Sheela ki Jawaani ka Bhaavaarth

प्रस्तुत उत्तेजक गीत हिन्दी फिल्म जगत के नवीनतम रत्न 'तीस मार खान' से लिया गया है. यह गाना नायिका के संगमरमर जैसे शरीर से आकर्षित होने वालेलंगोट के ढीले पुरुषों पर नायिका की अपमानजनक प्रतिक्रया को व्यक्त करता है. नायिका उन्हें सीधे और कटु शब्दों में बताना चाहती है कि शीशे के पीछे रसगुल्ले कीख्वाहिश करना एक बात है और उसे चखना दूसरी बात!

I know you want it

But you never gonna get it

Tere haath kabhi na aani

Maane na maane koi duniya

Yeh saari, mere ishq ki hai deewani

गाने की शुरुआत नायिका के ईमानदारीपूर्ण वक्तव्य से होती है. वो जानती है कि इन मर्दों को उसकी भावनाओं, दिल और प्रेम से कोई सरोकार नहीं. वो तो बसएक ही चीज चाहते हैं. पर वो उन्हें मिलने वाली नहीं. उन्हें मुंह में भर आये पानी से ही अपनी प्यास बुझानी होगी. दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण, परन्तु सत्य.

Hey hey, I know you want it

but you never gonna get it

Tere haath kabhi na aani

Maane na maane koi duniya

yeh saari Mere ishq ki hai deewani

Ab dil karta hai haule haule se

Main toh khud ko gale lagaun

Kisi aur ki mujhko zaroorat kya

Main toh khud se pyaar jataun

नायिका पुनः दर्जनों पुरुषों में उसके प्रति जगी वासना पर प्रकाश डालती है. वो अपने आस-पास मंडराते छिछोरों को बताती है कि उनकी दाल नहीं गलने वाली. परसाथ ही यहाँ नायिका के व्यक्तित्व का एक और पक्ष उजागर होता है.

सौंदर्य से जागृत अहंकार का पक्ष. वो अपनी सुन्दरता से इतनी प्रभावित है कि उसे किसी पुरुष की ज़रुरत नहीं. वो अपने अन्दर की स्त्री के लिए खुद ही पुरुष बनजाना चाहती है. अब इसे अहंकार की पराकाष्ठा कहें या आत्म-प्रेम की मादकता!

what's my name

what's my name

what's my name

My name is Sheela

Sheela ki jawani

I'm just sexy for you

Main tere haath na aani

Na na na sheela

Sheela ki jawani

I'm just sexy for you

Main tere haath na aani

अब नायिका अपना परिचय देती है. अपना नाम बताती है. और नाम भी ऐसा जो बूढ़ी नसों के लिए वायाग्रा का काम करे. उनमें यौवन का झंझावात ला दे. नाम बताने के साथ वो यह भी बताती है कि वो बहुत ही ज़्यादा सेक्सी है. अपने मुंह मियाँ मिट्ठू. पर इस आत्म-प्रशंसा में भी अहंकार की सुगंध है. वो खुद को इतना ज़्यादा सेक्सी बताती है कि वो सबकी पहुँच से बाहर है. एक ऐसे चन्द्रमा की तरह जिसकी चांदनी तो सबको उपलब्ध है, पर उस चाँद को छूकर उसे महसूस करना किसी के बस की नहीं. यहाँ यह सिद्ध होता है है किनायिका सौंदर्य की साधक ही नहीं, बल्कि अहंकार से भरी चुड़ैल भी है.

Take it on

Take it on

Take it on

Take it on

अब नायिका सीधे शब्दों में चुनौती देती है. एक ऐसी चुनौती जो शायद मर्दों में शराब के बिना भी साहस ला दे.

