Kartikey Sehgal

What if Rajbala were your mother?

Then you would post facebook updates in her support. You would make facebook groups and pages.

Why don’t you? Because Rajbala is not someone you aspire to be. If an author/pilot/astronaut or a rich woman were in Rajbala’s place, then you would show sympathy and rage. What does Rajbala wear? Salwar-kameez? Does she converse in English? Then why should we bother. If she were a minority member then we would have something to complain about.

Nobody bothers about the normal. So media creates the abnormal.

The Delhi slut-walk (info) is against terrorism. No.

The Delhi s-walk is for the benefit of Rajbala. No.

They don’t think it’s worthy to stand/strut in support of Rajbala. Why should they? Delhi women will only support a cause if it gets them attention. And Rajbala is from the ‘other India’. She doesn’t dress trendy. Or walk around the posh Khan market.

The s-walk is titled ‘Besharmi Morcha’. An apt name for the participants. They are playing around a foreign concept and are too scared to follow it to the fullest. And they are too embarrassed to stand up for one of their own.

They are too meek/inept to walk ‘against terrorism’. They are the ones I talked about in my DNA and Norway story about hiding under the umbrella of concepts like secularism and peace and harmony. My beauty regimen should not be disturbed. Bas. Until then I give a damn about terrorism.

If I attack the Delhi girls participating in the s-walk and break the bones of a few, and harm one girl enough so that she is paralysed for life, would you ignore her as just another ‘Rajbala’? Just like you have ignored the government/Delhi police who brutalised Rajbala?

You should, right? You have no reason to be angered going by precedent.

Come on, you are embarrassed to be associated with poor, salwar-kameez-saffron wearing, baba-supporting Indians aren’t you? Now only if I brutalised a ‘hottie’ with slender legs and silky skin. That would get you worked up, wouldn’t it?

1.

Two drunken policemen pointing AK-47′s threatened to march a colleague and me into a shack for “some fun.” We got away untouched, so why bring up the matter? I didn’t want my boss to think that my gender was a liability. (source)

but of course woman, it is. Secularism is your enemy. Righteousness in suggesting, that, all men are essentially good, everywhere, in-all-parts, draws on short-term emotions.
Of morality.
Of goodness.

It draws immediate praise, and certified fan-following; attention—of the kind seen when you are in fashion.
For fashion it is, to talk of glory, or of what brings glory.

Your gender is a liability. And it is human liability that they can stand on the edge but not fly thereafter from the mountain. Liability if you sit and think in pain, otherwise, actuality.

And it is the liability of men, that, a woman should soften them—their world-view of pain and misery and its mingling. For the muse is seldom threatening, but a source.
Of ideas.
Of imaginations.

And hence men must live with this liability—or, actuality.

2.

The roads of Delhi, once romanticized to contain the verses of poets, now contain men without culture; men, caught in the paradox of the old and the new, with trousers and jeans replacing their sense of tradition. The old is unfashionable, worthy of ridicule, unaccepted in the posh Khan markets. Unaccepted by women, even those in smaller homes, who are looking for designer shirts on scented bodies. A city sans culture, that hides behind the visage of pride. And Ghalib.

Alas, it’s a liability. For the men feel small without the triceps and the cuts, without the shirts, the easy money that permeates the senses of society, of women.

And a liability for women to walk on such streets, among such men.

Or,
you can claim righteousness and suggest that men should be castrated, or, women should be kept indoors.

3.

Do not send your daughter to work in prisons where the prisoners stay. The quality of equality is not physical, neither does it surpass reality, except perhaps in the realm of fantasy. And the world, alas, does not run to suit you, woman.

Superior claims of justice and equality do not make for solutions.

34-year-old jailer Jayme Biendl went missing while on the night shift at the Monroe Correctional Complex northeast of Seattle. (source)

Kartikey Sehgal

St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

St. Stephen’s (Delhi) contribution to India is commendable. It has given Her bright students and more importantly, girls who like to drive their father’s car. In fact, it is believed that Stephen’s girls have never stepped on a road.

My friend and I ventured into the empty Stephen’s college—sans people but with green gardens, healthy flowers and neat pathways and corridors. The buildings don’t have a name. You’ll have to ask around if you want to visit the library or the principal’s office. No big banners or signs here.

We discovered the library and were told that namelessness was a plan to compel the students to talk and discover the campus. “Just like you asked around to reach the library. You had to talk to people”.

The library’s furniture is not modern. “We didn’t want to have modern-day furniture. It is tradition”, a library staff member told me.

The highlight of our visit was our visit to the girls’ hostel. It is forbidden to enter their space. Even when they are not there to present a potential threat to your life. We didn’t know this. Until a lady attendant turned hysterical at our sight and the hostel guard—a man—asked the heavens how we managed to slip past him. Then he turned polite and told us to not enter the girls’ hostel because, “It is girls’ hostel. Hope you don’t mind”.

But while we were there, we saw the rooms and agreed that they were small. I imagined that women fought here due to claustrophobia; not that they don’t fight in open spaces.

And behold. The myth about women being cleaner than men was dispelled when we discovered this:

 
Truth about Stephen’s Girls

This information was found pasted on the hostel toilet door. Let us write the six commandments clearly, so you don’t have any doubts about the toilet habit of Stephen’s girls. Dirty husbands rejoice.

What we learn from this list:

1) Stephen’s girls don’t flush.

2) There is no water in the loo. Proves point 1.
Also, either there are no buckets in Stephen’s or girls are lazy.
Further proves point 1.

3) They take more than 10 minutes to bathe. But there is no water in the loos!
So Stephen’s girls don’t take a bath.

4) and 5) No comments. No wait. No. 4 actually proves that there is no water in the loos; only toilet paper. So point 3 is now assured. No.5 tells us that Stephen’s girls don’t know how to wrap pads or don’t dump them in the dustbin. Possibly, there is no dustbin in Stephen’s.

6) Note: Day Scholars refers to girls who didn’t drink the night before and suffer no   hangover in the day. A rare phenomenon. Hence they are called Day Scholars.
We further learn that Stephen’s girls do some business in the loos.
They call their hostel “residence”; as my relative would exclaim in moments of spiritual ecstasy, “Lol”.

Exploring Stephen’s through photographs:

Either that’s the name of somebody or it describes the students here. Or both.

Much of the social life of Stephen’s boys means progressing from giving the white flower to girls to giving the red flower. The red flower is generally accompanied by a car and at least three credit cards but the nicer girls would settle for a furnished three bedroom flat if you are nice to them and buy them Gucci.

The chapel. It is undergoing major repairs due to massive confession from students.

The Library: This is how the tables were in 1881, when the college was established. Students can be found here when they are not confessing in the chapel.

Eminent Stephanians: The college likes to admit its mistakes.

The Girls’ Hostel Corridor: Has seen many a blood-bath which works well because there is not enough water to bathe.

P.S: According to a senior member of St. Stephen’s,
“…if St Stephen’s sets up a co-educational hostel, it would have to set up maternity wards as well.” (source)

Dirty loos, no bath and they want to make babies.