the objects object

24th February, 12:25 am

Picture this:
An assorted group of people standing at the steps of a college.

The same bevy now standing outside the only place that serves food at this hour in a city that swears by the maxim of early to bed (at least ; if not early to rise), but this time through they stand together, if only by the virtue of being in an alien place.
Tired eyes. Weary from having waited on the whims of judges and quirky participants at one of the many competitions colleges seem to hold during the ‘fest season’. And let’s not forget hungry.
Amongst these, a gaggle of chattering lasses draped in sarees. Clustering together as girls in sarees invariably will. You are one of them. A little circle of ogling eyes forms around the group. Disembodied eyes. Like those of pack wolves closing in. The congregation moves indoors, into the glaring white light of the 24 hour café at the station.

Walk in. Look around.
Shiny glass counters. Bright colours supposed to make one feel cheerful. Cling-foil wrapped. Insipid. Cold. That goes for the food as well.
Sit down on the chrome chairs with their ultra-last high gloss polish and you notice that the eyes have followed you in. 15 minutes into the ritual hour-long wait for the food to arrive you realize that the supposedly disembodied eyes have voices. LOUD voices. And the theme of the confab is YOU! Every single one of you. This is no sotto voce discourse either. Everything from tip of your toes upwards has come under careful scrutiny and is now being opined upon with noisy animation punctuated with gasps. Which, obviously, you all regard with a studied, condescending disdain. And then out come the camera phones.. This cant be for real! This cannot be happening! You girls outnumber them for heaven’s sake! And if that isn’t enough you are sharing the table with a dozen or more guys.
But it is.
Now for the weird part : these guys look like regular people. Trousers trying but failing miserably to hang onto some last vestige of a behind, hair stuck at weird angles with globs of styling gel and t-shirts advertising the latest design house for free. In a word –Normal– as normal as our ‘identity crisis poster-boy’ generation gets, anyway. Man! Haven’t they heard that all horrid people are required by law to resemble gargoyles so you don’t end up talking with them by day?

Meanwhile, the aggravatingly blatant play at gaining your collective attention just gets more glaring. The throbbing at your temples has attained a fevered pitch and you want to give them just that : your Total, Undivided Attention. While you cause them lasting physical damage. Like by slow roasting them on a spit. Or sewing up their mouths with a thick gauge needle. Or pushing tin tacks through the hands holding up the phones, one finger at a time. Slow. Yeeees … slow is good.

But (I really must stop beginning sentences with a but) you are held back by the awareness that driving a spit through someone in a largely public place where not many people prescribe to cannibalism would obviously create a scene. And one must NEVER create a scene. Even if it costs one one’s self respect.

Put your head in your lap. Look elsewhere. Ignore them.
Pretend this isn’t really happening.
Pretend your skull isn’t going to burst with the deafening din building up in your head.
Pretend you feel safe seated with a dozen boys (men?) at your table.
Pretend you can walk with your head held up after you’ve pretended all this.


P.S.:
In all fairness the guys with us were way at the other end and didn’t see these other people.
For the first time in my life I acted like a spineless wimp. I did have reasons but in retrospect they sound more like excuses for not having done the right thing.
Truly speaking, what do I know about being objectified. I sit in front of the flickering monitor curled up in a comfy chair, my hair dripping water from a bath onto my collar, ensconced in the quiet of my room. Yet, I read about the skewed sex ratio in most parts of India and about the bride market in Haryana and I’m not surprised. We’re not really people, you see, we’re just commodities. Objects; to be bought and sold and haggled over. Next stall to the vegetable vendors.

Oh, well. Maybe I’m just too cynical.
I sure hope so.