Nice song blaring in the internet parlour. An idea my classmate gave me when we ran into each other on the first of my many trips here.
Chennai Mail is the one train for which they won’t annnounce the platform.. not sure why.. maybe the other train on the platform has to leave first.
The station is overcrowded with people. But there is none of that characteristic smell of fish that meant Chennai railway station in our childhood.
This is the platform on which I dropped the shreds of the photograph of a boy friend gone bad. May be he was bad all along and I did not want to think about it…
This is the platform on which my family spread sheets and slept – making me think that somehow that was wrong. Though I don’t think so now…
Chennai is where my mom’s sister and her family used to live. We used to visit to spend summers. First crushes and summer fun. That was a good period of my life.
I am again in this city – this time to work for a budding software compnay setup in NSIC. This is the same city but a different city.
I am looking for a place to stay. There are friends that I can pile on for a while.. and then?
My friends suggested Working women’s hostels. i went and looked some up. In one word awful.
It is not that they are cramped – they are, or unclean – they are that too, or even that they are exhorbitant – they are that too in a sense…
No, why I hate them is the feeling that women are herded into these hostels like cattle for their ‘safety’ and for their ‘reputation’.
No woman wants to be identified with the oldest profession in the world. And to protect themselves from that they allow themselves to be ‘sheltered’ by all manner of institutions and face exploitation from those institutions.
I hate it that all hostels, and PG accomodations etc behave as if they are custodians of chastity and need to protect women from their own hormones and from preying, prowling men. There is indignity in this.
Don’t others see this?
Friday January 12, 2007 – 10:40pm (IST)
