Nothing brings ‘em together like a common enemy. This time, the common enemy happens to be the Pakistan national cricket team.
As Alex, Jason and I enter the large, third-floor dining area of Lobos, a local restaurant and bar, the strong scent of cheap beer and body odor welcomes us in – long with sounds of fans hollering and clapping. They huddle around collapsible tables littered with pitchers or bottles of beer and greasy Indian food. All eyes are fixed on the single big screen TV perched in the front corner of the room that’s broadcasting the championship game. That is, until we come in. Then their eyes shift to us like magnets until we lose our attraction and the game regains it’s force.
This place welcomes all types – the ones wearing freshly pressed collared shirts who came directly from their desk jobs. Some sporting India team jerseys or eurotrashy T-shirts. Young, old, educated or not. They all have two thing in common: they are all diehard fans of the Indian cricket team and they all have…Adam’s apples. No women here.
“When was the last time you had women in here?” Marie asked one of the waiters once.
“A Month?” She asked after getting nothing but a confused look for an answer. The waiter shakes his head no.
“A Year?” He shakes his head again.
“Five??” The quiet waiter nods a “maybe.” Maybe five years, maybe more.
The place is full save for one lonely table on the small balcony in the back, which turns out to be ideal because it’s out of the chaos and in the fresh air. We don’t pay attention to the game much, but join in on the cheers when the India team makes good plays.
The thing about Lobos is we can’t go without EVERYBODY there wanting to meet us. This time, the first guy to stumble in our direction is a relatively large, slightly sweaty man in a bright yellow and green jersey.
“Hello!” He says excitedly, and extends his hand to me. “What is your name? My name is Neval!”
Neval is piss drunk and having a grand old time. After releasing my grasp he swaggers over to the other side of the table to properly greet the men. On the way he knocks Alex’s empty beer bottle. As it shatters on the floor everyone looks our way.
We assure Neval it’s no big deal, not that he thinks it is in the first place. He jollily completes his rounds and comes back to my side of the table.
“What are you studying? I'm studying law!” He asks me, extending his hand for a second shake. He shoots the shit in broken English a bit longer. Then, after saying goodbye, he goes in for one last handshake.
Only this time he won’t let go. Before I know what’s going on, he leans in and plants a kiss on my cheek (I turn my head before he can get my lips). James and a bunch of the girls arrive at the very end of the incident. James sees that Neval is shooed away from our group, then sits down next to me.
“Get out of here man! You have to go. That’s not cool at all.” Neval stumbles away, but not before he’s made me feel pretty violated. He looks like an ignorant child; he acts like he has no idea what he did.
“I need a drink,” I announce. Jason hands me his beer and I order some harder stuff too. A couple people ask me if I’m OK, and I answer that I am, but for a few minutes I’m pretty withdrawn into a couple shots of vodka, a bottle of beer, and my own troubling thoughts.
Seriously, WTF? I know it was just a kiss, but it’s the fact that he thought he could do that, that I didn’t have a choice, that I was basically powerless. I feel small and oddly a tiny bit ashamed. And of course, angry.
Angry that he did it because India says I’m an easy American slutbag like all American girls. Angry that, unlike the guys here how have a position of power, I have to be on the defense. Angry about that double standard that men here won’t so much as look Indian girls and women in the eye because it’s considered improper, while I’m obviously OK to approach and kiss without even my consent (It can suck to be an Indian women and it sucks to be a foreign women in India – two extremes). Nothing brings ‘em together like common cultural (mis)conceptions.
Angry the alcohol isn’t kicking in faster.
More of our group arrives and Alex and Jason relate the funny story of Drunk Neval to them.
“Was their beer in the bottle?” Someone asks.
“No, it was empty,” Alex says. “Trust me, if he wasted my beer, then we’d have a problem. He wouldn’t have walked away in one piece!”
Still a little hurt, I think “Oh! So beer is important enough to fight for, but when someone violates me, it’s ok?? Men are scumbags everywhere.”
When Neval spots the fresh batch of American girls, he’s back at our table like a smiling shark, and extending his palm. “Hello! My name is Neval!”
“No! He has to go.” I say.
“Come on man, you gotta get out of here. Go back to your table,” James insists.
“OK! Goodbye!” Neval says, still smiling, as he slowly makes his way back, acting like he did nothing wrong.