Silly silly silly silly boys

O o o you're so silly

Mujhe bolo bolo karte hain

O o oHaan jab unki taraf dekhun,

baatein haule haule karte hain

Hai magar, beasar mujh par har paintra

अब नायिका उनका उपहास करती है. उन्हें मूर्ख कहकर पुकारती है. उन्हें ज़लील करती है. वो मर्द नायिका के बारे में गुप-चुप बातें कर सकते हैं, पर उसकेसामने जुबां नहीं खोल पाते. वासना<

On the Delhi Metro

As the grey train hurtled towards me on that gloomy day, I stood still and waited in anticipation of what lay in store for me aboard. I felt muscles twitch as a general air of uneasiness spread around me. Soon, the grey train opened its doors to us and exclaimed, "HUDA City Centre." My fellow passengers ran helter-skelter and sought desperately to seat themselves. Confused, I read the bright green signs that urged me not to sit on seats reserved for women, the elderly, and physically challenged persons. I wandered down to the next compartment. It was almost empty. I wondered why others didn't join me. Perhaps there's nothing like the warmth of humanity in winter.

In two minutes, we were at the next station, IFFCO Chowk, and in another two minutes, at MG Road station. Office clerks, call center employees, college

students, housewives, children, and senior citizens scrambled in through the doors to find places to sit. I pulled out a book and pretended to read. On my left sat a couple eager to know each other better. This quiet, brooding call-center employee sat listening to his partner's endless explanations for what she perceived as her inadequacies. "You know I feel my English and Hindi are worsening here in Gurgaon. I really did speak well in Bara Banki." Hmmm, muttered her boyfriend. "You know I don't really drink. It was just that one time when my Assamese flatmates forced me to drink and I got so drunk that I puked all night. These Assamese girls do it every week. I just don't know how they manage!" Hmmm, muttered her boyfriend again. "I hope you don't believe all the rumors about me in the office. They're all lies." Let's go, he said this time, the station's here.

"Guru Dronacharya," the announcer screamed. What a delicious irony that the ancient Mahabharata tale about Gurgaon has found favor with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in 2010!

In walked Old Father Time himself through the gates. Dressed in a yellow silk kurta and a Nehru jacket, Father Time smiled and seated himself next to me. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Patel Chowk," I replied. "Long way to go, my boy. These coaches are old, you see, but the new ones they've got will be faster and smoother without the jerkiness we have now." Hmmm, I responded, wondering how he knew about the DMRC's plans. I suppose my laconic responses put off the old man. So he began talking to a rotund gentleman who seemed intrigued by the tidbit about the new coaches. "Bhaisahab, there is no hope for us Hindus nowadays. See how the government equivocates when it comes to terrorism. They didn't even want to hang Afzal Guru." Bhaisahab concurred: "And now they speak of Hindu terror. What a travesty!" That comment clearly struck a chord. It promised to pave the way for a long discourse on minority appeasement and Hindu insecurities in contemporary India. But nothing of the sort happened because a young, bespectacled man in a skullcap and sherwani stood beside us. The joys of Indian secularism!

If you look outside from the window of your metro coach

on the Delhi-Gurgaon route, you will discover much that had been hitherto hidden. Greenery everywhere with only small shanties breaking up the verdant landscape. Hardly any people to be seen in this bustling metropolis bursting at its seams. The orderliness of the armed forces inside their residential colonies. The opulence of farmhouses that are exposed now to the public eye. And the elegance of the Qutb Minar towering over Mehrauli. Thereafter, we are creatures of the dark in the underworld. Who knows what's happening above us? A mosque had been demolished that day, in fact, and Mathura Road and its vicinity were jam-packed with cars. But we couldn't know that inside our metro compartments. What we did see and know, however, is that we were packed together with a motley bunch of human specimens with different colors and smells enveloping us. The rough-and-ready manner of democracy, Indian-style.

Aboard the Metro, we were left to decide whether to offer seats to ladies and older people.

