Tweet your children well...

Sometimes Twitter resembles nothing more than a schoolyard: bullies, cool kids, class monitors, et al

Growing up we were told that school was the perfect training ground for life. This is where we would begin to socialise with other kids; learn to rub along even though we often couldn’t bear to be in the same room. This is where we would learn to share our stuff so that we became a tad less selfish. This is where we would form friendships to sustain us in the future. And this is where we would learn the life skills that would help us survive once we left the safety of the classroom: the ability to stand up for ourselves; the sense to distinguish between right and wrong; and the desire to fight the good fight.

Well, at least, that was the way it was supposed to work in an ideal world. But now that my school-days are but a distant memory – but still have the power to traumatise me deeply when I’m least expecting it – I have realised that while all that time in school helps you cope with Real Life, it is also great training for when you finally bite the bullet and get on Twitter.

Because when you think about it, there’s nothing that Twitter resembles more than a disorderly school-yard (and that’s on a good day) with everyone jostling for space and attention and not worrying too much about whom they hurt in the process. And if you care to look closely, you will see the same dramatis personae on Twitter as you would see in your average school – except they are now all grown up and with the potential to wreck much greater damage.

In fact, the social pecking order here is also frighteningly similar. At the top of the heap are the Cool Kids (celebrities, mostly) whom everyone wants to be friends with. These people know their worth, though, and don’t bother to engage with the unwashed masses, unless they are responding to fulsome compliments and may deign to throw back a ‘Tks’ (apparently when you are famous it’s too much of a drag to type out a whole word). They prefer to engage with the other Cool Kids, being all witty and charming with one another, in the certain knowledge that their every tweet is being lapped up by their massive fan base.

Where there are Cool Kids, there are bound to be Suck-Ups (or Teacher’s Pets as we called them back in school). These people spend all their time tweeting to their idols, praising them for their recent exploits, telling them how wonderful they are, and asking for validation in the form of a tweet back. And you’d be surprised how often this strategy works. While flattery may not get you everywhere, it often does get you a follow-back.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Cyber Bullies, who hide behind the safety of anonymous twitter ids to shower abuse on whoever takes their fancy. These function like those feral gangs in school who would form a posse to bully those who were most vulnerable. They would trip them up on the driveway, punch them in the nose, shove them in the back when they are standing at the top of the stairs, spread vile rumours about them (or their mothers).

Just as it was in the schoolyard, so it is on Twitter (even if the wounds are only psychic). And when things get particularly contentious on Twitter, these Cyber Bullies tend to transform into Lynch Mobs, where anyone who doesn’t agree with them is fair target for vile abuse. Those of us who have experienced being heckled at the school play or at the sports day know exactly how this works (and feels).

But while you can cope with these types by blanking – not to mention, blocking – them out, the ones that really irritate me are the Gosh-Aren’t-I-Wonderful types. These are the kids who always had their hands up with the right answer in class, who always topped every exam – and then said how they simply couldn’t understand it, given that they hadn’t even studied for the damn thing. (Grrrrr...) On Twitter these people content themselves with RTing every bit of praise ever flung in their direction, by telling us how wonderfully their movie/play/music album/book is doing, and giving us little glimpses of their wonderful life.

Fortunately, these Over-Achievers just restrict themselves to sharing their highs, higher and highest. The Over-Sharers, on the other hand, want you to know every detail of their life: when they woke up; what they ate for breakfast; how they made their way to work; what they are wearing; what they are thinking of eating for lunch...You can imagine the interminable essays they wrote after the summer vacations: “What I did in my school holidays”. I feel for their teachers, I truly do.

And then, bringing up the rear – and trying to bring about some sort of order – you have the Class Monitors. In school these kids were assigned the thankless task of keeping a few hundred kids quiet while the principal addressed the school assembly. And even now, they can’t bear it if someone speaks out of turn. That old childhood conditioning kicks in and they butt in with well-meaning attempts to restore order. Don’t use bad words. Treat a lady with respect. Don’t intrude in conversations that have nothing to do with you. Don’t be racist. Don’t be communal.

