Day 31: Another Anecdote

This is gonna be a short one.

Disclaimer: This is not a tale of somebody being right or wrong. Please feel free to derive your own conclusions.

First, the Prologue:

Back in college I was part of a theatre group. I’m gonna be honest here, the female part of the group at least as far as I knew, was not very involved in the script writing process. The reason for this is threefold:

The college gates closed off to the girls at 19:30. That was the latest which a girl could stay there without getting into trouble with the authorities. Even in the mornings, the girls weren’t allowed to enter the campus very early in the day. And on weekends/holidays, if you were seen somewhere in the campus, either you’d literally be held for questioning, or they’d just shoo you out. The watchmen literally patrolled.

Of course you could get permission to stay there/practice. But it wasn’t an ‘n’ number of permission slips that the principal signed and they did not allow you in the campus even with those permission slips before/after the above mentioned times. And whatever permission you went to secure, it sure was a hassle. And we’d need that time for practice and rehearsals.

The hostel gates would close the latest, at 8pm. And they wouldn’t open them before 6am. And you’d still need a permission slip for a lot of this. People who lived at home, also had to go through similar hassles.

And then there was the separate “issue”, where the guys would go around saying the following words with pride: “Maal Quota”. For those who do not know what “maal” means, it’s a hindi term that usually means “a thing/goods”, but here in this context, it’s referring to the women in the group.

“Maal quota” was a very popular term in this college. Any group that you joined, from the robotics to music and theatre, this was the term the beautiful minds came up with. God knows when.

I first heard this term being used by a senior in the robotics club. That’s when I learned, they thought, the only reason a female should belong or would belong to any of these clubs was because she was, let’s say good-looking, and also just ‘cause she was female. She brought no added value to these clubs because her thoughts and ideas would amount up to nothing. And those who did carry a brain that was of some worth, they never spoke up, apparently. Again none of these are my words exactly.

If you were to go confront some of these people, I don’t think they’d see any wrong in any of this.

So, going back to the primary topic here, how was this a separate issue? Not only was it difficult for the girls to contribute to a script, the people who could write the script, didn’t really care if the other part of the group could.

Except apparently, on one fateful day. And how exactly did this contribution go about? Here’s how:

The Anecdote: So we’re called for a meeting. Everybody’s sitting on the steps of the Architecture block. Three people, my seniors, are standing in front of us. The girls are made to sit on one side. In that order of seating, we were asked to answer one question.

Not the guys, just the girls. I am sitting there perplexed. “Why only the girls? Not all guys would’ve attended the previous meeting. So they couldn’t really have done this same exercise with the boys. So then, why? Is it the “maal” thing?” I couldn’t really come up with an answer as to why. But let’s continue.

The question they asked was this: “What is Feminism?”

There were maybe 4 to 6 girls there, including myself. The answers went something like this: Girl 1: Female empowerment. Guy standing: No, next? Girl 2: Raising women (or something to that effect) Guy standing: No, next? Girl 3: Putting down men? Guy standing: No, next? Girl 4: Putting men down and standing over those men.

I was appalled. I could not believe what was happening.

I was the last one in the row, and when they came to me, I answered “Equality”.

You know what the reaction was in one of those boys standing in front of me? Shock. He was shocked that I knew what feminism actually meant. He fucking clapped. They all did. The 3 boys in front of me, and those other boys who were sitting separately from us.

It was like a baby identifying rice correctly for the first time ever. “That is rice!” “Oh yes my baby! Look at you growing!”

Well, that wasn’t a short one. Peace Out! A Town.