Ashish Pandey & Co. appear to be ‘woke’ — his pink pants are very metrosexual. Yet he totes a gun, while his friends use ‘transsexual’ and ‘#MeToo’ as insults.
An allegedly drunken man wearing pink pants pulls out a pistol, threatens a couple, abuses them, and then speeds off in his BMW. All this happens after a raging party his businessman friend threw at the Hyatt Regency in south Delhi late Saturday.
The entire time, his three friends are egging him on, and joining in to insult the couple with sexist, trans-phobic, and degrading remarks.
As he drives away, the woman filming the incident, who has been sitting in the backseat of his BMW, looks out of her window and calls the man being threatened a “f***ing transsexual mother****er”.
The man in pink pants, identified as Ashish Pandey, is the son of former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Rakesh Pandey and brother of current BSP MLA Ritesh Pandey.
But there’s more than meets the eye in this viral video.
Masculinity in pink pants
At the centre of this one-sided contest is something that shines even brighter than a weapon and a golden dress — the pair of bright pink pants, which have come to define Ashish about as much as the gun he’s brandishing.
Even the media zeroed in on this particular detail: ‘Pandey-monium in pink pants’, ‘The Man In Pink Pants Said I Will Kill You: Victim’s Police Statement’ and ‘Pink pants, expletives and a gun’ are some of the headlines that flashed across computer and TV screens Monday. Pandey’s attire piqued public curiosity to such a degree that the term ‘pink pants’ was trending even in Pakistan late Monday.
It’s ludicrous to think that a piece of apparel can dictate the terms of discourse when a serious threat of violence is being discussed, but perhaps it’s worth getting into.
Fashion designer Ashish Soni says: “Pink pants have been associated with metrosexuality in men from the 1990s.”
Men — specifically hyper-masculine, powerful men with guns — avoid associations with stereotypically ‘feminine’ colours out of fear that it might emasculate them.
Thus, on the one hand, Ashish and his friends appear, at least outwardly, to fulfil all the prerequisites of civilised ‘woke-ness’ — they are rich, educated, ‘classy’ in the literal sense, and seemingly liberated enough to embrace unapologetic metrosexuality.
However, a closer look at the video exposes the superficial nature of their ‘modern’ sensibilities. The same metrosexual-looking man wearing pink pants is brandishing a gun, while his friends use the word ‘transsexual’ as an insult.
Allowances are made for Ashish because of the position he holds within his friend circle, as well as within the larger context of society. He escapes, by virtue of his privilege, the trans-phobic bigotry reserved for the ‘outsiders’. Just as these women will fight for feminism when their own upper-class friends are in the line of fire, but the other girl at the bar is a “hoe”.
It is nothing short of hypocritical. Unfortunately, it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you’re rich and powerful, everything is admissible, even by your bigoted pals.
Also read: What do you do when your woke friend is named in #MeToo
#notMeToo
At a certain point, one of Ashish’s friends can also be heard calling the woman being harassed a “hoe”, short for whore.
She then follows up with a comment directed at the woman. “#MeToo, up your f***ing a** you skinny little b***h,” she yells.
The woman in the front seat turns her head towards her friend in disbelief. “Skinny? You’ve given her a compliment!” she laughs.
In one instance, these women have slut-shamed a woman being harassed, commented on her weight, and trivialised the #MeToo movement by using it as a mocking insult.
Even as the world continues to struggle against the policing of women’s bodies, to be rich continues to mean ‘looking rich’ — a picture perfect world where ‘fatness’ has no place.
Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of feminist publishing pioneer Kali for Women, says: “Misogyny and sexism are often inextricably linked with class and caste. It shows that the women really don’t care that they might be in a similar situation themselves sometime, which speaks more of their class positions and less about their gender.
“Body shaming has always been a part and method of harassment.”
Also read: India’s ‘Raja Beta’ culture: Here are five ways to raise your boys
Power and privilege
Every moment of the altercation reeks with an understanding that the consequences will be few, and if the inconvenience of accountability does arise, it will be dealt with.
“Main Lucknow se hoon. Khuli khet mein gaad dunga (I’m from Lucknow, I’ll bury you in an open field),” Ashish can be heard telling a man just outside the camera’s field of vision.
Just before this, his companions express sheer disbelief that the man being harassed — with a gun, mind you — has the audacity to show them the middle finger. It seems that they’re more used to having a weapon wielded in a five-star hotel bar fight than being insulted by someone.
“Sahil, he’s f***ing doing this to us,” the woman in the gold dress cries, making the middle finger sign with her hand. “He’s giving us the middle finger Sahil,” she says, complaining. Meanwhile, her friend, to reiterate, is holding a loaded pistol.
I hide this part of Delhi from my other friends, carrying the embarrassment of this ‘Tu janta nahi mera baap kaun hai’ attitude like an albatross around my neck. I am rich in this country, but God forbid I am clubbed with that 1 per cent which doesn’t believe the other 99 per cent exist.
The truth is, 36 per cent of MPs and MLAs are facing trial in 3,045 criminal cases as of 2018. Whether it’s the Manu Sharmas of Haryana, or a BJP MLA’s son thrashing a toll booth worker in Uttar Pradesh, this culture of toxic masculinity and shameless impunity is fed to powerful children in their silver spoons.
Add a BMW, a south Delhi hotel, and an endless supply of alcohol, and you get a cocked gun — in every sense of the word.