Of course, just as it was in school, nobody pays a blind bit of attention to anything they have to say. But I still love them for making the effort.

Have money; will spend

There’s a new disease affecting the middle-classes: it’s called affluenza

Growing up in a middle-class home, I didn’t really give much thought to money. But some things were taken for granted. Going out for a movie and dinner afterwards – even if it was just idlis and dosas in the local Udupi joint or kebabs at Kwality – was a major occasion. When we went on a picnic, the food was always home-made parathas or sandwiches. Holidays were spent with relatives to save on hotel bills. And when we felt like French fries or pakoras, they were rustled up in the kitchen by our mothers – or our cooks, if we were a little bit better off – rather than ordered in from the neighbourhood fast-food joint.

No matter how much money our parents made, they were always obsessed with putting some aside. Sometimes it was for a big purchase like a car or a home of our own. Sometimes it was for a social occasion like the wedding of the eldest daughter. Sometimes it was for the proverbial rainy day, in case everything went belly-up and we were left without a regular income. But whatever the reason, putting money away was always considered to be A Good Thing and it was something that we were encouraged to do from the time we started getting little cash presents on birthdays, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Rakhi or Baisakhi.

Money was always better when it was tucked away somewhere safe for a day when we would really need it. And no, we did not need another pair of shoes; those school Bata shoes were just fine for a weekend trip to the shops. We did not need to splurge on cold drinks every evening in the marketplace when Mom could rustle up perfect lemonade at home for a fraction of the price. And we certainly did not need big parties thrown to celebrate our birthdays: a few friends, a shop-bought birthday cake (a special treat, you understand), some chutney and cheese sandwiches, home-made chana bhatura and you were set for the year ahead.

See, that was the time when parents – well, okay, let’s admit it, mostly moms – had the time, the energy and the inclination to play what we would now call a Domestic Goddess role. And when families actually spent time doing stuff together rather than out-sourcing all the boring bits because frankly they were too darn busy and, in any case, they could afford it – so what was the problem, exactly!

I guess it all began with the advent of double-income nuclear families when there was plenty of money to go around but not enough time. And that’s when affluenza struck: the condition in which we throw money at every situation that we don’t have the time, energy or inclination to handle on our own.

Here are some of the most common symptoms of affluenza among the cash-rich but time-poor. Let’s see on how many counts you qualify.

• You have a gardener to mow your lawn, window-cleaners who turn up every week to ensure that those glass French windows always look pristine, and a guy who comes every morning to clean your car inside out (sometimes, of course, he’s called the driver and also ferries you around all day). There’s the live-in maid who does all the cleaning, dusting, ironing, grocery-shopping. And the cook comes in every morning and evening to make a three course meal and stick it in the fridge for when you are ready to re-heat and eat.
• Your child can’t master the first principles of physics (or geometry, algebra, chemistry, insert subject of choice) no matter how hard he allegedly tries in class. And frankly, the thought of going back to muddle through middle-school text-books is too much to bear. Not to mention that you’re knackered by the time you get back from work. No problem: just bring out the cheque book and hire a private tutor.
• Both of you have high-pressure jobs that involve long hours and bringing work back home. And you have that whole competitive tiredness thing going on where each one of you acts more put upon than the other. So when you finally do get away for that long weekend without the kids, you spend more time getting massaged in the spa rather than in bed with one another.
• Your kids are home long before you are. And you don’t want them vegetating in front of the television, watching endless re-runs of Friends or worse, The Simpsons. So bring on the tennis coaching, the piano classes, the salsa sessions, horse-riding instruction, hell, even synchronised swimming will do. Try and get the little mites to learn every skill that money can buy. Keep them so busy that that they don’t have a moment to call their own until Mummy and Daddy finally stagger home. And then you can appease them by ordering in a nice, large pepperoni pizza with all the extras.

• A large house and a lovely garden just cries out for a dog, doesn’t it? Or maybe even two? But given that the entire family is out all day, either earning money or spending it, who is going to take the cute little thing out for walks and the like. Yes, you’re right – yet another member of staff, bringing up the grand total of home help to a grand four or even five.


