Monday, January 17, 2011

All world loves lovers? Naah!


            Good old Shakespeare once said all world loves lovers. Do they? May be in England of Shakespeare. Not so in India if we are to go by the evidence we have.
            A youngster in the throes of his/her first love (or even second or third) has no freedom either in the house or outside to speak of the thrill or pain of the experience. They can share with nobody without being put down. Nor can the couple even meet to stare into each other’s eyes without drawing stares of disapproval from others around them.
            Never make the mistake of having a rendezvous in the neighbourhood where you live. Not only the neighbours will look at you suspiciously and convey the information to your parents but even the locality’s Big Man’s (industrialist/contractor) watchman will give you a tongue lashing if he finds you talking with your favourite. He is also the keeper of the area’s morals, you see. If you have to talk go somewhere else, the watchman once advised a young couple in my neighbourhood, rather roughly. When the young man resented this unsought for advice the watchman bristled and raised his voice and advanced threateningly, forcing the youngsters to retreat in the interest of peace. Lovers, you see, are quite vulnerable to the self-appointed moral policemen.
            An incident in Osmania University in Hyderabad showed the moral police at work. A boy who was speaking to a girl around 9 pm outside her hostel on the OU campus was beaten up by a group of boys as a punishment. However the girl was outraged. She roped in fellow ideologists of the Red variety and lodged a complaint against the moral policemen which were of the saffron variety. It is another story that the cops did not follow up but a point had been scored in favour of youngsters. How dare anyone impose their morals on others!
            Only in India and I suppose in most Asian societies others’ affairs of the heart is the business of the neighbours and even the entire community. The idea of privacy and the right of the individual to go where the heart leads, with the person of one’s choice apparently is foreign to our people. The woes of the people in love apparently moved the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah. He must be the only politician to instruct the police not to harass lovers who frequent parks and gardens to seek solitude in each other’s company away from prying and frequently disapproving eyes. In a garden on a university campus, every now and then the watchman goes about poking the bushes with his lathi and when young girl and boy emerge from them, he shoos them away, I suspect, with spiteful glee. Not everybody is Farooq Abdullah, you see.
            Some even find the young lovers easy prey. A group of teenagers comprising two girls and two boys were stopped by the police in the night as they were driving back after a party in a resort on the city outskirts of Hyderabad. All papers were in order but the police threatened to take them all to the police station and call their parents. The boys pleaded; the cops relented but only after emptying about Rs 1000 from their two purses. In another instance, desiring to escape from prying eyes a college-going couple decided to take refuge in the abundant rocks outlying the city. Parking his brand new motorbike the young man guided the girl up the highest rock and sat down for some heart-to-heart talk. Their joy was shortlived. From literally nowhere villagers emerged and threatened the couple with dire consequences if they did not stop 'polluting' the pristine environment. Rocks as the last resort? No way!
            There is hope though. The other day I took an NRI friend to see the latest showpiece of the city, on Hyderabad’s outskirts, the Hidden Lake or Durgam Cheruvu. The park has plenty of original shrubbery, natural rocks and trees around with themes worked around them. And for a change, it was not crowded with one billion people. The only crowd was under trees, behind the rocks and hidden behind the shrubs, two-somes who were lost to the world. Durgam Cheruvu is a paying park. The entry fee is a deterrent for the undesirable elements such as noisy kids, voluble parents and screaming vendors. There seems to be at least one positive aspect of liberalization, thank God!
ends

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