The train gets going, without you in that Second Tier AC berth you finally shelled out good money for.
I guess I’m not meant to go to Nepal. I’m going to Bangalore instead.
I’ve always had a problem with time: I have no sense of it. I’m the sort of person who leaves home for an important 8.30am presentation at 8.20am. You can do that if you’re commuting Clementi to City Hall, but Kandivali to Kurla? With a train to catch at 10:55pm in bloody out of the way Kurla, starting at 8.45pm in the crazy Mumbai monsoon and its semi-flooded potholed roads was apparently not good enough, I must have been mad. And I was, because the train left without me. 53 kilometres and 1200 rupees back to Malad, and I’d spent an enormous sum just travelling to Kurla and back and missing my train.
For the first time an Indian train left on time, and I was late. It’s usually the other way around.
Everything that can possibly go wrong has.
Language is power, it really is. All too many times I have seen the transformation of those people in just a few seconds, from being regular and decent in one instance (this is when they speak Hindi to me because they think I’m Nepali/Northeast Indian), to lascivious and disgusting in the next — the moment my ineptitude at Hindi gives away my foreign-ness. One kiss, they say, Give me one kiss. Then they reach for you to try to feel you up. Why don’t I fight, and why am I resigned? I’m a fighter and a feminist from the cradle, but I lost my ability to fight in this country. I would go mad — I would be fighting everyday. I have already programmed myself to be oblivious to and to ignore the verbal harassing and the mental undressing, which takes place with such intensity and frequency there’s even a name for it — eve-teasing, because I don’t understand much of the language and the verbal abuse, I don’t live in this country so I won’t walk down that road ever again, and thus I lose nothing tangible. But in moments like these, like yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that, what would I shout, and who would help me? What can I possibly do but to first get myself out of danger as quickly as possible? It’s all too easy to say: shout, stand up for yourself, hit him, take down his details… defend yourself. I used to be that way too until I found myself in the position of the victim rather than the observer.
I fight all the time and I’m frankly not sure I have enough energy to fight some more. I invent lies to protect myself. I don’t have a boyfriend or a husband — obviously — but I need to act as if I have one. That protects me a little, but only slightly. So I pick and choose details of my ex-es and mix and match them into fully formed fictitious characters with aspects of my past loves. My “husband” is a Bengali doctor, then there are also the various Tamil and Portuguese Goan “boys” who are “27, 28 and 26″ respectively. We have been married “five years”, we got married in Kolkata when I was 17. When I travel alone in trains I find that when I keep to myself, it is assumed I am Assamese or Khasi so nobody bothers me. I dress conservatively in a salwar kameez and with a dupatta, so you can’t say I was looking for it. Then there’s the colour of my skin, which I can’t change.
The “last week in India” is usually an emotionally charged affair; all four times in the past they’ve seen breakups happening with as many different people. This time, though, things are a bit different. It’s not quite that, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m walking around this city, Bombay, treading around the pieces of my heart. I’m coming apart. I’m tired of fighting.
Times like these I wonder why I can’t just sit at home and watch Discovery Travel and Living.
So I will see you in Bangkok in ten days and do exactly that.
possibly related
This Tshirt Was Outsourced in Bangalore /
Kashi /
The D Word /
Bom Shankar /
Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai /
When The Going Gets Tough
The train gets going, without you in that Second Tier AC berth you finally shelled out good money for.
I guess I’m not meant to go to Nepal. I’m going to Bangalore instead.
I’ve always had a problem with time: I have no sense of it. I’m the sort of person who leaves home for an important 8.30am presentation at 8.20am. You can do that if you’re commuting Clementi to City Hall, but Kandivali to Kurla? With a train to catch at 10:55pm in bloody out of the way Kurla, starting at 8.45pm in the crazy Mumbai monsoon and its semi-flooded potholed roads was apparently not good enough, I must have been mad. And I was, because the train left without me. 53 kilometres and 1200 rupees back to Malad, and I’d spent an enormous sum just travelling to Kurla and back and missing my train.
For the first time an Indian train left on time, and I was late. It’s usually the other way around.
Everything that can possibly go wrong has.
Language is power, it really is. All too many times I have seen the transformation of those people in just a few seconds, from being regular and decent in one instance (this is when they speak Hindi to me because they think I’m Nepali/Northeast Indian), to lascivious and disgusting in the next — the moment my ineptitude at Hindi gives away my foreign-ness. One kiss, they say, Give me one kiss. Then they reach for you to try to feel you up. Why don’t I fight, and why am I resigned? I’m a fighter and a feminist from the cradle, but I lost my ability to fight in this country. I would go mad — I would be fighting everyday. I have already programmed myself to be oblivious to and to ignore the verbal harassing and the mental undressing, which takes place with such intensity and frequency there’s even a name for it — eve-teasing, because I don’t understand much of the language and the verbal abuse, I don’t live in this country so I won’t walk down that road ever again, and thus I lose nothing tangible. But in moments like these, like yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that, what would I shout, and who would help me? What can I possibly do but to first get myself out of danger as quickly as possible? It’s all too easy to say: shout, stand up for yourself, hit him, take down his details… defend yourself. I used to be that way too until I found myself in the position of the victim rather than the observer.
I fight all the time and I’m frankly not sure I have enough energy to fight some more. I invent lies to protect myself. I don’t have a boyfriend or a husband — obviously — but I need to act as if I have one. That protects me a little, but only slightly. So I pick and choose details of my ex-es and mix and match them into fully formed fictitious characters with aspects of my past loves. My “husband” is a Bengali doctor, then there are also the various Tamil and Portuguese Goan “boys” who are “27, 28 and 26″ respectively. We have been married “five years”, we got married in Kolkata when I was 17. When I travel alone in trains I find that when I keep to myself, it is assumed I am Assamese or Khasi so nobody bothers me. I dress conservatively in a salwar kameez and with a dupatta, so you can’t say I was looking for it. Then there’s the colour of my skin, which I can’t change.
The “last week in India” is usually an emotionally charged affair; all four times in the past they’ve seen breakups happening with as many different people. This time, though, things are a bit different. It’s not quite that, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m walking around this city, Bombay, treading around the pieces of my heart. I’m coming apart. I’m tired of fighting.
Times like these I wonder why I can’t just sit at home and watch Discovery Travel and Living.
So I will see you in Bangkok in ten days and do exactly that.
possibly related
This Tshirt Was Outsourced in Bangalore / Kashi / The D Word / Bom Shankar / Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai /