The most salutatory punishments are not fines and imprisonment but disgracing Eve-teasers in public: the traditional blackening of their faces and taking them on a donkey’s back through public thoroughfares would do them a world of good.
Eve-teasing is a delightful Indianism which does not exist in any English dictionary. The rest of the English speaking world find it very intriguing. ‘Why Eve and not Sita, Savitri or Urmila?’ they ask, ‘and why teasing?’ Only little boys and little girls tease each other! Once you achieve adolescence you stop teasing and learn to ‘make passes.’ Their young ladies do not mind being made passes at; on the contrary if nobody makes passes at them, they conclude that they are not good looking enough to attract attention. To wit Dorothy Parker’s classic: ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.’
Making a pass is regarded as a form of compliment. A wit commented: ‘Whether men will make passes at girls who wear glasses depends quite a bit on the shape of their chassis.’
In other words, good faces and shapely figures should get the attention they deserve. It is the girl’s geography that determines her history, i.e., whether or not she will make the grade.
Our closest equivalent to ‘making a pass’ is chher chhaar which is far from being complimentary. It may be directed at any woman irrespective of her looks or age and is often indulged in without as much as looking at them, i.e., when a man takes advantage of being in a crowded bus to press himself against a female or lets his hands stray over the most prominent bulges on her body. It is only a brave woman who will risk creating a scene by slapping the fellow or admonishing him with the traditional formula: ‘Have you no mother, sister or daughter of your own to do this to?’
There are milder forms of chher chhaar which do not involve personal contact: a wolf-whistle, a wink, a leering look or an obscene gesture. In my younger days the favourite slogan of Delhi’s gutter casanovas used to be: ‘Hai Jaanee mar daala, pyjama phaar daala – Oh life you’ve killed me and torn up my pyjama.’ I haven’t heard that for a long time.
It can be maintained that some girls invite more unwelcome attention than others. Frustrated, lecherous types find fat Bessy Buntings irresistible. The over-dressed obviously invite attention. One may be forgiven for a long, lingering look at someone who is dressed to kill:
Sab hee mujh se kehtey hain
Neechee rakho nazaar apnee;
Unsay koi nahin kahta
Mat niklo yoon ayaan ho kar
(Everyone tells me to keep my eyes lowered:
No one tells her not to come out so splendidly
attired.)
There is yet another class of female, usually unattractive, who makes up stories of men making passes at them. This kind of Eve is deadlier than any Adam.
This long prelude was written by me way back in 1984 for the benefit of Delhi’s city fathers. Having passed the age of Eve-teasing these worthies were determined to punish the practitioners of this trade – singing, ballad mongering, reciting, uttering indecent words, or making obscene gestures to annoy women was to land the fellow in jail and saddle him with a fine. I don’t remember whatever happened to their recommendation but am reminded of an incident which took place many years ago on board a ship on which I was travelling from London to Bombay. Among the passengers was a batch of young Sikh peddlers who had made their fortune but little else besides money. There were also two Indian girls who had acquired degrees from Oxford and disdained talking to their less educated countrymen. They would stroll round the deck with their noses stuck in the air. After a few days whenever the girls passed by the peddler boys would chant: ‘Saddey Val Vee Veykh Jao’ – a glance on our side please! The young ladies were incensed and asked me to tell the boys to behave themselves. When I did so with some show of temper, the lads asked me in loaded words: ‘Terey pyo da jahaaj hay?’ or does this ship belong to your father?’ Another passenger who was better acquainted with the peddler attitude to women simply asked them: ‘If these girls were your sisters, would you be asking them to look towards you?’ Thereafter the harassment ceased.
Eve-teasing is an Indian phenomenon and can be best countered by traditional Indian techniques. First appeal to the Eve-teaser that if he indulges in harassing girls there may be other lads harassing his sisters. If that does not work, it is for the public and not the police to intervene. Why don’t college students who make much noise on issues that do not concern them organize squads of their own to beat up the eve-teasers? The most salutatory punishments are not fines and imprisonment but disgracing eve-teasers in public: the traditional blackening of their faces and taking them on a donkey’s back through public thoroughfares would do them a world of good.