An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 21
In this Lenten Journal I’ve been reflecting more than I expected to on relationships in India. Yesterday’s entry concluded with a personal story from my teenage years in Australia about how sex can affect male egos and behaviour, and how I discovered that “non-provocative standing my ground” proved to be a good tactic in a situation that could have turned out badly.
This tactic has also worked a couple of times in India . Almost exactly 30 years ago I was travelling with Lena, at that time my bride of 3 months, from the leprosy hospital in south India in which I worked to Delhi. It was the time at which the Hindu festival of Holi (See my entry for March 16, Lent Day 12 for more details on Holi.) was being celebrated all over India. Our train stopped for 5 hours at a city called Raipur, waiting to join compartments with another train from India’s south-west for the onward journey to Delhi. It was oppressively hot, and Lena didn’t feel well, so I left our compartment to buy soft drinks. On the way back to the train two small, drunk, paint-besmirched young men passed me, and one snatched one of my bottles. In the instant of calculation I had available I decided that it was wiser to let my bride have the one bottle left than to risk my male ego against the probability that in any fracas my assailant would be joined by dozens of his fellows!
Nearly a quarter of a century later my family - Lena, myself and our children Jonathan and Sara - were travelling in the opposite direction. We boarded a southbound train from Delhi at Bhopal (the city which has suffered so much from the explosion of the Union Carbide plant in 1984). In our compartment was a young Indian woman. Unusually, she was travelling alone and dressed in casual western attire. I thought that she was tempting fate, and so it seemed to turn out. The next morning several young men came along and started to photograph her with their mobile phones. She objected vociferously, and I decided to support her. Standing near the male protagonist I said that in my country it is good etiquette for men to ask for permission before taking photos of women, and that because she was clearly objecting I thought they should delete their photos. Because their conversation was in Hindi I don’t know exactly what happened, but things eventually cooled down and the men retreated, though the protagonist looked sullen.
Several years later I joined White Ribbon, an organisation for males that is dedicated to the support and protection of women. On its website is a “how to” section which emphasises the very stance of “standing one’s ground non-provocatively” that has proved helpful for me. I’m not sure if White Ribbon has an Indian branch, but I’m informed that since the dreadful rape and murder of the medical student Damini in a Delhi bus a little over a year ago the nation-wide culture of abuse of women has come under more and more scrutiny and criticism from both women and men. But until enough men stand up for women one suspects that organisations such as Mirchi Jhonk, which encourages women to aggressively defend themselves (Mirchi Jhonk means “chilli thrown”!), will continue to be necessary, just as they are in the west.
All of this begs the obvious question, “Why do so many men think that it’s OK to oppress and abuse women?” That, I think, is a topic suitable not just for a Lenten journal but for intense introspection by every human society. Quite frankly, it’s obscenely wrong!
In this Lenten Journal I’ve been reflecting more than I expected to on relationships in India. Yesterday’s entry concluded with a personal story from my teenage years in Australia about how sex can affect male egos and behaviour, and how I discovered that “non-provocative standing my ground” proved to be a good tactic in a situation that could have turned out badly.
This tactic has also worked a couple of times in India . Almost exactly 30 years ago I was travelling with Lena, at that time my bride of 3 months, from the leprosy hospital in south India in which I worked to Delhi. It was the time at which the Hindu festival of Holi (See my entry for March 16, Lent Day 12 for more details on Holi.) was being celebrated all over India. Our train stopped for 5 hours at a city called Raipur, waiting to join compartments with another train from India’s south-west for the onward journey to Delhi. It was oppressively hot, and Lena didn’t feel well, so I left our compartment to buy soft drinks. On the way back to the train two small, drunk, paint-besmirched young men passed me, and one snatched one of my bottles. In the instant of calculation I had available I decided that it was wiser to let my bride have the one bottle left than to risk my male ego against the probability that in any fracas my assailant would be joined by dozens of his fellows!
Nearly a quarter of a century later my family - Lena, myself and our children Jonathan and Sara - were travelling in the opposite direction. We boarded a southbound train from Delhi at Bhopal (the city which has suffered so much from the explosion of the Union Carbide plant in 1984). In our compartment was a young Indian woman. Unusually, she was travelling alone and dressed in casual western attire. I thought that she was tempting fate, and so it seemed to turn out. The next morning several young men came along and started to photograph her with their mobile phones. She objected vociferously, and I decided to support her. Standing near the male protagonist I said that in my country it is good etiquette for men to ask for permission before taking photos of women, and that because she was clearly objecting I thought they should delete their photos. Because their conversation was in Hindi I don’t know exactly what happened, but things eventually cooled down and the men retreated, though the protagonist looked sullen.
Several years later I joined White Ribbon, an organisation for males that is dedicated to the support and protection of women. On its website is a “how to” section which emphasises the very stance of “standing one’s ground non-provocatively” that has proved helpful for me. I’m not sure if White Ribbon has an Indian branch, but I’m informed that since the dreadful rape and murder of the medical student Damini in a Delhi bus a little over a year ago the nation-wide culture of abuse of women has come under more and more scrutiny and criticism from both women and men. But until enough men stand up for women one suspects that organisations such as Mirchi Jhonk, which encourages women to aggressively defend themselves (Mirchi Jhonk means “chilli thrown”!), will continue to be necessary, just as they are in the west.
All of this begs the obvious question, “Why do so many men think that it’s OK to oppress and abuse women?” That, I think, is a topic suitable not just for a Lenten journal but for intense introspection by every human society. Quite frankly, it’s obscenely wrong!
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