Men You Should Never Date

This article is currently "trending" on my Facebook homepage. Just from the headline ("Women You Should Never Date"), even before I clicked on it, I knew it was going to irritate me. And I was right. Though the author seems to be trying to avoid generalisations ("Firstly, not all women nag"), the article is still pretty fill of stereotyped problems that woman apparently have. 

So, I wrote an article in response. It's nearly identical to the MensXP article, with the gender flipped and a few lines added/editted/removed. I removed and edited a "category", and added a new one. What other problems in guys should we notice and avoid? Let me know what you think!

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Ladies, this article is one you should take a print out of and carry in your pocket at all times simply because it will give you a very vivid picture of the kind of men you MUST NOT DATE. I am sure at some stage in your life you must have fallen for the wrong guy and then shed many-a-tear over him. In case you have been lucky and escaped such trauma, congratulations!

You must keep the distance if and when you come across men with traits as described below.

1. The Possessive/Obsessive Stalker
He gets upset the moment you look at another man and gets jealous when you talk to another man? He doesn’t like you having close guy friends and questions you incessantly about them? He likes it when you wear his favourite outfit but minds it if you don’t wear what he likes and wants you to wear? He doesn’t like you going out with your friends without him? He doesn't take no for an answer?

If the answer to the above questions is a yes then you NEED to NOT see him ever again. Some men get possessive, obsessive and dominating to the point that they suffocate you and thus stunt your growth as a human being. You cannot and should not become his shadow or a person of his liking alone. Protect your identity and guard your self-respect by giving him the boot.

2. The Attention Seeker

Many men like to get as much attention as possible from their girlfriends. But some men make a nasty habit out of it. They want to be the centre of your life and hate it when the attention shifts. They don’t like you going out with your friends without them. They don’t like you having a life that doesn’t involve them. Let’s be practical. It is wrong of your boyfriend to want to be the centre of your life for an indefinite period of time. After all, you have friends, family, work which deserve your attention as well, that you want to give attention to. As soon as you realise he is asking way too much of your time and that he is crawling into your personal space, ask him to back off. If the problem persists after repeated warnings, it is advisable for you to back off.

3. The Hero Complex

Some men love to be the hero in a girl’s life. It might work when you want him to help, but other times, it can encroach on your independence and make you feel like you can’t take care of yourself. He might pay for you more often than you are want (if ever), or buy you things though you’re not comfortable with accepting gifts. He might insist on carrying things you’re perfectly happy carrying yourself, or do you favours that you don’t want. Don’t let him take over problems you want to solve yourself, or help out unnecessarily.

4. The Material and Selfish Boy
If he’s only after your money, he’s no good. If he only wants sex and a “good time”, he’s no good (unless that’s what you want too). If he is only after emotional counseling for himself, then he is no good. He will distance himself from you when he finds another woman he is attracted to or when your pocket or emotional strength weakens. Building ties with him is futile and so is expecting a give-and-take, equal relationship.

And I’ll add a crucially important one:

5. The Sexist Boy

If he makes broad generalizations about women, stay away. If he tries to dominate you or the relationship just because he’s a man, stay away. If he expects you to do what he says and not contradict or argue, stay away. If he has expectations of you based on you being a woman, stay away. If he subscribes to and believes in stereotypes, stay away. If he expects you to prioritise his career over yours just because he’s a man, stay away.  If he ever makes you feel small or inferior because he thinks the choices you made are not in line with “what a woman should do”, kick him in the balls and then stay away.

Tips for Unemployment

A few days days ago, while moving to my second temporary housing in three months, the reality of my situation hit me suddenly, like horrible realisations tend to do. I’m a college graduate who’s finished nearly seven months without a permanent job. My roommate and I were carrying our stuff three blocks down the road, moving by ourselves since we’re too broke to hire a van or movers. I was dragging a suitcase by one hand and carrying a pillow, a purple stuffed elephant I call Dumbo, and, ironically enough, my graduation gown in the other.

I graduated in January as an international student in Singapore, and was naive enough to expect to get a job immediately. Now, seven months later, with a rejected work permit application for the job I did get and few signs of another job, I’m still living off my parents in a city with very high living expenses. I’m an unemployed college graduate, nearly broke, and living in an apartment with ten other people (and a dog whose existence my landlord refuses to admit to).

I could so easily panic.

Instead, walking down the road with my arms full of stuffed toys, pillows and graduation gowns, I found myself giggling at the ridiculousness of my situation. Singing sad songs to force myself into an appropriate melancholy didn’t work, so I gave up and planned this piece in my head instead.

Unemployment is hard. I wasn’t a bad student in college – I have decent grades, as many skills as a fresh graduate could be expected to have, and several (unpaid) internships on my résumé. My résumé doesn’t have any typos or grammar mistakes, my cover letters are all customised and enthusiastic, and I genuinely am enthusiastic about a lot of the jobs I apply for. Given the fact that a large part of the Class of 2012 of my university is also similarly unemployed, I can conclude that my lack of income is not entirely my fault for partying too much or skipping too many classes over the past four years. Yet, I spent most of my graduation ceremony feeling jealous of the students who talked about their upcoming promising careers and scoffing at the Dean when he mentioned a “close to 100% employment rate” in his oh-so-inspiring-but-actually-a-marketing-pitch speech.

So, since this period is hard for me and for everyone else going through a similar situation, I thought it was a good idea to compile a list of things I have found to be helpful. They help me to not panic and lose my mind, or feel so scared that I’m literally frozen and unable to do anything productive. I hope these “tips”, from one unemployed person to another, will help others in my situation. (Warning: these are not tips on how to get a job. I clearly don’t have the answer to that question yet.

