The word "canal" sounds way more romantic than the phrase "open sewer"
I have officially been traveling in the developing world for too long.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Will, King of the Monkeys
“This isn’t going to work.” Paula said very matter-of-factly. “There’s a monkey blocking my way.” She said it as if she was talking about a traffic jam or a long line at the grocery store. (I guess we are just getting used to everything at this point.)
Paula was attempting to deliver some leftover shrimp and fried egg to a pregnant cat that she had befriended at our bungalow in Tonsai, Thailand. Unfortunately for her, the monkeys had other ambitions on the snacks.
“There was a big monkey right on the path, so I tried to go around our bungalow, but it darted around the side and intercepted me,” she said. “Why are you laughing?”
I am fascinated at how monkeys, from quite a distance away, can tell when someone is carrying food. They have such one-track minds.
“Ok. Let’s go,” I told her, smugly getting up from my beach-strung hammock. “We’ll get past the monkeys.”
We neared our bungalows and caught wind of an unexpected sight. The lone monkey had multiplied into a full troupe of monkeys – papa monkey, mama monkey, twin baby monkeys, cousin Earl the monkey. And believe me, they were causing havoc. A small female perched on our railing eating a banana peel that we had discarded, apparently unafraid of fulfilling every monkey stereotype. Another small monkey fished the remaining crumbs from a neighbors’ Pringles can as the neighbor looked on helplessly.
I have never taken a primate behavior class, but I have hung around enough bars in a college town to know how to make a dominant male behavior display, so I knew what to do.
I bared my teeth at the largest monkey I could find. Paula, meanwhile, coaxed the pregnant cat to a nearby bungalow. As the monkeys attempted to follow her, I held them at bay by making sustained eye contact, hissing and showing my incisors as needed. As ludicrous as this sounds, it worked. Paula was able to feed the cat in relative peace while I battled the monkeys.
What has my life come to?
Paula was attempting to deliver some leftover shrimp and fried egg to a pregnant cat that she had befriended at our bungalow in Tonsai, Thailand. Unfortunately for her, the monkeys had other ambitions on the snacks.
“There was a big monkey right on the path, so I tried to go around our bungalow, but it darted around the side and intercepted me,” she said. “Why are you laughing?”
I am fascinated at how monkeys, from quite a distance away, can tell when someone is carrying food. They have such one-track minds.
“Ok. Let’s go,” I told her, smugly getting up from my beach-strung hammock. “We’ll get past the monkeys.”
We neared our bungalows and caught wind of an unexpected sight. The lone monkey had multiplied into a full troupe of monkeys – papa monkey, mama monkey, twin baby monkeys, cousin Earl the monkey. And believe me, they were causing havoc. A small female perched on our railing eating a banana peel that we had discarded, apparently unafraid of fulfilling every monkey stereotype. Another small monkey fished the remaining crumbs from a neighbors’ Pringles can as the neighbor looked on helplessly.
I have never taken a primate behavior class, but I have hung around enough bars in a college town to know how to make a dominant male behavior display, so I knew what to do.
I bared my teeth at the largest monkey I could find. Paula, meanwhile, coaxed the pregnant cat to a nearby bungalow. As the monkeys attempted to follow her, I held them at bay by making sustained eye contact, hissing and showing my incisors as needed. As ludicrous as this sounds, it worked. Paula was able to feed the cat in relative peace while I battled the monkeys.
What has my life come to?
Why Indian Men won't marry you... You'll leave him!
“ Indian men like to have European girlfriends, but for a wife, they want an Indian woman. If you beat a western woman, she will leave you! Indian woman stands by her husband.”
The Indian man at the next table had seemed nice enough, and I could not totally believe what I was hearing. I wanted to think that he was talking about Indian men in the general sense, but he had just finished telling us that he has had European girlfriends but when he gets married, it will be to an Indian woman.
I am aware of the problems with domestic violence that is pandemic in India. I am aware of the bride burning when a man or his family feel that they have not collected enough dowry. In the abstract, I know that these problems, which are almost unimaginable to me in the scope of their cruelty and prevalence, exist in a theoretical way in India.
But to hear the acceptance of this cruelty expressed as a virtue of Indian womanhood still left me shocked.
