India is bitten ( or is it bit) by the IPL fever. From office to cocktail discussions are all about how Shane Warne is captaining to when Rahul will get sacked. I was initially resistant to the lure of the T20 version of cricket but over the month have started following some of the matches. It might also be a by product of me being a sports freak and The Gunners will not win any silverware this year ( so nothing else to watch on TV except maybe what Khali eats and how he walks )
Alas one of the reasons I wanted to watch IPL vanished due to the need to safeguard Indian men from foreign assaults on our morality. My friends had spoken about the extraordinary ability and assets of the Washington Redskin Cheerleaders and the sundry blondes from Belarus and Ukraine but when I started watching for some reason they had donned new avatars and were covered top to bottom. I was away for some time this year and so unfortunately ( or fortunately ) did not follow the fracas and time this issue generated.
On the Reuters India site a
blog had been posted on the issue and the gist was that more than the cheerleaders it was important to question our attitude towards women and how we see them. In itself the blog is innocuous and is not the subject of this post, the subject being a comment posted by someone I know which said that if women walk out at 2 they are asking to be molested.
This guy is normal eduacated & likeable. Not the typical boor from Jatland who burn their daughter because of izzat issues. He has been raised in Delhi, did his schooling here and is also a new generation MCA so one cant put him under the classification of
' the poor guy is not educated and so education is the key'. When I confronted him on his post he was quite convinced that what happens to women is bad but is brought to them by their own acts whether what they are wearing or where they are going.
This brought out in stark the issues that women face in Delhi or any Indian City ( Mumbaikars your city is just as bad so dont get sanctimonious ) . It is how the vast majority sees the fairer sex that there is a view that their place is ordained by men and it is the men who will decide what is right or wrong for women.
I dont have a solution but I dont know whether education alone can solve the issue. Till the time we as parents dont communicate these values to our kids this thing will move from one generation to the other. Maybe more and more working women is the answer as proximity might bring in more tolerance and the right value.
This friend asked me ' Tell me, will you
allow your sister or wife to go out at 2??' My response was that I dont know whether I have the right to allow but I would definitely advise them against it. Not because Good girls dont go out at 2 but because there are men like you who think that anyone out at 2 is easy meat and available.
May our country get better sense and soon!
