Friday, August 22, 2014

Glad Eye - Men Only

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glad eye:

to look at someone in a way that shows you find them sexually attractiveAll the men were giving her the glad eye.






Our God Indra is famous for his glad eye. He had several beauties like Rambha, Menaka, Tilottama and Urvasi in his ashram but he had to come down to earth and give his glad eye to Ahalya. And he was caught in the act by her husband, Sage Gautama, who cursed him that his entire body will henceforth display a thousand luminous Clefts-of-Venus-cum-Labia Majora. 

And Indra caught Gautama's feet and apologized fiercely, upon which his curse was reduced to the mere display of a thousand peacock's eyes on his body.

Apparently Indra consented. I guess he was being foolish...peacock's eyes are sort of digitally enhanced and enriched color copies of his original decoration...at least in my glad eye.

And Ahalya herself was cursed to be turned into a stone. And on her apologizing fiercely, Gautama, her husband reduced her punishment to a few thousand years till Sri Raamjee's holy feet touch her stone image.

Talking of Ramayan, I guess Sri Raamjee's brother, Sri Lakhmanjee, had the opposite of the glad eye...let us call it a dud eye. For, for all those 14 years he had kept watch, night and day, on his brother and his (Sri Raamjee's) wife, he never ever looked at Sitajee's body above her holy ankles.  

Here is the charming story:


This facet of Lakshman's personality was revealed after Ravan abducted Sita. While Ravan was flying to Lanka, Sita dropped her gold ornaments to leave a trail. When Bhagwan Shri Ram and Lakshman came across an earring, a bangle and an anklet, Ram questioned Lakshman whether he could recognize any of them as belonging to Sitaji. Lakshman replied:

"Naham janami kundale naham janami kankane,
Noopure chaiva janami nityam padabhivandanat."

"I do not know the earring nor the bangle. But I recognize the anklet for I bowed at Sitaji's feet everyday." (Valmiki Ramayana, Kishkindha Kand 6-22)






Hmm!

Here is quite the opposite news item:







Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has suspended a sessions court judge on charges of sexually harassing a female staff. M.T. Gaikwad, presiding over a special Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act Court in Mumbai, was suspended last week after a preliminary inquiry found substance in the complaint by the staff member about his “inappropriate behaviour”.

“The judge was suspended on August 14 after holding a preliminary inquiry,” Shalini Joshi, registrar general of the Bombay High Court, said. The complainant had alleged that the judge used to stare at her quite often in an offensive manner. During the preliminary inquiry, the allegation made by the complainant was corroborated by other employees, High Court sources said.  The preliminary inquiry was conducted by another special judge S.D. Tulankar, who presides over a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSOA) court.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/140821/nation-current-affairs/article/bombay-high-court-judge-removed-ogling-female-staff





I don't know what is with our Indian male judges. There was a news item not very long ago, not of their ogling, but of their irritability with their opposite sex's habit of shaking legs...not a glad eye but a tired eye:


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/02/shake-leg.html



But I guess our Indian women are a tad too touchy of their menfolk's glad eyes. I read that their American counterparts are not like them. 


I read this charming story in Readers' Digest in the roaring 1960s: This middle-aged American lady  got suspicious that her body is aging too fast and her youthful charms are fading like snowflakes in the sun. And she was into depression. So, one day she dressed herself up in her best and most revealing costume and make-up, bought a local train ticket, and occupied a seat in a rather lonely compartment. And pretty soon a youth got in and took his seat opposite hers. And started silently giving her his glad eye for a whole hour...peeking and missing. Then her station arrived and she got up. Before exiting the train, she looked at the lad and said:

"Thank You!"

in a most lovable accent.


Here is our Autocrat on the Rules of the Road in America:

...There are some very pretty, but unhappily, very ill-bred women, 
who don't understand the law of the road with regard to handsome 
faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to 
all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely 
female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of 
courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to 
define the person of the individual one meets, so as to avoid it in passing. 
Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology 
for a second, not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating 
homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a 
passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some 
vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. 
When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation 
countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a 
picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant 
to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them... 


...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table





Here is the lowdown for our touchy Indian ladies:


Dear Dr GP: Ours is an arranged marriage, now one week old. My husband loves and adores me and is devoted. But he has this embarrassing habit of ogling comely girls on the street and keeps turning his head when we walk together.

Dr GP: This is as old as Adam & Eve, psychologically speaking. It is known as “Lock-in-Radar Fixation”. This is a passing phase lasting another 60 years. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that Nature expects every man to love every woman but marry only one (at a time).


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/03/ask-dr-gp.html




And there was this other diverting news item recently:




Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan on Thursday demanded in the Rajya Sabha that action be taken against Radio Jockeys who joked about and mimicked MPs on air.
"The language used by radio jockeys on private channels is extremely objectionable. Now they've started giving news of the Parliament and they mimic a lot of MPs. I want to know whether the government will do something about it," Bachchan said.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-jaya-bachchan-demands-action-against-radio-jockeys-poking-fun-at-mps-2010843



Well, I haven't heard the 'objectionable mimicking' by the said Radio Jockeys and so can't comment on their actionable behavior. Opinions are varied: the other MPs (naturally) were not at all glad, and condemned the jockeys in question for their foul mouths.

On the other hand there have been contrary opinions in the media that, instead of raising the dozens of burning women's issues like their poverty, lack of toilets, gang rapes and hangings, the concerned lady MP (an ex-Bollywood star to boot) chose to come down heavily on poor radio jockeys who make a living out of their dim wits.

Like Sir Roger used to say:

"Much can be said on both sides" 


But I guess politicos these days are tending to be rather too touchy, unlike in my days of Pandit Nehru. There was a Shankar Pillai who started a magazine called Shankar's Weekly that was full of lampooning cartoons on our politicians. I recall that almost all the cartoons that filled about its dozen pages were drawn by Shankar himself. And he tutored many of his famous disciples like Abu Abraham, Ranga and Kutty.

And Pandit Nehru, our first PM, used to complain to Shankar if an issue of his weekly didn't have an 'objectionable' cartoon on Nehru...which he deemed a deliberate slight on himself:








To wind up this post it should be noted that a glad eye was not always considered a visual assault, willy or nilly, in the olden days. Here is PGW raising his glad eye to the very heavens:



It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly nude chappie, with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye.
– P.G. Wodehouse, ‘The Aunt and the Sluggard’



...Posted by Ishani

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2 comments:

Mayuri Srivastava said...

Excellent read , uncle. As usual a masterpiece. And happy birth day :)

G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com) said...

A million thanks, Mayuri!