[Reader-list] CC/Surveillance

[khadeeja at sarai.net]

When we talk of a space (public or private), it has a feeling of
connectivity, association, usage, and, of course, freedom/leisure. Our
association with a particular place must ensure that you
experience/enjoy/feel/use that place according to our own will.  Be it our
home/ school/ playground/ community center/ balcony/ main road/public
toilets/ gardens/ square/ historical monuments/ restaurants, coffee
houses/ parks/ chai ka dhaba, and even your work place, it should be free
of surveillance of any sort.  This is what we all wish. But,
unfortunately, it is not so!!

No space (Public or private) ironically, is spare of a constant
watchfulness of formal and informal kinds. All places, all people are
under constant vigil. Tools employed are galore: ranging from the
surveillance mechanism governed/operated from the state (“Pandu’s video
camera”) or the gaze of some un/known, strange individual. At times, it
could be your neighbor /remote acquaintances or some son of some pados ki
aunti, who is simply interested in your life more than his own.

Is it enough to identify surveillance in the form of some guidelines
/institute rules/how to behave in a park/historical monuments, or rather
as a paranoia of the state (to safe guard its citizen from any sorts of
“terrorist attack”) etc? Or, is the distinction between two different
kinds of vigilances: state operated and individual activity of
watchfulness sharp or recognizable?  Or, in other words, does a policeman
shooting some students (of course without their knowledge) disturb more
than a gaze of an individual, trying to note every action of yours out of
his sheer moral responsibility to safeguard ‘his women’ (specially, when
you are outside your own gali/mohalla)?

For me, it is far more disturbing/uncomfortable when somebody tries to
make me feel watched/observed/caught/ through gestures than a policewala
making a video for some weird citizenship records out of some nonsensical
fear psychosis.

Living in a close-knit locality has both its advantages and disadvantages.
Here everybody knows everybody. Some people, especially, men tend to take
a moral responsibility of safeguarding every step of “their women” and if
they find a woman trying to do something that goes against their way of
living or their expectations, there is a problem.

It was the summer of this year. For me, Walking out of the house at 10 in
the night is normal. Most of the time I go to meet my friends at CC. 
Though I prefer to meet my friends at home, but the association with CC is
strong enough to pull all us there. One night I set out of my home at
10:30 in the night to meet my friend Kavita at CC Mcdonald.  Though it is
not safe to pass New friends alone in the night, but still I took a
rickshaw and started. As I was on the rickshaw, I noticed that a
motorcycle is constantly crawling with my rickshaw. Initially, I thought I
am being little too suspicious. But, then, I realized that these guys, on
the motorcycle, were actually following me. On seeing closely, I found
that these guys were from my own gali.

I got down at CC (these guys also got down at CC) and found that Kavita
was nowhere to be seen in McDonald. Well, as CC is too familiar a place to
worry about sitting alone and waiting, I decided to sit outside the
McDonald and wait. I noticed that these men are constantly having an eye
on every movement of me.

As I was walking in front of the McDonalds, one of them passed through me
and commented: “ yaar itna intezaar karana bhi theek nahi”. They kept
hovering around me, making clear through their gestures that they would
catch me any moment with a guy (their imagination!).

Finally, Kavita reached at 11pm.  The moment they saw me with Kavita, they
left. I think they were relieved or may be ashamed.


In retrospect I wonder how would I have reacted (in a situation like this)
had it been some guy who I was waiting for?  Would have I felt awkward? Of
course, not! But, then, why was I nervous at all? Was it because of the
fact that I hated to be watched/scrutinized like this? Or I was anxious
because these were people from my own locality, and somewhere I felt
responsible to behave the way they wanted me (or any of ‘their women’ to
behave)? Or I was uncomfortable because a place like CC (that symbolizes
some kind freedom for me) was also not free of Vigilance????

Khadeeja