Saturday 13 April 2013

Delhi

Delhi taught me a lot of things. That gender matters. That your life could be so constrained ( by your gender, by society, by a zillion other things) that you have hardly any space to breathe ( just following the routine) and still you manage to "live", never questioning, never trying to break free and be almost proud about it.
No one ( read NOT PARENTS, NOT FRIENDS) had ever told me that ,I can't go to all GIRL trips alone, that you NEED a BROTHER/ BOYFRIEND/ MALE PARENT to accompany you. Delhi (or should I say a particular female around me) told me so. In Kolkata, me and my gang of girl friends would sit in a dark alley smoking even at 9: 30 pm in the night. We'd do things that even guys would never dare. I thought Delhi would be one step ahead of this. But alas, it didn't keep its promises.

I first discovered this massive gender discrimination (that culminated in or culminated from a low female: male work ratio, its a vicious circle anyway) while boarding the Delhi Metro for the very first time in my life at New Delhi Metro Station. The male queue was unending. The female queue was hardly 2-3 aunties long. I was momentarily happy, but then had to wait for dad and was delayed anyway. I was simply stunned by this very low female: male ratio. Where did all the women go? This is true for any station, other than the DU Metro station. Now, ofcourse I don't feel elated or disappointed anymore, when I see this. I've gotten used to such stuff.

In Kolkata when I would tell agony aunts and ever so curious relatives about my friends, they could never tell whether its a girl or a boy that i am talking about. Its because he/she doesn't figure in Bengali. I immensely enjoyed when they speculated over the gender of the person that I was referring to, sometime nervously trying to joke whether it was my boyfriend that I was referring to. In Delhi, when I talk to some-one aunt-like he/she invariably comes in(in Hindi) and the gender's no longer a secret. Why should gender come in speech anyway? Isn't it the greatest and most used form of gender discrimination ( well it does in English too, and maybe in many other languages but not in my mother-tongue and I am so happy to brag about it).

Without parents, I 'grew up' in Delhi. It taught me manipulation, politeness. You are always polite and laugh , even when your heart is burning. Or your heart never burns, you are just a stone, unaffected by whats happening around you so you laugh/smile always. Either way, lesson learnt. I had never learnt to fake stuff, to not speak out my mind out before coming to the National Capital.

Lastly, being an economist, I would also allow for the possibility that all these above attributes may not be city specific,  that my sample size is not large enough to draw such conclusions, but alas I'm a human being too who is just noting down her own observations and inferences.