The Hindu
Pro-ILP activists believe implementation of ILP will protect and
safeguard the interest of the indigenous population in Meghalaya. Photo:
Ritu Raj Konwar
While the whole country is busy condemning racist tweets on Miss
America, debating Tendulkar’s retirement and reacting to Mallika
Sherawat’s birthday wish to Narendra Modi, a small state in the
north-east of India is struck with continuous agitation.
Reason – ILP .
Meghalaya that is remembered mostly only in geography lessons is facing
agitation for the past few weeks from 10 pressure groups including some
frontal organisations of regional political parties and the Khasi
Students’ Union.
These groups have been taking out rallies, picketing government offices,
calling for bandhs and imposing night curfews on national highways
across the state to push forward their demand for introducing Inner Line
Permits (ILP).
ILP is an official travel document issued by the Government of India to
allow inward travel of an Indian citizen into a restricted/protected
area for a limited period of time. The document is an effort by the
Government to regulate movement to certain areas located near the
international borders of India (according to Wikipedia).
Currently, the ILP is applicable in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland.
Situated in the north-eastern corridor of the country, Meghalaya is
bound on its north by Assam and on its south, Bangladesh. To check the
inflow of illegal migrants into the State, parties are in continuous
demand for implementation of ILP. The huge, labour-intensive coal mining
industry is one of the reasons for the inward flow of labourers from
various parts of the country. Also, since the state shares borders with
Bangladesh, the flow of illegal immigrants goes unnoticed. This influx
has led to the unemployment of local labourers. Also, the people believe
this influx is causing a demographic shift and threatening the tribal
minorities of the state.
Introduction of ILP is to regulate the entry and temporary stay of outsiders in general and migrant labourers in particular.
The High Level Committee on Influx had submitted its report last year
recommending the State Government for the implementation of ILP. But the
Mukul Sangma government has refused to do so and is looking for other
options to control the influx issue. Strengthening of Directorate of
Infiltration, appointment of labour officers and a strong Tenancy Act
are a few such options. Sangma is of the view that it will create
negative perception about the state and hinder development.
Talks between the government and the pro-ILP activists have failed.
Adamant NGOs have refused any assurance that these “other options” will
help in tackling the matter.
Result – A week long holiday for government employees (picketing), loss
of earnings for the daily wage earners and creating obstacle in
travelling of people via the state.
The ample airlifter has supported
missions both martial and humanitarian. Now Boeing has delivered its
last one to the Air Force as it gets ready to power down its C-17
assembly lines.
By Jonathan Skillings
The final Boeing C-17 Globemaster III for the
US Air Force takes off from a Boeing facility in Long Beach, Calif., on
September 12, 2013.(Credit:
Boeing)
Fighter jets have the sizzle. Bombers bring the oomph. But cargo aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster can always take pride in doing a good day's work.
The C-17 likely has many years of service ahead of it, but the US Air
Force won't be getting any new ones any more. Manufacturer Boeing
earlier this month delivered its final C-17
to the Air Force, bring the total over the last 20 years to 223. It has
also delivered 34 additional Globemasters to other customers in the UK,
India, and elsewhere.
The big cargo carrier has seen duty both in war zones such as Iraq
and Afghanistan, and in humanitarian efforts including Hurricane Katrina
relief in 2005 and post-Fukushima cleanup in 2011.
"C-17s are the workhorse for the U.S. Air Force in wartime and in
peace," said Chris Chadwick, Boeing Military Aircraft president, in a
statement marking the final delivery.
And these are big aircraft: 174 feet long and 55 feet high, with a
wingspan of just under 170 feet and a maximum gross takeoff weight of
585,000 pounds. (The max payload capacity is a brawny 170,900 pounds).
Even so, the C-17 Globemaster III can operate from "small, austere
airfields" with runways as short as 3,500 feet, according to the Air
Force.
The maiden flight of the C-17 was September 15, 1991, almost exactly
22 years to the day ahead of the first flight of the 223rd C-17 on
September 12 of this year. The Air Force first took delivery of a
production model in June 1993.
While Boeing has completed its contractual obligations to the Air
Force, it still has a smattering of C-17 aircraft to build, an
additional 22 for other customers around the world. But then that's it
-- save, of course, for years of support and modernization yet to come.
Boeing said this week that it will finally cease C-17 production in 2015.
A loadmaster (center) greets troops boarding a C-17 Globemaster III in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in July 2013.
