Encountering Fear

As I am counting down the days till I reach Delhi, I am enveloped with a feeling of dread. When I read about the girl from Guwahati being attacked, my mind took me back to a few years, to Mumbai, where another girl was attacked by a mob of men on New Years Eve. A shiver runs down my spine every time I think about these incidents. I can feel the gnawing helplessness, the agonizing and paralyzing fear that numbs your peripheries. Has this happened to me, you wonder? No.

But I am in an Indian girl (woman?) and this is what my nightmares are made of.

I haven’t lived in India for three years now.  Living without the fear that someone will come around and purposefully ram into you to get a feel of your bosom, comes slowly. Even now, when I walk down the streets of Madrid at night by myself, I look over my shoulder to make sure no one is following me.  It’s summer now, and careless abandon is in the air. Girls wear whatever they damn well please, and admire the warm spirit of the city at 11 pm. This can indeed be uplifting. The independence, the ability to wear whatever you want when its 40 degrees outside, the safety that no one curious eyes will undress you as you cross the road, it can be uplifting. But only till the moment you realize, this is not reality. My reality is my country, which scares the living day light out of me for being a woman. And that will stay with me for eternity. 

Growing up in Delhi, a girl learns that she can not go out by herself at night. . For those of us who do not have boyfriends, brothers and fathers handy, this can be a problem. Ofcourse, some of us do venture out anyway. To hell with the world, we think. The few times that I had the temerity to do this, I remember sitting in the drivers seat of my car, at a signal, silently urging the gods of the colour green to beckon the signal. I looked to my left and there was a car full of men, looking in my direction, smiling, laughing even, and smirking. No they didn’t do anything; no they didn’t say anything that I could hear since the widows were forced closed. But my heart pounded, and as the signal turned green, I sped across the road, looking in the rear view mirror time and time again. Making your way home at night, Delhi Girl, you know, is worthy of an accolade. The adrenaline is nothing short of what you would have generated in a battle. 

As I sit here writing this, I feel angry. Not that boiling rage which makes one want to throw stuff around but that kind of systematic low range rage, which makes you want to write this. I want to be able to talk to those men, that driver from a licensed motor training school who felt comfortable enough to graze my thigh while teaching me how to drive a car. I want to say yeah, I would like to slap him. But really, I want to know his psyche. What was he thinking? What made him do that? Was he pathological? Was it the first time he did something like that? Did he know it was wrong because I was uncomfortable? And ofcourse, the 17 year old me didn’t know what was going on and rationalized by saying hey, maybe it was a mistake. Well, if it happens every 5 minutes, it is sure as hell not a mistake.

I did tell the management and they refused to believe the word of this 17 year old girl. And I didn’t drive till I was 19 because I was afraid to take lessons. One day though I decided it was enough, and I picked up the old family car and my best friend and bumped away into the horizon, in second gear, with the hand break on. 

Maybe it was the guys background, maybe he wasn’t educated enough, I would tell myself thinking about what happened. Well, I was wiser atleast. Or Was I?

What about the gentleman in the business class seat on the flight to China? Did he think the small of my back was a mitten he could use to warm him hands on this warm August night as our flight took off? Was his unapologetic nature when I shrugged it off and ran with my bag to the back of the plane, induced by drugs and alcohol? Or was it just him thinking that a helpless looking girl tucked in on the window seat would make for a good story? I didn’t say anything to him either. I just sat in my new seat, mortified, thinking about what happened, writing a blog!  So I guess I vented by writing, and ofcourse I always book an aisle seat when flying now, but hey, everyone has baggage right?

How do we change this mentality? This brazen nature of accosting a woman and getting away with saying and doing anything. What do you call these men? Hooligans? Maybe the mob, yes. But the guy in the plane or the car guys? Are they just regular men like we know or there is something different about them?

I want to know. I have questions. Conjectures and guesses are not enough anymore. It is easy to say that he must be illiterate/ignorant/a criminal or other such justifications. So girls, next time you meet someone who whistles at you. Please stop him, and ask him. Why. What gave him the liberty to do this. Maybe we will get an answer. Maybe we won’t. But we need to try and get to the genesis of this behemoth of a nuisance.

