In the Land of Religion and Spirituality...

The Indian people are a welcoming lot. Especially the men. If you’re a white guy walking around Mumbai, they’ll ask you where you’re going so they can point you in the right direction. You’ll receive numerous invitations to sit with total strangers at restaurants. And if you’re looking to go somewhere in a rickshaw, the drivers will often offer to ease your burden upon alighting from the vehicle by doing their best to lighten your wallet.

Meatloaf? Meeatlooaf!!

Two out of threeee aaain't baaaaad.

-Meatloaf

Thank you.

And if you’re a white guy walking around Mumbai with an Indian girl, they’ll show her concern. They’ll ask her if she likes to speak English – if she’s too good for Hindi. They’ll ask her if there aren’t any Indian men left. In fact, their hearts are so kind, their generosity so abundant, they’ll even offer to fuck her.

That’s hospitality.

I know, I know. I know what you’ll say. “There are living, breathing wastes of human flesh everywhere in the world.” But you’d be wrong; I’ll tell you why.

Now, yes, there are living, breathing wastes of human flesh everywhere in the world. You are correct, sir! But I’ve been to a number of different countries and never seen anything like this. They sit there in a group of guys, their clearly audible Hindi remarks (obviously precision-guided, aimed solely at the girl), unwillingness to look you in the eye, and craven refusal to take credit for what they’ve said after the fact making it impossible not to recall those sexually frustrated high school guys who constantly stew in the bitter juice of their neglected libido, of that age before dating becomes common and of that type whose high fear of rejection or low likelihood of success prohibited them from even seeing themselves as potential participants in the dating scene. So, to let a little blood to treat the disease, they resorted to abuse. Here in Mumbai, every time you go out, you don’t think it might happen. You know it will happen. The only questions are how often and to what extent.

Sure, in the U.S., there’s the stereotype of construction workers engaging in such sexual harassment. And yes, I have seen it happen in the U.S. But those were white skinheads hanging out in the middle of the workday outside a department store in downtown Pittsburgh yelling at a black guy with a white girl. (The black guy responded by communicating to those fine ambassadors of baldness that he planned to later return with his boys. I don’t know if that ever happened, but if it did, I can only assume it was a delightful occasion full of mixed drinks, vegetable trays, and Jenga.) As I said, it was a group of skinheads who like department stores – not something you find every day. But in India, you get that from university students walking around a residential neighbourhood, from high school kids at the mall, and from 30-, maybe 40-, something men at tourist attractions. (To be fair, the tourist attraction guy had first followed the white guy, his white friend, and his Indian girlfriend about 300 feet and invited all of them to swim in a pond with him. He had also been told, and possibly believed, in his rather inebriated state, that the Indian girl was Swedish, before telling his Indian friend in Hindi that the two of them should just give the white guys a tight slap and then fuck the girl. (It was never adequately explained to the author whether or not this gentleman meant one slap each or total.))

Here in India, they call it “Eve teasing.” I can only assume they call cancer “funky, ambitious growth.”

To their sexually confused minds, any Indian woman who has a boyfriend, or, as far as I can speak on the topic, at least a white boyfriend, must be sexually permissive and indiscriminate, meaning that she would be just as happy to get naked with them as she is to walk around with her boyfriend. So you get comments like, “How much?” or “I wonder if she’ll go up with me afterwards.” Of course, they assume the whole relationship is one big intercourse-fest, if I may use the non-alliterative term, as shown by comments that are audible to the lone girl who’s arriving home later than usual, such as, “Oh, she stayed late at his place today – must be really sore now.” If she’s walking around with her boyfriend and another white friend, they’ll proffer their prognostication that a three-some will be shortly in the offing.

Now, of course, harassment is preferable to assault, physical or sexual. But that happens, too. Delhi is kind of known for it. But even Mumbai, which isn’t, is a place where a girl, even accompanied by two guys, is questioned as to what she’s doing out so late when she catches a rickshaw at 9 at night. And if she needs a late-night cab to get somewhere in an emergency? Well, first she’ll call everyone she knows who has a car, because everyone knows that a single woman alone in a cab at night risks rape.

So that’s nice. In a “this-country’s-morally-pathetic” kind of way. But at least it’s got a low divorce rate!

I don’t know if it’s a lack of strong deterrents like frequency of arrest for such things. Maybe it's some kind of backfire from a culture that so frowns upon girls having any sexual power (and possibly thereby gives them all of it by turning them into abstractions of desirability rather than people) that men feel they are free to treat them, at least verbally (and relatively frequently, physically) in an abusive, dehumanizing way (or that their only, limited, power lies in doing so). Maybe it’s the result of a culture that makes it so difficult to have a relationship you’d like to that, when you see someone doing so, especially someone who’s unlike you, and especially with a girl of your own kind whom you yourself wouldn’t mind doing so with, your jealousy manifests itself as sophomoric, but virulent, offensive, and, at least in theory, actionable verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse.

Of course, abuse, even of the verbal kind, isn’t from everyone. But it happens with such frequency that it can be fairly stated that there’s a cultural tendency toward it that’s much stronger than, certainly, America, and I’d guess many, many other places as well. And thus, it may be interesting to analyze and examine those factors that make it so much more prevalent. It may even be useful.