World Travel and Tourist Destinations

Watching the news channel yesterday, I was compelled to reflect on the status of women in India. The Arushi murder case, though claimed to be solved by the police, sent wrong signals across the country. People are against the labeling of Arushi-Hemraj love as ‘illicit’. How can a girl, emotionally dependant on a person much older than her father, be termed as having illicit affair with the person? This instantly reminded me yet another pathetic situation: the cheerleaders controversy, where several ‘moral groups’ were deciding on how should the people dress.

It is surprising why the culture which gives such “lofty status” to women, treats them as “pearls”, has troubles with their men acting lecherously while looking any meagerly clad women, and then charge the women for fault. It is the Indian custom which has given greatest value to women. Indian women have always lived up to the expectations, failing to power respect and admiration in the society. 

The IPL league initiated with the thought to start the new phenomenon of entertainment in cricket. IPL people expended a lot for making it a grand hit. The association had the purpose to take domestic Indian cricket to global viewers. In the beginning everything was all right, but then the politicians again started to grab the attention as it was done in the case of bar girls. However, in a temporary amnesty, the order to ban the dance bars in Maharashtra has been returned by governor. But the girls are always squeezed between moral policing and regulatory efforts on one hand and extreme poverty, susceptibility to health risks such as HIV/AIDS and sexual exploitation on other hand.

The majorities of these women have little occupational skills and are inadequately educated. A few of them might have come into such profession fascinated by glamour of being entertainers and singers.

Cheer-girls are a bit of entertainment or activity package which IPL had promised the audiences countrywide. Group of cheerleaders might have been barred by the politicians to come in cricket matches, but none of the political leaders can dare to challenge the love for western culture in our youth. Group of cheer-girls are liable for criticizing Indian culture and therefore are trapped by the politicians. But I think we should witness such responsive policies when the Bollywood beauties extend obscenity so boldly.

Various cheerleaders are not enchanted with the activities of crowd also. These girls may be barred from the game, but the authorities cannot plan to get back our own culture from clutches of ignorance and negligence. These girls might go back to their states but their recognition amongst youth has formed an imprint on impressionable minds of young group. We cannot eliminate obscenity by asking the cheer-girls to go back. We have to instill amongst us what is called as “Indian Culture”.

The politicians, the so called supporters of Indian Morality, made and are still making a big argument over the cheerleaders. They objected on the kind of clothes these cheerleaders wore. But then, why do Indian politicians wear khadi? Because it reflects their association with Gandhi. Similarly, these girls were also wearing something that has been associated with games across the world.

The kind of gestures which Bipasha or Rakhi Sawant would do in their dance number is fine, because they can see it in the private theatres. Cheer leaders were also performing on large stadiums as well as in front of thousands of people. The cricket matches were being shown on television messing the so called Indian Culture! The advertisements which come on TV, the type of show models, male or female, bathing in pools or anywhere, are they not against Indian Culture?

These too are transmitted throughout India. The kind of jokes which come on various laughter shows, they speak directly or use double-talk, which derogates comedy, but such things are accordance to the Culture because children cannot understand them. I am surprised what these leaders and politicians are upto. They were believed to take care of the welfare of the public who selected them and not expected that same chosen person will take the “cheers” away from their lives. Rejoicing ’the woman of substance’, in Indian Culture, it seems is similar to dropping a woman to a substance.

Authored By Arun Kumar M., India

The timeless South of France has the mysterious capability of bringing back memories that have long since been lost. A trip to Saint Paul de Vence in Provence brought me back to my childhood, even if just for an afternoon.

25 degrees in March. How things have changed in just two years. Two years ago, I was trudging through feet of snowdrifts in Massachusetts on my way to yet another day of high school math. Today, I’m in the south of France. Today, I’m in Saint Paul de Vence.

I don’t miss typical March weather. I’m hypnotized by quintessential Mediterranean bright yellows and blues, winding stone streets, small-town church steeples. There is something so very French about this town; I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the laundry lines hanging from the windows, or the way that even in the South where the people tend towards paresseux without becoming completely lazy (although a sieste is an important part of every day), you can’t ignore the French pride, by now I know it well, in everything that people do and say.

Shop owners and artisans watch as you examine their wares, certain that there are no flaws and almost daring you to find one, and I remember, once more, why I fell in love with this country almost ten years ago.

And yet, although Paris may have been my first love, there is something about the South that encourages dreaming. I’m not quite sure what it is, but in small towns like Saint Paul de Vence, up in the mountains where one can find refuge from all the people, time becomes less regimented. Memories and reality float amongst each other without any concern for the rules that apply to the concrete and the abstract. As I climb the street that winds up through the town, I pass a store that is under renovation: it may feel like summer here but it’s not tourist season yet.

I smell fresh paint and am propelled back in time. I’m six, seven, eight, nine years old; the age doesn’t matter because the memory repeats itself. Moving again and again, new apartments over and over until I can walk down the Manhattan streets and point out the numbered awnings, like a game. Moving was the game to my parents. That new paint, that new apartment smell has always felt more like home to me than any actual place. I breathe it in and keep walking, hanging in limbo somewhere between now and then, the past and the present.

I admire the pissaladière, the Niçois pizza shiny with olive oil and sweet caramelized onions in the glass windows in front of the stores, but I don’t buy any: lunch of crawfish with aioli and whole sea bass, scales and tails flayed expertly in front of me at the Colombe d’Or are still only a vague memory. The Colombe d’Or never disappoints.

I walk further up the road that winds to the top, to the spectacular view. I look out over the cliff, and as far as I can see, everything is green. A patchwork of all of the greens possible. Even the giant Crayola boxes wouldn’t have enough colors, I think to myself, still caught up in the past, a time before that magical tenth birthday when you finally reach double digits.

I turn to walk back down the winding path and stop by a small church. It is the church of Saint Anthony, a saint I claimed as my own when I was very small and who would follow me long after as I, disorganized as ever, would do my father proud and invoke the patron Saint of the lost to help me find my flash drive. I push open the doors into the small church, just a few pews, a modest altar and a few candles with a donation box. I listen as my coins clink to the bottom and cross myself to pray, as I was taught.

Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please look around. Something is lost, and cannot be found. How ironic, I think to myself as I recite the childish prayer. Nothing was lost here, but I did, for an afternoon, find a small piece of my childhood, memories so few and far between in the hustle and bustle of daily life. Here it was, all this time, hiding in the south of France.

Authored By Emily Monaco, USA