The Movement is greater than the some of it's parts!

It was ten o clock in the morning, and I was heading towards CP, to get an early breakfast from Mc D’s the one on Janpath, with the pancakes, (just so you know, I don’t think they’re worth it). I had with me, a remnant of last night’s party, a girl from DU, where until recently I was studying as well, who was rather militant about feminism, and as a result had made it her night’s goal to convince me of something or the other.

The only problem, she seemed to face, was that I already agreed with the concept of sex-equality, even if my understanding of it differed slightly from her. However, I am a man, and so, naturally, I was a male chauvinistic pig, and needed to be converted... very new age church shit! Well, our evangelist, was busy trying to talk me into conceding something or the other, that women were better at, and given that I am entirely unfamiliar with whatever she was talking about, she was naturally having a tough time, and that only served to convince her of my MCPness. However owing to certain things that happened at the party, we did also manage to have a good time and enjoy each other’s company. So she was accompanying me to breakfast, with a deal to not mention anything about the women’s movement, provided I didn’t say anything derogatory about women.

This was going to be hard, but I persevered.

Just as we exited the CP station, she looked back at the metro queue, and commented on how unruly the men were, compared to the women. I had to admit this, men do cut lines, and jostle, and all in all, disobey ‘civic’ rules. On the other hand, the women were passing through rather quickly, and unobstructed, something she took great pride in, telling me we (men) should learn something from the fairer, (notice the pun) sex.

I agreed, though frankly, being 6 feet tall, and formerly beefy, I must admit, I prefer the un-queued way of life. But my saying that could have been taken as something derogatory to women, so I kept my mouth shut!

Breakfast was rather uneventful, though a little depressing, since I had to pay for both of us. Somehow she skipped that page of the feminist manual, or personally, I think they ripped it out, some things are best kept unequal after all.

Anyway, on our way back, she passed through the ladies line, really fast, while I was held up by the queue, and by now, it was rather long, around 12. By the time I got out, and walked over to her, a good minute or two had past.

“hmmm....” she said, “so can we go?”

I wasn’t too sure whether that was sarcasm or boredom, so I chose to evade the questions entirely, “Nice weather,” I said. That got her laughing, thank God. I don’t know what it is about an obviously inappropriate answer, but it always gets a laugh. Like when I ask my dog if he ate my chocolates, he fished out his tennis ball, now what am I supposed to do with that? Is a tennis ball admission of guilt or denial?

Anyway, my bitchiness, Alyssa, my dog, is a girl, got me away with things... and we were walking towards the gates of the metro, when she looked over her shoulder, one more time, with an air of observation and confirmation. I wondered what she was looking, at, but feared asking.

Though I really had nothing to fear, she told me. “It’s not fair, look at that, such partiality, the men have two lines, and we only have one. Why should you get two lines?” she looked at me, as though it was I who had sanctioned the second line for men. Women are great believers in the concept of collective responsibility. Ever noticed how they ask us, “Why?” whenever anything goes down. I mean how am I supposed to know why someone got raped, or Alyssa sat on your book? But we’re expected to simultaneously play dog whisperer and violent criminal in our minds, and yet, be original, or they say we’re not. Neither is this, I know!

The next day in college the Feminists got together, and decided to do something, naturally, I have very little to do with anything of this nature, and in fact have invented this ‘meeting’ to explain what happened next, cause no one person could single handedly be responsible for the People Mitigating Systemic Problems of Male Surveyors of Public Means of Movement and Sex, (The PMSPMSPMMS). Essentially they were in favour of a fairer treatment of both sexes in the metro. Essentially, they wanted both men and women to have equal queues. How this was to be achieved, was a little harder to figure. One suggestion was that the fourth lane, the one used for exit should be converted into the second entry for women, which was immediately refuted though, because it give men both inside lanes. Another suggestion that was almost accepted had something to do with making the middle lane open to both sexes, but was also disallowed, as it would create enough proximity to allow the body odour from men to enter their nostrils, they were scared of pollution.