1) Appreciate and celebrate the small wins. My roommate and I found housing on the last possible day – we were going to be homeless in another few hours. The room is cramped and has no windows, and we’re sharing a tiny bathroom with at least 5 other people, including two guys who don’t know how to aim. But still, it was a huge relief to have found a place to stay, and once we unpacked as much stuff as possible, put up our posters and bought a new bulb for my good-mood-lamp, the room is quite nice. So, though we’re both unemployed and interview-less, this small win helped us feel better. Appreciate the small wins, even when it feels like they have no real impact on your life in light of the big problems – the smallest wins help you be more positive.

2) Be positive. I know you must have heard this from a hundred different people in 27 different ways, but seriously, staying optimistic is the only way to keep at the bleak task of looking for and applying for jobs. I did a fairly good job of staying positive, even after the first company that made me a job offer called two days later to cancel said offer. But my sunshine-y outlook took a big hit the day my work visa application for my second (and nearly perfect) job got rejected. I sobbed on the phone to my mom for half an hour, bought a horrendously overpriced ticket home, and was on a flight that very evening. I spent three weeks at home as an absolute vegetable, doing nothing to help myself. I finally did snap out of it, but I lost a valuable month of job hunting and spent much more money than I could afford. Believing that something will work out if you keep trying will help you keep trying and hence make something work out eventually. Stay positive, even if the elusive “something” is taking longer to come along than you would like.

3) Do non-job-hunting things. I know it feels horribly guilty to enjoy a drink with some friends, especially when every beer at a bar can mean one less meal the next day. I know it feels worse to talk about non-job-hunting stuff, or to laugh and have fun (gasp!) when you don’t have a job. But you really, really need to take a break and enjoy other activities. My dad advocates going for a run – something about endorphins and adrenalin apparently make you feel better. As a criminally lazy person, I haven’t yet tested his theory, but it’s probably true. If running is your thing, go for it. Or go for a movie, or a drink, or a party (even better if it’s a house party with free alcohol!). Look for cheap/free options, such as a free movie night or a simple walk with a friend. Give yourself a break and do something that doesn’t require you to worry about your job.

4) Do something productive every day. It is so easy to spend hour after mindless hour watching an endless stream of Grey’s Anatomy episodes. They’re distracting, relaxing, and let you focus on some fictional character’s crappy life rather than yours. You start by promising yourself just a one hour respite, and before you know it, you’ve finished that season of Grey’s Anatomy and both seasons of Blue Bloods over three days.

Don’t get caught in this trap. Make sure you do something productive everyday – it’ll make you feel so much better at the end of the day. You have to, of course, spend several hours on the job hunt every day. If you reach the point where you simply cannot look at another job description, find something else to do. I spend several hours reading the news from different sources – makes me feel awesomely smart later! You could write something (rant about unemployment!). Or learn something – in the age of the internet, there really is no excuse for putting off that one thing you always meant to learn to do. In my experience, doing at least one good thing in a day significantly helps me not feel like a complete loser.

5) Find others. You are not alone in this. I know that talking to friends who have seemingly perfect lives is often a painful experience of jealousy, anger, and subsequent guilt, and can leave you feeling worse than before. Talk to them anyway. Blaming friends for having a better time in life is not acceptable. But at the same time, find people going through the same stuff. In my case, it helps that most of my friends are in the same workless situation. If yours are not, turn to the internet. There are countless blogs and websites where people have written about their unemployment, and it helps to know that you’re not the only one – someone else has felt everything you feel, and might be able to help through advice, tips or support.

I’m sure there are many other things you could do too – a tub of Ben & Jerry’s always makes me cheer up. The effect of alcohol on my mood fluctuates drastically – vodka combined with the right music might put me into a wild party mood, but the same in another context has left me a sobbing mess, strategising ways to finally find Hogwarts and “leave this cruel world behind” and accusing every favourite Harry Potter character of having “magicked” their way into a career.

But anyway, these are my top five tips, and I hope they help. If there is something crucially important that I am missing out on, please do let me know. Happy hunting!

I Need Feminism Because..

This blog on tumblr is pretty awesome. And it got me thinking about something I've wanted to write for a long time, but been too lazy to - one thing that I really detest about sexism.

I think absolutely everything about sexism is wrong. I can't choose one aspect that is "wronger" than the others. I've been lucky - personally, I haven't faced much sexism. But lately, the one thing that is really affecting me personally and I am really starting to detest is the tendency of people to attribute a lot of things a woman does to her gender.

"She doesn't like sports? Of course, she's a girl!" "She doesn't like beer? Of course, girls don't." "She wants to get married and have kids? That's what girls want!" "You're fighting with a friend/boyfriend? You're a girl, must be PMS." "Of course you like cooking/shopping/cleaning/talking on the phone/trying on clothes/using make-up, you're a girl!"

I've seen this attitude a lot lately, in men and in women. Attributing everything to "being a girl" not only offends and stereotypes women as a whole, but also discounts me as a person with personal beliefs and thoughts and desires that do not stem from "being a girl". And the thing that makes me the most uncomfortable about this attitude is the obligation I feel to modify my own behaviour! If I want to go shopping, I try not to mention it to people I know will crack a you're-such-a-girl joke. I avoid using make-up even though I'd like to put some, just to break a stereotype. I try to minimise the time I take to get ready, because if I'm late, it's not just my fault, it's the fault of all women. And if I ever do skip dessert or try to cut calories, I excuse it as being full or not in the mood, because god forbid my efforts to lose weight prove to some jackass that all women want to be "thin and beautiful".

