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I wrote this one for the magazine.
***
Beware men. The next time you step forward to protect your women friends from getting sexually molested, be ready to be stabbed repeatedly, all under full public eye. And women, you were never safe to begin with. Just that the few good men ready to lose a few teeth and bones to save you may well lose their lives next time. That’s what happened with Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez and which could happen to others too. While the gathered crowd stared in sick pleasure, they were stabbed with choppers after being beaten with sticks by 20 men, all for trying to protect their friends from getting ‘eve-teased’.
Eve-teased. Such a charming word carrying with it images of bold dandy roadside Romeos loudly complimenting every girl passing them. No? No. What happens is that a creepy guy in the bus pinches you and all that you can do is glare at him with teary eyes and not complain. Why’d you complain too? You were just ‘eve-teased’. Chalta hain. And even if someone came to your defense, the irony’d be that it’d be your protector who’d get lynched. And justly so. Eves’re supposed to be pinched by every Adam in the world. No one should and can change that. And that’s what Reuben and Keenan learnt that night. The crowd watching them already knew that lesson. Why else’d they not come forward to help the young men while their friends kept on screaming for help. You can blame the ‘Bystander Effect’ for that. But we all know the truth.
The fact that it happened in ‘The Most Safest Indian City For Women’, Bombay (excuze moi, M. Thackeray) must be a pointer to the state of the world we live in. And no Delhiwalo, you may not rejoice that at last, some dirt got on the Mumbaikars too. We all know how safe you all’re from each other. If it happened in some remote outskirts of the big city, then it could’ve been blamed on the remoteness of the place, the very immorality and imprudence of boys and girls roaming around in secluded places. Then the whole of the city in particular and the nation in general could’ve gasped in collective self righteous horror.
Only this time those immoral, Americanised youngsters were out for a simple dinner at the restaurant they’ve always frequented, in a place very public. At the end of the night, two of those youngsters ended up dead, three sexually molested (oh be done with ‘Eve-teasing’ for Eve’s sake) and two others injured.
We live in a world with no heroes. No one to guard our backs. The sky isn’t going to throw up a caped vigilante to save us anytime soon. When you don’t care whether the other guy’s girlfriend gets molested or the guy gets killed, then you can scream all that you want the time you get screwed, no one is going to give you a second look. What happened to the friends that night shows our cities and their people at their worst. And the possibility of the worst becoming the norm is positively scaring.
***
Beware men. The next time you step forward to protect your women friends from getting sexually molested, be ready to be stabbed repeatedly, all under full public eye. And women, you were never safe to begin with. Just that the few good men ready to lose a few teeth and bones to save you may well lose their lives next time. That’s what happened with Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez and which could happen to others too. While the gathered crowd stared in sick pleasure, they were stabbed with choppers after being beaten with sticks by 20 men, all for trying to protect their friends from getting ‘eve-teased’.
Eve-teased. Such a charming word carrying with it images of bold dandy roadside Romeos loudly complimenting every girl passing them. No? No. What happens is that a creepy guy in the bus pinches you and all that you can do is glare at him with teary eyes and not complain. Why’d you complain too? You were just ‘eve-teased’. Chalta hain. And even if someone came to your defense, the irony’d be that it’d be your protector who’d get lynched. And justly so. Eves’re supposed to be pinched by every Adam in the world. No one should and can change that. And that’s what Reuben and Keenan learnt that night. The crowd watching them already knew that lesson. Why else’d they not come forward to help the young men while their friends kept on screaming for help. You can blame the ‘Bystander Effect’ for that. But we all know the truth.
The fact that it happened in ‘The Most Safest Indian City For Women’, Bombay (excuze moi, M. Thackeray) must be a pointer to the state of the world we live in. And no Delhiwalo, you may not rejoice that at last, some dirt got on the Mumbaikars too. We all know how safe you all’re from each other. If it happened in some remote outskirts of the big city, then it could’ve been blamed on the remoteness of the place, the very immorality and imprudence of boys and girls roaming around in secluded places. Then the whole of the city in particular and the nation in general could’ve gasped in collective self righteous horror.
Only this time those immoral, Americanised youngsters were out for a simple dinner at the restaurant they’ve always frequented, in a place very public. At the end of the night, two of those youngsters ended up dead, three sexually molested (oh be done with ‘Eve-teasing’ for Eve’s sake) and two others injured.
We live in a world with no heroes. No one to guard our backs. The sky isn’t going to throw up a caped vigilante to save us anytime soon. When you don’t care whether the other guy’s girlfriend gets molested or the guy gets killed, then you can scream all that you want the time you get screwed, no one is going to give you a second look. What happened to the friends that night shows our cities and their people at their worst. And the possibility of the worst becoming the norm is positively scaring.
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Yes, as the title says, the magazine's launched! And I'm a bit late in announcing this here. But whatever. Compiling that one issue broke my back into a million pieces. But at the end of the day, it was more than worth the pain. :)
Take a look. Or look here if you're unable to open the flash based site.
