also here. But more there :)
Announcements
For those who have tried posting before but couldn't:
I have FINALLY enabled anonymous comments. So no more irritating rejoinders saying: anonymous posting not allowed.
:D
Antigone by Sophocles
I don’t know how many of you’ll have read the play Antigone, both the version by Sophocles and the one by Jean Anouilh. The story is about a young girl who perceives something which she believes is wrong and decides to make it right again, in spite all the risks she would have to take to do so. And at the end she dies, along with almost everyone else in the play, but that really isn’t the point here.
The point here is not about the story of Antigone per se, but of the ideology behind the play. In the past few months, in the middle of frantic rehearsals, endlessly repeating lines, unbelievable tension and worry, we took some time of to actually understand what the play is about. And it’s not about some girl wanting to bury her brother to give him eternal peace, but it’s about rebellion, the force of protest, sticking your tongue out at an authority gone completely to seed and this theme, this ideology has never been as important to us, the youth of the world, as it is now.
Because the world around us is crumbling. Governments are now nothing more than exalted edifices, built on the rather tenuous support of corruption, greed and hunger for power. And this is deep-seated, reaching far within the houses of power. And we know all this. We know what is happening around us. But we close our eyes and ears and go the opposite way, because it doesn’t concern us.
How many of us turn a blind eye against injustice? There are crimes happening all around us: rapes, murders, hate-crimes, racism. Women are still a mostly subjugated race; wife beating and female infanticide is still rampant. Politicians scramble greedily for power and we let them, we allow them to start unnecessary wars, to sign biased treaties, to spread false information. All this is happening right in front of us and we ignore it, safe in our own secure bubble of so-called happiness, because hey, it doesn’t affect us, does it?
Of course people are waking up. All around us are signs that people do care, people are trying to make a difference, however much they can. But how much can they achieve when the majority of the world does nothing to help them? How much can they do when you and I don’t even bother to appreciate them, let alone help them?
It’s because we’re so comfortable in our existences that we really couldn’t be bothered about the rest of the world. A half-way decent house, a steady flow of income, a loving spouse, two cute kids, that’s all a lot of us look for and that’s all is happiness for us. Once that is achieved and we have settled, we balk at uncertainty, balk at the thought of moving our sedentary bottoms and help someone else get as ‘good’ a life as us. And so we let things flow, to carry on the way it has always been because trying to change it would mean a complete shift of rhythm, a complete sea-change in our life pattern, something we are not willing to do.
Which is why a play like Antigone is so important for us living in the world of today. It teaches us to fight for what we believe in, to not fall into antiquated ways of thinking, to tear out the bubble-wrap which has isolated us from the world and to turn the world upside down, if that is what it takes to make that wrong a right.
And then we can sit back and watch as everything falls into place.
(A lot of this was discussed at an impromptu session with our director Mallika Prasad. It had quite a bit of influence on this piece, as anyone who was there will be able to testify. But it is important, especially today, and I thought by sharing this, others out there would be as influenced by these words as I was)
This piece was posted first at The Martini Lounge, a place where I do the weekly speak out column with another girl. Once it was taken down, I decided to put it here, which explains why it is so late, since the play was performed more than a month ago.
