It's Time to Break the Silence

My silence, that is. I'm not sure if anyone still reads this space anymore, and even if someone does, my opinions can't possibly be a matter of too much significance to them. But I want to do this for me. So even though this is a little belated, for whatever it's worth I'm putting it down in writing.

I first heard the news of the gangrape a few hours after it happened, from a friend. I wasn't angry. I wasn't outraged. I wasn't shocked. I smiled wryly and went on with my life, because you know what? That's India for you. No, not just Delhi, even though it's definitely the worst of the lot. But this is the country we live in. We kill our girl children when they haven't even been born yet, we kill them when they're infants, and if by some stroke of luck they survive, we marry them off early because it's their 'duty' to bear children when they're at their 'reproductive best'. We think it's only natural for husbands to rape their wives because once again, it's womanly 'duty' to provide sex to her husband. We consider it routine, not even worth mentioning, when drunken barely-men pass lewd remarks on women on the road, cop a feel in crowded buses or elevators, stalk or follow girls trying to walk home from work, or "even worse", a pub. And God forbid if anyone ever saw a woman walking with, let alone hugging or kissing a male friend. She had it coming then, she really did.
And if women are not safe on the streets, they're not safe in their homes either. Uncles stare, house guests ogle, and unless you happen to be one of the lucky ones, some day a man from your family, who you've been taught to trust ("because beta, family surpasses everything"), will come into your bedroom, sit on your bed and give you that sick feeling in your stomach. And in the next half hour, things you're not even old enough to understand will happen. Sometimes I'm just glad I live in a house where I know I'm safe, because I certainly don't know it out on the streets, even in broad daylight.

And let's not even get into what we can wear, what we can't, when we can step out of the house and before what time we must be home, who we can go out with, what we can do with them in public, where we can go and the million other restrictions that start with, "beta, I'm saying this for your own good." Do women not have an equal right to go out late at night with their heads held high? Can they not go to pubs without being deemed "loose" and "lacking moral character", while it's okay for men to do the same? Am I asking for rape because I went to watch a movie with my boyfriend? Is it impossible to survive in this country without obeying advice such as "you can't go out late if you haven't fixed up a ride home already. Your brother can though, he's not a girl. But it's not safe for you."? The other day, I caught myself crossing the road after I saw a bunch of young, slightly boisterous-seeming men approaching on the side I was walking on. It was dark and I was alone. I lowered my head and sped up a little bit. And what really bothered me about the whole thing was not that I did it, but that it was a completely subconscious act. THAT's the kind of CONSTANT fear Indian women must, and do, live in.

No, it's not about the law. No, it's not about punishment, or even police enforcement (although let's face it, those things aren't helping either). It's about the mindset. Capital punishment or chemical castration is not the solution. India has some of the strictest laws against rape. Their implementation may be flawed, to say the least, but it's not about that either, which is where I take issue with the people who say the problem is the ineffectiveness of legislation and police action. In India, rape and...associated acts, for want of a more concise phrase, are about establishing your dominance over the woman. Humiliating her, degrading her. It's a power play. Certainly surer and swifter punishment can only better the situation, but these are short-term solutions. Rape and violence against women might decrease because of them, but it'll be due to fear. Not out of any sense of genuine respect for women, which is what's truly lacking in our nation. Women are to BE suppressed. Women are to BE the weaker sex, and if they are not, they are to be made so. How else can one explain people WATCHING, as women get raped?! They make videos on their cellphones! No one calls the police. Men FUCKING WATCH.
That doesn't happen anywhere else.

And the mindset doesn't just manifest itself in such acts. Frankly I've made my peace with the fact that rape and molestation happen every twenty minutes. When you read something or hear of it again and again in the news, it stops shocking you or making an impact. What really bothers me is that if I stay in this country, the one day I get raped, it'll be MY fault. MY fault for wearing a skirt that was two inches above my knees, MY fault for staying in the bar until 11 pm, MY fault for going out with friends who happen to be males. And I'm basically ASKING to get raped if someone sees me drinking or if I happen to approach a random person on the street asking for a light or a cigarette, when I'm wearing JEANS no less! ("How can woman wear jeans?! Do they not want to be 'good traditional wives'? Raam raam!!"). 

