The Screen behind the Mirror

I look at the mirror. It is a lie. It's not I who's looking back at me. There's something missing. There's something that's not right. It's nothing to do with my face. The same two eyes, the same nose, the same lips, everything else is in place too. But it's just not me.

Look, look! I don't see how extraordinary I am. I cannot see how different I am from others around me. I respect women and their decisions; yet the mirror shows me as a man who seemingly is no different from other men who objectify women. I act true to my beliefs, yet the mirror shows me as no different from those whose morals are as transient as a chameleon's colours. I work honestly for a living, yet the mirror only shows that I am not an engineer. I would never beat my wife and constantly suspect, belittle and dominate her, but the mirror only shows a strong arm and frown on my face, just like on any other man. I have infinite compassion in my heart, but the mirror understands not what is meant by that. I want love, attention and affection no less than the next person, but the mirror cannot decipher so complex a code.

The greatest irony is in the truth. The mirror only shows my face, hands, trunk and legs as they are. But then, why do I interpret the mirror differently?

How Mature is my Society Part III

Urban India never ceases to amaze me. I have said this on two previous occasions on this blog, but I will not tire just yet. My fascination stems from the dichotomies I perceive between how advanced people in India's metropolitan cities today seem in terms of material progress, but how far they lag behind in terms of updating their collective state of morality and their reaction to individual actions.

I met a very interesting person yesterday. She made two very interesting statements. First, that she was open to the idea of having one-night stands with attractive strangers, for mutual pleasure. Second, that if she were to get married someday, she would never grudge her husband for having a one-off sexual escapade with "another woman", so long as he was emotionally committed to her (i.e the wife) . Women who have such thoughts are not non-existent in metropolitan India today, but they constitute one of the most marginalised and misunderstood minorities.

Somehow, I feel that Indian society and the unwritten code of morals that weighs heavy on our collective shoulders is obsessed with women and their sexual behaviour. Any woman who has thoughts as my friend does is described as a whore or a woman of loose character and literally becomes an object in the eyes of Indian men. Men harbouring adulterous thoughts and desire to bed several women are forgiven by the same code of morals. Even highly educated men in great jobs are not spared.

Which brings me to the plight of another friend. She had been in a couple of relationships during her college days. Whether she had partaken of the forbidden fruit of sexual pleasure or not is a matter of speculation and no more (without asking privacy-intrusive questions, that is). Based just on the material that she had dated two guys, a family "carefully selected" by her parents to marry her into not only rejected her hand in marriage, but also broadcast their speculation (and there are no points for guessing what they speculated) to the larger community. The friend in question was transformed from a brilliant, ambitious and extremely eligible lawyer into a common street whore sans morals. And this is a family (the boy's, that is) where everyone was a "gold medallist" in all their academic glory.

The point here is not about questioning the morals of society, but delving into why one cannot embrace a common, consistent school of thought. The market-based capitalist economic model adopted and embraced so passionately by the businessmen, software engineers and management graduates (who, incidentally, are the hottest property on the marriage market) in urban India today necessarily demands the freedom of the individual and a respectful acceptance of the competence of every person to make decisions that suit them best. If investing in risky stocks was a decision a female took and gained success by, she must equally have the right to make a sexual choice. If a man and a woman are judged by their boss on the same criteria, then society must judge them against similar moral benchmarks.

I feel somewhat sorry for my friend who had the "deviant" thoughts on her sexual choices. Being a man, my agreement with her views means little because I apparently have the right to think that way. Will I marry a girl who admits to having had sexual relations with other men in the past, but who will assure me of lifelong commitment in an emotional and temporal sense? My simple answer is yes. But will I be marrying a whore? The simpler answer is no.