Not Wanting to See
Selective seeing and Selective hearing- Selecting living
A bus ride to work. A ‘labour’ sits in the seat vacated. The ‘lady’ in the adjacent seat gets up and leaves. The lingering smell of her perfume wafting past as she takes up a seat at the back. The adjacent seat is occupied by a formally dressed individual. From the attire, looked like the place of work would be an office space.
A family having a meal at the food court. Parents, children, related, by the look of it. Trays of food in front of them, eating, drinking, spilling, climbing all over, intently engaged on their phones. A young girl, not related, seating at the table beside. A little distance away. Sometimes fussing over the children. Sometimes looking at them with vacant eyes. Picking up the toys they are throwing around. Feeding them. There was no tray in front of her. The young girl, not related, by the look of it, a house help.
The warm hugs by the teacher, to the kids in her care. Warm and tight for some. The bright eyed, fair skinned, uniformed with fresh smell of ‘Strawberries kids shampoo’ in their hair and smelling of sunshine. A mere gesture with arms around the child, for others, who smells of sunshine alone. It lacks the heart, the warmth.
The eyes that are not met outside the car window when it stops at a traffic signal. The small hand that stretches out, the ‘clap’ that asks to be seen, the elderly with rheumy eyes and vacant looks.
The questioning looks given to someone who does not have that ‘airport look’. The turning down of certain patrons at the boutique outlets in upscale shopping spaces.
The many times we go about choosing not to see, choosing not to speak!
Our ability, or inability, to see is subjective. Just as we do what we wish to do and learn what we wish to learn, we see what we wish to see.
Perception is not innate. It is acquired. Learnt. Practiced. Over the years. Over contexts.
We all are partially visually impaired, and it is a matter of choice.
To See and not to see?
We are deep rooted in our beliefs. Belief of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, belief of ‘trust and mistrust’, belief of ‘us and them’, belief of ‘good and bad’.
Our belief systems are a part of our inherent nature and acquired nature as well. We are born in certain belief systems and walking through life, knowingly and unwittingly, we imbibe a lot from our surroundings. Our surroundings of people and places. Of cultures and languages. Surroundings of contexts. Surroundings of gender.
Behaviour is often born from these beliefs, feeding into each other, in a perfect symbiosis. They are nurtured, shaped, altered, rearranged and restructured by the different belief ecosystem that we find ourselves in throughout our lives.
It is the belief in the understanding of ‘good and bad’ that makes us unsee the grey. Dividing actions into watertight compartments of acceptable and unacceptable. A mother who sacrifices her desires is acceptable and hence ‘good’. A mother who chooses her desires and dreams, could have been a little bit adjusting perhaps! A better understanding of her new ‘role’ would have been ‘good’. We do not get a rejection outright for choosing our dreams these days, its often the health of the family, upbringing of the children, the half-eaten lunch boxes, the desire to feed that ‘home cooked meal’ made by the wife and mother that does the job! “Born to make laddoos”, was not a mere dialogue. It reflected a belief system, working relentlessly, irrespective of discernible differences in class, caste, city, economic hierarchy and educational qualification.
We seldom question these exchanges often missing them in the glossed over outer surface of movies, advertisements, stories, narratives and understandings.
‘Unseeing’ or not seeing is not pertained to the gender question alone.
The rickshaw puller denied of his meagre earnings, the shabby looking individual served last in a roadside tea stall, if there happens to be someone, visibly different, the sharp words of cleaning that corner of a room, not letting our children ‘mix’ with everyone in the neighbourhood park are all incidents of ‘not seeing’. The separate ‘service elevators’ in many apartments perpetuates the class divide of who can stand beside you in the same space. It also pertains to ‘dog owners’ when they are taking out their dears for a walk. Many a times, happy Husky and Golden Retriever’ do join the other residents in the elevators ‘not meant for them’. These breeds are not inexpensive. An assumption that their ‘owners’ are ignorant, callous, illiterate (this is often written in bold in the lifts) is perhaps not the full story. Perhaps, they just ‘does not care’? won’t be too harsh, I hope!
Not consuming food from certain households for religious, caste-based reasons and ‘types of food’ consumed, is seen, tolerated, participated, justified and practiced every day under a million pretexts. These are violence. Committed every day, in many ways, relentlessly, consistently, methodically. Other than perpetuating divide, these acts not a guarantee of a ‘good place’ in our posthumous holiday destinations!
Our societies are hierarchical. They are divided and class ridden. There is no denying this fact. Added to class discrimination, we also have deep divides along caste and religious lines.
I have heard from friends about relatives who would only eat food when prepared by people of certain caste. Caste being an important criterion in a marriage, caste is questioned and asked when a new colleague joins an IT firm. The person asking, could be working at a high post, driving a BMW to work! Caste is reflected in the very name we carry, the name we hide and the name we flaunt, depending on what it is. It defines and shapes individuals and perceptions of individuals as well. In a country where we revere the ‘Gita’ and its verses, we tend to forget that ‘dharma’ is not religion or caste, but our ‘work’ and ‘duty’.
Our preconceived assumptions play a tremendous role in harbouring notions about people who are different from us. We seem to have a lot of ‘known’ inferences with very little interaction. How do we arrive at this ‘knowing’ is however unknown! “General knowledge often leading to misrepresentation, misappropriation and misinterpretation of knowledge and ideas are practiced in oblivion”, Situated Learning, Jene Leve and Etienne Wegner.