At the same time, I catch myself feeling "proud" of things that I like/do that break stereotypes. For example, I don't want to get married and have children. I feel the need to make sure everyone knows that, just so they know that there are women out there who want different things. I feel proud of not wanting children, because I feel I'm breaking a stereotype. I like beer, I don't want a boyfriend, I like one night stands, I'm not too fond of pink, I follow politics, I dislike cooking and on and on and on. These are not things that should inspire either pride or shame. Liking pink is not something a feminist should be ashamed of, just as not liking pink is not something a feminist should be proud of. By feeling proud of the ways I break stereotypes, I'm feeding the stereotypes and making women who are different feel worse.

A friend once told me that she wants to have lots of children and grandchildren. And she immediately apologised for being such a "bad feminist". She felt bad for wanting the "conventional" things. Another friend said the same thing when she told me she wants to get married and start a family early. That is not the point of feminism! Feminism says that women are free to choose what they want without being hampered by their gender. You can choose to have seven kids or no kids, to get married at 23 or 30 or never, to use lots of make-up or none at all, to wear only pink or no pink, to like sports or hate sports, to drink beer or drink Cosmopolitans. We should do what we want out of free choice, and without our personal choices reflecting on our gender as a whole.

So, for the Who Needs Feminism blog: I need feminism because I want to be proud of my choices because they're the right ones for me, not because they break a stupid sexist stereotype of women.

She

She is a journalist

During protests and movements

During elections and Emergencies

During poverty and abuse

During war and violence

During arrests and investigations

She is the truth.

She is a writer

Of realistic characters in realistic worlds

Of partying students and dreamy intellectuals

Of stories of friendship and ambition

Of murder mysteries and action-packed thrillers

Stories to get lost in

She captures you.

She is a musician

Uncontrollable, irresistible

Intense, all-consuming

Overwhelming melodies.

Real feelings, true stories

You will always remember

The first time you heard her play.

She works in the government

She listens, she cares

She researches and studies

She takes a stand, the right one

She investigates and prosecutes

She implements policy and programmes

She is change.

The Suit

I found a formal jacket yesterday

After looking in every shop I know

Smart, black, two buttons

And it fit perfectly.

They stitch custom suits too

So I got measured for a skirt

And a matching jacket

In sharp, icy grey.

I’ll have the suit on Saturday

I have the enthusiasm now

I’m ready to start a career

All I need is a job.

Creating Stories

Sometimes when I’m on a long flight, I like to give people background stories that I think fit their behaviour or appearance. Sometimes, I like observing people and listening to their conversations, though I usually don’t like having conversations. Today, on a 17-hour journey, I created a daydream version of me.

She sat a few seats down from me while waiting to board the flight. She wore jeans, a plain t-shirt, a jacket and sport shoes – exactly what I usually wear while travelling. Her hair was long and tied back into a ponytail – messy, like mine. She wore glasses and no make-up. She was typing furiously into her laptop. In my version of her life, she’s a writer – not a journalist, a fiction or blog writer. She writes subtly funny articles and realistic stories based on her interpretations of events and people. She smiled while typing – something one of her characters just did amused her.

She carried only a backpack. It looked new – her last backpack was too worn out from all her travelling to be used anymore. A water bottle was stuck in the bottle-carrier net on the side of her backpack. She never buys a backpack that doesn’t have those carriers, because keeping a bottle inside the backpack is too inconvenient.

During the flight, she sat at the emergency exit row, in the window seat, the same seat that I had on the other side of the plane. Clearly, she visits SeatGuru to research the best possible seat, and has travelled enough to know to check in online to make sure she gets the best seat. She spent most of the flight watching something on her laptop that she found funny. The first thing she did when we reached our transit airport was to buy a can of Coke, and then look for a plug-point to charge her laptop – a woman after my own heart.

She talked to the guy sitting in the aisle seat in her row. She talked about travelling – she’s an American student, travelling Asia on the money she earned working several student jobs. She worked in Singapore for a while, but her workplace wanted longer commitment and she didn’t want to stay longer than a year. She’s moving on now – perhaps to Melbourne, where I’m headed, or the mysterious sounding Changchun, flashing on the board of the gate we’re waiting at in the transit airport. The conversation wasn’t long – she’s friendly, but prefers to spend travel time reading her book or watching her movie.

We eye each other at the transit airport, both stuck here for a few hours, both recognising the other from the first flight. I see a kindred spirit, someone who, in my head, is similar to the romantic picture of myself I sometimes conjure while daydreaming. Maybe she notices similarities too, in my behaviour and habits. Maybe she’s giving me a story in her head, in which I feature as a student travelling on a tight budget – I’m flying from Singapore to Australia through China – clearly a cheap ticket convinced me to add 10 hours to my travel time. Or maybe she sees me as a confused girl, unfamiliar with airports, running around and constantly turning to walk in the opposite direction because I can’t choose between Starbucks and Coffee Bean.

Or then again, maybe she’s just pegged me as the inevitable creepy person of the flight, staring at her constantly and typing furiously away into her laptop, blushing when caught.

Too Much

There’s just

Too much to learn

Too much to study

Too much to read

Too much to know

Too much to think

Too much to see

Too much to do

Too much to write

Too much to feel

Too much to accomplish

Too much to change

Too much to fix

Such little time

So much frustration

I’ll never finish it all

Because it’ll never end

The hour I just spent watching TV

Was such a waste of time.