As the night goes on I lighten up again. I start to see the humor in it – or at least the unimportance of it. Coming into the trip, I was well aware of the Indian perceptions of Westerners, so I shouldn’t be all that surprised that Neval McDrunkface would be so bold. I mean, I’m the one who decided to defy Indian ways and go to bars and socialize in public. If I assimilated more to the unfortunate lives of women here, it probably wouldn’t happen. And really, the Indian perception of Americans isn’t entirely their fault. With all the MTV crap we send this way, what else are they going to think? I’m responsible too, at least indirectly, by the various ways I support our pop culture.
Not to mention, if I was in a bar in Venice and Neval was a handsome Italian stallion who took the liberty to kiss me, I don’t think I’d be quite so upset.
After India wins the match there’s more and more excitement. People shout and sing. They jump and dance. We join in too. We all chant, “I love India!” Everyone wants to hug and pose for photos with us, and thank us profusely for supporting the Indian team. I even have the first semi-intelligent conversation with locals since I got here.
“Where are all the women?” I ask one man.
“At home! They never go out,” he replies.
“Aw, that’s not fair. Women should be able to have a good time too.”
“But this is India,” he insists almost sternly - implying the vast difference between our countries in what’s acceptable female behavior.
I could rant to him for hours about why women should be entitled the same rights and treatment as men. Instead I relent. I do understand things are how they are, and I have to respect these differences. But If it sucks for Western women here, it sucks even worse for Indian women. That’s a story for another time.
9 comments:
Their = possessive.
There = what you meant to use.
They're = contraction of 'they are'.
I like reading your blog, but this really goobers me.
I was lovely reading you post. I'm from India, but in USA these days, for higher education. I randomly stumbled upon your blog, specifically, to this post. How did you land up in India? I really wonder. Apart from that, I think your observations and the inferences that you've drawn are indeed commendable. Reply ID- gupta57@purdue.edu
Hi,
I'm an Indian by birth and lived in quite a few major cities in India and abroad.
I'm not sure exactly which part of India you had been to because intentionally or unintentionally you seemed to have made a couple of gross generalizations here.
1. Not all Indian men think of American girls as 'slutbags'. There were, are and always would be a few idiots like Neval in any country. Even in the US.
2. Not all Indian women prefer to live inside their shells. There are actually millions of women across all age-groups who flock into the pubs, bars, discos and restaurants with or without male companions. Just check out the hangout places in any Indian city - Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, bangalore, Pune, Chandigarh ... any city.
However, outside the cities, in small towns or villages, Indian women in general are still quite shy and introvert. Not to mention, a little dominated by the opposite sex, too. However, it is being India and NOT Pakistan/Afghanistan, the male-dominance has more to do with protectiing the women than torturing them and keeping them under control.
What I gather from the description of the bar in your blog is probably you had been to a shady bar which is not really a place women should get into, especially so if you are a foreigner.
And such places exist in every corner of the world, not just in India. Being in a foreign country where the socio-cultural norms are totally different from those in your country, you should have been a little more careful about choosing your hangout place, may be by asking some like-minded Indian.
However, in life all kinds of experiences are required. Otherwise one's life remains unfulfilled.
It was a nice read nevertheless.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers!!!
Drinking in a third rate bar does not necessarily make a woman "fortunate" or progressive. How typical of an American to misunderstand and misread the situation of Indian women!
Wow, this seemed to have causes a recent uproar.
I'm not going to deny what any of you have said. You're right. My emotions were extrememy ethnocentric and Westernized. But, don't forget your are too. The bar was not a hole-in-the-wall. The people there were not from an extremely rural area. What I said about men's understandings of U.S. women was based not only on my own (generalized) observations and experiences, but from what many many many people told expressed to me while I was there.
Furthermore, what I have said about Indian women, I know does not aplly to all women. I am very aware that the issue is more complex than this, and even when this does seem to be the case, Indian woman often embrace their roles. BUT that being said, if you are reading this, you are not in the same situation as many woman in India. I have gotten the opportunity to see women from every economic demographic, every cast, etc. And women's opression certainly does exist, and not, not all women are happy about it. There are many NGOs that adress these problems. There are many women who are immoble and unble to change their situation or lives because of social constricts. Also, my perception was influenced by femist (woman's studies) professors where I was studying, who were very very adiment that women in India, indeed, have much to complain about.
