'Shame'

A few years ago, travelling by the western railway in Mumbai was routine. Singing and dancing beggar children, bold and demanding eunuchs, blindmen and their beggar wives, fisherwomen, mothers-in-law, daughters, wailing children, men with itchy crotches were a part of everyday travel.

(Warning: If you are eating you might want to not read the rest of this post.)

One day, during rush hour, me and a friend climbed onto the train and stood by the door waiting for seats to empty. On the next station, a naked women entered the compartment. Thin and frail, she was so tiny. Her breasts were nonexistent, I could count her ribs from afar. It even took me a moment to realize it was a woman and not a teenaged boy. We are so used to seeing poverty in the trains of Mumbai, not many people cast a second glance. Many people did look away however, for fear of losing their appetite for lunch that day.

She sat alone on the floor near the open doorway of the train. As the train stopped from station to station, men from the platform across would look at the skinny, naked woman and look away. This woman had an infection in her genitals. She was trying to see what it was. Very unabashedly, she looked down at her vagina and touched and rubbed and stretched her skin to see what it was that she had. The men looked at her, the men looked away.

She was naked and yet, she was not a sexual object. Nobody judged this woman. Nobody probably even thought of her as they went about their day. She definitely had no home, no possessions. NO possessions. Not a single piece of cloth on her. Not a single friend or family member in the world. How could that be on the most populated country in the world that you are completely alone? How must that be?

Anyway, I digress from the point I am trying to make. So, this naked skinny woman with no possessions and nobody to go 'home' to is sitting in the train trying to understand the rash in her privates. I don't know anybody else that can do that in public sans feeling embarrassed. Nude people can be nude in bunches to save being singled out. Nude people are usually running. Some of us can't even wear certain clothes showing too much skin because we are 'conscious'. Conscious of what?

Where does this consciousness come from? Where does the 'most embarrassing incident' feeling come from? I think possessions and people play a big part in our public egos. For just one moment put yourself in this woman's shoes (or the lack of them!). If you had nobody to answer to, nobody to impress, nobody to call your own--then, would you worry so much? It is so much like living alone on an island with other 'species'. Self-respect, ego, pride, shame everything loses its meaning in isolation.

When I'm left alone, I bite my toenails.