Clarity

Clarity

The thing I want the most now

The thing that seems the hardest to find

The paths leading to it have been built

I need not find the road less travelled

I just want to find the highway

Confusion doesn’t suit me

In courses, jobs, decisions, friends

It makes me stupid and frustrated

I want to make informed decisions

Randomness or baseless analysis doesn’t suit me

But I don’t have the information I need.

There don’t seem to be any street lights

Highways never do have any, I’ve noticed

I have to find the highway without a map

I’ll stumble around, take a few wrong turns

I will eventually find clarity, I know

I’d just rather it be now, than five, ten years from now.

Disjointed Thoughts About Rajasthan

I spent three weeks in different villages in Rajasthan, and have wanted to write about that time for the three weeks that I’ve been back. However, a combination of laziness and other work led to this post being composed only now. Another reason why I’ve been hesitant to write about my observations, and why I now have five Word documents named “Rajasthan” on my laptop, each only a paragraph or two long, is that it’s fiendishly difficult to compose anything resembling a coherent article about the villages. The best I’ve been able to come up with a list, sort of, of unrelated thoughts and observations.

1. Rajasthan is definitely one of the hottest places I’ve been to. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me because I was actually outdoors all day in the scorching June heat, going from house to house in the villages, whereas the same time in Delhi would have been spend indoors in a comfortably air-conditioned room. But whether or not Rajasthan was hotter than Delhi during that time, the heat was enough to leave us panting and gratefully gulping down matkas of waters at every house we visited. And, as I’ve become fond of telling friends, though we drank water all day long, neither I nor my friends felt the need to pee at all during the day. I would pee just twice – once in the morning after waking up, and once at night before falling asleep when the ridiculous consumption of water would finally catch up with my bladder instead of being sweated out in litres and litres.
   
   
2. Since I’m on the subject of peeing– us “going to the bathroom” was a constant source of amusement and much discussion in the villages. Lacking running water or built-in bathrooms, all villages evolve their own fairly efficient systems for doing their business. And we city-kids just didn’t cut it. Our behaviour regarding toilet functions were weird and laughable – “sham ko khet jaa raha hai!” (“he’s going to the field in the evening!”) was always said with awe every time one of us needed to use the fields at anytime other than 5am in the morning. And it amused them that we had no idea where to pee during the day (if we ever needed to), since though the shit-locations were well-defined, pee-locations were not. We tried hiding the fact that we were going to pee, but our newly developed concept of “ninja pees” never seemed to work very well – everyone in the village was always aware of our exact whereabouts, and any deviation from the plan would incite numerous questions.
   
   
3. Each trip to the “bathroom” was a source of great stories for us city-kids too. A quick pee under the comforting cover of darkness in a clearing outside our host’s house led to a funny story about out hostess graciously switching on the outside light to enable us to see our way, but succeeding only in putting us in the bright spotlight for everyone in the house to see. And in every village, there was always at least one creepy black dog which would stand at a distance and freak me out by just staring at us while we peed, behaving as if he were just waiting for a signal of some kind before attacking.
   
   
4. Village life was, of course, very very different from city life, but there were constantly some pockets of familiarity which would always take me by surprise. For example, after hours of talking to villagers about the ration shops and their entitlements, NREGA, the corruption of the Sachiv, and bias of the Sarpanch, we spent an hour at a widow’s house who had invited us for dinner. We ate the roti with the Rajasthani pyaaz ki subzi, and while we talked to her sister-in-law and her, I was constantly aware of a feeling of surprise at how normal the conversation was. We oohed and aahed over the two toddlers in the house and encouraged the proud mother to tell us tales of their naughtiness. The sister-in-law joked and complained about her husband (not present during the dinner), and poked fun at him when he arrived later. I’d overheard the same small talk and dinner conversation countless times between my parents and their dinner guests, but only this time, my friend and I were the “adults”, participating in the conversation to the best of our ability, instead of just listening in curiously to see what it is that grown-ups talk about.
   
   
5. I also came across the weirdest squirrels I’ve ever seen. They were normal grey-and-white squirrels, scampering and chasing each other around in the trees, but as soon as they got onto the ground, they would lie flat on their bellies. Completely flat. I’ve never before seen a squirrel actually lie down – they always crouch, poised for flight, every movement sudden and quick. These squirrels appeared defeated by the heat, and would lie flat, all four tiny legs splayed out on their sides. When I saw the first such squirrel, I actually thought it was dead, and was rudely shocked when it promptly scurried away at my approach. I didn’t manage to click a good enough picture, since they would always scurry away as I got within photo-taking distance, but this one that I pulled off a Google search is pretty much what I’m trying to describe.
   
   

More disjointed thoughts later.

Venice, the Metro Station

Barely two days of travelling on non-airconditioned, Rajasthan Roadways buses reminded me of how privileged I really am. The only other time I’ve travelled in sleeper class in a train was five years ago, when I went for a summer camp. And that, too, was not by choice – sleeper class was what the camp had booked for us.

Now, I’ve spent three weeks living and travelling among villages in Rajasthan. I’ve travelled in sleeper class, both with and without confirmed bookings, taken four different government provided Rajasthan Roadways buses to get from one village to another, hitched rides on everything from an overstuffed auto to overloaded tractors. And though I wasn’t so okay with the situation at the time, I do appreciate the experience and understanding afforded to me by the travels.

