Sex, Lies and Society!!
The next couple of posts from me will be related to socio-cultural topics.
I was travelling in a train to Chennai and the journey was really interesting; In fact, made interesting by a couple of college students. As the train reached Changanacherry station, a couple of college girls boarded and after settling down their baggage next to my berth they went out for the farewell ceremony with one of the girl’s parents who had come to drop them. The parents looked pretty ordinary, the dad was wearing a Kerala mundu and rubber slippers (I am a keen social observer). Mom was in tears and both were advising and showering her with love and care. Before the cajoling and consoling was over, the train was ready to move and the two young ones jumped back and took their seat adjacent to mine.
Looking at the parents, I was really moved– the dad was probably an auto driver, a rubber tapper, or a salesman; nothing more than that. Their dream of making their girl an engineer or a management graduate might be a big financial burden for them in the true sense. I was lost dreaming their dream when I sensed the girls were back to their routine self – munching on biscuits, cracking jokes, giggling and intermittently using their mobile phones. As I listen to music while travelling, their conversations were limited to my imaginations.
The train arrived at Kottayam station and both the girls jumped out of their seat and vanished for some time and returned back with a couple of guys
and another girl. The new entrants settled down, it was obvious that one of them couldn’t fit in our coupe, one of them was an ‘extra’. Well, the giggling and hushed talks turned into full fledged laughter and chatter. I sipped on coffee and digged into yummy ‘parippu vada’ as I watched the drama. It didn’t take me long to realise there was something more than plain friendship between the guys and girls.
It seemed like both the guys had their seats in another compartment and they started persuading me and fellow passengers to exchange the seats with theirs. I usually go out of my way to help people to be comfortable, you know - young married couple, aged grannies and young children separated from the rest of family by the ticketing system of Indian Railways, but in this case, my gut instinct made me decline. Finally one of the guys managed to persuade a middle aged gentleman to move over to his ‘window seat’ in some other compartment. I laughed at the bad luck of the other chap.
Their hullaballoo continued and as night fell, true to my instinct, they didn’t need any extra berth. The lone girl tucked away in a middle berth and the couple started their cuddling and cosy activities unmindful of couple of passengers like me who were still not asleep. I felt like getting up and giving a tight slap on the girl’s face. But then common sense prevailed. Why should I get involved? It’s none of my business, I kept quiet. My mind wandered and then her parent’s face came haunting me, I was feeling real bad for them. Their favourite daughter, who was crying a while back when leaving her parents, forgot all those sentiments by the next station and was romancing a guy in public!
I felt as a citizen’s duty I should not be allowing this vulgar activity in public. It is true that I do approve of public display of affection, but here the case was different, when things began to get out of normal holding hands and pecks of kisses, I got down from my berth and went in search of the TTE and informed him. He came and packed off the guys to their respective berths but not before giving a piece of his mind, what I really liked among what he said was “If you want to do all this go and get a hotel room, a public place has to have some decency and decorum.”
I have done my schooling across India. Have changed seven schools and syllabuses within my 10th grade. Interestingly, I did two ‘unforgettable’ years of schooling in Kerala. Being a guy who had a broad outlook on relationships and life right from my younger days, my family could accept my ‘girls who were friends’ outnumbering my guy-friends. What I have noticed is the kind of relation that exists between teenage boys and girls in Kerala. I have never come across such self-indulgent and pallid way of dealing with the opposite sex.
I have noticed that 80-90% of the talks revolved around ‘panchara’- sweet talk. A guy may target a girl and then get on ‘Mission Love’, helped by his and the target girl’s friends he will make advances and try to woo her. Usually this Romeo is successful in his endeavour. Then begins the private sweet talks – Behind the college toilets, canteen, at the bus stop and in the favourite bakeries. Physical attraction is the only real motive at this age, because almost all of us at this age are pretty immature to think of a serious relation and a life partner. Talking about maturity, forget about the schools but none of the so called ‘true lovers’ and ‘made for each other partners’ in my college days made it and they split before the completion of our graduation. Surprisingly, the bookworms and so called ‘principled’ guy and girls of my college days ended up in love marriage but then it was after getting a job and settling down in life.
So what makes the teens here act the way they do? Is this their fault? In my opinion – NO!
It’s the society which binds them, the parents who don’t teach them the essence of true friendship and the rights and wrongs about ‘The birds and the bees’ are to be blamed. Kids are told to keep away from the opposite sex and about the taboo of befriending them. The kids grow up to become teens and then the curiosity about the opposite gender starts. The youth’s psychology works like a spring; the more you compress it, and the stronger it bounces back. Once the barrier is broken and a mistake is committed, the teenage girls are unable to find solace with parents and quickly reach a breaking point because she cannot share her agony with her mother or anyone else. It is then that suicide emerges as an option.
We cannot bring in a change in mindset of a society that is carrying forward a dogma of sexually restrained past and which is heavily influenced by the television media. Proper counselling and sex-education at school level; social liberation of male-female healthy relationships might help improve the situation. But as of now it really pains to see today’s youth getting stuck in the quicksand of poor fortification of relationship.
I was travelling in a train to Chennai and the journey was really interesting; In fact, made interesting by a couple of college students. As the train reached Changanacherry station, a couple of college girls boarded and after settling down their baggage next to my berth they went out for the farewell ceremony with one of the girl’s parents who had come to drop them. The parents looked pretty ordinary, the dad was wearing a Kerala mundu and rubber slippers (I am a keen social observer). Mom was in tears and both were advising and showering her with love and care. Before the cajoling and consoling was over, the train was ready to move and the two young ones jumped back and took their seat adjacent to mine.