Take a look. Or look here if you're unable to open the flash based site.
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Yes, I, along with another friend, am starting an online magazine!
Here's the bandwidth heavy version and the low-bandwidth version.
And if you were wondering, the name's 'Renaissance 21'.
Do send in your contributions by 20th October for the inaugurative November issue to mailtoeditors@gmail.com! Visit the links for more details.
Yes, I, along with another friend, am starting an online magazine!
Here's the bandwidth heavy version and the low-bandwidth version.
And if you were wondering, the name's 'Renaissance 21'.
Do send in your contributions by 20th October for the inaugurative November issue to mailtoeditors@gmail.com! Visit the links for more details.
8
Its long since anything's been posted here. A good many things happened in between too. For starters, I finally moved out of my nest. To a bigger city, free of the confines synonymous with small town life. To the state capital. And as evil omens go(READ: rains, rains and more rains. Oh, also an influenza epidemic at cousin's house where we lodged up), life almost began on the wrong foot in the Capital. A PG cum dungeon reminding one of Charles Dickens was in store, along with ace characters as fellow cellmates. A nosey cookwoman and the 9 year old irritating mass of bones whom she acknowledged as her son, who also is the youngest pervert known to my existence. A calculating, cunning, evil giant pretending to be human acted as our warden who was never there in the PG anyway. A ghost fearing recent convert to Brahminism who doesn't believe in Evolution and Darwin, chats with Khuda through meditation and studies law at the University. Huh. The 'Rendezvous With Weirdness' stories'll need a separate volume of their own. The saving graces were the friends one got to make there. F, A, M, T, R, B, V. Those're the faces I'd miss.
The Dungeon
The empty left side was my part of the cell
Good news is that the jail was violated mercilessly and yours truely managed to escape, along with two other friends, after much dramebaazi and ado. Now we haunt at a flat with a clean bathroom and ample space and privacy. And good food. And the reason as to why this post seems rushed, well it is rushed. No 24x7 net connectivity like before.
The new flat
View from the terrace
View from the terrace
Life in the big city is good. No Big City Blues for this staunch supporter of (moderate) materialism. The kishmish on the payesh're the fabulous bookshops, which the mothertown miserably failed to provide. And what I loved even more was my eureka moment of discovery of the secondhand bookshops. Secondhand bookshops exist in reality! And not only that, but a whole locality filled with such shops!
*insert smalltowner gawping emoticon*
Okay, I forgot to photograph all the good books in the excitement
The staircase we've to climb to get to our coaching centre
when the lift refuses to work, which is often
My life completed its first 19th years sometime back too. The first birthday away from the parents. Also the night after was the first time the offerings of the barley and the vineyard were partaken with kinsmen (and a woman), with Nirvana as the background score of choice. Even later at the night, I also discovered that my prejudice against smoking didn't hold true under the effect of sufficient daru.
Am I happy? I don't know for sure. What I know? I miss my parents. My bed. My cancerous computer. The friends, rivals and soulmates. All those people I liked having around. Nahaz and its overpriced fried junk goodness. Jhalupara and its irreplacable momos. The legendary addas. I'm not homesick and dying, but the yearn is still strong. Like they say, all good things come to an end. Must come to an end.
And the choco-crusher at KFC
The Dungeon
The empty left side was my part of the cell
Good news is that the jail was violated mercilessly and yours truely managed to escape, along with two other friends, after much dramebaazi and ado. Now we haunt at a flat with a clean bathroom and ample space and privacy. And good food. And the reason as to why this post seems rushed, well it is rushed. No 24x7 net connectivity like before.
The new flat
View from the terrace
View from the terrace
Life in the big city is good. No Big City Blues for this staunch supporter of (moderate) materialism. The kishmish on the payesh're the fabulous bookshops, which the mothertown miserably failed to provide. And what I loved even more was my eureka moment of discovery of the secondhand bookshops. Secondhand bookshops exist in reality! And not only that, but a whole locality filled with such shops!
*insert smalltowner gawping emoticon*
Okay, I forgot to photograph all the good books in the excitement
The staircase we've to climb to get to our coaching centre
when the lift refuses to work, which is often
My life completed its first 19th years sometime back too. The first birthday away from the parents. Also the night after was the first time the offerings of the barley and the vineyard were partaken with kinsmen (and a woman), with Nirvana as the background score of choice. Even later at the night, I also discovered that my prejudice against smoking didn't hold true under the effect of sufficient daru.
Am I happy? I don't know for sure. What I know? I miss my parents. My bed. My cancerous computer. The friends, rivals and soulmates. All those people I liked having around. Nahaz and its overpriced fried junk goodness. Jhalupara and its irreplacable momos. The legendary addas. I'm not homesick and dying, but the yearn is still strong. Like they say, all good things come to an end. Must come to an end.
But some good things remain the same, like my rockstar nephew
And the choco-crusher at KFC
