#1: Delhi seems safe (for women).
MIGHT BE BECAUSE
#2: I do not move about. AND
#3: When I do, its usually the safer locales; that is what the undeniable safety of the Delhi Metro does to you - now everything HAS to be within 20 minutes of reach.
OTHERWISE
#4: I'd have come across the common scenes of direct/indirect abuse of the women. AND
#5: I'd have had the chance to headbutt into some random repressed fucker(s) doing so. HM
#6: The last I felt like that was some morning of January, 2008, upon learning of the terrorists attacking some couple on the New Year's eve close to a 5-star hotel in Delhi.
This über campaign, and the amazing artwork that
an associated art group created set me off to the fancy of physically assaulting those sad people.
Do I see a woman getting back even more strongly...the dainty slap taking shape of a punch? Yes.
Doing I see her knocking down those bikes/bikers that block her way and ask her to step out? Yes.
Do I see those bikers finding a new respect? No.
Do I see bystander stepping into the role of Heroes/Heroines? Maybe.
I just hope that such counter-reaction isn't met by counter-counter-reaction.
That rubbish party has already become a national face, henceforth holds more clout, and must be cashing in on more funds. The facade of culture is a great scheme for a business model.
My itch that is, is that there have been much severe incidents in the past (being sprayed with acid, burnt, abused, raped, killed), but the collective conscience only wakes up when it almost became a personal thing to the people who know how to make websites and write artikels. The sudden flood of sympathy seems confusing, and the keyword 'sympathy' only reminds me of an Amartya Sen quote:
"It can be argued that behaviour based on sympathy is egoistic, for oneself is pleased at others' pleasure and pained at others' pain, and the pursuit of one's own utility may thus be helped by sympathetic action."
Now let's see: the victims were accessible enough, not deprived of the power to speak (physical restrictions that being sprayed with acid or being killed puts) and, most importantly, willing to speak (thank God for being progressive-minded!). So this has shades of ego-exercise about it. And no, I don't think such activism fueled by ego is wrong, but surely something that had been existing latently and would've been much better off had it come earlier.
Seeing it another way, this incident caught on as it involved large congregations over a large number of places and, more importantly, was reducible to a simple binary relationship - the abuser and the abused. What the latter means gets more clear if one recalls the twisted social nature (thanks to our nakedness to irrational arguments) that dowry deaths or family abuse assume in India, and only a few NGOs are left to fight over it for years at times. 'I personally believe' that we learn to have an immediate opinion in these smaller cases as well - without needing the necessary media to generate sympathy to decide of taking action.
If anybody truly feels humiliated at such an incident, then they will not be looking for such straightforward binary roles: because there aren't any. These people that did so are inflated balls of ego, and deflated icons of potency. They promulgate their ideologies in private circles, which often escapes notice right under our eyes; they live amongst us, and you see them doing small, irritating, cute, (assumedly) social things everyday to push in their ideology. We should work on showing them humans first rather than creatures from hell, and then work on a direction that shows their decline to that creature from hell.
rightnow: so happy at the thought of going Gail Wynand (junior years) at the goons for something I obsessively feel about. Such thoughts should not be restricted to 2AM in the morning.
As always, late by a month in reactions :(
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