Beer is what economists call an elastic good;
the more it costs, the less of it people buy. But at Oktoberfest,
Germany’s debaucherous annual beer festival in Munich, the rule doesn’t
exactly hold. In fact, it gets flipped on its head.
When
this year’s beer festival kicks off on Saturday, more than 7 million
beer drinkers will gather to drink some 15 million liter glasses. If
they are sober enough, they will notice that their lagers, ales and
stouts cost more than they did last year. As is the case almost every
year, the price of beer at the Oktoberfest has risen faster than
inflation, according to UniCredit Research’s Oktoberfest 2013 report.
The average beer at this year’s festival will cost €9.66 ($13)—3.6% more
than it did last year.
Considering
that inflation in Germany is currently hovering somewhere closer to
1.5%, festival goers should be outraged. And yet, like they have
virtually every year before this, they will buy and drink more beer per
head than they did the year before. Beer consumption per capita at the
annual beer festival (the red line in the chart below) has been rising
steadily since the mid 1990s.
UniCredit Research
And it isn’t as though beer prices on the whole in Germany are outpacing inflation. Bottled beer prices have been rising at a much slower pace than Oktoberfest beer prices.
UniCredit Research
Normally,
beer buyers shy away from this kind of price-hike craziness. “On
average, a 1% increase in the price of beer triggers a roughly .3%
decline in the demand,” according the report. But Oktoberfest, it
appears, is anything but average. Dating all the way back to 1980, a 1%
increase in beer prices at the event has, rather incredibly,
corresponded with a 0.3% increase in demand. Oktoberfest beer,
the report explains, falls into the category of what economists call a
Giffen paradox, whereby the demand for and price of a good increase
simultaneously.
The
festival as a whole follows a similarly peculiar pattern of behavior.
Oktoberfest-goers have continued to spend more per capita, despite hikes
in the price of, well, everything. UniCredit’s Wiesn Visitor Price
Index (WVPI), which tracks the cost of visiting the event by accounting
for public transportation, beer and food prices, has increased by 4%
every year since the bank began to track it in 1985.
UniCredit Research
As
with so many other festivals, Oktoberfest has become something very
different to what it once was. When originally conceived back in 1810,
it was held to celebrate the marriage of Bavaria’s Crown Prince. Over
200 years later, it has become something of a beer-drinker’s mecca, and
economic wonder. Without a detailed understanding of the costs involved
in hosting the event—and, really, whether they have been rising quickly
as the festival’s beer prices have—it’s probably safest to say that
until beer-drinkers stop celebrating the price hikes, Oktoberfest is
going to keep pouring them on. (The organizers of Oktoberfest didn’t
respond to a request for comment.)
Earlier
this month I requested the input of an astrologer via Twitter. I had
moved to New York City a week earlier and, in that span of time, had
suffered a series of small but aggravating mishaps, including but not
limited to: carrying my suitcase six flights up the apartment building next
to mine; subsequently trying, for 20 minutes, to enter the wrong
apartment; purchasing the wrong kitchen cart at IKEA and having to get
in the return aisle immediately afterward; taking an under-prepared cab
driver on an unnecessary loop around my Lower East Side neighborhood in
an attempt to direct him to Brooklyn; breaking two of my new roommate’s
ceramic dishes and one of her Champagne flutes; losing my favorite
bracelet; and riding the subway in the wrong direction for eight stops.
This is likely more or less what anyone (and especially anyone with
below-average grace) moving into a tiny apartment in a big, unfamiliar
city should expect, but it seemed like a lot to go wrong in a week even
still, even for me. I felt notably, cosmically unlucky, and I wanted to
know when exactly I could expect it to stop. So I did the modern
equivalent of visiting a soothsayer, and I tweeted at Miller of
Astrology Zone in hopes she would tweet back to tell me I could expect
the rest of the month to be blessed and error-free.
Although she’s known for responding fairly frequently to astrological
inquiries via Twitter, she didn’t respond to mine. She may well have
been too busy that day, but I suspect she knew my string of screw-ups
was far from over and didn’t have the heart to tell me.
I felt notably, cosmically unlucky, and I wanted to know when exactly I could expect it to stop.
As with most other supernatural/paranormal/pseudoscientific
phenomena, astrology captures my interest for reasons I can’t really
explain. If pressed to state my level of belief in it, the strongest
support I could give it would be to say, “I don’t know … not really?”