I have many stories to tell, which would be the same as the stories of another Indian girl with only a few details changed. The man in the bus staring at your ankles, the man on that motorcycle shouting profanities in your direction, or those boys in that car, circling the street you and your friend are parked in, waiting for someone. That trepidation which makes you crouch down in your own car to lose the stalkers, the fear which makes you want to wear jeans when its 45 degrees outside, the dread which makes say, Girls, wake up. We need a revolution.

Words Revisited

Dull, is the sound in my head

The waves of the brain

That slow to a crawl instead

The inspiration fades,

 as the night lingers on

The glow of the candle,

Dances around the dark

My eyes want to close,

But the hands tremble on

They utter these words

I can’t discern

The letters form words

words weave sentences

while the heart pounds

gently in the body cavity

The magnetic force draws me in

The night descends, the light fades

The fingers cease to caress, the words.

The words are all there is.

The Mighty Unknown

I like not knowing,
What comes tomorrow
The obscurity, the questions
The uncertainty of tranquility
The probability of bliss
The dreams remain alive,
Not buried in the sand,
When nothing is certain
there isn’t any blueprint
What comforts me most
Is the prospect of adventure
new cities, love, muses
The possibilities that lie
in the mighty unknown.

Diatribe Delhi

I met an Indian girl at a Dussehra Dinner gathering last year in Madrid. She was new to the city and we got talking. When it came to topic of our hometowns in India, and I mentioned Delhi- her reaction blew me away. “Oh, you’re a Delhiite” (Pronounced Delhi-ite). Wow, are we such notorious creatures? I thought.

It’s only been two years and a few months since I ceased to be a resident of Delhi, but this holiday season, I feel more alienated than I’d ever felt before.
The years before I left Delhi weren’t exactly spent in a tizzy of love with the city, yet this time around I can unequivocally attest to the fact that as this city engulfs me in smog, meaningless traditions, blatant disregard for humanity in general and disrespect for women, I can’t wait to run away, again.
The cars are being towed away for being illegally parked on roadsides, but where are the parking lots? Can an action not be justified, if there is no other institutional alternative available? It’s easy to target young couples in parks, since catching actual criminal requires prowess (or intent) that eludes the police force. And what might I ask do I do with men who stare at women unabashedly? Stare back at them for a couple of minutes and they shy away like a little mouse. Such is their machismo. And ah! It’s the woman’s provocativeness that is the reason for such overtures said some lady of political dominance.
What about that fine lady with the high pitched voice, heels and a dark lipstick, who feels its her birthright to cut queues and barge in ahead of me? How many times must I draw out daggers so no one steals my spot in the queue?
And then, yes, the existential crisis of an unmarried girl of my age which is not fathomable to someone who is not an unmarried girl of my age.
I guess, us Delhiites realize these shortcomings, and in order to ameliorate the pain, must buy two cars each. Hello Traffic jams.
Delhi, you’ve failed to impress me. Yet again. Unfortunately, you’re like that family member who I can’t stand, but yet I must come back to. Bi-annually.
I’ll contend with being the occasional visitor. Or not.

Amidst the smell of human piss and medicinal alcohol I realize how Delhi makes me resent myself. There is always Nizams kebabs to ameliorate this feeling but that apart, each push and jostle from the lady in the queue behind me has my adrenaline pumping as thoughts of confrontations loom in my mind. People are extremely comfortable jumping ahead of you in queues, and sure some hyper queue jumping junkie doesn't get me worked up but when it transpires three times in a row I feel it's time for a confrontation. And so it ensues and not that it leaves you simmering in a pool of victory. I felt resentful,like I have regressed. There are ofcourse many socio economic evils in our society that makes one sympathize with the bottled anger and frustration, but the words of German philosopher Nietzche resonate in my mind- he said- the measure of a society is how well it transforms pain and suffering and undoubtedly, en masse, Delhi has plenty of the aforementioned pain and suffering, yet we channelize it into hate and aggression. A new form of catharsis perhaps is needed. A metamorphosis into art, as Eric Weiner writes about Iceland in his Book "The Geography of Bliss", is required in this disgruntled city as well. Brooding writers, dark poets, struggling painters...where are you my friends?

The Invincible Bubble

We live like we are going to live forever
Planning and doing, with the aura
Of invincibility upon us.
Forgetting we’re no different from the
Insects and rodents we disinfect our homes of,
Man is great at creating illusions, delusions
Why are we different from the stray dog
that was killed yesterday on the highway?
Why are we above this randomness,
The mortal nature of our living?
Why do we plan years and years of happiness
Ahead of us?
Why aren’t we more afraid?

