No Sex Please, We are ...

I arrived in Delhi on 10 October, three days ago. Here are some glimpses of how India is changing and yet unchanging, going in one direction and then in another. We are Indians and so no sex please, is followed by songs and dances with explicit sexual references.

I spent some time in CP going around the central park, where a group Hijras (transgender women) were asking for money. They have so few possibilities of finding any kind of employment, so I can understand why need to ask for money.

 

 

* 

 

Explaining the way to the taxi driver, a young man who has come recently from Bhagalpur in Bihar, made me realise that my memories of Delhi are getting rusted. I was confused between Vasant Kunj and Vasant Vihar.

 

As the taxi passed through the Mehrauli road, it was clear that if India is indeed shining, its light has yet to reach certain parts of the capital. May be the cellphones and satellite TV and digital cameras have arrived, but the signs of old smelly confusion, narrow roads, shops encroaching on the streets, heaps of garbage, wandering cows, traffic with horns-blaring, brash and aggressive car drivers, poor kids standing at crossings and asking for alms, etc. are all still there.

 

Mahipal Pur, the village where I used to come for my preventive and social medicine posting in the village health centre in 1976, is now an unending stretch of houses, shops and traffic.

As the taxi turned towards Munirka and the flyovers of the outer Ring Road, it was good to feel the changing face of urban India, even if the quality of roads, pavements and railings over the new flyovers seemed to be not very good. These two Indias, the shining one and the one still in the dark, live close to each other, at times mixing together.

*
While people in Tamilnadu have forced actress Khushboo to apologise for her "insult to the Tamil womanhood" by talking about pre-marital sex, the song-and-dance routines on the Indian TV have become more daring.

 

I saw a girl on the TV, showing her backside, moves it seductively and then slowly enlarging her buttocks with her hands while singing a remix version of the old Rishi Kapoor-Jayapradha song, "Daphliwale, daphli baja..", and I am flabbergasted by this unexpected meaning to the old song. How naive I must have been not to see the dirty meaning of the song before, I thought. Or perhaps, all songs can be dirty, all words can be bent to give them another sexual meaning. Every thing is about sex!

The promos of a new film are even more shocking. They are for a new film by K-lady Ekta Kapoor, the lady who makes all the serials about Bhartiya sabhyta like the "Kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi" kind of serials. They have yesteryears' star and Kapoor's father, Jeetandra's face splashed on them. One scene has the hero, Aftab Shivdasani, standing up with his bleeding finger held in front of his crotch being licked by a girl on her knees, another girl looks at them from behind and thinks that the girl is sucking something else. This promo is repeated about 15 times during the day, without any warning that it is for adults or any such thing.

This sexually liberated India coexists with Bajrang Dal-Shivsena-controlled "no sex please, we are Indians" kind of India.

*
There were pandals every where in Alaknanda in south Delhi, for Durgapuja. For Dushehra, big Ravans are standing in each park, full of loud crackers, waiting to be burnt. 

 

In one park I saw the Ravan Puja. It was being performed at the feet of Ravan's effigy and at the end, people took turns to touch Ravan's feet and held their hands in prayer in front of it.  I have been to Ramleelas all my life and I had never realised that there is a puja in front of the Ravan also and people ask blessings to it before burning it! Isn't Ravan the bad one, why are you touching his feet, I wanted to ask them but then I stopped myself. May be that is the American or western way of thinking.

 

We know that Ravan was a great vidwan, perhaps, it is good to pray to him, recognise the good parts of him and then burn him for his bad deeds. It is completely different from the way they think of devil and satan in the west.

*

Watching a performance of the Birju Maharaj's dance troupe against the background of Purana Kila was a highlight of this Delhi visit

 

*