But here I am anyway, reading my horoscope every morning before work.
Two of them, actually, from apps I’ve downloaded onto my iPhone—the
aforementioned Astrology Zone, which provides an incredibly detailed and
frequently (if inadvertently) funny monthly outlook, and another called
The Daily Horoscope. I keep my “lucky” days and “most romantic” days in
mind, vaguely, and though I don’t think they have ever been accurate, I will always give the next month’s a chance.
When a stranger who follows me on Twitter emailed me to ask why so
many “seemingly otherwise smart” people believed in astrology, that’s
probably the kind of cognitive dissonance he was talking about. Despite
near-total scientific dismissal and a penchant for getting even the
haziest predictions wrong much of the time, astrologers are still
compelling to many of us. Various polls
typically put the figure for true belief among Americans, Canadians,
and the British at roughly 25 percent—a figure that would likely be much
higher if only it incorporated those who kind of, sort of
believe, as well as those who claim not to believe at all, but still
read their horoscopes sometimes anyway, just to check, as a joke.
THAT SUCH A SUBSTANTIAL number of us could believe in
something with so little to support it has plagued various scientists
and thinkers since the 17th century, when developments in astronomy and
physics undermined most (if not all) of astrology’s legitimacy. It’s
been, at various times, illegal; fortune telling was outlawed in New York City
in 1967. The law, which is still on the books, is little enforced, but
it speaks to the particular disdain reserved for people who take that
kind of thing seriously. (It’s also, no doubt, meant to protect people
from spending their money on something stupid, but still, the government
only steps in on some of those stupid things.)
The belief in astrology has also been the subject of academic study. A 1997 article entitled “Belief in Astrology: A Social-Psychological Analysis”
by researchers Martin Bauer and John Durant used 1988 British survey
data to test a number of hypotheses that might explain why certain
people are more likely to check their star charts than others. Among the
likeliest contenders: first, the level of structure and detail implicit
in astrology appeals to people with “intermediate” levels of scientific
knowledge (because they like the theory and the process, if not the
rigor required to disprove it); second, a belief in astrology reflects
“metaphysical unrest” most present in those with religious backgrounds
who have since moved away from organized religion; and third,
astrological belief is more prevalent among those with an, ah,
“authoritarian character.” I can’t speak for everyone, but on a personal
level: OK, fair enough.
Bauer and Durant found strong support for hypotheses one and
two—belief in astrology coincides with scientific interest and education
up to a point, but then drops off among those inclined to true
scientific rigor, and it does indeed occur more frequently among those,
as the authors put it, “alive to religion” but not currently involved in
a religious community—but, somewhat surprisingly according to previous
literature, none for three. Some believers in astrology might happen to
be authoritarian, but there are a number of other traits that predict
belief more significantly. Frequent horoscope readers are more likely to
be women, for one, and single, and in search of a greater sense of
control (none of which are factors that have ever lent much credibility
to any practice whose enthusiasts are defined by them).
What may be even more notable in Bauer and Durant’s findings, though,
lies in their breakdown of the survey data. Among those who answered
affirmatively to having ever read an astrology report (73 percent of all
respondents), 44 percent responded that they do so often or fairly
often. But only six percent of those who admitted to having ever read an
astrology report said they took what they read seriously or even fairly
seriously. Sixty-seven percent said they took what they read “not very
seriously,” and 22 percent said they didn’t take it seriously at all.
Whether these figures are strictly accurate or at least partly the
result of respondents’ self-consciousness, it’s hard to say. Perhaps,
like me, that 67 percent and 22 percent are mostly speaking of last month’s horoscope. Next month’s could be totally spot on.
Guwahati, Sep 19 : Another rhino was killed for its one-horn in Kaziranga national park on Tuesday evening. The forest officials fired an attack with the poachers but they were successful in escaping with the animal horn. AK 47 and .303 rifles‘s empty cartridges have been found near the dead rhino.
Divisional Forest Officer of the park, SK Seal Sarma, said that the officials recovered the carcass of the male rhino from Burhanpur range of Assam during a forest patrol on Wednesday morning. Only the last, poachers had killed a rhino and a rhino calf in the range.
This year, a total of 22 rhinoceroses have already been killed in Kaziranga National Park. The figure is much worse than the previous year when the poachers killed 40 rhinos in the forest areas of Assam.
Assam's Kaziranga National Park is UNESCO’s World Heritage Site.
