Changing society – A man’s perspective

Over the last 1 year, we have seen a lot of concern in the country over security of our women. Cases of atrocities against women coming to light almost every day and getting extensive media coverage. We have seen candle marches and demonstrations of solidarity with women of our country. All this in a country which made sati a norm, is a refreshing sign, a sign of changing times. But on 16^th December, all Hindi news channels had shows asking if Delhi has changed and is more secure than a year before. Surprisingly, all of them concluded that not much has changed in Delhi. Then what is it that has actually changed?

When I went for a concert a week back, I stood in line for 2 hours to make sure I get to stand right in front in the audience. And I achieved that too. Half an hour into the concert, a girl approached me from behind and said “Excuse me, I can’t see a thing please move aside”. A gentle request in a jam packed place. I politely responded saying “There is hardly any place for me to move ma’am”. Then came her sharp reply “Dude I can’t see, MOVE!” This time, it was an order. And all I could do was just push back and allow her to go ahead. Then, her friend. And another friend. And in no time, I moved from 2^nd row to about 8^th. So much for all the effort in getting in line 2 hours in advance, braving the heat and moving in early!

In another incident, a friend of mine stood in a queue for an hour to get in to a talk by a Bollywood superstar. The queue happened to extend to hundreds of meters with over a thousand people in it. To his surprise, after an hour, the organizers asked the girls to move out and make another queue and that queue was allowed entry much earlier than the male queue. Girls who came into the queue an hour after my poor friend got in before him. On inquiring, he was told that one of the girls complained about a lot of “pushing” going on in the queue which made them feel uncomfortable. My friend later swore to me that there was absolutely nothing of that sort going on! But nothing would make the organizers agree to that fact!

THAT is what has changed in the past year! There is fear today amongst guys like me in confronting a girl no matter how right we are or how wrong the girl is. We fear because it may just lead to the next big controversy about women exploitation and no self respecting man wants to be seen as male chauvinist. This leads to an undue advantage to girls, “some” of whom exploit it to their benefit.

Our laws are getting stricter in favour of women which is a good thing as long as they do not put innocent men at a disadvantage. I do not know if the recent changes in our laws have put men at a disadvantage but it certainly has created a sense of fear in men. Fear in men wanting to do wrong to a woman is what we should attempt to create but fear in all men? We recently heard Mr. Farooq Abdullah saying that he fears keeping a female secretary. Unfortunately that is what we have managed to achieve!

Look at it this way. If a girl accuses you of exploitation of a physical nature, what defense do you have to prove your innocence? Before you can even try and prove yourself not guilty in the court of law, the society and the media would have already branded you guilty and barred you from all social interaction. How would you face your friends and relatives and neighbors? The media today tends to blow up every little case of women exploitation on just a complaint of the “victim” with little care for the court’s verdict. Once accused, you are assumed to be guilty without any doubt! And by the time you do manage to prove your innocence in court (if at all the law has provisions which may help you), thanks to our legal structure half your life is already over!

At this point I would like to clarify that I do not justify or support any atrocities against women and am totally against all men who indulge in women harassment of any nature. I am also in favor of strict action against such men and better laws which help protect our women. My concern here is the nature of the change that our society is going through. We are slowly moving towards a more conservative and a closed social structure rather than a structure where men and women are at par, interact freely and without fear of any nature on either side. In a society where we talk of gender equality, is this change a good one? And whom should we blame for this state today? In fact can I call it a “state” at all? May be not because it is just a small section of men who would feel this way today and the larger section of society sadly, is still oppressive towards women. But if this does become the norm in the future, would we have succeeded in our motive of building a society which is not biased towards any gender?

Of cattle class travel and the masses of India

Woke up at 5AM for the 1st time this holiday to travel to Indore to meet some uncles I hadn't met in years. With temperatures at 8 degrees and a 6:30 train to catch, this was one difficult morning! As is the custom with me these days, I reached station seconds before the train departure time. But luckily, the train today was running late, thank fog for that because I had to still buy a ticket! Now I had never travelled general category which may be regarded as the "cattle class" of Indian railways and since this was a short 3 hour journey, I decided to take a chance. Life is nothing but a mix of experiences and I expected this one to be a hell of an experience!