We somehow seem to ‘know’ quite a bit about everything. I have heard the phrase ‘knowingness is new a malice’ mentioned many times and this explains it like nothing else.
A recent conversation about a group of women belonging to a certain religious minority, reiterated our ‘perception’ of certain sections of the society. It was a ‘knowingness’. A research project led to repeated interactions with a group of women in an urban slum. This was a community of the religious minority and the point of contact with them was regarding schoolings for their children. These women shared how they fought for a proper school to start, how they defied patriarchy and took their daughters to school, how the teachers , women from the community again, made arrangements to accommodate these kids ( these kids would come to the classes later than many and the teacher would stay back to ensure that they get the part of the morning lesson that was missed). These women shared how, they during the Holy month would spend time to read in the afternoons. Their TBR a mix of books on religion, society and novels! These women fought against patriarchy, preconceived notions about the education of a girl child, formed communities based on common interest, taught, read, collaborated and worked to keep their homes running just like the millions of other women all around the globe! They were no different from the others in their sisterhood. The lense that is often used to see them, however, is often a rather different one! These lenses leave much unseen.
The comment made by the maid to her employer in ‘Dabba Cartel’ reiterates ‘respect’. She questions the right to respect and how it is the prerogative of a select few. She questions how hard it is to earn and why is it is she unseen? She speaks about the façade of class divide. The stark ‘reality’ behind is always hidden surprise.
Seen and Unseen
The elite businesswoman leaves her demanding career, at its peak, to take care of the young child. She soon becomes someone who is easily walked over. Her opinions don’t matter. Her business acumen questioned. The clever strategist is now someone who’s very understanding of ‘being in business’ is questioned. She is invisible. She picks at her house help for being late at work, every day. The struggles of both are real. Authentic. Unseen. The once seen, has now become invisible.
Perhaps one perpetuates the other.
The mother who wakes up the earliest every day just to ensure the others are in time for their respective places is unseen. The child who struggles under the expectation of the parents to take science pens down his invisible being into his poetry. The ‘man’ who is holding a storm within and wants to shed them through tears is unseen. A man who cries is not man enough. A boy child who is told, “don’t cry like a girl” holds an unseen torment within himself, waiting for the slightest crack to gush through. The worker who sit by the road to eat a meagre meal is unseen all the time. Passerby moving at a distance without a glance at him. He has travelled to a first world city and is engaged in constructing an international school. Does he dream of a school for his children back home? He has stopped dreaming perhaps or they have receded to the back of his memory. Unseen by himself. The struggles of the first-generation learners in contexts that ‘assumes’ their laziness and inability. The expectation of dishonesty from people who are alongside us, is perhaps jading on the victims and its perpetrators alike.
The teacher in a village school, who still believes in the capacity of the children, the contractor helping in renovation who suggests alternatives to expensive remodelling, that officer in the government offices who still believes that paperwork can be processed without the underhand dealings. These people are mostly unseen by us. Their everyday struggles unnoticed. Generalization of the ‘many’ clouds our seeing of the few.
Seeing and not seeing, been seen and being unseen is perhaps inherent in all of us. As we see, we also unsee. In this world of reel violence, we have perhaps numbed ourselves not to see too much. To think too much. To act. We choose to be at the periphery. This makes it easier for us to go through our everyday. Choosing not to see the ones who are actually in the periphery! We block them from our field of vision. We overemphasise and discuss the international politics, the soaring prices of thing, the high cost of living. We talk about corruption and how it is permeating every aspect of our lives as we relate how we ‘got a work done’ by knowing the right people at the right places. Shouting at the fruit vendor standing in summer heat and chiding him for not weighing the purchase correctly, sets our moral compass of not tolerating ‘cheating’!
We talk about pollution as we slip in to the airconditioned interior of the car. We talk about poverty as we try to negotiate the last 200 rupees of our house help’s request for an advance.
We talk about feminism and yet unsee the wives working at home for their husbands and children, ironing their clothes, packing their lunches, arranging tuitions for the children, managing interpersonal relationships every day. Their forgotten ideas of identity a thing of the past.
We talk about our adherence to temples but have no qualms about pushing and elbowing our way through a long queue! That the serpentine line of devotees to enter was ‘unseen’ is a little hard to swallow!
We talk about justice, and yet movies that are ‘entertaining’ and a ‘timepass’ (a word which makes no sense) are often preferred over ones that raises uncomfortable questions.
Random acts of violence and show of power, perpetuated on whoever is weaker, is perhaps a reflection of being ‘unseen’. Not to justify it however, it is perhaps a precipitation of the need of the self to be seen and heard.
Seeing and not seeing is a conscious choice we make. A conscious choice we are conditioned to make. Families, educational institutes, neighbourhoods, work places reinforce and solidifies this divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Who should be seen and who should be left unseen. We carry the burden of sightlessness.
“A vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains”
Desensitizing ourselves, opaque in our visions, numb in our sensibilities, alienated from our communities, we climb step by step on the citadel we have built for ourselves. When we reach the top and as the door closes behind, turning back, I see no one behind me. I am all by myself undisturbed by what is happening below. I am alone!
“Hello darkness my old friend
I have come to talk to you again”!
*Art Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence