Jerks! They Are Here Too

I deplore ‘some’ Indian men (at times I think they are more than some). The types who have a thick accent, who can’t stop looking at women like stupid asses, love their scotch and play cricket. They are also a bit different from the ones who stand on the roads of Delhi fiddling their fronts waiting to hop on to the next crowded DTC or a 620 bus playing raunchy Bollywood numbers and where they can have the closest brush with any woman – age no bar - and get a hard on. The types I am talking about manage to speak English, get degrees and decent jobs that enable them to talk louder than necessary on the phone anywhere in the hope of getting heard that they have been there, done that.. you know, been to Las Vegas, Canada. And of course they settle abroad for better future of their children. In the company of their own ilk, their big fat bragging mouth will be talking figures and how much they earn.  I regret to say I have met few too many of this type.

A few days back, I was coming back from the doctor after an ear problem and taking a short cut across a big field where four men were playing cricket. Ironic I had to hear something soon after, something I am rabid at its mention. I wasn’t even looking till the sounds of the familiar hideous laughter and accent perked up my ears a bit more. They were losing their concentration it seems at the sight of a ‘chinky’. I wanted to ignore and walk away. I have not fought with anyone in the past four years of my stay in Australia. With no exaggeration, it was almost one every other day in Delhi on the same issue. But I turned back. “Oh sons of mother fuckers…,” I lashed out. Shocked beyond imagination, they started to apologise, a scenario completely different had it been in India. Satisfied, I walked home still seething in anger. I imagine later they would have been discussing my ethnic background more than their blunder and trying to figure out how in the world an Asian could speak Hindi. These Indians have no idea that of the one billion population, there are 39 million Asian- looking people who reside in the northeast of the country. 

The men on the field that day fit into the category of pathetic Indian men I abhor. They cannot be total illiterates and migrate here, I am assuming. But perhaps they scammed their way through a migration agent to earn dollars, there is a whole bunch of those types now, the papers are investigating and reporting these days – something in the name of ‘rorting of 457 visa scams’. I can’t shut my trap now.

These are men for whom Asian women are all ‘chinkys’. Here’s the other real thing: these men will date chinky women but never marry them as their families won’t accept ‘fast women’.  I know women who have been told verbatim by their spineless boyfriends. They are not elite in any way, of course, they have a veiled racial bias which is entrenched in their roots and their ‘oye chinky’ stems from there. Not without reason then that the Ministry of Home Affairs has been forced to come up with a law that says anyone who calls a northeasterner chinky or commits any form of verbal or physical abuse against them will be jailed for five years!  

I went ballistic on facebook after the incident I faced. It is my way of taking out my ire against the type of men I thought I left behind in India. It appalls me that they have infiltrated into a country where they rant racism against them and create a hype about it in the media when they are the perpetrators themselves. I loathe the use of the word ‘chinky’. It comes loaded with meanings, it comes from prejudices, it comes from a complete lack of knowledge about one’s own country and a complete lack of respect. 

And then people chime in about how we ourselves are also racists or are at the receiving end too or use words that in effect amounts to casual racism. In other words, what happened to me is OK because we are guilty parties ourselves? They forget I am focussing on seemingly intelligent men who are laughing at a certain woman who by definition does not fit into their stereotype of a typical Indian girl. It is not one incident, two incidents or three; it is hundreds of shit incidents that hundreds of northeast women face in India. Only a fart would not get it! Sure one can be discriminated on many other grounds, but this is my rant based on my experience.

Some friends who for some reason don't want to be public with their opinion asked me privately why I am letting this bother me? I think they just move on with their lives irrespective of shit happening around them. I can't be a silent spectator of life, I am normal, I react, I over react. And yet there are others who otherwise are vocal but choose to remain silent because they fall in the category of what I call - no spine to take a stand when it matters. It is at times like this that people make me do a status check on how I feel about myself and how I feel about them. The conclusions are not always great!

My apologies to my other Indian male friends who coincidentally play cricket and love their scotch. This is not about you but some in your ilk who need to respect women irrespective of any race, creed or colour.