Sitting in an unusually undercrowded bus, enjoying the luxury of personal space (having just finished a seven hour journey in a sweltering bus carrying at least twice the number of people as there were seats), I was oddly reminded of a guy I met in metro station in Washington DC. I’d been using my debit card to buy a ticket at the machine when a guy of around my age, carrying a guitar and a bag, approached me. “I’m trying to get to Venice, ma’am”, he started, which immediately confused me. It took me a minute to realise that he was talking about a stop on the metro line, not the city in Italy. “Could you buy me a ticket?” he asked simply.

I didn’t immediately understand his request – I still hadn’t figured out that Venice was a metro station. When my mind cleared, I pointed out that the fare was more than $6, more than double of what I was paying for my own ticket. He responded by saying that that was the fare for the peak hour, but he just wanted me to buy him a reduce fare ticket. “Let me worry about getting out of the station at Venice,” he said.

By now, I was even more confused. I’d used the metro system in DC just once, I didn’t understand that I could buy him a reduced fare ticket for $2, and he could wait at the Venice station for the “reduced fare hour” before exiting.

I refused to buy him the ticket. That one decision has bothered me several times since that day, mainly because the reason I refused was that the whole situation was very awkward for me. I didn’t immediately understand him, and it took me a while to see what he meant when he asked for the reduced fare ticket. Rather than prolong an already awkward meeting, I politely asked him to ask someone else. He thanked me before turning back to his original position, observing the other metro riders.

It was a stupid decision, not just because I turned down a civil request from a guy to whom the request was clearly costing a lot of pride, but because the reasoning behind the denial was so utterly stupid. Out of all the times I’ve refused a request for money, out of all the times I’ve shaken my head at beggar children knocking on my car window, all the times I’ve waved away the one-legged man or the young girl clutching an infant on the road, this one incident is one of the few denials I vividly remember and regret.

All I can say is, I hope the man and his guitar made it safely to Venice.

My Music Teacher

When I was around nine, I had a music teacher. He would come to my house to teach me Indian classical music... singing and playing the harmonium. He did the same at many other houses in my campus. He was also the music teacher at our local primary school. He was regarded as the best music teacher in our area. The other students and I lived in a university campus, but he came from the village half an hour away from our campus, and so, was always regarded as an "outsider".

He was a good teacher in many ways. He used to boast that he could play all the musical instruments except the violin. He was well-trained and knowledgeable, and managed to impress even my dad, who has always been hard to impress.

But despite his musical prowess, what I remember when I think back to my years of learning music with him were the whispers that followed him. Murmurs that he was perhaps a little too fond of his young female students. Whispers that he had roving hands that didn't always just touch to teach a particular skill on the harmonium. And also mutterings that he had a temper that would flare up if a student did something wrong or said something out of place - a temper that could get out of hand.

No one knew where the murmurs began, and I'm not sure they ever reached my parents. The closest I came to hearing a first-hand account of his roving hands was from a friend who'd heard it from her friend who talked about too much "accidental" brushing of her breasts. No one ever called it molestation or even sexual harassment. But all the children knew about it and talked about it. We were all around the age of nine, we were just realising that his touching a student's breasts was wrong, though we weren't really sure why.

I don't know whether anyone told their parents about the whispers; I know that I didn't. There was always the hesitation of saying anything "bad" about a much-respected and very elderly music teacher. I remember thinking that even if I did tell my parents, they might not even believe me. After all, the first question would be "Who did you hear this from? Who said that he touched their breasts?" and I, of course, would have no answer. They were just rumours, unconfirmed and unverified, passing from one student to another. And the reports of his uncontrollable temper which had (as rumour said) led him to physically hit a student made all his students afraid of ever saying anything against him.

We didn't make a big deal of it then. I was mildly concerned when my parents hired him to teach me music, but I confidently stated that if he "tried" anything with me, I would go to my parents. And maybe I would have. But throughout the time he was my teacher, he never did anything overt that I could complain about. But I was always uncomfortable when he touched me in any way. I didn't see why he needed to touch my hand while teaching me, and while there was never anything blatant, there was always the sense of inappropriateness whenever he came physically close. But I did see first-hand that he definitely had a temper - it would flare up when I did something wrong, or dared to disagree with him. He never hit me, but I was always scared of his acid tongue and raised voice.

But to think back over it, maybe my parents had heard the rumours too. I remember being told (again and again) to never go anywhere alone with him. Either my mom or my dad would always remain in the room while I had my lessons with him, and if by chance neither of them were around, the live-in maid had instructions never to leave me alone with him. But still, week after week, for several years, he was allowed to come to my house to teach me music.

All the children knew about the reports, but no one ever said anything. If the parents (mine or others') knew about the rumours, they didn't do anything either. He was always hired and got good reviews from parents, he remained a respected member of the "outsiders" group in our campus, and as far as I know, was never told off by anyone for anything he did. And while I can't be sure that the rumours were true, no one really doubted them at the time. Yet, no one raised a voice, no one said anything. People moved away, the music teacher retired, and the rumours were forgotten.

But I Don't WANT To!

The first time marriage became a topic possibly relevant to me was when I went to college. No one had ever talked about it in terms of me before: not my parents, not my friends in school, not my cousins or sister. We'd discussed the "ideal boyfriend", what we want to be "when we grow up", colleges, dreams, travel plans, how to change the world etc, but never the “ideal husband” or marriage.

Within the first couple of months of college, however, during one of those late-night talks when everyone's just trying to get to know each other and make new friends, someone asked "So, what age do you want to get married at?"

That was the first time I'd even thought about the idea of me being married. I was only 18, I'd just begun college in a new country, I was as confused as ever about what I wanted to do with my life. Marriage, frankly, had never even occurred to me as a possible part of my Plans for the Future. I was genuinely surprised at the question. "You mean to say you guys have an age that you want to be married by? You've actually thought about this before?"