In response to the rising number of poaching incidents in the state of Assam, the Assam Forest Protection Force (AFPF) was set up by the government. Around 200 AFPF guards are deployed in the park but this has not brought a decrease in the incidents.
In order to protest against the government’s inability to keep a check on rhino killing on Kaziranga, the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) stranded the National Highway near Kohora. They also burnt effigies of government authorities.
Horn and tusk trade
Rhino horn has been poached since time immemorial for its demand as a constituent in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and is believed to be effective in reducing high fevers and convulsions and controlling haemorrhage.
An American reporter in Syria sits down to talk to four
Western-educated, radical jihadists about the war and what they think
Washington should do. By Anna Therese Day.
I
knocked over my tea. The explosion outside the house in northern Syria
startled me. But the Pakistani, the Kuwaiti, and the two Saudi fighters
breaking the Ramadan fast with me seemed unperturbed. “You wouldn’t be
so scared if you had Allah, Anna!” one of them said.
Fighters from the Islamist Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra clean
their weapons in Aleppo December 24, 2012. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)
The four young men were members of a group called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams—more commonly known as ISIS.
It is an organization that has close ties to Al Qaeda. One of the
quandaries for Washington as it approaches greater involvement in Syria
is how to try to bring down the hated Assad government, accused of using
chemical weapons on its own people, without handing power—and perhaps
those weapons—to radical jihadists such as ISIS. For their part, these
men wanted to convince me of the righteousness of their cause.
All
four of my dinner companions had left their respective countries to
join the “Syrian jihad against the Shia donkeys,” as one put it; each
said he was eager for his turn to become a “martyr for the global
jihad.” Yet, despite our many differences, our table shared three common
characteristics: we are all under 30, we are all Western-educated
college graduates, and we all speak fluent English.
“I first started learning English from American cartoons, but when I got older, I really liked Boy Meets World.
Do you know it?” asked 22-year-old Ayman. With his wide brown eyes and a
patchy attempt-at-a-beard, he looked like a teenager next to his older
brother and their stone-faced friends.
Had
we not been just miles away from the battlefield of Aleppo, much of the
dinner conversation would have been normal chatter among peers: the
young men asked about my family, my schooling, and of course, my love
life. They spoke fondly of their college days in Canada and the United
Kingdom, and said they hoped to find a Syrian bride because “Syrian and
Lebanese [women] are the most beautiful of the Muslims.”
Yet,
paradoxically, as they talked about building a future on this earth,
they also talked about a future in Paradise, as martyred suicide
bombers. “It is a dream,” said Mohammed, his eyes glazing over as he
spoke. The 24-year-old Kuwaiti engineering graduate explained that the
selection process for suicide missions is very competitive and that
“becoming a martyr” during Ramadan specifically is “like extra
points with Allah.” Among its recent operations, ISIS carried out
suicide attacks against the Mennagh Airbase of northern Syria, which was
later seized by the rebels.
“Tell America: we will fight you where ever you kill more Muslims. We are ready when you are.”
“ISIS
has proven remarkably adept at spreading their military resources
across large swathes of territory, joining battles at the pivotal
moment, and exploiting their superior organizational structures to
establish political control and influence over territory,” says Charles
Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre
in London. Of the numerous armed groups in the Syrian opposition, ISIS
is not one of the larger forces. Various estimates put their numbers
somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters. Yet their affiliation with
the decade-old
Islamic State of Iraq organization, once led by the infamous Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, has afforded them the international financial support and
guerrilla combat experience necessary to set them apart from the local
Syrian groups.
Before
they joined ISIS, Ayman and his older brother, Ahmad, were part of the
group called Jabhat al-Nusra. “We are like the special forces here,”
brags Ahmad. They switched to ISIS when the current Islamic State of
Iraq leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the merger of the two groups in April. The merger was later rejected
by both Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Golani in Syria, and by the core
al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri, presumed to be hiding in Pakistan. But,
despite minor clashes, the two groups have coordinated operations with other opposition forces in and around the cities of Aleppo, Idlib, al-Raqqa, and Deir ez Zour.
“ISIS
and Jabhat al-Nusra are essentially friendly rivals in that both groups
represent themselves as the al-Qaeda presence in Syria,” explains
Lister. “Politically, the two groups have subtly different outlooks,
with Jabhat al-Nusra still stressing its Syrian nature and the
limitation of its objectives to the Syrian theater. Conversely, ISIS has
a more transnational look.”
