Opinion Raise our glasses to end of hypocrisy — women may drink, serve, get high just as much as men
Men have been creating a ruckus and brawling in bars for centuries, women have been held back by frustrating societal expectations of ladylike, shrinking demureness.
Leher Kala writes: In our imaginations, beating up people, or a bust-up in a watering hole automatically signifies (toxic) masculinity. (Reuters/File) 
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While exiting a buzzing bar in Gurgaon recently I noticed something I’ve never seen in any security detail stationed at the entrance: a woman bouncer. Dressed in the same charcoal grey safari suit associated with intimidatingly muscular blokes working as professional guards, she was similarly inscrutable and kindly humoured my curiosity about her job — basically, to toss out misbehaving, drunk girls whose tribe it appears, is fast increasing. The unspoken etiquette of power dynamics demands only women may oust women. Besides, the inevitable altercations that arise at the doors of trendy nightclubs requires a female presence to restrict “entry” and assist in that most inexact of sciences, deciding who has the right demeanor (and the fattest wallet), before letting them in. In this woke era, when denying someone access means risking loud cries of discrimination on Twitter, out-of-control female revelers have to be tackled delicately, and never by men.
Rowdy women are such an anomaly in Indian society that the slightest, unhinged behaviour would terrify the burliest of male bouncers. Typically, on weekends, one to two all-woman tables get particularly raucous but usually, just a stern (warning) look from her is enough to sober them up. Every now and then though, a heated, alcohol-fueled argument ensues. The club policy in such situations, she said, is that the male management steps back and the women, manager and bouncer, step in. Before I’m accused of being a traitor to my gender, focusing on that statistically minuscule number of Indian women privileged enough to act with reckless abandon — let me say that in a twisted way, boozing females defiantly doing their own thing is progress.
Men have been creating a ruckus and brawling in bars for centuries, women have been held back by frustrating societal expectations of ladylike, shrinking demureness.
Of course, it’s a frightening thought of where India is headed if the women are starting to behave like the men (not to worry, we still lag far behind) — 95% of road rage cases, murders, robberies and online frauds are committed by men but if we’re aspiring to gender equality, some catching up in crime should be expected too. It was Page 1 news in September when a woman, a college professor, was arrested for slapping and abusing a guard at a Noida housing society. A man doing that is not news (and would be relegated to a footnote on the city page, if at all).
In our imaginations, beating up people, or a bust-up in a watering hole automatically signifies (toxic) masculinity. Women won’t wear this behaviour as a badge of honour but unlike a previous generation, they’re not afraid of occupying space and being combative when they have to.
One can sense changes in young attitudes from the fashion sections of www.myntra.com and www.flipkart.com, which are full of T-shirts spouting feminist quotes like ‘I choose my dress’, ‘No means no, yes means yes’. And my favorite, chup kar, a long overdue revolt against the national pastime of judgment, the bane of female existence in India.
Historically, women the world over, have been persecuted for consuming liquor. Women were executed for drinking wine in Roman times, the presumption being it unshackled inhibitions and threatened their chasteness. In the Middle Ages, women who brewed beer were accused of witchcraft. India’s moral universe is still so complicated and visuals of girls’ drinking are loaded with primitive symbolism.
Going by Hindi cinema, till the 1970s, only the vamps held glasses and swayed to cabaret numbers. It took till 2007 for the Supreme Court to throw out the rule in Delhi that banned women bartenders, on the flimsy grounds that they needed to be protected from lecherous, intoxicated men. Let’s raise our glasses to the end of tedious hypocrisy — women may drink, serve, get high just as much as men. And cheers to that.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
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