A journalist friend of mine who just happens to be male, was annoyed and quite incredulous when some of the nation's most respected newspapers called the July 2012 mob molestation of a young woman in Gauhati a case of 'eve teasing', a term which diluted the seriousness of the incident and trivialized it, although this was probably not the intention. Or was it?????
Incidentally, on the one occasion I used this term in an international setting among friends from various foreign countries, there was complete incomprehension on their faces. It would seem then that 'eve teasing' is a term exclusively coined and used in India!
So is 'eve teasing' really something exclusive to our culture? At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I see in pure, original and physically unthreatening (though no less objectionable) 'eve teasing' behaviours (such as whistling, making catcalls, singing a romantic song as a girl walks past, passing stupid or lecherous comments about a girl within her earshot, winking, etc.) a license that the perpetrators of such acts have given themselves, thinking themselves to be clones of Lord Krishna who often 'teased' the gopis!
Inspired (to my mind) directly by the good Lord Krishna, Bollywood of the 60s, 70s and 80s carried this indigenous 'eve teasing' or 'chhed-chhaad' culture to the level of physicality by having the hero roughly manhandle the coy and unwilling heroine who by the end of the song almost invariably became willing and pliant. Unfortunately, the above Bollywood formula has become romanticized, amusing, acceptable, and is considered playful and harmless even though it sometimes borders on violence as in shoving and pushing and arm twisting (immortalised in song as baiyyan marodna)! It has given the stupid 'roadside romeo' the stupid idea that this is how even real women want to be wooed....and who knows, perhaps at one time they did, because it probably seemed appropriate for a good Indian woman to be falling in love 'unwillingly'! Given our addiction to Bollywood films, is it surprising then that this celluloid sanction sometimes acts itself out on the streets in the form of violence against women?
Today the manhandling Bollywood hero sometimes gets a dose of his own medicine from the less than coy, and often man-eating vamp cum heroine cum item number girl. At other times he is a true metrosexual and tries less rough, more cerebral or simply, openly sensual wooing tactics.
In these confusing times, what is the pea-brained romeo on the street to do? He does not have the wherewithal to be cerebral, the finesse or experience to be subtly sensual, or the looks, attitude or means to be metrosexual. So he uses crude physically sexual overtures, and because the sexily dressed, immensely desirable object of his unwanted attention is not only no longer secretly elated, but openly contemptuous of him and resists his advances, he uses violence, telling himself she needs to be taught a lesson or alternately convincing himself that she like her sisters of yesteryear wants it, but only as a fait accompli and if she can appear unwilling.
And that's what he gets completely wrong - that when a woman says 'no' (at least today if not in earlier times as well), she means NO, that any kind of unwanted attention is a crime, that 'eve teasing' and rape and molestation are all as bad, no matter how physically threatening or unthreatening each of them may be, no matter how she is dressed or how she behaves, and no matter what the cause or level of his arousal may be! On a parting note and again at the risk of sounding irreverent, in order to rid our dictionary of this 'eve teasing' euphemism, it may help to stop and think that maybe even Krishna's gopis actually really did not want to be eve teased or harassed or molested (call it what you will) at all, and that all we hear to the contrary was wishful thinking on the good Lord Krishna's part!
Incidentally, on the one occasion I used this term in an international setting among friends from various foreign countries, there was complete incomprehension on their faces. It would seem then that 'eve teasing' is a term exclusively coined and used in India!
So is 'eve teasing' really something exclusive to our culture? At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I see in pure, original and physically unthreatening (though no less objectionable) 'eve teasing' behaviours (such as whistling, making catcalls, singing a romantic song as a girl walks past, passing stupid or lecherous comments about a girl within her earshot, winking, etc.) a license that the perpetrators of such acts have given themselves, thinking themselves to be clones of Lord Krishna who often 'teased' the gopis!
Inspired (to my mind) directly by the good Lord Krishna, Bollywood of the 60s, 70s and 80s carried this indigenous 'eve teasing' or 'chhed-chhaad' culture to the level of physicality by having the hero roughly manhandle the coy and unwilling heroine who by the end of the song almost invariably became willing and pliant. Unfortunately, the above Bollywood formula has become romanticized, amusing, acceptable, and is considered playful and harmless even though it sometimes borders on violence as in shoving and pushing and arm twisting (immortalised in song as baiyyan marodna)! It has given the stupid 'roadside romeo' the stupid idea that this is how even real women want to be wooed....and who knows, perhaps at one time they did, because it probably seemed appropriate for a good Indian woman to be falling in love 'unwillingly'! Given our addiction to Bollywood films, is it surprising then that this celluloid sanction sometimes acts itself out on the streets in the form of violence against women?
Today the manhandling Bollywood hero sometimes gets a dose of his own medicine from the less than coy, and often man-eating vamp cum heroine cum item number girl. At other times he is a true metrosexual and tries less rough, more cerebral or simply, openly sensual wooing tactics.
In these confusing times, what is the pea-brained romeo on the street to do? He does not have the wherewithal to be cerebral, the finesse or experience to be subtly sensual, or the looks, attitude or means to be metrosexual. So he uses crude physically sexual overtures, and because the sexily dressed, immensely desirable object of his unwanted attention is not only no longer secretly elated, but openly contemptuous of him and resists his advances, he uses violence, telling himself she needs to be taught a lesson or alternately convincing himself that she like her sisters of yesteryear wants it, but only as a fait accompli and if she can appear unwilling.
And that's what he gets completely wrong - that when a woman says 'no' (at least today if not in earlier times as well), she means NO, that any kind of unwanted attention is a crime, that 'eve teasing' and rape and molestation are all as bad, no matter how physically threatening or unthreatening each of them may be, no matter how she is dressed or how she behaves, and no matter what the cause or level of his arousal may be! On a parting note and again at the risk of sounding irreverent, in order to rid our dictionary of this 'eve teasing' euphemism, it may help to stop and think that maybe even Krishna's gopis actually really did not want to be eve teased or harassed or molested (call it what you will) at all, and that all we hear to the contrary was wishful thinking on the good Lord Krishna's part!
Good one!
ReplyDeleteQuite right,Amita. There is also a huge disconnect between how our films dress our heroines-overtly sexually- who move around in their secure cars in secure environs and the average Indian girl on the street who has to take public transport.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Amita, I like the twist in the end, were all of us completely wrong
ReplyDeleteThanks Venu Rajamony for reading my ramblings and for your comment on this entry.....it is an interesting thought isn't it? Would it turn everything on its head if what I say at the end of the entry was in fact true??????
ReplyDelete