Bum to
crotch, crotch to crotch, bum to bum, crotch to shoulder, hip to crotch, crotch
to ear, and all those other unimaginably incredulous permutations and
combinations are a routine flavour for everyone on the go in a DTC on a typical
day in delhi. For their insidious pleasures, the voyeuristic fluency of their
minds, or the cheap thrills of ego boosts and adrenaline rushes of the perverse
kind, the average man from delhi will be the man from delhi and for the very
same reason, the delhi woman will be the quintessential woman from delhi.
For if
equations were to change, wouldn’t the possibilities post the same be a life
difficult to imagine! As a girl child growing up in a Bengali family, i was
always protected from the delhi that was out there. I lived, in the delhi of my
imagination. And oh my, it really was amazing to wallow in its wonders till one
fine morning, on my way to college in South campus; i saw road rage at its
best.
The DND
flyway had just opened up and it was obvious that the delhiite’s demand for
decent infrastructure had just begun to be answered. As a testimonial to that
fact, it was packed choc a bloc that morning. However, our dear delhi man had
found a way to display his angst even in the middle of this involuntary
gathering. And with the bumper sticker backups of jat is king, the site seemed
no less than an impromptu akhada. A spectacle to behold even as they undressed
each other in furious attempts at ripping apart each other’s underwear which
were of course completely successful for the fear of being proven the lesser
mortal on those grounds.
That
morning, on the flyway where no one was exactly flying, let alone moving, everyone
got ten concentrated minutes of gawking at the scene, and some even cheered, of
course not without taking sides. Our men had also found a great excuse to let
their egos consume their itineraries for the day. Of course there were
appropriate bruises to show the authorities they were accountable to, that is,
if they did consider them authority at all.
However, in
all those years of overhearing the regular behenchod maachod, there, and
everywhere - my senses evolved in all crookedness. The remembered Delhi of
Sunday mornings spent in a middle class neighbourhood in East Delhi remained
intact while the lived ‘Dilli’ grew on me. As a woman, i was made uncomfortably
aware of the seven o’ clock curfew, like i was living in a strife torn area. But
my journalistic beginnings kept me out till late. Ultimately, my parents gave
up on trying to maintain a curfew and just kept calling me an alarming number
of times in a day. In those times when i reached places like Vaishali at 12 or
1 on a few days, i just had a strange spiritual conviction that nothing would
happen and nothing did. I was not followed, teased, and rape was a far cry. But
the strong realisation that i was roaming the streets of this city with these
‘terms’ in my backpack was enough to send me back home at a ‘decent’ time. I
accepted my paralysed existence. The issue was, that given a choice between
exploring the city and staying home, i was afraid that i would, in time, fall
in love with the latter.
While this
was the case, among a majority of us, on this side of the gender divide. The
grass was undoubtedly greener, stronger, and abounding with strength and vigour
on the other side. While we packed up for the day at 7, the men were just
beginning their plans. And while those who had boyfriends and brothers were
very fortunate, a lot of us cursed our sibling-less existence or just resigned
to our fate, hiding in chocolates, family time, or books. Though a few of us,
did manage to slip out for late night parties in the company of reasonably
responsible men and the other lot of us thought we knew better than that; all
of us who lived in delhi in those years can vouch for the fact that things
seemed better back then. For we were to see, what we would probably term ‘worse’
in the years that followed.
In the times
that ensued, I and a few other friends moved to cities like Mumbai, and
Ahmedabad. We breathed in a fearless existence, staying out nights to quench
our thirst from deprived years, even if it meant waiting alone for a local on a
platform. We could embrace our sexuality freely, feel less masculine, and the
unnecessary ruggedness disappeared from our personae in time.
But most of
us left our parents, or what was the paternal or maternal ‘home’, back in
Delhi. And somewhere down the line, the pull was inevitable. And so we
gravitated back, more ‘woman’ than we were before. It felt ‘normal’, like we
were finally breathing. We got back to Delhi, and were happy to note that the
patrolling rounds were more frequent and we could see a larger deployment of
police personnel on the roads. However, the fact that we had worn out a bit of
our hardiness made our re-synthesis with the city a bit turbulent. Our body
language on delhi roads was unconsciously different from what it used to be. We
embraced a less alert, happier gait in no time. The metro made me feel safer, but
those of us who could drive cars, did so.
