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. Can it be completed with, they just ‘does not care’? It 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,
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