America for Americans
Canada
for Anglophones, Francophones
Telephones
Which, like the electricity, almost never work in India
though -shishtachar- one mustn't say so.
He brays,
stung by a non-Indian
truth
fairly quivers
______So many rapes in L.A., New York, Chicago!
______So much unemployment in Manchester, and Birmingham
______And the weather in Toronto,_well!
Still, she
remembers jostling men
in buses, along the open-drained__roads
The brazen leers, the sometimes-joking blame of Eve
for Adam's spinelessness, y-chromosome-
lessness___________The lack
of one safe place outside on any Delhi night.
The nationality of the potential rapist
somehow
doesn't move her.
Before she left for India
her colleagues,__male
tsk, tsk regaled her
with clippings, articles in Time
on dowry deaths and sati
and how absolutely terrible
______-- not here,_or us,__of course
it had to be for women -- there.
But she remembers,__still
the joking
hostility of bitter men
still blaming Eve for Adam's spinelessness
The lack
of night street safe in her own city
The nationality
of the potential rapist
somehow
doesn't move her.
___________
shishtachar - Hindi for decorum, courtesy; discipline
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