Those students in Pokhara

It is the most unaesthetic task to condemn youths because such a disparaging attempt is repugnant, feels the critic. The same is true of youths if they behave un-aesthetically.

Many of the students, especially girls, studying abroad, in South Asia, Australia and the United States, tell us that Nepali youths are better behaved when it comes to gender issues, linguistic mannerism, and peer support, and even scholarly cooperation. My favorites are the young people of contemporary generations who prefer Valentine celebrations, cricket, soccer, and discourse on the problems of neo-colonialism, and many such beautiful cultural signs and ideas. But you cannot be complacent. Let me tell you an anecdote.

I went to a Pokhara restaurant at Lake Side with my wife. While we waited for the dish to be served, we overheard students talking. They belonged to a medical school, it seemed, because they referred to their multiple disciplinary terminologies. They used words from their classroom vocabulary amidst chewing and gossips. But their topic was not medicine. They were outspoken about their personal sexual experiences. They were so loud that it became very difficult to continue waiting for the food and listen to their fantasies.

My wife paced in the corridor to suggest that a lady is around. They may notice her, she thought, and would behave differently conversationally. They did not care and we were unsettled. They were self-engaged – seven or eight male students – and were on the peak of explaining their sexual experiences.

The gaze turns the object into a sexual item, write the psychoanalysts. Overt sexual language in public is not gaze but it is the linguistic expression of gaze.

I do not want to be a moralist and at times do not prescribe to overt didacticism. One is free to choose what one wants to talk about. My argument, however, is how and when to separate public from the private. Sex-related gossips – not discourses on sexuality – may have private and public spaces to cleave. Stories of personal sexual experiences and bigmouthed tittle-tattle on sex must have private and public spheres to engage with. You would not expect a normal person being vocal in the class about what he or she does in the bed in the passionate night. Though you too would think that moral policing is ridiculous, but my point of argument is who speaks where.

There are many sitcoms in Indian television channels these days where lower secondary students engage in jokes with sexual implications. I recently happened to watch Comedy Circus where a couple of girls shared jokes with an adult. The adult cracked jokes on one of the girls being fathered by a neighbor. The judges laughed their hearts out.

Televisions are the prime locations of knowledge more than schools and text books and new generation kids learn the ways of the world in these virtual schools. Not sexual merely, but vulgar sex jokes are in abundance with participating kids and audiences.

The entire production of the sitcoms, actors, directors, participants, viewers from days and months watch small kids dancing with sexual gestures played around adult sex-related songs. A girl cannot properly express herself but puts her hands on her body to express adult sexual expressions. He or she does not know but s/he gestures.

Who draws the line about what to show and what not? A girl of six or seven years cannot dance with sexual gestures if her parents have plans to teach her about sex education when she matures. Even in the Western countries, which are famed for being sexually liberated, there are time-censored shows. Such Indian entertainment channels do not pay any heed to age and time-related reservations.

You and I may not mind sex scenes shown in movies or soap operas, but I do think that there must be shared cultural understanding in the entertainment world concerning a primary school kid not gesturing sexual signs on stage. I do not support banning programs but I certainly would not want to see your kid being humored as neighbor’s kid in front of millions of audience.

The apparent medical students in Pokhara (they may be of Law and English) are innocent because they belong to the Comedy Circus generation laughing their hearts out with parents and grandparents around. There may be an identity issue involved. One thinks that one needs to express the modern by expressing sex wherever and whenever possible. If you can talk on sex, you are an urban-digital brand. We were more disappointed because we asked the butler to pack our food which we brought to our hotel and ate some tastelessly.

Let me generalize now. I have to be critical to generalize their behavior in the restaurant. The gaze and the language, the gaze or the language are very unsettling these days, wrote Jahanavi appa in her mail this morning when I sent the article to her too to read. The gaze turns the object into a sexual item, write the psychoanalysts. Overt sexual language in public is not gaze but it is the linguistic expression of gaze. In a cultured and liberal society, you are becoming offensive. The food to tell you frankly was never so very tasteless in Pokhara. I have to return.