Brigade of gawkers

Recently, on a sultry noon, I was seeing snippets of some old flick on the telly. In a certain scene, the film’s young female protagonist, who is zooming ahead in her vehicle, suddenly stops at a traffic signal flashing red. As she tries flicking her gaze around, she happens to notice a middle-aged co-commuter, unblinkingly and unabashedly staring at her.

Looking visibly vexed, she vents out an outburst of vitriolic invectives at him. “Don’t you feel extremely mortified to be endlessly gawking at other women, especially when you have an enchantress-like wife, sitting bang behind you? It is exactly like making a stray dog sit on gem-studded throne, amidst gastronomic delicacies of food. Yet, it’d go after globs of dung, gathered on the  streets!” Spewing these hard-hitting phrases, she zips off in her vehicle.

On a lighter note, this gawking, or staring stupidly at the opposite sex, is typically a distinctive trait, predominantly found in the male species. This isn’t to say there are no female-gawkers! Maybe, they do it subtly unlike some males, who gape blatantly and brazenly at every woman passing by, including a she-dog! (Of course, bracketing exceptions of those ultra decent/dignified males, who feel it is infra-dig to their image to even cast a glance at female-folks, howsoever sensuous/ mesmerising they may be!)

Interestingly, there are umpteen kinds of gawking. The first one is apparently the aforesaid ‘lascivious or lustful’ gawking, wherein you feel the gawker’s prurient eyes doing a head-to-toe mental scan of your entire body! 

Then there is the ‘innocuous gawk’ where men stare at you the same way the same sex too is stared at! Even the ‘curious gawk’ is an innocuous type, where men casually look at you, scrutinising your apparel/accessories, maybe to glean gifting options for their mom or wife. The ‘inscrutable gawk’ is when gawking is done in a rather oblique way, where you simply aren’t able to comprehend their imperceptible intent. 

Next, there is that ‘squint-eyed gawk’, where you think you are being stared at, but in reality, their transfixed gaze would be on someone or something beside you! The ‘slit-eyed gawk’ is when the gawker’s eyes are screwed up, as though trying to examine a rare specimen.

In the ‘raccoon-eyes gawk’, the gawker’s wonder-struck eyes are like saucers, as if he has just sighted an alien. ‘Rubber-neck gawk’ is when the gawker’s head turns 360 degrees, till you are out of his vision ambits. Not to discount, “snow-on-top and fire-at-bottom” gawking of some aged men, with tufts of snowy-white scalp hair, who gawk at girls their grand-daughters’ age!

Now, just a lighthearted advice to those irredeemable gawkers. Under the justification of long virility, don’t obnoxiously keep gawking at other women in  a way that would embarrass not only the person being gawked at, but also the one (wife, sister, daughter) with you!