That's the first time I really understood that there are families which have expectations from their children regarding marriage. My best friend at the time, a boy, had a long-term girlfriend that his parents knew about. He knew he was going to be married around the age of 25, because his girlfriend would be 24 at that time and already past the "ideal marriage age" for girls in her family. Another close friend, a girl, said that there was no way she'd be allowed to be unmarried past the age of 24, and that's if she managed to push it to 24.

This was all new to me. My parents had never even mentioned their "plans" for my marriage to me. They still haven't, and I'm fairly sure they don't have any such plans anyway. I couldn't imagine a situation in which my various uncles and aunts and grandparents could pressure me into getting married at any age. Why would it be any of their business? And why would disapproval from them lead to me making the life-altering, very serious decision about getting married?

Since then, I've talked more to my friends, and while I still can’t understand the pressure and the expectations that they face because I’ve never faced that, I’ve accepted that there are such pressures. My advice to just “screw it and do what you want” may not work in all situations and for all people. I may not be able to empathise, but I can at least sympathise.

I’ve also had more time to think about marriage. And it still doesn’t feature on my Plans for the Future. For many reasons, I don’t understand marriage as a concept, and until I am convinced that there’s a real reason why I should get married, I don’t plan on getting married. What really bugs me, however, is the dismissal that I encounter if I voice this opinion. “Oh, you’re still young. You’ll change your mind in five years.” I have heard that countless times. Especially so if I add that I don’t like kids, and don’t want to have any of my own. The indulgent smiles from many adults really annoy me. Yes, I’m 20, but that mean that my opinions will necessarily change magically when I hit 25? Why are all women expected to want to get married? Why am I expected to want kids just because I’m a woman?

Do guys face the same indulgent smiles and general disbelief? I don’t know, but I’m inclined to believe not. A guy saying that he doesn’t want to get married or have kids will probably be more believed than a woman saying that (I may be wrong here). The expectations that a large part of society has from its members are extremely gendered. I may want to change my mind later on in life, but the desire to not get married just to spite those who were so convinced that I would change my mind is very strong.

I feel a little stupid even writing about this, because I do feel too young to be even thinking about marriage. Not because I’m too young to understand it and have an opinion about it, but because I feel too young to be thinking about it affecting my life because it’s never been discussed as part of my life in my family, and won’t be a part of my life for a long, long time, if ever. But I have friend who might be married two years from now, solely because the society she lives in has set this schedule that her life must follow, and marriage is part of it. Her not wanting to be married at 24 is abnormal, stupid and against everything they believe in, and hence, the childish desire must be ignored and squashed. And my opinion that marriage as an institution doesn’t make sense should die a similar death.

About Helplessness and Frustration

I'm living in the "international dorm" in my university in Florida. Half of us in this dorm are international exchange students. The group of friends that I've made consists of people from all around the world. The diversity of the group often leads to discussions and comparisions of life back home, from food and shopping, to governments and laws.

Last week, when we were looking to rent a car for the weekend, the talk turned to driving. We discussed the differences in driving laws - I mentioned that all my driving test consisted of was one U-turn, my Peruvian friend said that in Peru, you can get out of traffic tickets by bribing the cop, I agreed with her. From which point, the talk turned to the police and law implementation.

All this tied in with some articles I've been reading recently. Tehelka carried an article about the botching up of the Aarushi Talwar case by the CBI, Annie Zaidi published links to articles about further incompetence, brutality and corruption of cops (here and here), Dilip D'Souza poignantly displayed the utter stupidity and blatant incompetence of police offers in a court case. And I remember walking with a friend and talking about how I've never been asked for ID in any bar in Delhi, and how easy it is to find drugs or bribe a cop to get out of a traffic ticket in Delhi. And I remember telling her that we read and hear a lot about the corruption of cops, or their incompetence, but we never really hear about the good cops. Surely there must be some.

But these succession of articles are so frustrating, so shocking, they leave me feeling so overwhelmingly helpless that I start doubting that belief. If there are some good cops, where are they? Why do I hear only about events and behaviours that should be hard to believe, but sadly are so familiar that they're not even particularly surprising?  Why is it that I'm beginning to doubt my comment that there are good cops in India, they're just never talked about?

What went wrong? Why are there so many bad cops? Corruption is one thing - at least there's some gain to be seen, which provides an explanation for why. But what do police officers gain from imprisoning and harassing 23 men without even telling them the reason for their arrest? How can that possibly not sound blatantly wrong? What reason could a public servant, an officer of the law in a democratic country, have for doing that?

I believe that I've been lucky. I've never been stopped by a cop, nor ever needed a cop for a crime that happened to me. But I'm still so scared - what if someday I need the police? What if I need them to solve a crime, and they display their incompetence? What if someday I'm at the receiving end of their incomprehensible bullshit treatment of citizens? It's frustrating and depressing enough about to hear of such things happening to strangers. How would I handle it if it was me, or someone I cared about? Is there even a way of seeking redressal? Is there a way out of a situation where the police refuse to protect evidence or do a thorough investigation into a murder? Is there a way to do something, anything when trumped up or incomprehensibly random "evidence" is used in a trial to convict a citizen?

Three Naked Teenagers

I'm trying to get into the habit of reading news online everyday. And it's not going too badly... I usually do visit CNN, NDTV and The Hindu every couple of days. Today, I came across this on NDTV's website. The title "Boy Drives Into Canal With Two Naked Girls" was interesting, so I clicked.