I'm not saying rape doesn't happen in other countries. Just not with such fucking frequency, intensity and impunity.

Sometimes I think we're lucky that things like female foeticide and infanticide are so rampant in our country. At least those girls would never have to live in a world like this.

Nallud Part 2

There's a couple more quirky faculty members I'd forgotten to write about in the last post. I shall do that here.

English teacher: Calls the girls of the class "May-dum." Has no idea how to control the class. Insists we do not clap or bang our desks after a horrendous experience with the aforementioned activities on our first day. Does not know how to handle excessive participation and involvement in plays. Has no idea what to assign as research papers to us and asks US to come up with ideas instead. Insists we make PowerPoint presentations on pointless topics like what is an adjective and where to use a hyphen instead of a dash.

HLCD Teacher (For those of you not in the know (which I guess would be all of you), HLCD is History of Legal and Constitutional Development): For some reason, is known as Chintu among the students. Is much like the Torts teacher. Is also quite possibly the most boring and soporific person I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.

Also, the VC in his interview had asked us to sign on a particular target percentage for the first semester. And warned us that if we did not achieve it, he would be setting the bar even higher for the next semester and "upping the ante," so to speak. I made the mistake of quoting an impossibly high percentage. And here I am blogging away to glory while the first terms are only a week away.

One thing I'm really happy about is my roommate. She shall hereby be referred to as S (for that is the letter her name begins with (obviously)). She has great taste in music, movies, books and pretty much everything else that really matters. Wodehouse fan, ardent admirer of almost all Star World shows, and appreciator of good cinema. The other day she wanted to kill me for not having watched Iron Man. =D

To top it all off, she's responsible. She's got her priorities right. She studies, but not too much (unlike me, who has neglected to even TOUCH a book since college started, unless it's fiction), remembers to clean the room once in a while, and yet finds time to read a lot of fanfiction and watch a movie when she feels like it. I need someone like that. I shudder to think what would have happened had I had a roommate even remotely like me. That is, crazy and irresponsible, and without an iota of room-sense, if you know what I mean. We would prolly have had filthy vermin crawling all over our beds.

Then there's I. She lives across the hall from me, with N. But I, S and me hang out together most of the time. There's nothing extraordinary about I. She's just a loud, fun and big-hearted girl. But what I love most is irritating her with dirty jokes and gross talk. She's not used to such things, somehow. She used to get completely scandalized, but I think I'm growing on her. Now she can even handle it if I drop an F-bomb every 20 seconds.

So since I'm already exceeding the word limit for normal-sized blog posts, I shall stop here. Now that I have a laptop, hopefully it'll be configured soon and I'll be able to post more often. Unless I decide to actually study for the first terms.

But that's not likely at all.

Nallud

That's the name of my college by the way. NLUD. I got sick of calling it that, letter by letter. It's so long and drawn out.
Not that anyone I know calls it Nallud. That's just my own creation.

So in this post I'll be telling you a little about Nallud.
1. VC: Tends to talk sense but also tends to ramble on a bit. During the Orientation, his speech lasted for about an hour and a half. And the few classes he's taken, he's spent the whole 45 minutes trying to explain a concept for which a mere quarter of an hour would have sufficed. So yeah, just a tad verbose.

2. Chief Warden: Is also a teacher of economics by profession. But all she knows to talk about is how we have imbibed all the evil tendencies of Western culture and forgotten our own pure, holier-than-thou "Indian tradition." Even in her economics class, according to what the seniors tell us. Has an extreme aversion to ANY kind of interaction between the freshers and their seniors, which she calls ragging. Insists we call our seniors bhaiyyas and didis. Which pretty much rules out any possibilities of a junior and senior dating. Not that that's happened. Yet.

3. Assistant Warden for the girls hostel: Goes by the motto "I shall only smile in the presence of those members of society who have a penis." Is female. Of course.

