Heard On The Street
These are two interesting conversations that I happened to overhear on the street.
This first one was on a street in Pune (For those of you who are familiar with the place it was on MG Road in Camp). Anand and I were standing and conversing outside a tailer shop which was shutting its doors. A portly woman was shutting the doors of the shop from the inside (it was a shop cum residence) when a swarthy man marched upto the door and started abusing in what sounded like Kutchi or Gujarati. One of the good things about Indian languages is that even if you can't understand all of them you just know when a guy is abusing. The cuss words are never said they are spat out with disdain and contempt that is unique to them. In this case the man was repeatedly referring to an anonymous mother and sister in colourful language. The lady said something that ired him even more and he added some private parts of the male anatomy to the conversation as well. The man finally sped off and the lady turned and began yelling at a man who was presumably her husband, but had remained comfortably in the background while this incident took place.
Ten minutes later the abuser was back and this time the man of the shop/housewas waiting at the door for him. Anand and I imagined that the abuser was going to get as good as he had just given. We were wrong. The abuser let out another string of abuses and continued to be agitated whilst this man stood quietly. When the abuser ran out of breath the shop-man told the abuser that he was making a fool of himself by talking to women. The shop-man told the abuse r rather nonchalantly that how could he take women seriously and did he not know that women have little or no sense. For a good ten minute the shop-man ran down women in general adding his own string of abuses towards some more anonmous mothers and sisters.
And then the two shook hands and parted.
The second one was at a bus-stop in Bandra where one man resting on his cycle was talking to a friend. The gentleman on the cycle was trying to tell his friend to be careful of som woman pointing out that a woman's tongue was like a snake's tongue and therefore the word of a woman was worthless. Everytime the other guy said something the cycle-guy would remind him that he should not trust a woman
Both these incidents coupled with Ms Lalita Pawar in the hospital make me wonder about the status of women in this country and I guess that what Vrinda Nabar says in her finely written book "Caste as a woman" about women being oppressed along the caste lines is rather true.
This first one was on a street in Pune (For those of you who are familiar with the place it was on MG Road in Camp). Anand and I were standing and conversing outside a tailer shop which was shutting its doors. A portly woman was shutting the doors of the shop from the inside (it was a shop cum residence) when a swarthy man marched upto the door and started abusing in what sounded like Kutchi or Gujarati. One of the good things about Indian languages is that even if you can't understand all of them you just know when a guy is abusing. The cuss words are never said they are spat out with disdain and contempt that is unique to them. In this case the man was repeatedly referring to an anonymous mother and sister in colourful language. The lady said something that ired him even more and he added some private parts of the male anatomy to the conversation as well. The man finally sped off and the lady turned and began yelling at a man who was presumably her husband, but had remained comfortably in the background while this incident took place.
Ten minutes later the abuser was back and this time the man of the shop/housewas waiting at the door for him. Anand and I imagined that the abuser was going to get as good as he had just given. We were wrong. The abuser let out another string of abuses and continued to be agitated whilst this man stood quietly. When the abuser ran out of breath the shop-man told the abuser that he was making a fool of himself by talking to women. The shop-man told the abuse r rather nonchalantly that how could he take women seriously and did he not know that women have little or no sense. For a good ten minute the shop-man ran down women in general adding his own string of abuses towards some more anonmous mothers and sisters.
And then the two shook hands and parted.
The second one was at a bus-stop in Bandra where one man resting on his cycle was talking to a friend. The gentleman on the cycle was trying to tell his friend to be careful of som woman pointing out that a woman's tongue was like a snake's tongue and therefore the word of a woman was worthless. Everytime the other guy said something the cycle-guy would remind him that he should not trust a woman
Both these incidents coupled with Ms Lalita Pawar in the hospital make me wonder about the status of women in this country and I guess that what Vrinda Nabar says in her finely written book "Caste as a woman" about women being oppressed along the caste lines is rather true.
posted by bababull at 4:55 AM
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