As I was involved into a Sunday afternoon lazy routine of reading "The Telegraph", the following excerpt from a similar titled feature was successful in sticking out in my mind:
"The Metro is not foreigner-friendly, either. A hush descends as soon as a phirang comes into the compartment. “I feel very conscious whenever I get on to a train. Nine out of 10 passengers will turn to look at me, measuring me up from head to toe,” complains Jennifer, a researcher living in the city for a year."
Source: "Entertainment", The Telegraph, Sunday, August 19, 2007.
Apparently, the "foreigner experience" has a common element, irrespective of time and place; I also have a tweaking suspicion that being of a particular gender assigns a similarity to it. Obviously, I didn't actually "learn" this small piece of truth from reading The Telegraph, but the tangible piece of news was reassuring and disheartening at the same time. Reassuring as I could see I am not alone; disheartening to see my place and place-men doing the same detestable thing..... even now when supposedly Calcutta has "changed".
Of course, I never expected "chivalry" from Calcutta men. If this sounds too objectionable, let me put it thus: I never expected and observed chivalry from men travelling in bus-es, auto-s and metro-s of Calcutta. This is because most of the male species were (and are) involved in extracting varying degrees of derivations from pleasures of travelling with women by touching them with whatever body part comes 'handy' (in true sense of the term...that is using body parts as hands); For example, toe fingers, shoe soles, elbows, love-handles...you could think of all sorts of body parts men would use to show they are dicks and what could be used in lieu of a dick......to touch a female wherever touchable.
Leching? yeah.....leching was there, but that was Level 1 of extracting derivations from pleasure. Most men grew up from Level 1.
So yeah...I was saying that I never expected nor observed any form of chivalry from Calcutta men. I'm sure most men wouldn't know what chivalry entails, let alone spell it.
Chivalry was something too pricey to ask for. Humane feelings were also in rare supply (even though we, Calcuttans, would like to brag about them).
Seats were seldom offered to pregnant women, from men; Or to senior citizens. These gestures comprised more of a scene in a public bus of Calcutta....but Metro was something else. Metro was Calcutta's pride in its supposedly stylish packaging, fast service and Bhadrolok clientèle. Metro signified a space where people left their class and class values (middle class values at that) with cold business and plain individuality of each to one's own.
The exception offered was the gaze. From men to women; from women to women; seldom...from women to men; and almost never from men to men;
Sharing some personal experience would make the above assertion less ambiguous.
When I was travelling with a plastered right hand in Calcutta Metro for almost a month in 1999....seldom was I offered a seat; of course I could manage without one, even with one working hand, but it was indeed amusing and interesting to see that men held to their seats as there was no tomorrow....with seats. Of all the offers of seats I could think of...it used to come from women and old gentlemen.
My plaster exhibited love from my friends: funny, serious, weird quotes, mushy sher-o-shayari's and whacky messages adorned my plaster from my adorable friends. In addition to being a female of 21, the plaster was also a piece of observation with an unfaltering gaze from men.
Women also used to read and oftentimes I would play with that gaze:- If I were standing and a woman was reading it, I would slightly move my hand at an angle where she would have to squint her eyes....even then she would move her head, squint her eye and keep on reading! And I would keep moving my hand....and watch the game! Satyi bangali poraku jaat!
I did not use to see any more reading however....certainly some persons used to carry newspaper rolled into a convenient size as they held on to their handrails and briefcases...but reading books and newspapers were not a common sight.
I think my plaster came as an oasis to these hapless passengers.
In fact, doing anything extra-ordinary got the metro passenger's attention, e.g, even listening to a harmless and status-less walkman. Unlike the Canadian experience, that walkman did not make the fellow passenger listen to the music played, but people would keep staring nonetheless at the little tool and the owner..... as they perhaps silently hailed me from doing this extra-ordinary thing. Sometimes me and one of my friend would share the musical experience, in that she would have one earphone and I, the another....and that would do the ultimate magical trick. NOTHING, nothing could take the eyes off us then. From men.
Which makes me wonder....are Calcuttans bored? So that anything that goes over the predictable gets their attention so instantly and holds their gaze so long? And is asking this question very non-calcuttan?? I was never bored when I was and am in Calcutta...even though we get used to monotonous routines of life there. Monotony exists in every city, but it seldom makes its citizens so bored as Calcuttans.
Therefore... what are the factors in operation here?
2 comments:
I have always been used to hearing
that calcutta as a city posseses some rare virtues, not to be found in other indian metros
Those are
1.intellectual level of the common people.
2. Overall respect for woman kind.
and I cant let you call them myths and go away with it
I can, safely, restrict the definition of intellect to developed reasoning abilties and the scholarly accrual of knowledge from external sources ,of which books and written material form a major part ( a very restricted definition , it might seem to some )
But then if a cynic asks why 'reading' is such a scarce sight in metros,we have to point out to him that calcuttans, as sensible people, avoid intellectual exertion while travelling.Repose is needed for pursuits of higher order, and motion of any kind destroys repose. That time could be well utilized for activities like studying human faces and plasters. Curiosity we must rememeber, forms an esential ingredient of the refective mind .
Now I will say nothing about your attempts to disprove the second assertion, and thus vilfy calcutta males except the fact that again motion plays an important role here
Public modes of transprt act as a grinder-mixer turning travellers like particles into a nameless formless sticky gel , where the law of observing and respecting boundaries simply breaks down.
( I can't be sarcastic about this,... this is a sorry state of affairs. I do not know of any male acquaintance who indulged in such acts and I also witnessed people rise to protest on such occassions
. sometimes these are not brought to notice....its a shame)
So you see overall, that its Calcutta in motion which is the problem. It might be because movements (not the political ones) are so alien to our nature that
even short trips, make us lose our inertia and fall back ( or stoop low)in shameless imbalance.
Can only wait for the redeeming push, dont expect it from the economic front, anyway.
-Riten.
@Riten
Thanks so much for reading this entry! Any consumption value is appreciated than none at all :-)
I just have two points in reciprocation to the issues raised by you:
1. Do the people who are involved in "scholarly accrual of knowledge" through reading books coincide with the subset that travels in a metro? Moreover, more than non-fiction and other scholarly learning aids, the general public, the common man prefers reading fiction.
Fiction written by Suchitra Bhattacharjee, Shirshendu and Sunil. Sunil and Shirshendu'r books are usually quite heavy to be carried around bags, leave alone to be enjoyed while people are moving.
And then, apart from Sunil's books an arguable question could be raised on the scholarly ingredient in the general Bengali books.
However, If I agree to your point of the Bengali cultural habit of enjoying reading in a repose, and acquiring scholarly knowledge SOMEHOW, even then, it is not clear how leching, staring and being selfish as far as holding on to seats and not offering them up to senior citizens, could be correlated with such scholarly minds!
Yes, some people do offer seats and are being nice, but my observation (and I can only speak for myself) has been that such offers usually come from college/university students. What happens when they grow up to middle-aged people?
2. You can never understand point #2 being a male. Moreover, do not expect that other male friends/acquaintances would come to you and brag about their "attempts", IF they ever engaged in that. This is nothing to be bragged about, though certainly a habit that is enjoyed by the practitioners.
A crowded mode of transport can well be a "grinder-mixer", but not a haven for sexual abuse. I've travelled in very, very crowded bus and trains in Calgary (where I live right now) and never, ever have I experienced unsolicited touching.
Ask any female friend living in Calcutta. Do a survey and you'll know the facts.:-)
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