4. Boys Hostel wardens: Incapable of facial expressions and voice modulation.

5. Torts teacher: Speaks bullshit just to check if anyone's listening. Which they aren't. Her sentences aren't gramatically correct by a long shot, let alone being correct on points of law. Always ends her class by assigning homework because she knows the students' ears will perk up at this and enjoys the satisfaction of people listening to her even if it is only for a few seconds everyday. Teacher whose class it is easiest to maaro-fy proxy in because she goes by roll number and never looks up from the attendance sheet.

And that's the faculty. The eccentric (for want of a better word) ones, at least.

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

Too much to say. Too less time.

First off, I owe an apology to my readers. I haven't been posting for two weeks. The situation is something like this. The IT guy at my university (read fucked-up-bastard-who-knows-shit-about-IT) couldn't configure my laptop to the NLUD Wi-Fi network. Not only that, but he's fucked up my laptop so that the Wi-Fi at MY place doesn't work either. And then he has the balls to say, "May-dum, isko toh format karwaana padega. Isme aapka koi important software toh nahin hai naa(May-dum, this will have to be formatted. Is there any important software in here) ?"
So basically, my laptop cannot possibly work at my university. Which means I'll have to wait until Mom comes back from her trip, for which there is a month left, take HER laptop, and get THAT configured, which'll take another week. And hope to GOD he doesn't fuck that up as well.
I'm INFURIATED. But you prolly already know that by now, thanks to all the upper-case-ing.

Oh and yeah, since my laptop basically counts for shit now, as far as the internet is concerned, I'm doing this on my Dad's laptop. And he's not even supposed to know I HAVE a blog. So much for privacy.
This also means that the most I can do is blog once a week, if that. I didn't even feel like blogging last weekend, but more about that later. I go to the computer lab everyday, lest my email inbox starts to look like it's contracted jaundice (The "new email" color for Hotmail is yellow). So I comment on a few blogs from there. And keep reading the newest QC comics to retain a smidgenny modicum of my former sanity. Or rather, lesser degree of insanity. But working up the courage to actually post something on mine is too much to ask of my already addled brain. Why is my brain already addled? More about that later.

So I realise I'm already exceeding the word limit for a normal post, and I've been getting requests from left, right and center to keep my posts short lest my readers lose interest halfway through. I was rather happy to hear this in fact, since I had always thought my readers lose interest only a quarter of the way through. But my point is, I have a lot to tell you about college and all the exciting new stuff, but it shall have to wait for next week.

And I tried replying to all your comments on the last post, but the comment that came out was WAY too long to be called a comment. So I shall do it here. However weird and unheard of it may be.

@Nyx and Espera: Thou dost grossly overestimate hostel life. I mean, seriously, just because it's like a party in my room every night...ok fine, point taken.
And yeah, that "pretending-to-be-a-second-year" thing actually happened. This guy has to repeat a few weeks of first year because he was short on attendance, but since all the second years know him, he was allowed to aid and abet the ragging. Ok, I guess that wasn't really pretending. But it's pretty much the same thing.

@Midnight Sun: Because it's INDIA.
And yes. Yes you will. Die, that is. Initially I didn't think it was that bad. But now I actually wait for the tea break every morning to brush my hair just so I can do it in the air conditioned academic block. As a result of which, for the first 3 classes of the day, I look like I've stuck black wires to teh top of my head. In a hurry. And this is August we're talking about. Fucking AUGUST.

@Sahil: The cell phone network within our rooms sucks. I have to hang my torso out of the second floor window to text any of my friends. Feel better?

@Sam: Thanks!
@Disguise: Are you still in school?
And also, good for you, man. But promise me, whatever you do, go somewhere with an air conditioned hostel. Unless you LIKE getting up at ungodly hours in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and having to wash your hair every other day because it stinks of sweat. But I'm guessing you don't.

So there. I bet most of my readers would have fallen asleep somewhere in the middle. I wish I could nudge you awake. But even I, sadist to teh core, would never want to inflict the torture of reading all that on anyone.
And if you haven't fallen asleep, well, all I can say is that you have a high threshold of crap-taking.
Until next week.