That
international aspect is precisely what brought Faraz, a 24-year-old
Pakistani to ISIS. Faraz, who lived for seven years in the UK, spoke
passionately about Western human rights abuses in the Muslim world, and
said he returned to Pakistan to stand with his fellow Pakistanis against
“the new era of American drone wars.” After two years in Pakistan, he
moved to Syria because he realized there’s “actually a war against the
entire Muslim world by the US, Israel, Europe and Iran.” (He does not
consider those who practice Shia Islam, the dominant religion of Iran,
to be Muslim. The Assad regime in Syria is largely composed of Alawites,
who belong to another Shia-linked sect regarded as heretical by
Al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists.)
These
young men agreed to an interview with an American publication in secret
and on the conditions of anonymity, each seeing value in sharing his
perspective with Western audiences. This openness is a major departure
from the party lines of both ISIS and al-Nusra, both of which have been linked to the kidnapping of Western reporters and aid workers. Dozens of journalists have been taken hostage since the Syrian conflict began, with the numbers spiking in recent months. Al-Nusra and ISIS also have been accused of kidnapping members of the opposition that disagree with them.
Mohammed
vehemently denied these claims. “We only detain spies—regime spies,
Western spies, and spies from Iran. This is a war so we have to do what
is necessary to make us strong enough to defeat the Shia,” he insisted.
“If
any of the prisoners are really journalists, then I am sorry for that,”
shrugged Ayman. “But a million journalists have told the Syrian story,
and no story has changed the situation. So if we have to choose between
our security and that the world will wake up from one article, of course
we will choose our security! We are up against the E-Army [hackers who
support the Syrian regime], Iran, the CIA, and the Israelis so we have
to!”
Despite
their animosity towards the United States and its allies, over the
course of several meetings, all four men consistently called for
Washington to arm the rebels with more sophisticated weaponry. In the
most recent interviews, however, the tone shifted to a deeper mistrust
and paranoia about Western involvement in Syria.
“Even
if I didn’t have this, I wouldn’t take one from the Americans,” said
Faraz, as he patted his Kalashnikov. “The Israelis would make sure it
exploded in my hand. You [Americans] have your reasons to get involved
now, and the reasons are not humanitarian.” He recited a long litany of
U.S. military actions in the Muslim world that rarely if ever saved
lives, and most often brought death and destruction.
“If
the U.S. dares to ‘put boots on the ground’ here, they need to know
that we will blow them out of Syria,” said Mohammed, staring intensely.
“If they want another battle with us, we are ready for them like we are
in Afghanistan, like we are in Iraq. If the US cared about the Syrian
people, they would have done something before 100,000 Muslims [Syrians]
were killed.”
With this, Faraz added: “Tell America: we will fight you where ever you kill more Muslims. We are ready when you are.”
As the glamour of smoking rapidly fades and smoking sections shrink,
those still living with the habit are beginning to be seen as outcasts,
holding their tiny burning scarlet letters for people to ridicule.
Laura Noel
has always been attracted to individuality, searching for people to
photograph who aren’t afraid to go against the grain. Noel has a
background in public policy, and in late 2005 after seeing smoking
policies in her native Atlanta begin to rapidly ban smoking in
restaurants, bars, and other public places, she realized she had found a
new pocket of society on which to focus.
“I became interested in people that are willing to continue to smoke
in the face of what is essentially public condemnation,” Noel said. “I’m
not defending it, and I’m not a smoker, but I was intrigued by people
willing to do something that most people know as not only deadly but
also disgusting.”
Micki on Her Porch, 2006
Laura Noel
Barry Behind the Lab, 2010
Laura Noel
Brittany in Her Bathroom, 2007
Laura Noel
Initially Noel took portraits of smokers while they were engaged in
other activities, but she shifted focus once she began to notice another
psychological angle. Noel said she was interested in the ways in which
smokers are able to stop what they’re doing and take on a more
contemplative look. “If you think about it, there is this break in the
day that smoking gives to you, a chance to stop whatever you’re doing …
you have a chance to pause in this incredibly hectic world we live in,”
she said.
In order to keep as natural a look as possible, Noel doesn’t ask her
subjects to smoke where they normally wouldn’t. She spends anywhere from
10 minutes to a couple of hours with her subjects—enough for a single
cigarette, or in cases with more aggressive smokers, her subjects “are
borderline sick by the time we get through!”
