The first thing that hits me when I visit a new place in India, is what I am and what I’m not allowed to do. Unfortunately that dictates a large part of our lives, especially if you lean towards wanting to do things a tad rebelliously. Different cities, different cultures, different upbringings in this one small country can lead to severe culture shock when you travel.
I’ve lived for five years of my life in Hyderabad, a city full of malls, flyovers and youngsters wearing fancy shades and fancier hairstyles. However it is also a city where if you walk around in shorts or a sleeveless T – shirt, you will get stared at like E.T would if he visited Earth. A strict dress code, a strict moral code, no short clothes for the ladies, no ladies for the gents, and vice versa. This bothered me when I first moved here. I still complain about it quite tirelessly, but now it’s with a kind of resignation.
Then I moved to Chennai, and I discovered how much character a coastal city can have. It makes such a huge difference to me that I live in a city that has beaches. When you think of a beach, you think of a relaxed atmosphere. No restrictions on dressing is what you’d hope for, (considering it’s not very comfortable wading through water in a salwar kurta.) but unfortunately conformism is the way to go. The clothes you wear, the things you say, the way you behave, the company you keep, everything is under the scrutiny of the public. Boys and girls together, even in large groups are looked at with a disapproving eye. Chennai is just as extreme as Hyderabad, maybe even more so.
And then came another city. Goa. I cannot even begin to describe the level of comfort I felt there. Walking around, meeting different kinds of people, talking to and getting to know them, enjoying the beach for what it is, taking in the scenery, the breeze, the sunshine, everything without a thought about what I was wearing, who I was with and how I should behave, was priceless. It was so hugely different from what I was used to, and so liberating.
It might seem trivial that all this is so important to me, but to be part of a city, a community where you don’t have to be afraid of and bowed down by societal pressure is to really live!
It’s not just about the clothes. That is probably the least of our problems. It only serves as a symbol for what is happening, because it’s so ‘in your face’, something we think of every single day. But there’s so much more. Everything seems to be everyone’s business. No one is left to themselves, to live life how they want to. Getting stared at, hearing stray comments from strangers who have no right to decide anything for us, feeling insecure in public, constantly worrying about what one is saying and how one might be perceived. The mental exhaustion might not be very apparent, but at some point it gets to you. Lives are ruled by the general public and their rigid codes of what is right and wrong. Moral policing has become an overused term, but unfortunately it is also an overactive phenomenon. One very important clarification that I want to make is: I am not at all criticizing people’s choices and preferences. I am only pleading that one individual’s way of living should remain his or her own, and not something that is thrown in everyone’s face and made a social norm.
True, I have become accustomed to the restrained way of public living, true that I do understand its deep seated nature to some extent, but to receive the breath of fresh air that Goa was after the stale inhaling of all these years, is an experience worth telling, and discussing.
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