See, that’s the thing with affluenza. It strikes when you’re not looking. And before you know it, you’ve got a full-blown case of infection to deal with.

The medium is the messanger

A look back at how we covered the last Mumbai attacks...

As the media brouhaha about the television coverage of the Mumbai attacks rages, it’s time to stop being defensive and to try and understand just why people are so upset.

The words used – in social discourse, on the Internet and in the print media – to describe the coverage are telling. Over the top, sensationalist, exploitative and melodramatic – these are just some of the adjectives being thrown about.

But the fury of the response and the venom of the attacks suggest that this is not a one-off thing. This resentment over the way television channels cover events has been building for a while. The 26/11 attacks were just a catalyst for people to express grievances of long-standing.

At the root of this anger lurks the resentment of the viewing public about the assumption of journalists that their opinions are the only ones that matter. As offensive is their presumption in inserting their own views into the narrative of whatever story they happen to be covering.

What is under attack here is the constant contamination of the news by the views of those who disseminate it on television.

As the cliché goes, comment may be free but facts are sacred. And when it comes to the news space, they need to be kept apart.

The problem with television is that there is a constant blurring of the lines so that one never quite knows where the news ends and the views begin.

God knows the print media has its own problems and it often gets things wrong. But where it scores is that the dividing line between opinion and fact is always very clear. Opinion belongs on the edit and op-ed page – and in the feature and style sections. The news appears on all the other pages, uncontaminated by the views of those reporting it.

Yes, newspaper columnists can be as self-indulgent and self-obsessed as television reporters (and I’m guilty as charged for my weekly column in Brunch) but on the whole they restrict themselves to the spaces reserved for the venting of opinion.

In television that is hardly ever the case. Newscasters start editorializing in the middle of a news broadcast, anchors of panel discussions are more interested in holding forth than eliciting the opinions of their guests, and interviewers routinely interrupt their subjects in mid-sentence only to insert their own agendas.

And that’s what viewers resent the most: being told how to feel or how to think. We are not imbeciles sitting at home that you have to tell us over and over again that an event is a national tragedy. We can work it out for ourselves.

Is it really surprising then that the viewing public has finally snapped and said: Don’t tell us how to feel about things. Don’t even tell us how you feel about things. Just give us the facts and let us make up our own minds.

But while it is easy to knock television journalists, let’s not forget that some of these problems are inherent in the medium itself. In the print media, when you sit down at a computer terminal to write your story, you are already one step removed from the event. And that in itself lends some distance and hence, some perspective to your report.

Television journalists don’t have that luxury. The nature of their job demands that they report from the thick of things in real time. And when there are flames billowing behind you, grenades exploding, bullets being fired, feelings running high, it is difficult to step back from the event so that you can report it dispassionately.

But it is easy to start to think that you are part of the story. It is easy to con yourself into believing that it’s all happening to you rather than around you. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your emotions, your reactions matter – that your pain, your anger, your anguish are part of the narrative.

Only they’re not. Your job is to tell the story, not become the story. More important, your job is to tell the story as an objective observer in a manner devoid of hyperbole. The event is big enough; you don’t need to magnify it through needless hysteria.

As the post-mortems on the TV coverage of 26/11 get underway, one thing is clear. What people resent most is getting the news through the prism of someone else’s emotions.

A reporter is supposed to be the filter not the funnel between the news and the viewer. A filter helps keep all the extraneous clutter out so that you can concentrate on the essential details of the story. A funnel on the other hand just pushes everything through without bothering about the contents too much.

All of us in the media – both print and television – need to treat the news as a sacred space inviolable by opinion. And just as we exhort the government to keep church and state apart, we need to draw a line between news and views – and make sure that we never violate it.

The message from the public is loud and clear. And we journalists ignore it at our own peril.

It’s freaks we seek

In today’s world, celebrity-hood is all about vulgarity and sensationalism

I groan inwardly each time I hear somebody quoting Andy Warhol’s famous line about how in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes; not because Warhol was wrong, but because he was absolutely right.

