by MUKUL DUBE
At a quarter to noon on 28 December 2011 I lost a rupee, because the ticket clerk at the Mayur Vihar 1 Metro station had no change. Worse was to come. I put my camera bag on the apron of the X-ray machine, walked through the wooden arch and spread my arms so that the constable on duty could frisk me. The man did nothing of the kind (and if I had been carrying weapons I should have walked through comfortably). He said, instead, pointing downwards, that lungis (or sarongs) were not allowed.
I was directed to a paunchy man in khaki uniform, an Assistant
Sub-Inspector of the Central Industrial Security Force, who was
lounging in a chair and was no doubt bored out of his hide. This man repeated that lungis were not allowed. He said that lungis were not worn by anyone. “Kaun lungi pehenta hai?” When I said that lungis were worn by most men in southern India, he granted that that was permissible in their region but this was Delhi. Finally I brow-beat him by loudly asking if there was anything in the rules of the DMRC or in the Indian Penal Code or the Delhi Police act or even the Hindu Marriage Act prohibiting the wearing of lungis by men.
Was it a matter of religion? In addition to the lungi, I wear a large beard and am often taken to be Muslim. Was it social class? The ASI said, inter alia, that “good people” dressed “properly”. Or was it just the common pastime of khaki-clad swine who harass citizens because citizens in this “democracy” are powerless and without a voice?
I had no trouble on the return journey from Chandni Chowk. Presumably the cops on duty were the lax or lenient ones who permitted Mr. P. Chidambaram, India’s Home Minister, to ride on the Delhi Metro in his white dhoti.
These cops are the ones who also shoot citizens in staged
“encounters”, who carry the corpses of human victims on poles like the carcases of animals, who shove stones into the body cavities that women have below the belt.
Mukul Dube can be reached at uthappam@gmail.com