| the real ashu |
Posted
on 16-Jul-01 01:00 AM
Hi all,
I have long considered a fellow-Martin Chautarian,
Manjushree Thapa to be the finest writer writing
in English in Nepal today.
Penguin, India, is releasing her debut English-language
novel this September in Kathmandu.
Meantime, given our recent thread on harassment on this
site, following piece of humor may be relevant.
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
*************************************************
Men Who Harass Women
by Manjushree Thapa
Oppressed by a sense of inferiority, unable to boost their self-esteem through activities that do not denigrate others, and generally lacking in intelligence, men who harass women are found in every alley of Kathmandu.
They have, in common, a shifty-eyed odiousness; otherwise,
they are as varied as life itself. Nevertheless, sociologists agree that they can be placed into the following categories:
1. Fat shopkeeper who stands in front of his store with his hands folded as he looks up at the sky and mutters at women half his age: His shirt buttons are popping open at their paunch, his mustache is crooked, and his wife's translucent rubber sandals adorn his feet.
Psychologically, such men are apathetic about life, since it is their wives' fathers who have set them up in business. Economically, they are happy to sell one or two pencils a day, believing that low sales have nothing to do with their attitude towards female customers. These men are likely to forget the names of their children.
2. Man in yellow pants with red stitches who hisses as he darts by
women, reaching the other end of the street before the women realize what happened: His shirt, to boot, is checkered green-and-blue satin.
For all their sense of color, these men move swiftly through the
streets, invisible to the general public. Perhaps this is because they are short, and very, very thin. They work in various ambiguous "businesses," and spend their free time watching quite a few too many Hindi movies. Their eyes are perpetually bloodshot.
3. Eighteen year-old with short cropped hair, dressed in slightly flared pants with black buckled belts and tight shirts, who only harasses women when he is in the company of friends: A foolish youth, all around.
Lacking opinions of their own, such boys latch avidly on to the opinion of their friends, which are, in turn, based on the opinions of their friends. This results in whole herds of boys whose favorite activity is standing on street corners, and whose general views on life are easily summarized by their favorite saying, "kei ho, kei ho," which is , incidentally, all they can think of saying to the women they choose to harass.
4. Man at the back of motorcycles who turns his face away after having uttered harassments into the wine: Recently married but still, at heart, a meat-head. These men generally engage in trading in Nepal's stock exchange.
5. Man who puffs his narrow chest just as he passes women, forcing them to step off the sidewalk: The first cousin of the man who swerves his bicycle towards women as he rides by. These are strange men, whose greatest moments in life come from the not-so-accidental knocking of elbows in crowded streets. Such men yearn for more connection with other people, and attain it in their own misdirected way.
6. Thirteen year-old student in the company of other thirteen year-old students: a dull one who has learned nothing from textbooks, and has not made up for this by excelling in anything else like sports or arts or even telling lies.
7. Man who hangs off his friend's father's jeep, leering: a recent, worrisome, and little-understood phenomenon linked somehow to the Third World melding of patriarchal moral values and modern means of transport.
8. Men who ogle, unsure if they should attempt harassment or not: Forty-five year-old in dysfunctional marriages direly in need of therapy.
And who do they harass. these men? Invariably, the subject of their harassment is a woman undertaking serious, nation-building tasks with the single-mindedness of purpose they demand, like going to work, college, or school.
Sociologists are not sure why a country which produces such women also produces the kind of men described above.
And what is to be done about such men? How can they be
reformed? Experts claim there is no use confronting them. Because when confronted about his actions, the fat shopkeeper becomes belligerent: "Who? Me? I've got two or three children, and their names are - unh-unh..." The thin man in yellow pants smiles back queasily, exposing paan-stained teeth.
The eighteen year-old says with an unbecoming blush, "kei ho, kei ho." The motorcycle man is already on the other side of the street. The man with a puffed-out chest may deflate it when
confronted, but further down the road, he will start, again, to pull in his breath. Thirteen year-old student giggle when confronted, and men who hang off their friend's father's jeep proceed from leering to sneering. Men who ogle become dangerously liable to explode with pent-up frustration when confronted.
The solution, experts say, is for women to befriend such men.
Loathsome and harrowing as this seems, it is, they say, the only way the Nepali men can learn that women are not distant objects at which they can direct the coarse expression of their neuroses, but that women are thinking, feeling human beings.
Experts could be right about this, but a thorough shaking, every
now and then , might also be in order. THE END.
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