Bijli ki Rani (Queen of Lightning)

So walking through the market some boys say something to me in Hindi. I ask Somvir, our driver, what they said.

He looked uncomfortable and then slowly and carefully said, They said you were "more pretty."

Eve-teasing in India is idiosyncratic and flirtatious street sexual harassment. Here is an entire site devoted to cataloging Indian terms for women (They have a whole section devoted to singing flirts, "If you have been sung to and felt threatened/ 'harassed' or even amused--email us at....) Most Western women who come to India (and I assume most Indian women as well at some level) have to deal with it incessantly.

In India, flirting is complicated. To unpack Indian courtship--street side or drawing room style--requires a lot of background. The unrelenting images of aspirational repressed sexuality in Bollywood films coupled with the nearly complete physical separation of men and women and further coupled with maternal idolatry and paternal parochialism is all further complicated by rigidly internalized gender roles and expectations. Seriously, complicated.

So, when these Indian boys say something to me in the market square that amounts to the idea that I am more pretty, I wonder what is going on here. In On Flirtation, Adam Phillips write, "Flirting allows us the fascination of what is unconvincing. By making a game of uncertainty, of the need to be convinced, it always plays with, or rather flirts with, the idea of surprise." Now, I suspect these boys would be extremely surprised if their flirting amounted to anything. In fact, I believe they would be positively freaked out it they garnered any response beyond reproach.

However, the surprise goes both ways. A bit later, after consulting the Hindi-English dictionary three times, Somvir clarified to say that they said that I was a "lightening bolt of pretty." Okay, putting aside how annoying and occasionally stressful this stuff is, I have to say, what a great comment. If flirting is trying to control uncertainty, then the metaphor of lightning reveals how haphazard and imprecise the game is. (Also they don't realize all the ways that flirting with me really is like flirting with disaster; the space between electrifying and electrocuting is small, but important.) Woods tells us that, like Tantalus, the flirt is a little bit of a sado-masochist: the tantalized and the tortured. Opening up the space of possibility means that impossibility gets a seat at the table too. You have to acknowledge their tenacity: in the face of so much rejection, these guys still try and try and try.

***

So after all this Zazie asks what is going on.

L: Did you hear that? Mommy is more pretty.

Z: More pretty than me?

L: No way, you are as pretty as a princess.

Okay, I am kind of baiting her here, though only a little I think.

She immediately starts crying. Big tears.

L: Whats wrong?

Z: I just don't like princesses Mommy, really.

L: Well, what do you think is the prettiest thing in the whole entire world?

She pauses for a really long time, thinking....slowly she says: A nice, washed car.

L: Zazie you are prettier than a nice washed car.

It may be that the best compliments stem from those very idiosyncratic terms that we come up with for ourselves, somewhere between compliments and harassment, between lightning bolts and Lightning McQueen.