The story is about three teenagers in Melbourne who were "having a bit of a party" and decided to go skinny dipping. Interestingly enough, all three of the teenagers (including the boy) were naked, despite what the title of the story and the first few sentences ("Australian policemen were startled on learning that a car carrying a teenage boy along with two naked girls plunged into canal..") would lead one to believe.

Now, why would the nakedness of the two girls be clearly mentioned in the title and the first sentence, while the nakedness of the boy be revealed only towards the end, in a direct quote from a police officer?

On another topic: suggestions for new (and better) websites to follow Indian news are welcome. The NDTV website doesn't appear to be doing a very good job at objective reporting.

An Excellent Night Out

Head spinning,

Loud music,

Gyrating bodies,

Packed room.

Lit cigarettes,

Cups of alcohol,

Make-up and perfume,

Low cut clothes.

Hugs and kisses,

Sexy grinding,

Unintelligible introductions,

Longing glances.

Inane laughter,

Long walk home,

Embarrassing conversations,

An excellent night out.

Charm

I underestimated charm. Before I went to Singapore for college, I totally underestimated the power of charm. I hadn't really met a whole lot of "charming" people - I'd grown up in a small, closed community, and no one ever needed or wanted to charm someone else. I remember the first "charming" guy that my friends and I met when we were about 16. He was so different from the rest of us. He would effortlessly flirt, cast his beaming smile everywhere, flick his hair about. The word universally applied to him was charming. And I remember that we regarded the fact that he was charming as slightly scandalous.

Then, in Singapore, I met more charming people. Flirtatious, smooth talking guys; bubbly, smiling girls. They got along with everyone. When I ran into one of them at the library, the conversation would encompass everything from current classes to upcoming parties, possible internships and future plans. I formed a stereotype of a "charming" person in my head: flirtatious, smooth-talking, but mostly importantly, fake. The interest they show in our conversations, in what I said, it all seemed so fake.

Then I met another type of charming. A genuine, occasionally rude, always funny, easy to talk to, interesting guy who is now one of my best friends. He didn't carry on conversations he wasn't interested in, but he got along with everyone, could talk to anyone, and was always fun to be around. The stereotype in my head was contradicted and abandoned. There's more than just one type of charming, I decided.

But still, I underestimated the power and importance of that charm. Until I came to Florida for one semester abroad. And last night, while having dinner with a massive group of people, the power of charm hit me. I'm not very good at social situations with people I don't know, so I was sticking to my table with a couple of friends, and just observing the other students there. And charming people are just so good at socialising! Witty comments, funny jokes and a slow smile will get you really far with people! The girl sitting across the table from me has been in Florida as long as I have, but she's friends with at least double the number of people I know here. A guy with a nice smile and very funny jokes was constantly surrounded by people, all laughing and talking. A group of people next to me randomly planned a post-dinner party and invited people, all of whom said yes.

In general, I prefer to hang out with a small group of friends. But the point of this semester abroad was to meet more people, learn to make new friends and party. None of which are made easier by my social awkwardness, physical clumsiness and lack of ideas for good conversation or funny jokes. Once in a while, it would nice to be able to be charming, even if I choose not to exercise that ability all the time.

I spent the dinner forming this blog post out in my head. By the end of two hours, I was exhausted. My cheeks hurt with all the smiling, I was tired of talking and hugging and asking people what they were studying, and I was ready to go home, get under my blanket and type this blog post out. I left, but the charming people stayed and probably went on to their impromptu party.

Wanderlust

Stuck in the library,

A week before the exams,

Watching the rain come roaring down,

Books lie forgotten.

Something about today is making me dreamy. The rain, pictures of places around the world on my Tumblr dashboard, the travel section of the latest issue of the school magazine: they’re all making me not want to be here right now.

One of the things that I want to do most in the world is travel. I’ve always loved travelling, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to understand the sheer massiveness of the world! There is so much to see, and probably not enough time to see it all.

There is no place that I don’t want to go to. I want to sit in a cafe on a cobbled street in Paris; take brilliants photographs in Barcelona; gape at the Grand Canyon; row down a road in Venice; marvel at the blueness of the sea at a beach in Greece; get lost in the crowds of Mexico City; ski down the Alps; stroll down La Rambla in Barcelona; feel the heat of the deserts of Morocco; spot all the gnomes in Wroclaw, Poland; and so much more! And I don’t want to go to just the popular places: I want to see the Navagio Shipwreck in Zante, Greece; the cliffs of Étretat in northern France; the beaches of Anguilla; the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia; the Minorca Island in Spain; the World Heritage Site of Sana’a in Yemen.

I want to spend more than just a few days in a lot of places: I want to spend a couple of months, I want to get to know some cities! I want to know about the not-so-popular nightlight spots, the seedy bars that make the best Bloody Mary in town, the unknown restaurant that will change what I think I know about pasta.

And I want to know India. I want to take four-six months just to travel around India; go to small villages and big cities, see all the great historic monuments I’ve only heard about, see the monuments that I haven’t yet heard about. I want to know and understand India in a way you only can if you’ve seen the problems that her people face.

There is too much to see, too much to do. Everyone says that it’s impossible to get the chance to do everything you want to do, to travel as much as you want to. But I have to make it possible.

