I fondly remember a day a few days before I left for India. A well-meaning relative who'd grown up in India pulled me aside to give me a little life advice.
"Remember," she said, fixing me with a serious look that I recalled all too well from my aunt's lectures, ten years ago, on how Indian girls didn't hold hands with boys before marriage despite what American girls did on TV, "in India, girls don't go out with boys to clubs or drink alcohol, and if you do those things then they might think bad things about you."
I stored this in the same part of my brain where I keep the long-ago transcript of an al-Qaeda manifesto that had been excerpted in a Slate magazine article helpfully titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" (Indeed, Aunties of the world, why do you hate us? But I digress.)
Since then, however, I've had many occasions to repeat her sage advice, and I have to say that in terms of jokes that earn me free drinks in bars, it's one of my top performers.
Consider, for example, last night, when I went out to a South Delhi nightspot with a group of female friends and a male fellow who works in 'banking' but declines, every time I meet him, to elaborate, citing the complexity of his daily work, his general malaise, and on one occasion even insider trading rules.
In fact, if the rules of Delhi nightclubs are any indication, Indian men are the ones who may have to go sober. Most Delhi nightclubs, like swingers clubs in other parts of the world, staunchly refuse to admit single men. Even men who arrive in a group that has more guys than girls are forced to pay an extortive cover just to earn the right to gawk at female flesh.
In clubs, women wear dresses that would make a Hollywood starlet blush, and enough eyeliner to make a black eye look like a fashion throwback to milder days. When songs like "Sexual Healing" come on the track, as they did last night, numerous young couples feel free to perform what my high school theatre club would have referred to as a 'dramatic interpretation' of the lyrics. (Yes, I was in a high school theatre club. Your point?)
Yes, Delhi's high-end clubs are elitist, noxious and exactly like clubs in the West, but they hardly lack for women.
But why should they?
In America, Barack Obama can talk about Michelle's 'Right to Bare Arms' in a nationally televised address. In India, if he were to mutter that at a passing girl, he'd swiftly find himself on the receiving end of a policeman's nightstick, a firsthand demonstration in how much India's attitudes towards violence have changed since Gandhi.
India is one country divided by religion, caste and cash. There's a culture of the streets - where honor killings eat up newsprint inches and short skirts are considered an invitation to assault - and a culture of the clubs - where themes like 'models and managers' prevail and ass-grazing hemlines are de rigueur.
Of course, the one big argument against all this is Delhi's young men, who seem to think that a woman's "freedom to do what she wants" means "I can enforce my adolescent fantasies on all women everywhere" - a confusion that, frankly, is hardly restricted to Eastern nations. Now, if only we had clubs where men played the models and women played the managers, equality (or something like it) would be ours.
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