Yet another rape(sic)
and yet another flood of open letters to Men, calling us rapists, molesters and
what not with images of women showing middle finger, in your face. As if the
entire Indian male population is running amok on the streets, high on testosterone,
with their manhood in one hand and the other hand reaching out to grope the next women to molest or rape.
Before the so
called “civil society” unleashes its feminist and male feminists on me, I want
to state my position viz-a-viz rape as a crime. I want all the rapists to be
hanged till death by their neck for committing such a heinous crime against a
woman.
Glad that we
are done with this ass saving exercise. Now moving on to something that happened
today (damn, it had to be a Friday).
What does an
office going white collar worker do on a Friday afternoon that’s not turning out
to be as productive as he would like it to be, the ideas are not flowing thick
and fast and a new business concept is up in the air waiting for some sort of divine
intervention? You guessed it, he goes out to grab a cup of coffee and hopes to
fish out some ideas from a half a liter coffee mug. And that’s exactly what I did. So, I locked my computer (in line with
corporate compliance policy 101 :), got off my lazy ass and swiftly walked to the nearest lift. I pressed the down button and waited for the
nearest one to go DINGG, and that’s what happened in exactly 10 seconds. What
followed for the next 30 odd seconds left yours truly questioning his morals, values
and self-respect. I am still shocked.
The lift
doors opened with their usual pace and as I stepped in I saw a loan womanly
figure standing bang in the middle. I quickly looked at the operator board,
noticed that the relevant floor was already selected and briskly stepped
towards the right corner of the lift. After exchanging a pleasantry smile with
the lady I did what almost everyone knowingly or unknowingly does in a lift, i.e.,
I kept on staring at the numbers changing with each floor passing by.
Suddenly, I
noticed that the figure standing bang in the middle of the lift had quickly
moved to the extreme opposite corner. A quick glance at her and I saw her
staring dead at me, noticing every breath I was taking to keep my biological
entity intact. A second glance, then a third and nothing had changed. She
looked visibly hassled for being forced to share 30 odd seconds with a stranger
in a metallic capsule. Lift stopped on
ground floor and as every gentleman would do. “Ladies first”, I still remember something
my 3rd grade teacher used to say. To my surprise the lady would not move, so
before the doors could close I stepped out and the lady followed. I gently
paced myself to the coffee shop and saw the lady briskly overtaking me and
still staring at me as if I did something really objectionable. I quickly replayed every second I spent with
her in the lift in an attempt to recall any ungentlemanly gesture I could have
displayed to offend that woman so badly.
Anyways, I
took my coffee and started scrolling down the twitter timeline on my mobile as
I took a sip. Four or may be five tweets into the timeline a strange thing
caught my attention, it was an open letter to “a rapist”(really). Other than
the usual blanket statements about India being a patriarchal society and how
crime against women have become a fixture on our daily news intake, the article
almost fell short of stating something that I had heard many a times from our school
and collage mates, girl-friends and sometime even our sisters and mothers mumbling
under their breath;
- All men are violent
- All men are molesters
- All men are lechers
- And above all " All men are Dogs"
I could not
help but wonder,
Was this the thought that might have come in
my lift co-passenger’s mind?
Did I make any gesture that made that woman
so aggressively defensive about my being in the same Six by Six space as her?
In today’s women Vs men slugfest, virtually everything is thrown
at each other (more at men than at women). And the problem is that because of
few bad apples (believe me both sides have them) most of the shit thrown at
men, sticks. Every act against women is quickly diagnosed as a ‘’Men” problem
rather than being treated as a “Crime”. And then we have feminists and male
feminists of all kinds running amock on Television screens making livid faces while
blaming my upbringing, my morals and even my being a man for every possible
wrong thing that’s happening to women. All this under the garb of prevention of
crime against women.
The attacks are so vitriolic and so repetitive that it has put men
on a perpetual defensive. So much so
that there is a perpetual fear that a mere exchange of pleasantry smile can be
seen as an unwarranted advance and labelled as a potential molestation bid.
Let me ask you (the reader) a few questions; is crime against a
man different from crime against a woman?
Why is a man getting killed in a robbery bid less of a news than a
similar crime committed against women? Is
a man’s life less important? Everyone remembers Nirbhaya, but does anyone
remember her friend who almost died trying to save the lady. Poor guy did not
get any help from any Government or Non-government agency; in fact no one even
came to ask if he needed any help.
We have all kinds of celebrities and wannabees writing open letters
to go damn everyone they could think of, asking for fixing the system that is
as brutal to men as it is to women. A
strange kind of hate is getting perpetrated in to the society with this them
against us campaign.
The situation is equally bad at women’s front. Women are often seen in an aggressively defensive
posture, with their teeth and claws out, looking for the next alleged molester
they can attack, chew and spit out. A
simple one hour ride in Delhi Metro will show up enough example of this. From
token counters to metro bogies, you see women on lookout, wanting to make an
example out of a ‘’MAN” who was allegedly molesting their comrade. And then we have our lady in the lift who
thought a mere smile thrown at her as a pleasantry could be a potential bid to
harass her in the time the lift takes for covering four floors. Do we want our girls to grow up into a paranoid creature who believes virtually every man around her is a potential molester or a rapist?
I wonder what kind of society we are building for us and for our future
generation. What would I teach my 3 year
old son as he grows up? Do I teach him to respect women because she is an equal
human being and deserves equal respect, or do I teach him that he should stay
away from women and avoid them like plague or else there is a chance that he will
be labelled as a molester if he dares to
say “Good morning lady”.
About the blogger: a loving husband to an amazing wife, father to
a beautiful son, a caring son and a carrier of Y chromosome. Above all
a Man and definitely not a rapist.
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