So with the ticket secured, I was all set for the journey and waiting for the train which decided to show up only at 7! In the meanwhile, a man known to dad approached him and started off a conversation. He took stock of me and the rest of my family and gave us some uninvited gyaan about his family. I've always felt that such experiences where you get in contact with the masses offer a great insight into the society we live in and these journeys to and back from Indore were no different. And that is exactly what I had signed up for! For example, this gentleman of ours told us "mera bada beta pehle yahaan 8000 ki naukri kar raha tha ab Dilli mein 28000 pe hai, khush hai". Or "Saab 20 saal aur 200 crore ke ghotalo ke baad ab jaakar apne vidhaayak ji ka tod aaya hai" implying that the corrupt incumbent MLA finally lost. Or "samaaj ke Marriage fair mein jaa raha hun Saab, bade bete ke liye koi khaate peete khaandaan ki lugaai dekhne". Marriage fairs? Really?

Must confess that his last statement shook my determination to travel cattle class. I mean these marriage fairs attract a lot of people which means that the train would be overflowing with such people! Dad sensed my fear and with an "I told you so" expression, offered me a drop to the bus stand for me to take a comfortable bus instead. But hell! I may never get a chance to experience this again and I didn't wanna let it go! The train arrived, not as full as I expected and so I jumped in and managed to get myself a… ummmm…  seat if you can call it because I was the 6^th guy to sit on that seat made for 4. And thus, the journey began…

This post is about the different kind of people you will encounter in journeys like these – the real masses of a considerably backward state of Madhya Pradesh. So the first guy of the day was the over enthusiastic, overtly friendly gentleman of ours who valued everything in monetary terms.  Then there was the kumbakaran of the journey. This guy slept below our seat, on the floor of the train right through the journey totally oblivious to all the chaos around. It was only later after the train reached its destination that he told us he’s a labourer and has a hard day’s work ahead and has to travel somewhere else at night. He’s been doing that since a week and hasn’t got enough sleep hence, the 4 hour nap at everyone’s footrest to cover up. #Respect

Then there was the “bade baap ki aulaad” and the “jaat bhai”. So this guy entered the train to sell his chanas and was confronted by this mid aged man who was upset because he did not get a seat. A fight quickly brewed up where this man fired the chana guy for entering an overcrowded train for his business and the chana guy retaliated saying he’s just doing his job. Over the next 20 minutes I heard all possible bad words in Hindi where these 2 involved their mothers and sisters and the other guy’s mother and sister. For a moment I thought they were long lost friends. How else would they even know that the other guy had a mother or sister? ;) This man went on about how the other guy doesn’t know ki “main kaun hun” and the other guy went on about how he would get all his chana selling jaat bhais together to screw this man.

An uncle, the wise guy, sitting next to me finally ended the fight saying “baatein band karo aur maarna shuru karo” after which, both our “brave” men quietly walked away from each other. A little later, our “bade baap ki aulaad” announced in the bogie that all of us should make place for all ladies to get a seat. “koi mata aur behene khadi nahi rahengi aaj” he said to my surprise considering that minutes back he was using all the maa-behen abuses known to mankind.

Nothing more on the onward journey but enough on the return journey to make me tweet incessantly from the train and eventually write this blog post. So I again reached the station minutes before the train would depart only to learn that this time, I had no place to sit in the train at all! The Marriage fair was supposedly over and everyone decided to return by this very train! I still got in with the determination to stand for the next 3 hours but NOTHING could get me to leave this train and take a bus instead! Yeah I am like that, ek baar jo maine decide kar liya fir main kisi ki nahi sunta. :P Luckily, in a while I got a seat. This one, on the top berth meant for luggage and on a platform made of wood! Damn this wasn’t expected! Out of a mini depression, I picked up a book and started to read.

