“Hey, did you register for Technology (insert hobby) Society?” “You should go for TSA selections; I’ve heard they are the coolest people on campus.” “NO PREREQUISITES REQUIRED.” It was all chaos for the unsuspecting, innocent and starry-eyed freshers who hadn’t yet learnt the art of calling bullshit on some of the invaluable fundae given to them. Introductory seminars and society selections were in full swing at KGP, and freshers had been successfully hoodwinked into believing that theatre and debating were the two most important things in an institute of technology. Luckily for Sanskar Sharma (aka Sharma ji ka beta), he attained enlightenment after attending the introductory seminar of Tech-NO-Logic Misogyny Society (TMS). TMS seniors, who were rarely seen outside the boundaries of their beloved Halls of Residence, had graced Netaji to b̶r̶a̶i̶n̶w̶a̶s̶h guide freshers into joining the society.
Sanskar had always been confused about these Homo Sapiens females. Having had a normal childhood, his teen years soon started lacking interactions with those lacking a Y chromosome. And guess who was to blame? The “wise elders”. In their eyes, boys and girls who were once good friends, become horny lunatics in their teen years, with the sole intention:- bringing disgrace to their families. And well, our little, naive Sanskar became quite clueless about girls of his age; and also about women in general. TMS provided him with some much-needed perspective in the intro seminar.
The Joy Exterminating Examination had been a cakewalk for his female counterparts. It’s not like girls are actively discouraged from pursuing STEM careers, or like most Indian parents and teachers feel that it’s all a boys’ game. Well, bleeding out for a few days every month, with an assortment of issues like cramps, headaches, and mood swings, does not make it any more difficult, does it? Naah, they have it way too easy.
Menstruation is just a tantrum women throw every month because they “love the attention”(?) Why else would the hospital pharmacy on campus sell EVERY MEDICATION except pads at discounted rates to students? Staying true to the institute’s “ancient heritage”, the pharmacy also refuses to sell tampons. After all, it is only fitting to make women pay the full rate for their monthly tantrums.
Well, at least because of the introduction of supernumerary seats at IITs, the number of dumb and gullible girls has increased; waiting to become trophies to the “cream of the nation”. Just like the main building has a severe deficiency of female washrooms, IIT girls lack gratitude for the fact that they get to frolic around the “brilliant” males. Instead, they go around complaining about unimportant things like sexism on campus and whatnot. Women, eh? (aggressively drinks tea)
This supernumerary favouritism and mollycoddling of KGP girls notoriously peaked during the placement and internship seasons. Everyone knows that the companies coming are looking for female students just to fulfil their diversity criteria. It’s not like these criteria have been made to address the <20% involvement that Indian women have in the workforce. How could women be competent employees and assets to the company? We have already established that they can’t have any brains or skills. So obviously, the biggest and most prestigious companies in the world just hire all the dumb, idiotic girls. All the painstaking test-taking and interviewing process must be just a sham. Because the general belief on campus during this time was that the only criteria for KGP girls to get jobs, was, well, be a girl and be alive. There were rumours flying around that most girls sitting for placements and internships got their respective offers on meritorious terms, but the members of TMS were quick to shut that rumour down.
The TMS folks were once sitting down and reviewing each other’s CVs (which is a task that required a surprisingly short amount of time) when one of the members came rushing and announced that a female batchmate had gotten a day 1 offer from the Red Cow F1 Racing Team, for the post of a mechanical engineer. Everyone immediately started to complain that now even the formula racing industry had started providing girls with quota jobs. It didn’t occur to anybody that she was from mech (chose the branch because of interest), was an active member of the student formula racing club of KGP, had interned at British Motor Works, and was probably the most skilled automotive engineer of her entire batch. Just like that, every single girl’s offer was given the asterisk of this quota, and the TMS seniors jumped at any opportunity to blame all of their own life’s failures on this same quota.
Anyway, making it into the club was a piece of cake for Sanskar; he had been raised that way forever. For now, let’s just ignore the fact that he was one of the very few who had the balls to show up for selections.
