Do I even feel like it?

in truth, when I read about the goings on in a non descript Mangalore Pub I didn't particularly care, apart from a more primal concern for the safety of the individuals attacked. I'm not the kind of person who gets enraged by this sort of thing and takes to the streets shouting slogans. It isn't me and I've never been particularly good at it.

I'm the kind who'd be more annoyed at the NCW report, and fantasize about alleging incompetence of its authors with no more than a cold stare.

I'm also the kind who'd play intellectual parcheesi, trying to sort out a coherent rationale for the physical assault of teenaged girls in a pub.

I think I managed to find one too. Only I don't much care for it. But its tempting to argue it. I have automatic responses to

Those girls weren't hurting anyone.

Actually they are. There is a general underestimation of the manner in which a way of life threatens other ways of life. Free choice does not exist isolated of its effect on its surroundings. Such is not possible. By choosing to live a certain way, whether intended or not, an example is created, which in turn illustrates a choice that may be made. It creates an expansion of choices, directly attacking restrictions on choices, which are one of the pillars of the 'system' for lack of a better term. The system depends on restriction of choice to ensure its stability. That is not too far fetched a connection is it? I have doubts when going out on a limb.

The system has its prime beneficiaries, who have a stake in the longevity of the system. Altering the system restructures its hierarchy of beneficiaries. Perhaps in simple terms, freedom of choice for women favours some men and women more than others. The people who it does not favour do not wish to give up their place in the hierarchy of beneficiaries of their system. They may have the liberty to define what they are progressively being denied as hurt.

The men and women who see change as beneficial may however, not define hurt as widely. It helps does it not?

Sigh. It makes sense to me. The rest is just a notion of whose definition has a better claim to being the norm. We have our processes for determining this.

Perhaps it is my belief that were such methods of appropriating benefits open to the individuals screaming harassment, moral policing and the like, they would have used them. Urban India showed scant regard for the law when they caught the terrorist. How dare he affect our pleasant bubble of security they cried. If it wasn't for a reasonably entrenched human rights ideal among the legal fraternity he'd have been hung by now. And not very legally.

All it takes, is for you to care enough about what you lose.

Perhaps it is merely a question of degree. We exclude from public and private life a great many things, do we not? Can we really, idealogically trumpet the notion of choice, when, in my opinion we would do the same to some who flouted our notions of acceptable behaviour (and we do have them)? Is there virtue in simply being more accepting rather than just accepting?

Oh dear. I don't know. I wish people would tell me.

At its heart is no more than people identifying an issue that will bring them notoreity (there's no such thing as bad publicity). Without this underlying discontent there will be none to follow you. There are some you may use to create it, but it must be there somehow before you lead.

On offer is the freedom to be truly free. To have the system be subject to you.

I personally feel a sense of sickness when I see this. I always do when I see stories of harassment, power and control. I wonder how easily those men could be me. Because the ideas thrown at them resonate with the ideas thrown at me. But having looked long and hard, I don't feel apologetic. I don't believe I did anything nobody else would have done. I don't believe I'm a monster.

My roars of survival, my claims to humanity may have made me a right wing fundamentalist.

Perspective comes first. Rationale comes second.