Every time someone offered his seat to a lady (not often!)he seemed positively pleased with himself. The elderly were not so lucky. They had to request seats, explaining that they had a long distance to travel, and even then, sitting could not be guaranteed. When an old lady came in at Jorbagh, ostensibly after cleaning some posh houses there, no one bothered when she asked for a seat. She deserved a seat under two of the three categories of the "abnormal" (old and female), but she apparently did not know that the unwritten class dynamics of Delhi had permeated underground into the Metro too. Unwritten also meant unspoken since no one offered an explanation for their rudeness: they simply looked away or continued talking as if they had not heard the woman at all. When I offered my seat to the lady, a young student with his ears plugged to his I-Pod threatened to shove his way ahead of her. I had to physically block his way to let her sit. Everyone looked displeased. An unwritten, unspoken law of the city had been broken.

Another such law concerns women. The DMRC has recently extended North India's zenana culture into the public transport system of the future. A reserved coach for women essentially means segregation. It is quite obvious that the majority of women will choose to avoid getting

their butts pinched or breasts grabbed in the other coaches. But with the new reserved coach for women, the "normal" passengers (male, aged 15-60 years) can rule the roost elsewhere and ignore the bright green signs that dare to impose a kind of civility in the early days of the Metro. Butt-pinching and breast-grabbing are now perfectly acceptable in three-quarters of every Metro train. Indeed, they are vital to maintaining the new zenana culture: "segregate, or else we'll, molest you" is the message to women.

On my way back, two call-center employees sat beside me all the way to Gurgaon. They seemed less-than-thrilled by their jobs. But they were even less thrilled by their friend Raghu, who seemed to them to be engaged forever in long telephonic conversations with his girlfriend. "What's there to talk to these bitches? They're good to fuck now and then after work. And it's great on the weekends. But there's nothing really to talk to them about." His misogynist co-worker agreed heartily: "I don't waste my time like that. Better to go out drinking with your buddies. Or stay home playing video games. These bitches are so demanding: if you get talking to them, they won't let you do anything else in life." This is how the "normal" passengers of the Metro are expected to behave. The misogyny of the streets is normalized now as it gets braided with the zenana culture of the old courtly elites. This is the culture of neoliberalism: selective appropriation of cultural pasts to reinforce existing power equations.

But neoliberalism is not simply trade liberalization and privatization,as many are wont to believe. The Delhi Metro is a dramatic statement by the Government of India in an era where the rotten core of private sector corporations has come to the fore like never before. Leviathan, too, can be efficient and profitable as it builds critical infrastructure and breathes life anew into the city. The state, as entrepreneur as well as regulator, is the new face of neoliberal reforms in India. If M-NREGA

is its most visible face in rural India today, the Delhi Metro is the blueprint for urban transformations in India today. Move over, Narayan Murthy and the BATF. Metro coaches are awash with public sector advertisements for yoga and naturopathy from the Health Ministry and mobile and internet plans from MTNL and BSNL. The state continue to enforce the writ of the law throughout the metro station. If you spit or travel without tokens, be prepared to pay a hefty fine. If you enter the women's coach forcibly, be prepared to be pulled out by a cop policing the gendered borderlands between the coaches. And don't urinate on the platform or clamber atop the train! The government hopes to impose a distinctly bourgeois civility on those whose notions of morality are characteristically different. It is not clear yet who or what will prevail.

There is no doubt that the Delhi Metro is the best thing to happen to the Capital for decades. Delhi lacks the planning apparatus of Mumbai or Bangalore. It is a segregated city that offers innumerable opportunities to the new migrant even as it blocks off many others. The Metro re-engages the energies of young aspirants to middle-class rank and privilege. It brings the city together in unprecedented ways, yet re-inscribes older prejudices of gender, age, and class in a neoliberal garb. In the stations and trains, the democratic populism of the streets battles the neoliberal moral order directed by the government. Little wonder then that the mall-going India Shining public shies away from the Metro: it is too plebeian for their tastes. And yet their college-going children may well end up sweating and scrambling beside less-privileged passengers who look and smell so different from them. In this tortured, tortuous way, the promise of the modern city comes alive and the century-old legacies of the colonial capital threaten to fall apart.