For “Smoke Break”
she said she tried to balance the subconscious part of her brain with
the “thinking part” in order to form ideas about the photograph with her
subjects while also maintaining a sense of normalcy in the images. She
said she tries to make her subjects feel at ease about the process; the
fact they smoke helps since it automatically adds an element of
relaxation to the shoot.
Azia Outside Work, 2012
Laura Noel
Julie on Her Patio, 2006
Laura Noel
Anonymous Behind Her Room, 2006
Laura Noel
Noel said she was surprised by the number of people who turned down
her request to be photographed for the series. “I thought all of my
artist friends would line up, and I was really surprised by people who
are out there in other parts of life but didn’t want to be known as a
smoker,” she recalled.
Currently Noel is working on other series, but she still shoots an
occasional portrait for “Smoke Break” and hopes to have enough material
to publish a book about the project. Her goal is to reach a wider range
of people of different socio-economic backgrounds and possibly to find
people outside of the Atlanta area.
Regardless of the subject, the purpose for Noel remains the same.
“I’m trying to bring out some of the other emotions when you think of
yourself as you smoke, some are peaceful, some have a bit of an edge …
some people smoke out of defiance, rebellion, and they don’t care what
other people think, and I admire that part of [it],” she said.
I’m a fairly tattooed guy, but a simple t-shirt hides most of my
tattoos. Both of my upper arms, though, are covered with colorful,
intricate pieces, and these are only partly obscured by short sleeves.
And this is a problem—not because I don’t want people to see this body
art; of course I do. But curiosity gets the better of many otherwise
sane people’s social sensibilities.
If you have a tattoo that peeks out into the world, I’m sure you
instantly know what I’m talking about. For those who are still in the
dark, let me give you a few examples.
One recent morning I went to my local convenience store to get a cold
beverage. The cashier rang me up and, as I was pulling my wallet out to
pay, I could see her eyes flicking back and forth between my arms. She
was staring—intently, with a glint of wonder—at the tattooed parts of my
arms exposed between sleeve and elbow.
I didn’t mind this. But then I saw a telling grin on her face. And
before I could finish thinking, “Oh no, don’t do it,” she wordlessly
reached over the counter and lifted up my shirtsleeve. You know, so she
could get a better look at my inked flesh. As if she knew me. As if she
wasn’t a cashier brazenly manipulating the clothing of a customer
without so much as a warning.
This anecdote is not anomalous, I assure you. It happens entirely too
often. And I’m lucky enough to be a 20-something male, which means the
violation I feel doesn’t begin to compare to what others I’ve heard from
have experienced.
Consider a 20-something female friend of mine. She has a lovely
tattoo on her shoulder blade and back; you can see part of it when she’s
wearing a tank top. And some strangers who get that glimpse just go
head and pull back the clothing’s edge in order to get a better gander
at the artwork on her skin.
Or take this even more extreme example: Another friend with an
extensive leg tattoo was standing on the sidewalk when she felt
something on her leg. She looks back and there’s a middle-age
woman—oddly enough all the perpetrators in the stories I’ve heard have
been middle-aged women—reaching to pull up my friend’s skirt so she
could get a better view of the leg tattoo. My friend, who was rightfully
taken aback, slapped the woman and walked away upset.
Would the strangers in these stories be considered anything less than
uncouth, handsy violators if there weren’t a tattoo there that they
simply had to see? Why does a tattoo suddenly change the rules of what people think is and isn’t acceptable to do to other bodies?
Yes, tattoos are outwardly facing—some more so than others—and some
are quite eye-grabbing. So it’s no surprise they draw attention. But
they’re also inextricable from a person’s body. When you stare at a
tattoo, perhaps you think this is like starting at a work of art in a
gallery. It’s not.
Tattoo etiquette is nothing new, there are a number of attempts to address it through guidelines, rants, and raves, which all amount to the same general principle:
“Tattoo etiquette dictates that you simply ask the tattooed person if
you can take a look at their tattoo and if you can touch it.”
But these broad statements do not seem to have made anything better.
In fact, based on my experience and that of the people I’ve talked to,
things are actually getting worse. People are becoming bold, more
willing to touch and grab at others’ ink.
I’m glad that tattoos are no longer as taboo as they used to be, and
that, for the most part, having tattoos does not push you to the fringes
of polite society. But too much of that society still sees body art as
an excuse to be impolite. It’s a tattoo. It’s not a sign that says, “Touch here!”
By Sayanti Chakraborty
