burqa pic.jpg

At the traffic light riding pillion on this snazzy bike was a woman in a burqa, only the slits making her eyes visible. This is not a regular sight in Mumbai. She was holding on tight to the fellow riding the bike.

They were a young couple. What surprised me was this guy. He was wearing tight crotch-hugging jeans; he had a diamond ear stud, his hair had blonde streaks and was gelled back and he wore trendy shades. Everything about his demeanour was shouting for attention. I wanted to roll down the glass and shake him up, give him a piece of my mind.

The disparity between the two was disturbing. The argument often touted is that it is for the safety of the women.

Some men are such cowards. They fear their own kind...

Cowardice of another kind is manifested when the establishment decides on banning something that is considered constricting. Does anyone see the irony of it? One sort of freedom is repressed by another sort. I don’t quite understand this. The French legislators said the garment amounted “to a breach of individual freedoms on our national territory.”

Whose individual freedom is it? I may be personally against the veil but I do not think any woman wearing it infringes on my freedom unless she tries to convert me to her way of dressing. If the religion of France is secularism, then it does not as a matter of course mean that no religious choices can be made. Secularism is not atheism.

If the issue is regarding security risks, then the government must make it clear that certain checks will be mandatory and those wearing the veil better shape up or ship out. That is valid. But to sneak in ethical arguments is utterly stupid. As one legislator said, “Today... we are confronted by certain Muslim women wearing the burqa, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head like a moving prison.”

Again, I do find it shackling, but so are leather pants, tight jeans that you have to lie down and pull up to fit into, stilettos, underwired bras…I have spoken to many veiled women and they feel differently. It has made me rethink my own attitude from the example I gave at the very beginning.

One evening there was a discussion on Indian television about how safe women feel in a city like Mumbai; they had a separate category for Muslim women and there was a woman in hijaab in the studio to represent the ‘Muslim’ voice. They had the audacity to ask her whether her being ‘well-dressed’ acted as protection. She might have replied in the affirmative because she came with the added dress code she had chosen to use for herself as an individual. She was speaking for herself, and that is perfectly justifiable. On what grounds do TV channels decide who voices the thoughts of a whole group of people and why are they singled out for separate ‘privileges’?

A woman is a woman, and her economic status and exposure will decide how safe she feels.

The media should just stop messing around with minds with mindless attempts at surveying values. Values are not for sale to every microphone thrust in the face.

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This picture above is indeed amusing and has done the rounds of the funny forwards route several times. I wonder who is having the last laugh, though...

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Isn’t this shackling?

• PETA does it again. Lydia Guevara, the granddaughter of Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, has posed semi-nude—wearing only camouflage pants and bandoliers of carrots—in a Peta campaign urging people to join the vegetarian revolution.

Another ironical situation. They are promoting vegetarianism, no killing of animals and this woman is dressed for war. Carrots may not kill but the idea of aggression is antithetical to what the organisation claims to promote.