Barcelona Bay

Some months ago I traveled to Barcelona and stayed there at a youth hostel for four days. For nearly two nights the room heater did not work effectively and I had sleepless nights. I had ignored this, thinking it was a change of place that had kept me awake. On the third night, it was unbearable and I went to the receptionist to complain about the now dysfunctional heater. He was very worried about bending the rules and giving me another room. I persisted, saying I cannot sleep at all and he had to do something. He started to wonder what he could do and muttered to himself that he could not put me in the same room with the german boys who were drunk. And then that he could not put me in some other place because that was not safe either. And then he finally decided to put me with two other girls and I shifted my room overnight. I was surprised later on when the situation dawned on me. I could understand a little bit about the myths of sexual revolution in the west, the ideas we Indians have about it, the way western society functions and the way in which Indian ethics itself was formulated.

For all the claim of being a mixed-sex youth hostel, here was this man worried about my safety. For all the rules about rape and the wonderful sexual revolution of the west, it was still unsafe for a woman to sleep in a dorm with men. I dont know if the gap was between the rules in the west and the practical life there, or between the our understanding of the west based on their rules or whether their rules emerged only to safeguard women while the promise of the sexual revolution always remained ambivalent. In India, I think the situation would have been thus: The man would not worry about bending the rules. Knowing that such problems may arise, no mixed-sex dorms would ever be constructed or allowed. And as soon as people saw you were a woman and alone and needing protection, they would lead you away to safer zones. Although this does frustrate me while I am here in India, part of this is the effect of all this background knowledge of possible harm and is not in itself always a prejudice against women or a curbing of their freedom. Sometimes this misreading happens by those who think that the lack of a sexual revolution in India poses the threat of rape or that a sexual revolution would solve all our problems.

I still struggle to understand how in the west, the situation is considered afresh and from the start each and every time, while their conclusions and concerns are humane, and in fact quite similar to the Indian response. I am also awed that rape is still such a strong possiblity and so upsetting everywhere in the world. Not just in the Indian mother's "get-home-before-dark" curfew slogan.