Sorry to offend, that was not my intention. But please, this is just one woman's slightly fictionized blog. If you have something else to say, you are free to write your own.
I gues the bar in question is Lobo's in Goa. If it is so then I can only say that it certainly wasn't very intelligent of you to land up over there because that bar is a den of mischievous elements and people who may not be 'rural' but do fall in the category of miscreants mostly hailing from slums or underprivileged areas. The ones you came across in formal officewear may not be educated office-goers but most probably ruffians who earn a living as well-dressed salesmen or something like that. This drunkard Neval told you he was a law student. He may or may not have lied. There are lots of third-grade law schools in India which get third-rate students admitted by taking huge donations simply because those students won't get admission in any decent schools.
Having said that, I must say as a fairly liberal-minded Indian I do think your views about oppressed Indian women are commendable. Also, I appreciate that you have accepted that that is not the condition of Indian women in general. However, you should understand that in land of 1.2 billion people, in a country which is only 61 years old and was a third-world country till only a decade back, there would be some amount of hardships, oppression and injustice present in the society. Only time and conscious efforts by NGOs and the Governments can help in fighting against this. Tell me one thing, do you seriously believe every US citizen is happy? Do you think no one in the US faces injustice, oppression or exploitation? I'm sure you don't. Because, any society will have some issues within. Society is a mixture of good and bad. But, its entirely the people's responsibility to bring the good v/s evil ratio down.
The whole point of this discussion is to make you realize that India is too big a country to see and the social system in India is too complex to understand. Definitely not something which any opinion can be formed about from some one-off unpleasant incident in a third-rate bar in a place which has more Portuguese culture than Indian culture in it. I hope you know that Goa was a Portuguese colony and most people there are Anglo-Indians who are immensely influenced by the Portuguese than the Indians.
I don't really know how exactly you could see the Indian women from all socio-economic backgrounds. Even the biggest patriot in India probably won't make such a statement. I repeat, India is too big and too complex.
I understand that you have seen a part of it while being associated with NGOs but that's just a minuscule fraction of the reality.
As far as the impression you got about India and Indians from your friends, I can't really comment on that because I haven't heard or read their versions. Still, I'm pretty sure that if you compare the number of foreigners visiting India with the number of ones who have such horrendous experiences, the ratio would tell you these are rare phenomena and almost all of these incedents might have happened because the victims were not careful enough and had tried to be too adventurous.
I know people who have faced racial abuses/taunts by whites and physical assault/loot by blacks in the US. But we don't conclude from these one-off incidents that people in general in the US are hostile towards Indians/Asians.
Of course India is much to complex to understand. With all the intricacies and layers, I'm sometimes amazed the coutnry functions as well as it does.
The bar is not in Goa, it's in Mysore,Karnataka. it was not Portugese (not that that's an excuse at all) and it was not third-rate. But, where ever it is, let me ask you this. You write off the action simply because you think it was commited by someone "underpriviliged" from slums. Well let me ask you this. Why do you automatically assume underprivileged people are worse behaved than others? And if they truly are, why does that make it right? And what is the social responsibility of those who aren't, as you call them, underprivileged, to educate and raise them from this.
I know the U.S. cetainly isn't perfect. There is much "isms" of all kind, and there is quite a but of economic injustic. I can't speak for America, but I can speak for myself and I would not assume that because someone is economically bad off they are automatically rude people who do not know how to act properly in society. Poor does not equal bad and rich does not eqaul good all the time. These are troubling stereotypes and dichotomies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are coming from a fairly well-off back ground. Moreso than much of the country. What do you see being done for the economically less fortunate? Are they ignored? Are they stigmatized? Is one tiny section of India rising globally at the expense of the majority of India's people?
Also, I understand yor idea of travelors being "too adventurous" and I believe I addressed this in this or another post. But at same time (and I realize this is indeed idealism)I'd like to feel I can be adventurous without feeling unsafe. It is my choice where to go, but the people around me can make choices too.
P.S. I hope I'm not being too argumentative. I definitely value your thoughts and opinions. Listening and conversing with others is hw we grow :) so thanks!
Oh, and anonymous, it's not "drinking in a third-rate bar" that makes us fortunate, it's have the freedom to choose to or not that does.
Post a Comment