Carnal Chauvinism

                    A fictional account of a few womens' unwanted experiences in a patriarchal world. While such incidents often occur in real world everywhere around us at the blink of an eye but we still choose to overlook them. It’s high time we really gave up those rose-tinted glasses and open our eyes to such inhuman behavior and take immediate required action against it!

                    A:   I am a girl from Calcutta, a city that breeds honourable men. I am a sinner who is blessed with such divine milky radiance that people (men,women,children..) often worship this body which is considered to be a temple open to everyone. Their offerings in the temple comprise of virtues like lust, greed, envy, avarice, subordination, objectification, stereotyping among others.. My temple of God clad in a three-quartered shorts and a sleeveless deep-neck top attracts the malicious eyes of these pious devotees towards me as I tread along the cemetery of life.

                   The walls of the temple often get injured by annoying incessant drizzles at regular intervals and in extreme cases the entire sacred plaster of the wall is stripped off under the spell of the tormenting torrential rain accompanied by thundershower and lightning. The supposedly sacred plaster once ruined, ruins the temple’s image for a lifetime. After all it is the external structure of the temple that is of utmost significance, the Goddess residing within can be conveniently taken for granted and epitomized as the sacrificial lamb. People get a glimpse of heaven by glancing from top to bottom at my young, coconut white bodily temple. After all, this temple is a public property where no one will ever be prosecuted for trespassing. Just because I prefer not to decorate the temple’s neck with a mangalasutra or crown the head with blood-red vermillion to offer a proof of this temple’s land being someone’s private property people feel it is their fundamental right to glance at it and forcefully enter the threshold to acquire carnal ecstasy.

                    B: The other day it was my best friend’s birthday and I decided to upload pictures with him on all the social networking sites (as the ritual demands ). Woah! My inbox got flooded with messages like: “Snc wn?” , “Nvr new u r dtng hm!”, “He’s hawwt babe!” “U bth rock! Muahhh! #Mde fr each odr yaarrr!” “May God #bless you both!” “#New bff” “Cu8 cupl!” “Lucky U!” “Mah Blsngs!”…followed by a couple of more such remarks and #hashtags.. This was the first time I committed a virtual crime, being a girl I uploaded pictures with a male friend and then felt sorry for him not being my boyfriend, such a slut  that I was. While,he on the other hand was being praised for having a ‘patakha’/ ‘maal’/‘tota’ and their liked on his profile picture (read DP) but severely criticized by his friends after their epiphanic realization that I was not ‘his girl’. Perhaps,it is the 8^th sin for a girl to be ‘just’ friends with a boy in India. Why could I not fall for him? How could I be so close to him considering the fact he belongs to the opposite sex. I am bound to regret this for eternity. God, please forgive me for I knew not what I did and also don't punish that boy who raped and murdered the minor girl in my neighbourhood the other day for he is just a boy and after all boys do commit mistakes. But, a mighty confession has the power to atone him of all his murderous sins and to turn him into the greatest of all saints..

                  C: The long, windy stretch of Princep Ghat adjoining the Hooghly river  is precisely the place where I  happily  (except during summers) work. Waking up approximately at 4 am daily embracing the breeze of the chaste and pious Ganges (never mind the excreta, chemical discharges, grit, dirt, etc) , I set up my tea stall for the day. The stall adjoining the railway line constructed to enhance the  Riverfront Tourism offers serene, pleasant views of the holy Ganges along with the surplus views of young famishedly dressed girls and women deeply engrossed in work to the regular commuters on these trains. These commuters have their nasty little ways of showering me with their lusty love that comprises of catcalls, shrieks, whistles, sexual remarks and what not while I’m busy preparing tea. Initially, I used to be adequately offended by this unwelcoming overwhelming adulation. Later on, I decided to express my gratitude towards these lovely bunch of people by indulging in some much needed Adam-teasing. Hence, now onwards these gentlemanly gestures are greeted with ram-pyaalis which are hurled into the faces of these commuters enabling them  with an option of revisiting their roots.

            D:  I must have been three then when my parents decided to take me out on a holiday to a hill-resort in Southern India. After a tiring journey we checked-in at a lavish hotel with a lobby boasting of a monumental chandelier huge enough to fit in at least ten of me in it. I was warmly greeted by a bellhope who decided to transport me to the room allotted after allowing me a fun-ride on his luggage trolley whilst my parents were engaged with the check-in formalities in the meantime. While I was taking a look at the stupendous room I felt a finger sliding down through my pinafore into my neck and the surrounding area grasping the region below neck which would then blossom into a woman’s breasts in years to come. I felt ticklish and smiled only to feel a bit uneasy moments later. Before I could even resist, the finger made its way through my abdomen and I could feel it encircling my eve’s garden only to soil it. This lead to the eruption of dormant tears down my cheeks which were greeted by a grin on the bellhop’s face. My soul was molested and stripped off for at least two minutes before the emerging footsteps of my parents could be heard. I was then thrown down on the bed with my face full of salty water. The moment my parents entered the sanctimonious room I was lifted by those dirty hands once again to help him keep his jovial amiable mask intact which would so delicately unmask my soul for years to come. I didn’t even know what had happened to me then but still I would keep weeping like a child because I indeed was one while he would keep smiling despite committing the crime of brutally raping and murdering his own conscience spewing drops of blood all over me.