There was a time when you admired the famous. You respected them for the qualities that had earned them their fame. Top sportspersons, international statesmen, big-time movie idols, great artists and creative geniuses. Even the famous people one did not admire – Adolf Hitler or Charles Sobhraj, for instance – served as an object lesson in the negative aspects of the world: the nature of evil, the misuse of power.

These days alas, fame means little. There is so little to admire in so many famous people. And even notoriety is cheaply purchased. About all you can say with a degree of certainty of most of today’s famous people is that within five years most of them will have been forgotten. New instant celebrities will have taken their place – to shine in the spotlight for their own 15 minutes or so.

You can blame society and the communications revolution for the fickleness of today’s fame. But I think that we in the media have to accept our share of the blame. Because we are so celebrity obsessed that we devour and spit out ‘celebrities’ by the week, we create new, undeserving famous people almost on an hourly basis.

To some extent that is inevitable given the demands of today’s media technology and it is not necessarily a bad thing. But what worries me the most is the banality of 21st century fame. We don’t just take minor celebrities and exaggerate their importance. We use entirely new criteria to judge celebrity-hood. We look for vulgarity, for a trashy loudness and for an overwhelming cheapness. All the things that we would consider appalling and revolting in a colleague or a neighbour are the very things that help people to become famous.

Would you want to work in the same office as Dolly Bindra? How would you feel if Rakhi Sawant was your next-door neighbour? Would you allow Maria Susairaj into your home?

No matter how revolting we would find these people if we came across them in our day-to-day lives, we are forced to regard them as celebrities by the media, to follow their antics on our TV screens and to read about their every move in our press.

As far as the media are concerned, the fame game has now become a freak show. The freakier the person, the better the story. The more shameless the person, the more sensational the quotes. And the more horrific the personality, the bigger the spin-off.

It is no longer: in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Now it’s simpler and more basic: it’s freaks we seek.

In which world could you have imagined that Dolly Bindra would become a celebrity? Even ten years ago, the media would have ignored her. Once upon a time, Rakhi Sawant would have been recognised for what she is: a two-bit item girl with an unfortunate lip job. Now, TV channels vie to build shows around her and she gives long interviews to famous hosts.

Or take Rahul Mahajan. When his father died and we saw pictures of him at the funeral, we thought of him as no more than a young man whose life had been vitiated by tragedy. Who would have imagined that he would become a bona fide celebrity on the basis of drug-related deaths and a sordid private life played out in public? More worrying is this: as long as he was a subdued tragic figure, the media had no interest in him. But the moment he turned himself into a vulgar, public spectacle, he became a star.

So it is with Maria Susairaj. I won’t get into whether her acquittal on a murder charge was justified. But what kind of society are we if we turn a woman who helped her fiancée chop up her lover’s body and then burn it (she has been convicted on that charge) into a celebrity? Now Ram Gopal Varma wants to cast her in a movie. Reality TV shows vie to win her participation. And her press conferences are turned into bizarre circuses by a rampaging media machine.

Once a society becomes obsessed by the vulgar, the cheaply notorious, the loudly sensationalistic and proudly trashy, it loses its bearings. It forgets all the things that fame should really be about: achievement and excellence. And it abandons the distinctions between right and wrong, between the real and the manufactured, between the substantive and the illusion.

So the next time you see Rakhi Sawant giving an interview or watch a press conference by Maria Susairaj, pause a little and ponder the banality of celebrity-hood today. And remember that when fame becomes a freak show, it is our society that eventually pays the price.

Forty and counting

The tell-tale signs of incipient middle-age; how many do you identify with?

One of my daily trawls across the Internet threw up this interesting fact. According to a recent study, people become more concerned about their health once they hit 40. And by the time they are 45 they tend to make serious lifestyle changes so as to improve their quality of life. They start to eat better, exercise more, take their daily supplements, have preventive health check-ups, and so on and so forth.

Or I guess, in other words, they become a little more aware of their own mortality and start taking steps to defer it for as long as possible.

