Gender Trouble

Okay, enough mope and sap. I’m back. I’ve been told that my last post was “beautiful” and it made someone “cry” so there will be no more of that. (Bad for my image, you see)

Ask any traveler what they notice first about India and it will not be the sweet smell of cow dung burning in the morning, though that might come a close second. It will, inevitably, be the that Indians are a race of starers. Wide, unblinking, camp-stare-off-winning caliber starers. Add the more than occasional slacking of the jaw and you have what we call the Calcutta Gawk. It’s a whole-body phenomenon, everything goes limpid with the mouth, except for the eyes which get even wider. The anthropologist alurk inside me says that it may be an adaptive mechanism intended to make use of the extra-large eyes of the Indic peoples. Or perhaps the evolution happened the other way around and those protuberant features developed out of the extensive use and muscular stimulation which is needed for such full-contact staring. Whichever way it developed, Indians are now the chosen race of starers. From the very elderly to the infantile, at least a dozen people will pop their pupils in your direction in a given second (have to account for population density and what have you).

Mostly, I am protected from staring in Calcutta by the fortress in which I live. The RMIC guesthouse is a pentagonal fortress which consists a city block and within it houses a college, library, guesthouse and multiple offices. It is an impenetrable bastion of order and civility, hiding pristinely manicured gardens, white-uniformed bearers, and the stray foreigner cowering from the potent Calcutta Gawk.

View of the monsooned garden from my balcony at the guesthouse

Inside, no one stares. So when you step out of one of the 5 gates which protect you from the wall, guards standing in salute of your departure, and you get a full-frontal Stare, it’s not unheard of or shameful to run back into the compound grounds, whimpering and clutching your face. But should you be committed to living amongst those in the outside world, you have to be armed with an essential tool: The Counter Glare. It’s not as formidable or piercing as the Gawk but, aimed accurately, can send a gaggle of little old ladies scurrying out of your path. The Glare requires a determined set in your shoulders, sunglasses are helpful but not necessary, a clenched jaw and an neon-lit attitude of “Whatcha looking at, punk?” (Be forewarned, the Glare is least effective on those who evolutionarily gifted in India, the older that women get, the less the Glare touches them. In fact, it is possible the Glare just makes them go into HyperGawk mode, instant death to most foreigners. The tourist drags of Cal are strewn with the mangled bodies of Dutch tourists who dared take on the power of the Mashi– which means mother’s sister but is used as general term for women of a certain age…ahem, maturity– Stare.)

I’ve always thought that the Stare, when directed at me, was one which bemoaned the color of my skin and questioned where I was from. But as of late I have begun to wonder if there isn’t a different thought process and Spidy sense that governs it. You see, I’ve been– silly as it might seem– dressing for the heat, which means I wear baggy cotton pants and flowing cotton kurtas. Now, I thought I was dressing in the height of Indian handloom chic but I now suspect that it is only adding to the inevitable conclusion drawn by the Calcutta Gawk. The Gawkers can’t tell if I’m a man or a woman. The confusion is understandable, given that the average adolescent male Bengali is about 5′4 and weighs roughly 115 pounds (soaking wet). Add to that my lack of discernible markers of Bengali womanhood (the ample hips and boobs gene is clearly recessive here), my hair, the way that I walk, and that I do not scream and swoon hysterically all that often, the confusion begins to gather steam. So I see only one solution. I should start passing as a man. Think of the ease it would afford me in moving through the city. I could spit, stare, readjust my manly parts and hold hands with male friends in public! (All of you detail oriented folks who would point out my lack of both manly parts and male friends in Cal need not bring it up) But this might also mean the loss of the Calcutta Gawkers and, though I may scamper back into the guesthouse 3 mornings out of 7 in face of it, I have a deep-seeded respect for it and an anthropological interest in studying it further. So, the gender confusion continues. For another day at least.