Very soon, something caught my ears. It was a conversation between the uncles sitting below about Aam Aadmi Party, its promises and its fortunes in Delhi. Now that’s interesting. Here there were some mid aged to old aged men making a mockery of a political party which a lot of youth consider the future of Indian politics. Given my interest in politics, I HAD to listen to this! Very soon the conversation got the whole compartment involved. There was an old uncle, a few mid aged uncles, a few young uncles and 3 guys of my age sitting on top listening to the great uncles share there gyaan. The old uncle was the pessimist who said that AAP wouldn’t run for 3 months. A younger uncle who was also trying to be the ring leader said that he would give AAP less than a month and a half. Somehow, all the uncles agreed that AAP wouldn’t last long to which we young guys, just looked at each other and smiled.

The conversation soon turned to predictions about the 2014 general elections where the uncles bet on a sweep for BJP in the Hindi heartland and a majority for regional parties in other areas. All of them completely wrote off the Congress and called our Prime Minister a “rubber stamp” PM. That jibe somehow, has never gone down well with me. I mean c’mon, he is after all the Prime Minister of our country and we ought to be respectful to the post! But here, I was just a listener and not a contributor to the conversation. May be I would give my verdict in a most filmy manner while getting off the train and then expect a standing ovation from the uncles just like in the movies. ;)

The conversation soon moved on to corruption where each of them cited various instances where they have faced corruption. Quite ironic as most of them were travelling without tickets and blaming the government for the state of the nation. “Saab raajneeti ne desh ko duba diya hai… Is government ne toh akaash, bhu, agni, paani kisi bhi cheez ko nahi choda”. Sadly it’s become a trend for our countrymen to blame the government for everything wrong while we ourselves are responsible for making things so wrong with our country! Such hypocrites we are aren’t we?

A statement from the uncles I will never forget. “Engineer 2 tarah ke hote hain. Government college waale aur bazaar waale”. Was highly amusing to me how private colleges were referred to as “bazaar”. It is after all a market with Indore itself having more than 100 private engineering colleges! An interesting topic then started about the advent of mobile phones and Internet. A supposedly “modern” uncle spoke about this “great” new technology which tells a person where he is at that moment and to other uncle’s disbelief, can direct him to his destination with exact instructions. On hearing that, I quickly closed my Google maps which I was using to track my train’s progress and put my phone in my pocket.

While our learned old men conversed about almost every topic from politics to technology and education to weddings, we, “the future of India” as they called us, were quietly listening and absorbing and tweeting in my case. Their conversation was then interrupted by what I would call, the moment of the journey. A guy entered the bogie to sell his bhel and his unique style would put the best marketeers in our country to shame. I cannot recollect his whole “advertisement” for the bhel but the punch line went like “agar maza na aaye khaane mein toh rapat likhaao meri thane mein”! There was also a mention of Asaram Bapu in his pitch which invited a big laugh from all the passengers. Obviously, it resulted in good sale for him.

There is something that you will notice about people if you look carefully. We tend to be more accommodating and considerate when we sit together and have a random conversation to which, we share the same point of view. In an overtly full compartment, our uncles suddenly noticed a couple of men standing on the side and quickly made some adjustments and invited them to take a seat. It probably is a way to earn brownie points in a gathering of like-minded people by showing others how considerate you are as there isn’t much that differentiates you from others.

The last part of my journey was something that summed it up for me. When the conversation between the uncles was on the topic of sanskaars and how money cannot by sanskaars, one of them started smoking a beedi, an Indian alternative to a cigarette. To this, another middle aged gentleman, who had been quiet right through the journey said “uncle abhi sanskaaron ki baat kar rahe the aur ab bahu-betiyon ke saamne beedi pe rahe ho”? I so wanted to start clapping for this gentleman who delivered the punch line which I hoped to deliver myself at the end of the journey! Such hypocrites we are aren’t we?

With that arrived my station and I took leave of these strangers whom I would probably never see again but helped me to an entertaining and enriching journey. Entertaining as I did not realize how those 3 hours passed and enriching as there is always so much you can learn about people whom you don’t interact with on a day-to-day basis through such experiences.  Guys and girls, if you are adventures and want to learn what our real masses think like, take my advice and travel cattle class in train once. Be open to all kind of people around and do not hesitate in dropping in to a random conversation. You never know when and where an experience like this might come in handy…