On one of
these happy evenings, as i sat in India Habitat centre with a friend at
sundown, chomping away on momos, we gladly lost track of time. Catching up on
almost three years worth of experiences, the clock struck eight and she piped
up cutting a great evening short. “My god! ...Its eight! we have to head home
now”. Sadly, the evening lost most of its charm as we called it a day and cooed
to each other on our way to the auto about how we should meet very soon. As she
stepped into the good old hari peelee, happily settling for somewhere close to
the obnoxious fare demands of the autowallah, i said goodbye and decided to
settle for one of my favourite walks in Delhi.
The two or
so kilometre stretch from Habitat to the Khan Market metro station is one of my
favourite stretches in the city, apart from the ridge area around North Campus.
The evenings always seem nostalgic there. That was my claim to holding it so
dear. However, on that day, five minutes after i crossed the India
International Centre bus stop, i realised that i was being followed. Looking
back to confirm, i overheard these two men commenting loudly about my gait and
other details. As Khan Market drew nearer, i increased my pace and crossed the
road more than thrice. But it was not before i entered the market premises, and
lost them in the crowd, that i sighed with relief. However, for the first time
in twenty odd years of being in Delhi, had i felt that surge of panic in myself.
A few hours before, i had heard a friend recounting a horrific story about a
common friend who was dragged out of her car in front of Akshardham temple in
the early morning hours of a usual weekday, and beaten black and blue by a man
with the city traffic rushing past them. All that the police personnel nearby
could do was to plead the man to spare her. The justification that was given to
her was of the order that this man happened to be holding a reputable position
in a national bank. The incident was followed up by several calls made to our friends
in the media, resulting in coverage by the print media. The perpetrator was
jailed, post which he managed to get a bail. However, he was imprisoned a
second time following a strict scrutiny of legal proceedings by the victim.
Between then
and now, a considerable amount of time has morphed into indifference. A state
of silent mourning, as i see it. My friend is driving her car to work again,
and i am more cautious. I have even begun to think twice about wearing what i
usually would, in a city like Mumbai. The Delhi police and their alter egos are
on the prowl. One can’t be sure of which one to be more afraid of or of which
is which. Amidst the delirium, Delhi women seem to know, that ‘Two is better
than One’ and Gurgaon has posters and protests alike. In hope of a ‘someday’,
they rest their cases in the comfort of their homes, conventions, and the arms
of delhi men they know will protect them.
The larger
question, however, remains ‘how do we define belonging?’ and when it comes to
that. Do we belong to a city or a space at all? And what gives us the right to
belong? The Oxford dictionary puts down the definition of belonging in three
ways
·
3 [with adverbial of place] (of a thing) be rightly placed
in a specified position
¹Though, what we know belonging to be, as individuals, or as
men and women, completely depends upon how we build a ‘place’ into a ‘space’ in
our imagination full of an accumulated sense of attachments and sentiments by
means of everyday practices. We develop our belonging
or attachment for a place on the basis of our spatial knowledge of the
environment as well.
Growing up
as women in delhi, we were mostly witness to supervised visits with our parents
to sights and sounds in the city, that were relevant to the family. While
conditioning was meant to be internalised by both the sexes, it worked that way
only for the other half of us. The agency which would enable us to belong to
the city faded away because we grew afraid to explore it beyond our fears.
While the boys from our teenage days, and the men from our youth gallivanted or
rode across on their bikes, and often made gifts of their visions of the city
to their pillion rider of a girlfriend. We scurried away into our cocoons of
ideas of Delhi by a safe time under the sun. We saw the city of the day and
remained happy with our memories. And on a day or two, when we were stuck
outside at an ‘indecent’ time, caught in palpable throes of distress (mostly in
our imagination) and our thoughts ran amok in the middle of nowhere, we called
up everybody we knew to find the nearest shelter we could escape to for the
night. A crisis, a love affair, and paranoia. But mostly, a man. That is Delhi.
And the rest
is determined by the fact that whether belonging, is at all, a choice anymore?
1.
Reference
to ‘Gender and the City: The different formations of belonging- Tovi Fenster’
No comments:
Post a Comment