Hi there!
I have the Indian Express, Chandigarh Edition on my desk. One of the headlines, somehow, caught my attention, and with that reappeared a few moments which I spent at the Kashmere gate metro station, hitherto these moments were salted away in some stray corner of my minds workshop.
"SC lifts Maharashtra dance bar ban, says it is unconstitutional", says the headline.
A bench with honorable Chief Justice of India, Altamas Kabir and Justice S S Nijjar upheld the Bombay High Court verdict, which gave a very sensible and logical reason for declaring that any such ban on a particular profession was unconstitutional.
Now let us, together, recollect that particular morning, though very uneventful, in Delhi. I was supposed to travel to Delhi Mumbai by the 9:30 flight. Now, in order to reach the airport, we have in Delhi a very convenient arrangement of the Metro air link. Also having not much baggage, I felt that the safest way to travel from Kashmere gate to IGI Airport was the metro link, the decision seemed even better as I was to travel at 4 : 30 am. Not only safe, but also economical.
The taxi dropped me at at the Kashmere gate metro station at 4:45 (why was I there at 4; 45 is a different story, it was a continuous journey from some other place, so let us forget that part as it is of no consequence). I got down with my luggage and saw many other people, predominantly men waiting for the metro station gate to open. Cool. I still had a 15 minute window to stand and stare before getting back to my regular polygon.
As I was the only female around till then, I was over alert and that is a real pain. But lo! I saw an attractive female, very skinny, wearing a very attractive outfit (which somehow, I would have considered unsafe as it attracted much attention). This gave me an uncanny relief. She appeared from nowhere, confident in her stride, she walked up to the lorry selling Jaljeera, had a glassful, put paid to this guy. Walked further to the Pan ka Galla, lit a cigarette and stood there smoking, oblivious to stares or comments.
A couple of minutes later, came another beautiful girl, again clad in an outfit that made me now wonder what may be the reason for hanging around on this busy street with such devil-may-care attitude. What was the reason that these women were tarrying on the edge considered most vulnerable for a woman. They may be associated with any odd profession, but why would someone want to expose oneself to such circumstances that may engender irreparably harmful consequences. Now as the two of them, together crossed the street and were on the other side, I kept staring, till I could no longer see 'em.
Here I was still standing inside the regular polygon of morality, sides of which are dictated by religion, fear, society, education, economic strata, comfort, repression and know not how many sides does this polygon conform to. We add sides to such polygons every moment, in every choice, in every transaction. Now, let us assume that we keep on adding sides to our polygon, one moment the number of such sides reaches infinity, now, our polygon turns in to a circle, then, as is our nature we still keep adding dimensions that reflect not as sides now but as an expanding circle, just see what has happened....!! We were trying to constrain our polygon by adding numerous, infinite restrictions (symbolically sides), but when we keep doing this for a long time, such restriction is doing exactly opposite of what is the "moral" (irony intended) intent of doing so, in the parlance we end up creating a larger region, that will keep gaining and eventually become all encompassing....that is the place we actually belong to...this place knows no boundaries of good, bad, moral, immoral, small, big, important, unimportant, useful, useless, safe, easy, correct etc.
Is crime part of the criminal's psychology or that of the victim? Going by the way some people plan to ban scantily clad mannequins wearing lingerie, deemed as "titillating", we may be forced in to a Burqua system. The best way to avoid wrongdoing is to avoid the "Doing" part outright. Instead of building a progressive culture, we wish to be dictated by whims of those who do not wish to get to the root of this criminal syndrome, pushing us in to a vicious regressive cycle...let us not be swayed by what is moral/immoral, let us all be first wise enough to decide for ourselves, probably that should solve most of the problems sans government interference.
Let us aim at education, exposure, governance, tolerance, non-discrimination...It all starts with us, and thus only we have the potential to nip the criminal intent right in the bud.
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." - Rumi
I have the Indian Express, Chandigarh Edition on my desk. One of the headlines, somehow, caught my attention, and with that reappeared a few moments which I spent at the Kashmere gate metro station, hitherto these moments were salted away in some stray corner of my minds workshop.
"SC lifts Maharashtra dance bar ban, says it is unconstitutional", says the headline.
A bench with honorable Chief Justice of India, Altamas Kabir and Justice S S Nijjar upheld the Bombay High Court verdict, which gave a very sensible and logical reason for declaring that any such ban on a particular profession was unconstitutional.
Now let us, together, recollect that particular morning, though very uneventful, in Delhi. I was supposed to travel to Delhi Mumbai by the 9:30 flight. Now, in order to reach the airport, we have in Delhi a very convenient arrangement of the Metro air link. Also having not much baggage, I felt that the safest way to travel from Kashmere gate to IGI Airport was the metro link, the decision seemed even better as I was to travel at 4 : 30 am. Not only safe, but also economical.
The taxi dropped me at at the Kashmere gate metro station at 4:45 (why was I there at 4; 45 is a different story, it was a continuous journey from some other place, so let us forget that part as it is of no consequence). I got down with my luggage and saw many other people, predominantly men waiting for the metro station gate to open. Cool. I still had a 15 minute window to stand and stare before getting back to my regular polygon.
As I was the only female around till then, I was over alert and that is a real pain. But lo! I saw an attractive female, very skinny, wearing a very attractive outfit (which somehow, I would have considered unsafe as it attracted much attention). This gave me an uncanny relief. She appeared from nowhere, confident in her stride, she walked up to the lorry selling Jaljeera, had a glassful, put paid to this guy. Walked further to the Pan ka Galla, lit a cigarette and stood there smoking, oblivious to stares or comments.
A couple of minutes later, came another beautiful girl, again clad in an outfit that made me now wonder what may be the reason for hanging around on this busy street with such devil-may-care attitude. What was the reason that these women were tarrying on the edge considered most vulnerable for a woman. They may be associated with any odd profession, but why would someone want to expose oneself to such circumstances that may engender irreparably harmful consequences. Now as the two of them, together crossed the street and were on the other side, I kept staring, till I could no longer see 'em.
Here I was still standing inside the regular polygon of morality, sides of which are dictated by religion, fear, society, education, economic strata, comfort, repression and know not how many sides does this polygon conform to. We add sides to such polygons every moment, in every choice, in every transaction. Now, let us assume that we keep on adding sides to our polygon, one moment the number of such sides reaches infinity, now, our polygon turns in to a circle, then, as is our nature we still keep adding dimensions that reflect not as sides now but as an expanding circle, just see what has happened....!! We were trying to constrain our polygon by adding numerous, infinite restrictions (symbolically sides), but when we keep doing this for a long time, such restriction is doing exactly opposite of what is the "moral" (irony intended) intent of doing so, in the parlance we end up creating a larger region, that will keep gaining and eventually become all encompassing....that is the place we actually belong to...this place knows no boundaries of good, bad, moral, immoral, small, big, important, unimportant, useful, useless, safe, easy, correct etc.
Is crime part of the criminal's psychology or that of the victim? Going by the way some people plan to ban scantily clad mannequins wearing lingerie, deemed as "titillating", we may be forced in to a Burqua system. The best way to avoid wrongdoing is to avoid the "Doing" part outright. Instead of building a progressive culture, we wish to be dictated by whims of those who do not wish to get to the root of this criminal syndrome, pushing us in to a vicious regressive cycle...let us not be swayed by what is moral/immoral, let us all be first wise enough to decide for ourselves, probably that should solve most of the problems sans government interference.
Let us aim at education, exposure, governance, tolerance, non-discrimination...It all starts with us, and thus only we have the potential to nip the criminal intent right in the bud.
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." - Rumi
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