Looking around me in my peer group of 40-somethings, I have to admit that there is something to this study. These days it’s impossible to have a meal with a friend without it turning into an exercise in calorie-counting. Do you think the salad is a better bet than the soup if we order the dressing on the side? Wine? You must be joking; a Diet Coke, please. If we skip the main course, can we share a dessert instead? Let’s have an Americano rather than a cappuccino (and no, I don’t care if they make it with low-fat milk).

And that’s just the men. The women, on the other hand, have perfected the art of ordering the least calorific meals without even looking at the menu. So, it’s sashimi rather than sushi; fish rather than meat; steamed rather than sautéed (and please don’t even mention the ‘f’ word: ‘frying’); mushrooms rather than potatoes; coffee rather than cake.

The conversation follows much the same line. When we are not discussing the latest injuries we picked up doing power yoga/Pilates/kick-boxing, we are playing the ‘my work-out is more aerobic than yours’ game. The merits of Dukan Diet are debated endlessly (did you see how good Carole Middleton looked at her daughter’s wedding thanks to that regimen?). We swap notes about our latest spa retreats, trekking holidays or wellness resorts. We advise each other to have Omega 3 capsules, glucosamine, primrose oil and lots of goji berries.

So yes, you can tell the onset of middle-age by what we eat, how much we exercise and what we talk about. But that is – as is usual – just part of the story. There are several other markers of incipient middle-age and here is just a sampling of the most common. Read on and weep for your lost youth...

• You worry much more about exams than you ever did as a kid. Only this time round, it’s your children’s board exams that you are obsessing over. I mean, honestly, have you seen the cut-offs this year? They are insane!

• If you have spent most of your youth trying not to get pregnant then this is when Sod’s Law catches up with you. Now, it’s time to obsess about having a baby before your body clock gives up on you. So bring on the basal thermometer, the hormone treatments, the IVF, whatever it takes. Tick tock, tick tock.

• You think more about comfort than style when you go shoe-shopping. You may gaze longingly at those vertiginous heels that you used to go dancing in (God, when was the last time you went dancing?) but you settle for the sensible wedges in which you can do the school run and the grocery shopping after a hard day at work.

• For someone whose hearing is beginning to present the teeniest-tiniest problem, you develop an astonishing sensitivity to sound. Do your kids really need to have the music up this loud? Must the folks upstairs move heavy furniture around every morning? And why does everybody on the Metro have to talk so loudly into their mobile phones? Honestly, couldn’t they have made it an Underground like the one in London?

• It gets easier and easier to fall asleep when the night is still young – but harder and harder to wake up after a night out. And when you do surface, you need industrial doses of caffeine to feel human again.

• You begin to measure your day in pills: for blood pressure, for diabetes, for constipation, for back pain, and several other bodily functions that we will draw a discreet veil over.

• The fashions of your youth roll by again; but your kids kill themselves laughing when you try them on. Honestly, don’t you think I can work these ‘boyfriend’ jeans? Er, no, Mum. I think that biker jacket would look great on me. In your dreams, Dad!

• To make matter worse, the nice young couple who have moved in next door call you ‘Aunty’ or ‘Uncle’ when they can’t be more than a few years older than you. (Okay, so maybe a decade older, but hey, who’s counting?)

• In an attempt to cheer yourself up, you go to the nightclub with your buddies to check out the babe action – and realise that all of them could be your daughter’s friends. Eww!

• You have to think twice before going on your knees to retrieve a shoe that’s rolled under the bed – because you’re not sure if you can ever get up again.

If you identify with four or more of the items listed above, then you’re officially part of the middle-aged club.

But hey, don’t get too depressed. You know what they say about growing old. It’s seems like bad news – until you consider the alternative.

Taking a break?

Travel the world if you want to; but don’t knock the humble ‘family holiday’

Chances are that you are reading this either while planning a holiday, enjoying a break, or recovering from the rigours of a family vacation. Yes, this is the holiday season, when everyone who can afford it gets away from the heat as fast as they possibly can.

