Listening, Looking, Ignoring

 Etc.
Mar 072006
 

I’ve been a spec­ta­tor for a while now.

I watched silently, Krishna in tow, when a bunch of class­mates decided to take a peek into the girls dress­ing room on a trip to Ban­ga­lore. And lis­tened to their sto­ries — much exag­ger­ated, much embell­ished — after­wards, and won­dered for a sec­ond if Krishna and I had missed out on some­thing. Later, guilt.

I expressed a bit of dis­be­lief and not much more when I heard that some of the guys that I stud­ied with worked. Where work­ing means get­ting off stand­ing behind a girl in a crowded bus. Really get­ting off.

I’ve seen a lot. In buses and movie the­aters, upscale malls and veg­etable mar­kets. From cat­calls to breath­ing down the neck, from elbow­ing a fel­low pas­sen­ger to things a bit more than elbow­ing. Every­time, a silent “What the…” and I’ve moved on. Some­times, not even that.

And for the last week, I’ve watched an incred­i­ble lineup of posts for the Blank Noise Blo­gathon, and stayed silent myself.

Until now, until this post. In the hope that something’ll come out of it all.

Tag: blog-a-thon 2006

 Posted by Karthik at 5:03 am

  6 Responses to “Listening, Looking, Ignoring”

  1. Naveen says:
    Mar, 7 2006 at 9:20 am

    true dude…and like some­one else said, men have to also make an effort to stop har­ras­ment of women.….just make that small effort to help out a woman being harrassed.…

  2. Prashanth Narayanan says:
    Mar, 7 2006 at 11:51 am

    thanks for the heads up — just posted some­thing i used to feel strongly about when i was young.

  3. MW says:
    Mar, 7 2006 at 2:07 pm

    Atleast you’ve noticed it and hope­fully this will make a dif­fer­ence to a future gen­er­a­tion. Hopefully.

  4. tilo says:
    Mar, 7 2006 at 2:35 pm

    karthik thanks for speak­ing out.

  5. A Dash of Ash » Blog Archive » Post-blogathon thoughts says:
    Mar, 7 2006 at 7:12 pm

    […] Some have ques­tioned the pur­pose of the blo­gathon say­ing that blog­gers in gen­eral belong to a cat­e­gory of peo­ple who do not indulge in such activ­i­ties, and the blo­gathon will teach them noth­ing. I point them to Karthik, who admits, I’ve seen a lot. In buses and movie the­aters, upscale malls and veg­etable mar­kets. From cat­calls to breath­ing down the neck, from elbow­ing a fel­low pas­sen­ger to things a bit more than elbow­ing. Every­time, a silent “What the…” and I’ve moved on. Some­times, not even that. […]

  6. Ullas says:
    Mar, 9 2006 at 2:16 am

    Blog­gers don’t belong to what cat­e­gory?? Grop­ers are any­one from afflu­ent busi­ness­men to veg­etable vendors…they appear in expen­sive cars just as they do in crowded local trains…so what cat­e­gory are we talk­ing about?

    Yes even I have heard about all this, not yet seen it live but after Blank Noise, it star­tles me as to how ram­pant this prob­lem is.

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