Respecting the woman

Mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, teachers, goddesses and many more of such incarnations. The woman is celebrated by her dimensions and should be revered and respected for what she is.

Certain things that I hear and see around me make me wonder if the urban man respects his woman anymore. Off late, I have heard stories of how someone in a great position, made good use of his hunky looks and swishing personality to ‘devour’ “many” of the female species. It seems he had not spared any woman colleague of his- he had either made illicit advances towards them, or had them kicked out because they expressed dislike to his ways. To cite a particular incident, he was caught lying down under the chair of a woman wearing short skirts. I wonder how these souls can sleep in peace?

A colleague of mine, Peter (name changed to protect the chastity of my blog) urgently needs to be shifted to an asylum. Or a zoo. His head touches St. Peter’s beard and his nose chokes with the clouds that our staff photographer recently caught hovering over Flora Fountain. He is a bellow full of air and needs to be pierced with a pin, ASAP.

Women are playthings for him. I have had people I know, come to me and say this guy recently proposed marriage to them and claimed to be very serious about the idea. This, when he hasn’t even met them in person! Desperate asshole! That’s just what someone called him today.

There’s an extent to which you use expletives. Which sane woman would ever tolerate a “You fucking bitch!” from anyone on this planet? He shouted that to a girl today, someone whom, he calls his girlfriend. Not in private, not one to one, but in full public view. He then asserts on how someone who has given one a job must be ‘respected’.

I wish ‘respect’ could be bought. I would buy a truckload of it, roll it into a dildo and gift it to him on his next birthday.

I don’t see him going anywhere up the ladder. He just cannot. He’s too caught up in reframing public opinion to suit his current needs. He’s the most severe case of attention seeking syndrome I have ever met in my life. Anything, for a little limelight! And the one who can’t talk sense to people deserves no respect. None.

Big mess

Beings residing in the Central suburbs – Dombivli and beyond, are not people. They are pigs. Lower animals. They don’t need water. They don’t need electricity. They manage with whatever they have. The shameless species. Give them shit any shit and they’ll take it. They don’t complain, they don’t fret. Don’t give them electricity for days and they won’t make a sound. Cut their water supply and they’ll walk miles to get a potful of the nectar, but won’t fuss. Compromise.

Make their trains stop at one place for two hours- they sit in one place, waiting patiently for it to chug on, the way Gandhiji said?

Cancel the train and they’ll only mutter unparliamentary words under their breath. That’s all. There are no questions to be asked. “Why cancelled?” Oh, like there’s going to be a satisfactory answer to it! Duh!

I happen to know what the answer is going to be. ‘technical difficulty’. Snag it seems, snag where, no one knows. It ends there. Snag they say and the pigs go “ho, hum, what to do?”

Big mess. When is it going to be about time to put a full stop to this complacency? When will people in the suburbs get a voice? When will they become people and be treated like people? And when they will, will there be more late-night candle-light vigils like in Rang De Basanti? Will people march on the road saying ‘Revolution’ like in that sanitary napkin advertisement?

This reminds me, a father pig, his wife, a son and a daughter were at their dining table. Needless to say, being pigs, crap was their staple diet. The excited son happened to say, “You know, what? Last night, I saw a dead rat on the road!”

The father immediately chided him. He said, “Sonny, how many times have I told you not to talk dirty things while having food?”

This is it. May be talking about what is going on is blasphemy. Let it be. I just can’t take it anymore. The under breath is about to grow louder. Its getting angrier each day. A revolution will come. Soon.

Linguistic inclinations

The process of learning a new language is tough. It means registering the new word and how it sounds together in separate folders, for easy access later. There are different pronunciations to take care of. There are words that sound similar but are like milk and citric acid. Some words can be replaced by alternatives, while others just have to be used in specific places. Quite some words sound crude but actually mean something cute.

The secret to learning a new language is easy. Just when you are learning a new word, link it up with something that sounds similar or sounds similar (even remotely similar will do). Connecting the words with images in the head (my goodness! Marshall Mc Luhan’s theory of media understanding!) will help a great deal, the only qualm there being that ruminating the word anytime in future would mean taking a two-step jump, from the word to the picture and from there to the pre-registered word.

Where to start? From the alphabets or with words? I decided to do it with daily usages. I decided to learn it from saying aloud, common usages such as “How are you?” and “Where have you been?” which in non-chaste English would go something like, “Long time, no see.”

The look on someone’s face when they hear you talk their language – priceless! The effort is just worth taking. To surprise them with their own language, when they do not expect you to even comprehend what they are talking, feels squirmy in my tummy.

But for the regularity! I told my tutor to teach my five fresh words everyday. And she’s teaching me for free! No fees! Hmph, and no regularity.

I’m learning two languages together. One is Sindhi- a native language of Sindh (now a province in Pakistan). The other language is cornily, filmily and too commonly called love. I’m proud to say that I’m a student of love, learning from mistakes, listening, registering, thinking, caring, a little US-Iraq and making space for each other to – literally and not quite so too, to make each other feel comfortable and cosy to fall together into the depth of the language.

Fuss

I can feel my stomach being devoured by the cramps. My face shows no signs of it- it smiles normally but the eyes can’t hide the agony inside. They are cold. I am sweating all over. I can feel the sweat traverse down my legs, through the wisps of hair. All I want now is a place to sit, to kill the nauseous feel. The brunch that I just had is threatening to throw up. My head reels and I shut my eyes tight to stop seeing things go round and round.

The train compartment is crowded. The vacation crowd is in – travelling with noisy bunches of kids and irritating new mobile phones (read, with extra super-sonic speakers for the whole train). Two little girls, in their early teens remember Allah as the train stops for want of proper signals. They want to know were each one of their neighbours want to get down, so they could maneuver their way to the window seat.

This is probably their first visit to the city. I stand, holding my patience together, tight between my molars. It is beyond Thane, about time that those sitting, relieve the ones who stand. A tiny finger pokes my waist. I open my eyes and look back, I can feel them burning.

“Aapko kahaan utarna hai?”

“Kyun?” I ask.

No answer.

I can see pairs of eyes dart towards me, scornful of my curt reply. Like I care.

I continue with my trance.

I stand close to the window, holding on to the luggage rack. I need it to keep myself standing upright. I tell myself I cannot let myself go on like this. I must eat like I used to. This is killing me. My stomach never groaned as badly.

The finger pokes again. I don’t look back. It pokes again. I look back in slow motion, I fear my head will fall down if I jerk it back.

“Thoda bajoo hato, hawa nahi aa raha hai”

Pat. “Darwaze ke yahaan jaake khade raho, acchha hawa aayega.”

I am amused. Bourgeois demands indeed. Frills of comfort.
One more poke and the bomb will explode. No idea what I’ll do but the kids will surely be scared.

Just then, the couple at the window seat in front of me, get up. They have to get down at the next station. My insides heave a sigh of relief. I feel older, weaker than the two decades that I am. I let my head rest sideways on the headboard. The sun pierces into my thigh through my jeans. A bottle of water stuck into the grille occasionally drips water onto the thigh, bringing a welcome peace. I am bored, bugged. I hate to be this ill. Enough.