Ultimately they decided to first raise awareness about the problem, and then tackle it, once they had public sympathy. So they set out, to bring equality to the Metro station at CP. It was going to be a hard battle, and a difficult one. They started by printing a lot of flyers, and the next day they set about distributing them.

Now the metro stations are usually populated with several such flyer people anyway, and CP is doubly so, the average commuter really doesn’t have time to deal with them. However, they were going to try valiantly. They distributed themselves over the four entrances to the CP station, and then started to distribute flyers.

The only people willing to take the flyers were the men, who were queuing up, to get into the metro, and had to wait in line. The women on the other hand were not faced by any such dilemmas as they flashed past the waiting men, and into the checking booth, and out, into the station. They barely past a glance at the PMSPMSPMMS campaign, and hardly anyone took a flyer, the men though, cheered up by the fact that these were actual live women, handing them things, were very enthusiastic, but on reading the contents of the flyer were utterly confused, and proceeded to discard them, consequently littering the damn place.

That evening, when the PMSPMSPMMS met, and discussed the day’s work, they were rather happy, that they had given out all their flyers. In fact the president of the campaign, was rather smug when she announced that the flyers had actually finished by 4pm. Her right had (wo)man, however, thought there was more to it than that, “I think,” she said, very solemnly, “a word needs to be said for the men today, at least where I was there were genuinely more interested than the women.”

“Yeah,” piped in someone from the rank and file, “they actually approached me to see what I was giving out”

There was a smattering of me toos.

The president however rose, “However, it must be remembered that despite their willingness to take the flyers, they littered the place so badly, all over.”

“Yes,” the second in command said, “that was really terrible, they made the whole place dirty. Covered in yellow scraps of paper.”

“But you know what,” added another anonymous voice, “I feel bad for them they have to wait in line so much, I mean, the women get by so quickly, and then they have to wait. Despite the extra line!”

“That, my dear,” said a gracious president, “is what men are all about, despite having all the tools and privileges that 200 years of social evolution has granted them, they cant do the most basic things, and have no sense of justice, that’s why women have to fight for their rights, and for equality, I mean look at this... We’ve provided them with flyers, educating them the inequality of having two lines. And they’re standing right there, doing nothing, if anyone of them had any sense, they’d shift over na, and make do in one line... but they wont. They’ll keep hogging the second line, and pay lip service to women, er... i mean equality.”

“The women are so much nicer, in the whole day, I never saw anyone drop a single flyer, or throw it, or crumple it. None of them took any flyers, which shows a lot of respect, cause if you cant do justice to something, you shouldn’t waste it, right?”

“Yes, that is the problem with men, they have the tools, but will never learn to use them, instead, all they want is more of what they have... bigger lines, more lines, why not just be content with what you have?” Was the sage note on which the meeting ended.

The campaign didn’t have much of a life beyond that, the president was caught cavorting with her man who actually had his arm around her waist my DU friend informed me. “Such a sell out!” I acknowledged how absolutely base it was for her to do something so natural as enjoy the company of the opposite sex, and she nodded approvingly, if a little surprised, almost like saying, ‘oh you do get it?,’ with a big ‘REALLY?’ in the subtext.

When sometime later, I asked her about the campaign she told me it had completely foundered, no one was willing to take initiative, which was very very sad. I nooded devastated. “So, nothing is going to happen?”

“Well, no, I guess,” she said, “No one has the time, and it’s so sad, cause i really wanna do something about the whole problem, I really wanna fix it. IT’s grossly unfair that men have two lines when women have only one... but what can I do alone.” Being a student of history, I could have given her an answer to that question, but being a man, I knew it was futile.

Besides at that point I didn’t want her to do anything about anything, specially not if it meant her having to disentangle her hands from mine. I rather hoped she would be caught with me, and then she’d be expelled from the sorority.

What’s really strange though, for me, is figuring out, whether I wanna make fun of her, or truly enjoy hanging out with her. Because it has to be one or the other, if we’re going to be entangling hands, and hopefully other parts of ourselves in the near future.

On the flip side, if things do come to pinch, I have a ready excuse... “I’m a man” I love the feminists for giving us that one!