And these days we are all spoilt for choice, aren’t we? We can hit the beaches of Goa or Koh Samui, depending on our budget. We can enjoy the mountain air in Manali, Shimla or even Switzerland, if our money stretches that far. We can trek in Nepal; go shopping in Dubai; watch plays in London; golf in Scotland; sample the best of Renaissance art in Italy; indulge in a bit of wine-tasting in France or the Napa Valley; gorge – or gag, it depends entirely on you – on authentic Chinese fare in Shanghai or Beijing.

As far as holidays are concerned, the sky (and of course, our bank balance) is the limit. And even then, there’s nothing we enjoy more than pushing the limits. A week spent river-rafting in the wilds of the South American jungle? Bring it on. A fortnight in the icy wilderness of Greenland getting in touch with our inner Innuit? Why ever not? Walking up the slopes of active volcanoes in New Zealand? Count us in.

These days, everyone wants to push the envelope when it comes to holidays. It’s no longer enough to go tiger-watching in Ranthambore, Pench or Bandhavgarh. You have to go on a safari in Africa or better still, watch from the sidelines when the annual migration of wildebeest takes place in Kenya. Chilling out on the beaches of Kovalam is now passé. These days you must head out to Croatia, the new jewel of the Mediterranean. And Nainital and Darjeeling are now spoilt beyond belief; if you want to enjoy the mountains then Ladakh is where it’s at.

It sounds great doesn’t it? After all, who would pass up the opportunity to see the world in all its glory, sample the delights – both culinary and cultural – it has to offer, and explore every nook and cranny of our beautiful planet. If we live in a global village, then I guess it behoves us to get acquainted with all its secret gardens. And great fun it is too.

And yet, even as I scour the internet looking for the best deals on hotels and airline fares, there is a tiny little part of me that misses the good old days when holidays were more about family time and less about seeing the world. When we spent our vacations bonding with assorted uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews and a veritable army of cousins rather than discovering the delights of gelato or the finer points of bull-fighting. When taking a break didn’t necessarily involve breaking the bank.

Growing up, I spent all my school vacations visiting various members of our extended – and, to be honest, fairly extensive – family. The summers were invariably spent at my aunt’s tea garden in Assam. And the holiday started from the time we boarded the train from Sealdah station, me armed with a stack of Amar Chitra Kathas and my mother with a lot of patience. Snack-time came with every station we stopped at, with deep-fried samosas and pakoras being scoffed down with hot, milky tea drunk from terracotta bhands (yes, I know, it sounds a bit vulgar, but it just means a tea-cup).

The high point of the journey was the ferry transfer across the Brahmaputra, which put all those geography lessons in perspective. And then, there was the rickety jeep-ride to the tea garden itself, with us indefatigable kids singing loudly and I fear quite tunelessly in the back while the adults struggled to stay upright on those long and winding roads.

And then followed a few weeks of absolute bliss, when you never needed to do anything you didn’t want to. There were no mandatory early mornings to catch the sunrise on the beach; no traipsing around museums feigning interest in the Dutch masters and dinosaur models; no endless shopping trips for our moms to drag us on. Instead, my assorted cousins and I ran quite wild: going on long exploratory walks on the tea slopes; examining the wild life in the area (mostly frogs and leeches, if you must know); starting our own Enid Blyton-style Five Find-Outers gang; making friends with the kids in the local village; and generally, having a blast.

In the winters, we headed north to visit more uncles and aunts. It helped, of course, that my uncles were in the army and hence could host us in a different city every three years or so. Thus it was that we sampled the delights of Southern temples, splashed around on the rocky beaches of Visakhapatnam, explored a yet-unspoilt Bhutan, visited endless forts and palaces in Rajasthan and made ourselves at home in army messes all around the country. All of this, leavened with lots of inter-generation bonding, and much re-telling of old family lore.

Even today, when I have traversed every continent in my travels, it is those family holidays that evoke the most heart-felt memories. And it is the family bonds forged on those vacations that provide me with the most emotional sustenance.

So, in case you haven’t booked that mini-break in Bangkok just yet, you might want to examine the possibility of a family vacation. Your kids may balk at it now; but they may well thank you for it in the years to come.