The Grand Sophy

The Women's Web has a writing contest: the Favourite Fictional Female contest. What do you have to do? Just pick a female character from a novel that you would like/admire/appreciate, write about her in less than 500 words, and submit your entry to the Women's Web. Visit their website for more information. My entry for this contest is below:

I’ve always had immense respect for people who can fly in the face of convention and societal expectations to do what they want to and what they think is right. Sophy, from the book the Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer, is a character who does exactly that. The book is a romance set during the period of English Regency. Women in this time did not have much freedom. Society was governed by strict rules of behaviour: sports such as driving and shooting were considered extremely unsuitable for women; single women could not entertain men without a chaperone; it was unheard-of for a woman to remain unmarried past the age of 21; flirting was one of the cardinal sins for a woman.

In such a society, Sophy is a breath of fresh air. She was brought up by her eccentric diplomat father who taught her to look out for herself instead of depending on a man for protection. Sophy learned to become an excellent shot and to “drive to an inch”, sometimes making her the talk of the town.

The independence and strength of mind that I love in Sophy is obvious throughout the book. When she’s left in London with her aunt while her father travels to Brazil, she proceeds to take the entire family in hand to solve their problems. She formulates a plan that is as scandalous as it is innovative to make one of her cousins recognise that the man she loves for who he really is; she goes to a villainous moneylender herself to stop him from harassing another cousin, something that no woman is ever supposed to do; she stops yet another cousin from foisting his unwelcome and unpleasant fiancée onto his family, and puts an end to his unquestioned but well-intentioned authority over his siblings.

I love Sophy’s practical way of looking at a situation and never giving up. According to her, the people who say that there’s nothing to be done are those who are “too lazy or too timorous to make a push to be helpful”. And Sophy was definitely neither: she came up with successful plans to put an end to any problem that she saw.

Sophy has a very witty sense of humour, which kept me in splits throughout the book. Her hot temper rises up only in situations where I can’t help but agree with her, but never drowns out her innate sense of fairness. She does not let her love for a person blind her to the person’s faults, nor does she ever blind herself to her own faults. She doesn’t hide her opinions from men the way she’s supposed to, and is not afraid to tell her equally strong-willed cousin (and future husband) when she disagrees with his actions.

It’s because of Sophy that I never go anywhere without my copy of The Grand Sophy. Not only would I love to have written her, but in many ways, I’d love to be like her.

CWG Experiences

I've been to a couple of CWG events during the past few days, mainly to see what the organisers have managed to pull off and to be a small part of a big event happening in my city. Leaving aside the matter of how they prepared for the games, I wanted to see whether what they tried to do actually worked.

On Tuesday, I went to see Badminton at the Siri Fort Sports Complex; that went pretty smoothly. Even though there were no signs at the main entrance telling spectators to use the side entrance, we did manage to find our way to the gate we were supposed to use, buy tickets, and reach our seats. The area was clean, there were more than enough volunteers to guide us along the somewhat convoluted path to the stadium, and the stadium itself looked great. The entire experience was a lot of fun. Badminton is a sport that I have played and like, so I could at least dimly appreciate the skill of the players. The entire event seemed fairly well organised.

The next day, however, my mom and I tried to go watch Athletics at the new Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. I say "tried" because even though we bought tickets, we didn't actually manage to go into the stadium. The "servers were down" when we got to JLN Stadium to buy tickets, but thankfully, we only had to wait five minutes before the servers were up and the queue was moving. So, standing at Gate 14, we finally managed to buy two tickets that allowed us entry at Gate 6.

How far could it be, we reasoned, and resolutely walked the way indicated by the police officers. And walked and walked and walked. At one point, we actually left the stadium behind us and took a road leading away from the stadium because the road around the stadium was blocked. So we were supposed to walk up the other road, take two lefts, and walk all the way back to the stadium.

We walked for nearly 45 minutes before we reached an intersection point with CWG volunteers. Who then informed us that Gate 6 was at least another kilometre from where we stood, and the only way to get there was to walk. I was tired, my mother was exhausted, and we were furious. After somewhat dramatically tearing up the tickets and throwing them away, we found an auto and came back home.

Today, we went to watch the India versus Australia hockey match. Someone we knew had two extra tickets, so I don't know whether the servers at the ticket office at the Dhyanchand Stadium were down or not, but we got to the stadium easily (we took an auto rather than try the shuttle service from Metro stations). Both the matches were fun to watch, even though the Indian team got trounced by the Australians, and the audience was huge, enthusiastic and very loud.

The problem emerged when we wanted to leave. After the match was over, the entire audience trooped out of the stadium only to find no shuttle buses to take us to the nearest Metro stations. We ended up walking nearly a kilometre, I think, to Pragati Maidan, where we stood in a very long line to get through security check, to finally take a train back home.

What I've found is that the CWG Organising Committee seems to have done a good job with the actual building of the stadiums and other venues, late as the completion might be. The operations of the games, however, need some serious help. Efficient selling of tickets should not be as a big a hurdle as it seems to be! And it makes absolutely no sense to expect spectators to walk so much to watch anything, let alone matches where India may not even be playing!

Three Years, Countless Calories

Instant noodles, strong coffee,

Bread-and-cheese, flat Coke,

Midnight ice-cream tubs, soupy Maggi,

Readymade pasta sauce, packets of chips.

MTR Indian food, microwaved sweet corn,

Icy water, expired milk, old cereal,

Thai food, frozen cheesecake on sale,

Bars of chocolate, M&M packets.

Spicy potatoes with too much haldi,

Chola from cans, frozen parathas,

Baked-beans-on-bread, scrambled eggs,

A lot more Maggi.

Coke with JD, orange juice with vodka,

Salt and lime, tequila shots,

Frozen margharitas with stolen tequila,
Coke with Old Monk, surreptitious cigarettes.

What college tastes like.