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Drunk women don’t leave Bombay looking so good

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Gayatri Jayaraman
Gayatri JayaramanJun 17, 2015 | 16:45

Drunk women don’t leave Bombay looking so good

One woman, as opposed to 6,822 men, was caught for drunken driving in Mumbai up to June this year. For a city that prides itself on the safety of women who travel late at night and enjoy their freedoms, that’s a sure shot skewing of ratios.

Right. Let’s not make drinking a man-woman thing. Men behave atrociously when drunk too, and far more often. Apart from the regular staggering about and puking, there’s expletives and knocking down innocent bystanders routinely in the wee hours of the morning. In May, a drunk man in an Andheri pub fired a gun. Another bit his friend at multiple points in October 2013. They commit suicide either by jumping off the Sea Link or off their balconies. And worst of all, every woman’s nightmare, some men molest women when drunk, at parties, on roads, and in the wee hours in local commuter trains. In March this year a Pradnya Mandhare dragged a drunk man harassing her to the police station by his hair. Most of these obscure events make news. Mostly, they are ascribed to that generic male behaviour thing called "drunkenness’.

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Drinking becomes a man-woman thing because firstly, society is just acclimatising to women drinking, even in a town like Mumbai, and secondly, because patriarchal condescension rests on the foundation of allowances having been made. When the Mumbai Police only just wakes up to the fact that they have largely assumed women driving cars alone at night, will typically not be drunk. Once detained, Gadkar was not arrested on the spot, as drunk male drivers are (or ought to be, for those bringing up Salman Khan here). The Mumbai police reportedly “did not know how to deal with her” as women constables were not on duty at that time of night. It is only after the incident that the Mumbai police equalised the stringent rules for traffic cops checking for drunk driving. They’ve also only just realised that drinking is not a weekend-only phenomenon. In short, everyone knows women can drink and may do so, but nobody actually believed they would. Like. Not really.

Its aftermath? Women didn’t do so well in response. In a cringe-worthy performance, Shivani Bali, a 42-year-old Worli-based woman locked herself in a car when called out for being inebriated at a traffic checkpost. Television channels, including our own, show her doing everything from chasing the cameraperson to vengefully recording the proceedings herself. Police were at their wits end trying to get her out of the car as she brazenly sat there smoking cigarettes and listening to music with the AC on as a crowd surrounded her. Worried she would suffocate, the police attempted to break the window.

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Both performances of these inebriated women, Gadkar and Bali, have been nothing short of contemptuous of the law.

There have been strong reactions from those on both sides of the debate – how is it a gender issue and why does one woman’s actions reflect on all women? Should Gadkar be using the ‘woman’ defence for bail after two men died that night vs the fact that the law offers her the right to use it? And is one 42-year-old indicative of what women by and large, peacefully partying and going home without harming others, do?

It isn’t. Which is why the need to de-link the two becomes pressing. The issue is that as women involved in an endless fight for equality, it is critical at this juncture that the distinctions between legitimising our feminist stances and abusing the privilege of them, be made very clear.

Do we support reservations for women in Parliament, in the armed forces, or even in “small” ways like seats on public transport? Yes of course we do. Why is that necessary? Because, in Mumbai, as opposed to any other city in the country, when signs in red clearly mark a seat for women, it means that the rest of the populace may please expect a woman, a working woman, a woman with purpose or a woman out for leisure, to come and occupy it. It is the State making way for what has not been made way for by social norms.

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But this works both ways. Once extended the hand to a partnership, in our equality we become stakeholders of where we steer things. Protection of the law is nice but it is equally a patriarchal umbrella under which we function. It is one thing to use it to get in out of the rain and quite another to build a house under it.

The subtext in the air is clear: When are women going to start meeting partnership halfway? “Woman” cannot be a call for affirmative action and a defence to a crime in the same breath. It cannot be both sword and shield.

I pick sword.

You?

Last updated: July 02, 2015 | 10:16
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