Anywhere but here.

This is a digression from the usual snappy stuff I blog about, but I just have to get it off my chest

Show me a gentleman on a crowded Delhi street and I'll show you a woman.


In this country, if you wish to live in peace either be born rich or a man.


So much for gender role reversal.I find myself playing the eternal gentleman on the street stepping aside for one man after another coming at me full steam ahead.

Dress an electric pole (or a boa constrictor) as a woman and they'll walk into it for sure.


Even Ms. Sheila Dikshit, the CM of Delhi took note of the burgeoning uncouth male immigrant population from neighbouring states.(I am taking the liberty to assume that 'burden on infrastructure' was the politest way she could make an allusion to the rape Delhi is being subjected to)
Apparently that wasn't polite enough, she had to publicly apologize for noting it in public.I assume that she said something that only a Balasaheb or a Narendra Modi could have gotten away with in this country (by the virtue of being MEN obviously)

These are strange times we live in.
Ms. Dikshit is embarking on a mission to ban the influx of diesel vehicles into Delhi in order to curb air pollution.
Something tells me that the proposition to curb diesel vehicle effluent pollution will be infinitely more welcome than curbing human pollution.Human pollutants in this nation have a symbiotic relationship with their benefactors, their patrons ; the uber-pollutants which threaten the very moral fabric and infrastructure of the country in their quest for the perks that absolute power affords.

I would not call myself a very well-traveled person, but there is one thing I know for sure about Delhi women.Unlike women from other metros and semi-urbanized towns of India, they are flowers in a perpetual half-bloom, stunted by caution, stunted by weariness and stunted by insecurity.

Their inherent blaze has been dimmed by the constant attack their dignity is under, on the street, sometimes in their own colleges, or even in their own homes.By the prying, lecherous male gaze, the leering, the completely unsolicited remarks, whose lewdness cannot be described for the want of superlatives, the groping, the pinching, the rapes.
They get their engineering degrees, their medicine degrees, post graduation degrees, post doctorals, their professorships, their honorary felicitations in front of a ten thousand strong crowd, the adoration of young pupils bordering on worship...
But do you know throughout the course of their education what is the one thing they all learn?
On the street, you are no professor, no doctor, no engineer.Just a piece of meat, dangling on a hook amongst thousands of hungry dogs and what you have between your ears does not matter, only what you have between your thighs.

So what do they do? They run.They run ...into matrimony, to the US, to Europe, or to Mumbai, they run into baggy loose garments to conceal their curves , and if they can afford none, they run into resignation.They flee to breathe, because here, there is no air.