Sometime ago, a dog breeder fell in love with our
Rottweiler, Rambo. He was insistent that we agree to have his Rottweiler bitch
mate with Rambo to sire. The naughty Rambo being a virgin we were rather amused
to find out how he would react to the luscious bitch. Naturally the fellow was
bowled over and but we did not expect to see such panache and civilised (sic)
conduct from him, a dog. The female was in her heat and naturally the scent of
the bitch in her sexual arousal would suffice for the male dog to go berserk.
We let them together for one full day. Rambo first took her around the compound
and like an obedient escort stood by her side in the enclosure. We were
wondering and often thought Rambo was impotent. We in fact teased him for what
we thought was lack of masculinity behind his hairy chest. The fact was
that the female dog was not fully in her state of sexual arousal. And poor
Rambo had to wait and know patience. He would not violate her, alas dogs do not
know to rape!
The hullaballoo and outrage after the Delhi gang rape that has virtually
deluged over the past few days made me remember the conduct of the dog Rambo,
a creature in the family of beasts upon whom we foist the prevalence of such
behavior and designate it , “beastly act”. This notion and judgment that
mankind often make is unjust and preposterous. A rape victim was quoted having
said “Not enough people understand what rape is and, until they do ..., not
enough will be done to stop it.” As male, I cannot know the physical and
emotional trauma an act of rape can do to woman. But to empathize with agony
one need not have to be hauled over the burning coal.
I cannot say with certainty from the perspective of all men
what emotions can jet across a man’s mind and what muscular consequences he may
demonstrate when blessed with the site of a curvaceous beautiful woman. But
there can be no man who will not be titillated by the physical endowment and
beauty of women. Speaking for myself, necessarily it is not the feeling of sex
and instant copulation that plough me down. Often it is the awe and admiration
for the beauty of the female physique and charm that enchants. Lust is
something incidental and not a necessary factor that haunts when confronted by
a titillating female physique. And voluptuousness necessarily need not arouse
the insistent craving for copulation, though it can be the catalyst. Certainly
the endowment given to the human species is the faculties to think and
restrain. But beasts seem to have expressed amazing prowess of restraint that
we believe they are incapable of. When a man does an act that besmirches the beast,
perhaps we need to redefine the lexicon.
How do we explain a father violating the daughter? What
mindset is it that sets off a group of men on a hapless woman? It is just not
the sickness of the mind but the decadence of the society we represent and the
civilisation that we laud about. Such creatures, are they comforting beings to
be unleashed in the society?
I will not be surprised if a media enterprise offers the
victim of the Delhi outrage a fat sum to tell her side of the story, her
experience of the gang act. Because such is the swelling of squalid, vicarious
pleasure that is festering like gangrene among us.
The Mayan prophecy of apocalypse on the 21 st Dec last would
not have been a cataclysm at all. It would have perhaps ensured the elimination
of a civilization that has renegade the right to be called civilised.