Slut Walk? No thanks!

There are better ways of standing up for our freedoms than parading around in small, tight clothes

Okay before we get into all this ‘Slut Walk’ business, let’s get two things straight.

One: a woman’s right to refuse sex is – and must remain – undisputed. It doesn’t matter what she is wearing; how she is behaving; how much she has been drinking; why she came back to a hotel room with the guy in the first place; or even, why she allowed him to kiss and fondle her.

If she wants to say no – no matter at what stage in the proceedings – she has an absolute right to do so. And any man who ignores that is guilty of rape.

That is something that we are all agreed upon: Yes means yes; and no means no.

Two: Rape is never ever a woman’s fault. Never. Ever. Okay, let’s say that again. Never, ever.

It doesn’t matter if she is provocatively dressed. It doesn’t matter if she is walking down a rough street alone. It doesn’t matter if she is drunk. It doesn’t matter if she is out late at night. It doesn’t matter if she is sexually active. It doesn’t matter if she is ‘promiscuous’. It doesn’t matter if she is a sex worker.

No woman ever ‘asks’ for it. Never ever.

But my question is this: do we really need to parade our streets in small, tight clothes to reinforce these two messages?

In case you have been living on a different planet for the last month, this is how it all began. A policeman in Canada suggested that “women should avoid dressing like sluts” in order not to be victimised. This led to widespread outrage and a world-wide movement to reclaim the word ‘slut’ for women who wanted the freedom to dress the way they wanted.

Women organised Slut Walks all over the world, during which they walked the streets wearing short skirts, bikini tops and the like to assert their right to dress provocatively – and to reinforce the message that this did not justify rape.

Well, duh, of course it doesn’t. But if you ask me, all this ‘slut talk’ (not to mention Slut Walk) seems to be missing the point somewhat.

Let’s assume for a moment that a woman has the right to dress like a porn goddess if she so desires. That she has the right to cavort in public all day long, dressed like that. And that if the men around stare and leer or treat her as a ‘sex object’ then they are infringing on her right to dress any way she pleases.

Now, let’s turn it around. Let’s also grant men the right to display pornographic images wherever they please – at work, at home, on public transport – because, well, they enjoy looking at them. Let’s allow them to crack dirty jokes all day long or make sexually explicit comments because, hey, they love doing that. How long do you think it would be before the ladies start complaining?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. So, let’s take a step back and allow men to put their own flesh on display if they feel so inclined. They can whip off their shirts at the office; show the crack of their bums on the streets; and go dancing in nightclubs sporting just their underwear. Yes, I agree, it won’t be long before the women start crying foul.

So, what we are effectively saying is that women have the right to sexualise their environment if they feel like it. But the men around them must do nothing of this sort – for fear of being dismissed as Neanderthals and hit with a sexual harassment action for good measure.

Double standards, anyone?

Let’s look at this another way. Let’s say you decide that it is your right as a law-abiding citizen to leave your front door unlocked when you go out. Is this likely to attract the attention of your friendly neighbourhood burglar? Probably. Is it more likely that you will be robbed as a consequence? Of course.

Does this mean that the thief who robbed you is not guilty? Of course he is. Does it follow that you bear no responsibility for what happened? Of course you do.

You turned yourself into an easier target because of your actions – and you have to take the rap for that. Every choice we make has consequences; and we have to keep those consequences in mind every time we make a choice.

So, no one is denying women the right to dress any way they feel like. But if you dress to be noticed, then don’t complain when you are noticed. If you dress to attract attention, then you must be reconciled to the fact that you can’t control what kind of attention you will attract. None of this can be used as a justification for rape – but yes, freedom does come with responsibility.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how the best way to target a woman was to attack her sexuality. And one of the words thrown around by such people was, yes, you guessed it, ‘slut’. So pardon me if I see no reason to adopt the word as a badge of honour rather than slam it for the sexist abuse it is.

And hence, I say to all the ladies who have been sending me invitations to participate in the Delhi Slut Walk: Go take a walk if you want to. But I’m no slut; and I will be damned before I ever refer to myself as one.