Fancy Dress Party

I teach at an all boys school so I had not, until yesterday, seen my kids interact with girls of their age. I had only seen them interact with their female teachers with whom they demonstrate nothing short of respect and reverence. When I went to school yesterday, I was surprised to see a myriad of young women sprinkled amidst the landscape of boys. And I was glad. One thing I’ve found to be missing in my Indian Summer is interaction with Indian girls and women. Though I’m glad to teach at St. James, it does make me feel, to some extent, as though I’m missing out on something. While my other friends are going to dinner at the homes of their female mentor teachers and going saree shopping, I’m talking shop with the boys, which I don’t mind (well not always). So, when I went to school and saw the girls in their school uniforms, their salwars and their sarees, I felt more than a sense of relief; I felt at home.

My relief was short-lived. As soon as Aysha and I walked into school, we were ushered into a large tent where St. James was hosting an event called Jacosynthesis. The event is a highly-reputed and well advertised festival that features a series of activities, games, debates and is open to all schools, both male and female. The first event that I witnessed was a debate. In this debate, students from different schools across the city were imitating the Indian Parliament and arguing for and against different propositions. The debate was as heated as any I had ever seen with students aggressively arguing for their cause and even yelling at each other while hurling insults. I was so caught in the drama of the debate that I wasn’t paying attention to the arguments being made on stage, not until one of the boys (a boy I teach) stood up to counter an argument made by his female opponent. In his counter-response (attack?) he concluded that her claims were unfounded and suggested that she attend “a fancy dress party” instead of a debate. My jaw dropped. Had I heard correctly? I waited for others to demonstrate the appropriate degree of outrage. But they didn’t. The audience, composed mostly of other students, cheered. I looked desperately to the few teachers to my right and to my left for validation, but they seemed either not to have heard or not to have registered the comment. Were gender based attacks deemed appropriate then? As I continued to listen, I noticed that every counterpoint that a male student made in response to an argument launched by a female student ended (almost invariably) in a comment intended to undermine his female counterpart. The girls who were struggling to articulate their points were called useless and the girls who were arguing and winning were called terrorists which seemed like the academic version of the virgin/whore dichotomy.

I walked away from the debate feeling sick. I had never seen my boys behave that badly. I vowed to talk to them in class and to ask the teachers about their behavior after school. I wanted to try to understand why their comments had been deemed appropriate by virtue of their not having been deemed inappropriate. Though this is India, a country with a female president, it is also a country where young girls die more frequently than boys due to insufficient medical care and also a country where many young girls are sold into brothels as cited in Kristof and WuDunn’s Half the Sky. I’m reminded now of a young girl named Pooja. She’s a street girl in the fifth form. I meet her regularly as I walk out of my hotel. She sells her wares after attending school in the day and tells me which men to look out for on the street. She may not be on stage debating the rights of the Indian Parliament, but I have a suspicion that she fights for her rights on a daily basis as she walks the streets of Kolkata barefoot selling a tray full of hair adornments. Her face is weathered and she looks far older than her age, but she’s doing ok. And so are the girls on stage. After all, they didn’t go to a fancy dress party, did they?  They decided to go to school instead.