Looking at the parents, I was really moved– the dad was probably an auto driver, a rubber tapper, or a salesman; nothing more than that. Their dream of making their girl an engineer or a management graduate might be a big financial burden for them in the true sense. I was lost dreaming their dream when I sensed the girls were back to their routine self – munching on biscuits, cracking jokes, giggling and intermittently using their mobile phones. As I listen to music while travelling, their conversations were limited to my imaginations.
The train arrived at Kottayam station and both the girls jumped out of their seat and vanished for some time and returned back with a couple of guys
and another girl. The new entrants settled down, it was obvious that one of them couldn’t fit in our coupe, one of them was an ‘extra’. Well, the giggling and hushed talks turned into full fledged laughter and chatter. I sipped on coffee and digged into yummy ‘parippu vada’ as I watched the drama. It didn’t take me long to realise there was something more than plain friendship between the guys and girls.It seemed like both the guys had their seats in another compartment and they started persuading me and fellow passengers to exchange the seats with theirs. I usually go out of my way to help people to be comfortable, you know - young married couple, aged grannies and young children separated from the rest of family by the ticketing system of Indian Railways, but in this case, my gut instinct made me decline. Finally one of the guys managed to persuade a middle aged gentleman to move over to his ‘window seat’ in some other compartment. I laughed at the bad luck of the other chap.
Their hullaballoo continued and as night fell, true to my instinct, they didn’t need any extra berth. The lone girl tucked away in a middle berth and the couple started their cuddling and cosy activities unmindful of couple of passengers like me who were still not asleep. I felt like getting up and giving a tight slap on the girl’s face. But then common sense prevailed. Why should I get involved? It’s none of my business, I kept quiet. My mind wandered and then her parent’s face came haunting me, I was feeling real bad for them. Their favourite daughter, who was crying a while back when leaving her parents, forgot all those sentiments by the next station and was romancing a guy in public!
I felt as a citizen’s duty I should not be allowing this vulgar activity in public. It is true that I do approve of public display of affection, but here the case was different, when things began to get out of normal holding hands and pecks of kisses, I got down from my berth and went in search of the TTE and informed him. He came and packed off the guys to their respective berths but not before giving a piece of his mind, what I really liked among what he said was “If you want to do all this go and get a hotel room, a public place has to have some decency and decorum.”
I have done my schooling across India. Have changed seven schools and syllabuses within my 10th grade. Interestingly, I did two ‘unforgettable’ years of schooling in Kerala. Being a guy who had a broad outlook on relationships and life right from my younger days, my family could accept my ‘girls who were friends’ outnumbering my guy-friends. What I have noticed is the kind of relation that exists between teenage boys and girls in Kerala. I have never come across such self-indulgent and pallid way of dealing with the opposite sex.
I have noticed that 80-90% of the talks revolved around ‘panchara’- sweet talk. A guy may target a girl and then get on ‘Mission Love’, helped by his and the target girl’s friends he will make advances and try to woo her. Usually this Romeo is successful in his endeavour. Then begins the private sweet talks – Behind the college toilets, canteen, at the bus stop and in the favourite bakeries. Physical attraction is the only real motive at this age, because almost all of us at this age are pretty immature to think of a serious relation and a life partner. Talking about maturity, forget about the schools but none of the so called ‘true lovers’ and ‘made for each other partners’ in my college days made it and they split before the completion of our graduation. Surprisingly, the bookworms and so called ‘principled’ guy and girls of my college days ended up in love marriage but then it was after getting a job and settling down in life.
So what makes the teens here act the way they do? Is this their fault? In my opinion – NO!
It’s the society which binds them, the parents who don’t teach them the essence of true friendship and the rights and wrongs about ‘The birds and the bees’ are to be blamed. Kids are told to keep away from the opposite sex and about the taboo of befriending them. The kids grow up to become teens and then the curiosity about the opposite gender starts. The youth’s psychology works like a spring; the more you compress it, and the stronger it bounces back. Once the barrier is broken and a mistake is committed, the teenage girls are unable to find solace with parents and quickly reach a breaking point because she cannot share her agony with her mother or anyone else. It is then that suicide emerges as an option. We cannot bring in a change in mindset of a society that is carrying forward a dogma of sexually restrained past and which is heavily influenced by the television media. Proper counselling and sex-education at school level; social liberation of male-female healthy relationships might help improve the situation. But as of now it really pains to see today’s youth getting stuck in the quicksand of poor fortification of relationship.
Comments
Does that mean that a guy can get away with anything and the moral police will only police the women? :)
Richard (Shweta's brother)
(PS: Interesting blogs..Hope you are up and about!!)
Interesting find bro':-)
First, I need to clarify that I was not moral policing. I am open to public display of affection, but in this case they had crossed all permissible limits by making a 5.5 feet by 2 feet rail coach berth a honeymoon bed!
I had the vengeance towards the girl because; I had seen her parents and the pain and emotions in their eyes and actions while bidding her farewell. My feeling towards her might have originated from the fact that I felt she was betraying her parents. The guy was not in my purview at that moment.
PS: Im so glad that you like my blogs bro'. Hope you are doing great.I am very much alive and (trying) kickin' ;-)