The Silent Traveler

There was a reason Robert Louis Stevenson said “I travel for travels sake”*. Perhaps it was so I could include it in this little verbiagal waterfall or for RL Stevenson to be able to smirk from the heavens at us, when he sees the next facebook Post that goes like this: “Off to Ibiza”. Afterall, we live in an age, where apparently talking about traveling on social networking sites is more gratifying than traveling itself. Ah, us Post-liberalization children, little do we realize that it brought many things to us other than Coca Cola. Greater purchasing power to the educated elite translated into endless spirals of pretentious travels to corners of the world, to the existence of which we were previously oblivious Yes, indeed, travel is amazing, but more amazing, is to update our facebook status’ to inform our “friends” of our inevitable submlime coolness on touching down in a “foreign” land. The real bravehearts are those who travel, not knowing, not talking, but with that blissfully palpable trepidation, that beats in their heart with every step they take into the journey. That braveheart however, isn’t me.
I revere, the Silent Traveler.

*"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. the great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey, 1879

Anti-Beauty

Why do the prettiest
Declare that pretty is overrated?
When all I see, and all I hear
Is thin stick figures, clacking along the way
Pages and pictures, movies and theater,
Replete with the perfections, that perhaps,
Aren’t real, yet define our reality so.
The long glossy hair, and the untainted skin,
Their diaphanous visage, cascade in a bucket of
Visual assault, that seems intolerable.
My own cells, scream, squirm. They know that’s what
They’ll never be. Yet,
This is all I see.

Null Hypothesis: If our existence has meaning then everything we do has meaning.
Alternate Hypothesis: If our existence is pointless and without a meaning then nothing we do will ever have any meaning.

Veni. Vedi. Vixi

Since my phlegm ridden state couldn’t keep my away from it, I’d say Paris has a charm to it. But that perception was perhaps consecrated over the period of forty-eight hours I spent in this city, where people surprise you as much as the beauty of the tour Eiffel or the din of pedestrians at Champs Elysees. So I am prompted to say : Not sure about the third so much, but fourth time is definitely a charm. However, the apparent purpose of this blog ( is there a purpose, of any blog, apart from some subtle ego-massaging to ostensibly enlighten the world with your eclectically giddy words ?) is to extol the people I met and perhaps the spirit of the humanity in general.
It started with the lady Thai-Chinese taxi driver who drove us cheerfully to our hotel on Rue de Rome whilst chanting concerned instructions about protecting our bags in the underground metro. My experience with lady taxi drivers has not been the best in general, and that would be an understatement. However this particular creature had the spirit that was contagiously cheerful and she happily shared her holiday plans for the summer and apprised us that Thai airways is offering splendidly cheap return tickets to Bangkok. Noted, Mademoiselle Sunshine. Another taxi driver who drove us to Tour Eiffel the next day from Tunisia, told me that Freddie Mercury had lived in India and his parents were Indian. I did not know this. Oh well. Bohemian Rhapsody has a new found meaning in my life. We also conversed in English, Spanish, and I even tried my hand at some Arabic and repeated some extremely tongue-wracking French sentences. My contribution was the longest word in English – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Well, as far as coined words in English language go, and well Mary Poppins says so).
There was also an interesting tête-à-tête with a souvenir seller near the tour Eiffel. He was from Punjab, lured to Paris by an agent, having mortgaged his land to pay Rs. 10,00,000 to arrange his new life. Ofcourse, it was a ruse, and he ended up selling brass eiffel touwers to tourists on the road. He wanted to go back but well, he didn’t have the money, he told me. He seemed oddly at peace with this turn of fate though, and well I urged him to figure out a way to study more (he’d only finished high school). Once he realized I had nothing to offer more than some unsolicited advice, he decided to move on to the next potential customer. And yes, this was the underbelly of the city, a side I had not encountered before. This encounter also answered some questions that had floated around in my naïve mind as to the presence of multitude of Indian souvenir sellers around the Tour Eiffel area.

And thus, with these sweet and sour moments, the Paris sabbatical was wrapped up, sitting on a bench near the Seine, the proverbial tourist as always, staring up at the Eiffel Tower, as it gleamed golden in the rich blue Parisian sky.
As for the Latin in the title this blog, I shall let the incoherency hang.

PS: Midnight in Paris by woody Allen; is a must watch. Delectable , heart-lifting and magical!