It was christmas

It was Christmas. I was heading to a party in my auto-rickshaw carriage and we'd stopped near a trendy club to ask for directions. The pavement teemed with sharply dressed young people on cell phones and I marvelled at how much more confident and cool young folks are now, compared to the far less worldly or fashionable and far more broke young people we were 20 years ago.

A fancy car drove past and parked right in front. When we were ready to go, repeated honking raised no responseu00a0-- neither did the car move, nor did a head pop out to say, hang on. Exasperated, we finally manoeuvred ourselves onto the road with difficulty. The driver and I peered curiously to check on the car's inscrutable driver.



It was a very attractive and posh-looking young woman, not in a sudden coma, as we feared, but merely fixing her make-up. We looked comically surprised. Noticing us, she gave us the finger. We were perplexedu00a0-- had we complained when she'd blocked our way for so long while fixing her mascara?

The driver asked me what the gesture meant. I answered with maximum vagueness. I get your drift, he said. No doubt she's a dhandewali. I dithered, but finally responded. If a woman is rude to you, it doesn't mean you should immediately question her morals, right? He argued that by virtue of plying 40-odd people a day he could assess folks quickly.

Still, I persisted; an obnoxious brat can anger you, but perhaps the automatic response need not be to talk about her sex lifeu00a0-- just because it's a woman. Would you have said this if it were a guy?
He was quiet for a long time.

Then he said, you're right. I spoke in anger, and what I said makes me a lesser person. I was taken abacku00a0-- but moved too, that he had respected me enough to listen and think about what I'd said. I said so. Actually, he replied, I thank you for respecting me enough to say what you really thought. Well, the spirit of Christmas was upon us, alright! We proceeded in a warm fuzz, chatting about other things.

I imagined an analogous conversation with the young woman in the car. I'll bet her response would've been something likeu00a0-- 'Yaar, don't give me a political lecture'. These riff raff only understand this language. That's how I hear a lot of better off folks speak about less well off folks. Perhaps, my question to her would be ufffd what language would you say you understand?

Because I'm pretty sure the language she'd speak would be one of her own freedoms. No doubt, she considers herself 'modern', liberated, cool, confident, not taking no sh't from noone, a spunky, sassy chick.

Maybe she is all those thingsu00a0-- so what if, going by how old she looked, her fancy car was almost definitely paid for by mum and dad. But it was clear to see that some of the freedom she's claiming for herself seemed to express itself only through disregard for others.

Truth to tell, I was embarrassed for her. Such entitled rudeness, such disrespect of others finds an answering disrespect from others and makes a joke of freedom.

And freedom, as we saw often through the year that's just ended, is neither a joke nor a trend. It's a quicksilver thing we keep near, by being able to question ourselves as much as we question others, by
listening as we'd like to be listened to. Here's hoping for some of that this year.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevi.com.

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.