TMS started having regular meetings, where all sorts of things necessary to become a successful m̶i̶s̶o̶g̶y̶n̶i̶s̶t gentleman were taught to the freshers. These knowledge sessions revolved around effective catcalling techniques, cracking “harmless” sexist jokes, ways to talk to women because they obviously have smaller brains (which woke Western cry-babies call “mansplaining”, but whatever), etc. They also played fun games, including one where the seniors showed the freshers pictures of their batchmates’ trophies (or, to use the politically correct term, “girlfriends”), and told them to rate the trophies on a scale of 1–10, which got the freshers really excited. And who knows? What if one of these TMS freshers went on to emulate that “Harvard dropout who got screwed by some Cambridge analysts” and maybe create a similar website for KGP? Perhaps, this game laid the foundations for his multi-billion dollar tech company, whose outdated social media platform is used by KGP students to share extremely important campus updates, and also boomers to share equally important cringe memes.
Like all other societies, the nerds at the poetry and prose society had organised an introductory seminar. The TMS freshers had been instructed to join the seminar for some sort of practical demonstration. Since the majority of the members of TMS were allergic to literacy, these instructions from their “admirable” seniors puzzled them. It started off with a senior member reciting a poem about her not-so-amicable breakup. Now her ex happened to be in TMS, where the male egos were as fragile as eggshells. So it only made sense for the TMS lads to throw their weight around, like KGP’s very own Peaky Blinders. How else could they preserve their toxic masculinity? She started off strong, and gained confidence, but was pulled down due to the loud chants of, “Bewafaa, bewafaa!” This little stunt completely broke her momentum, and she could only resume a minute or two later. But the damage was done; TMS’ purpose of demeaning her entire poetry, with just one word, was successful. For years to come, all anyone could remember from that evening was how some “bewafaa” poet hotshot had been rightfully called out for her “bewafaai.” Nobody recalled what she recited, because those are “unimportant” details.
Now our sweet and innocent Sanskar started liking a girl from his section. After spending hours of lecture classes staring at her, Sanskar decided to make a move. But he had no clue how. So, he went to the most knowledgeable and trustworthy people on campus, the TMS seniors and they gave him an invaluable funda in the art of trophy making. Having established that the girls coming to IIT have “inferior” brains, they absolutely love it when a guy takes time and effort to help them in their academics. What’s this weird notion of a guy and a girl helping each other because they’re friends and all? That’s pure malarkey. The least a girl can do to repay such a brilliant, helping and caring guy is to become his trophy, right? So just tutor the girl whom you like, and bingo, you’ve scored yourself a trophy. Sanskar dutifully embarked down this path but was surprised to find himself still trophyless by the end of the first semester.
So naturally, his second semester was spent stalking her day and night. After all, he was following what decades of Bollywood “romantic” movies have taught us. “Romance” isn’t complete unless you mix stalking in the concoction as well. He was sure that she would finally recognise his lust love for her and fall into his waiting arms. Much to his annoyance though, she chose to get traumatised instead. Women, eh? (aggressively drinks tea again) But now, who could have imagined? Following a girl around campus while she is just trying to go about her day would make her so deeply uncomfortable and scared that words alone cannot convey the true meaning of that feeling? It’s almost as if Bollywood isn’t real life.
Sanskar wasn’t alone in such actions. Men like him had always existed in KGP for aeons, a constant thorn in the lives of its female student population. Fed up with TMS and its antics, the women woke the generally slumbering administration up and formed the Women Students’ Cell. Disbanding the “venerable” TMS was one of the first things on the agenda of this newly formed body. After a long and hard battle, TMS was finally dissolved. Things have improved since then, but TMS’ imprint on the institute continues to linger.
Although Tech-NO-Logic Misogyny Society is an obviously fictional society, the incidents mentioned aren’t. Everything mentioned in the above piece is based on real-life events; these are the stories of real KGPians. Yes, girls have been rated, catcalled, stalked, etc., on campus. Right from the moment they set foot into the campus, women have to deal with a barrage of nonsense that is thrown their way ONLY because they’re women. Be it any kind of achievement in their KGP lives, it is always belittled and credited to their gender and any effort put in is ignored. The constant sexualization and casual misogyny faced everyday is so mentally exhausting, but the sadder part is that it can be prevented with just a little bit of empathy. There shouldn’t really be a need to be saying this, but simply not harassing anyone based on their gender goes a long way in making our society a better place to live in. Everyone has a lot of stuff to deal with, and it is very much possible to ensure that misogyny isn’t one of those things. This is not a men vs women issue, it’s more of a people vs prejudice thing. The Scholars’ Avenue hopes this piece has illuminated the prevalent issue of misogyny on campus, and earnestly hopes that it is snuffed out once and for all.