Part of me wanted to say, “what the hell is wrong with you?” to all the men in India. I wanted to blame such vile behavior on basic ignorance, but the man sitting before me spoke English well and was apparently worldly enough to attract a female western friend. If he were just a stupid bumpkin, I could reconcile him also being a viscous wife beater. But he was not.
I think Indian men just have a keen sense of bargaining position (and are also maybe a little cruel and ignorant as well). Let me explain.
You might think ‘if Indian women are suffering so much abuse at the hands of these guys, why don’t they leave them? I mean, a guy hits you for bringing his dinner out a little too cold because you were bullshitting with your friends for hours, who wouldn’t up and split?’ That is what I though anyway, but realized I was examining the problem from an American viewpoint.
Consider this: In India, divorce is extremely uncommon. It’s not that there are just no marital problems- it’s that a female divorcee’s options are, to put it generously, very limited. A divorced woman (or even a widow, for that matter) will find it difficult, if not impossible to find a new husband. Women are expected and presumed to be virgins before marriage; so obviously, a woman who is getting remarried can not be virginal.
What’s the big deal about not having a husband? For a woman in India, she probably got less education than her brothers and also has much worse or nonexistent job opportunities if she were to strike out on her own.
Long story short- a man knows he can beat her as much as he wants because any amount of abuse is better than being out in the streets. Trust me, almost anything is better than being on Indian streets.
I don’t know how much times are changing, but I did see an article in an Indian Cosmo-style women’s magazine that had a long ‘ask the experts’ section about domestic abuse.
All of the segments either congratulated women who had left their abusive husbands in spite of the problems (usually returning to abnormally supportive parents) or encouraging women in bad relationships to leave them.
While I was pleased to see this as a positive sign, I definitely would not pronounce widespread barbaric treatment of women in India to be dead and buried.
The Indian man at the next table had seemed nice enough, and I could not totally believe what I was hearing. I wanted to think that he was talking about Indian men in the general sense, but he had just finished telling us that he has had European girlfriends but when he gets married, it will be to an Indian woman.
I am aware of the problems with domestic violence that is pandemic in India. I am aware of the bride burning when a man or his family feel that they have not collected enough dowry. In the abstract, I know that these problems, which are almost unimaginable to me in the scope of their cruelty and prevalence, exist in a theoretical way in India.
But to hear the acceptance of this cruelty expressed as a virtue of Indian womanhood still left me shocked.
Part of me wanted to say, “what the hell is wrong with you?” to all the men in India. I wanted to blame such vile behavior on basic ignorance, but the man sitting before me spoke English well and was apparently worldly enough to attract a female western friend. If he were just a stupid bumpkin, I could reconcile him also being a viscous wife beater. But he was not.
I think Indian men just have a keen sense of bargaining position (and are also maybe a little cruel and ignorant as well). Let me explain.
You might think ‘if Indian women are suffering so much abuse at the hands of these guys, why don’t they leave them? I mean, a guy hits you for bringing his dinner out a little too cold because you were bullshitting with your friends for hours, who wouldn’t up and split?’ That is what I though anyway, but realized I was examining the problem from an American viewpoint.
Consider this: In India, divorce is extremely uncommon. It’s not that there are just no marital problems- it’s that a female divorcee’s options are, to put it generously, very limited. A divorced woman (or even a widow, for that matter) will find it difficult, if not impossible to find a new husband. Women are expected and presumed to be virgins before marriage; so obviously, a woman who is getting remarried can not be virginal.
What’s the big deal about not having a husband? For a woman in India, she probably got less education than her brothers and also has much worse or nonexistent job opportunities if she were to strike out on her own.
Long story short- a man knows he can beat her as much as he wants because any amount of abuse is better than being out in the streets. Trust me, almost anything is better than being on Indian streets.
I don’t know how much times are changing, but I did see an article in an Indian Cosmo-style women’s magazine that had a long ‘ask the experts’ section about domestic abuse.
All of the segments either congratulated women who had left their abusive husbands in spite of the problems (usually returning to abnormally supportive parents) or encouraging women in bad relationships to leave them.
While I was pleased to see this as a positive sign, I definitely would not pronounce widespread barbaric treatment of women in India to be dead and buried.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)