In Continuum.

Chauvinistic Pigs

In ancient and parts of our modern day India, the caste system has been a tradition of the society for thousands of years. Called the Varna - which literally means 'color', the people in ancient India were divided into different castes according to what families they were born into. The upper class was the Brahmins, the highest group of people in the society that comprised mostly of priests and the nobles. Then there were the Kshatriyas, or the warriors of the society. They were probably soldiers with higher ranks, and they were followed by the Vaisyas, the commoners and the merchants. The Sudras were the most common class of people in India back then, a class of people most of us would belong to if we were to live in that era, with the minority of the population being in the Pariahs class, or the untouchables. In some states of India, such practices are still a tradition, and people are still treated differently from others according to their heritage. This is just an example of what I learn in school these days, and I must admit that it is rather interesting to observe such a class system in school as well.

You cannot run away from politics in school, even if you try your best to avoid such conflicts. The act of avoiding, automatically puts you into the lowest class of people in the context of a school. It doesn't matter if you are a pacifist or a dictator. Everybody has their places in the context of a school according to the perception of others, it is like a giant fishing net that you cannot run away from. I must say that I have been fortunate to experience little of such politics in my own social circle, simply because of the lack of jerk-offs in our course. It is quite a rarity to have people with the same ideals, and be able to avoid conflicts thus far in our lives with each other. However, this is not nearly the case in other course, as I have observed in my COM337 lectures.

The social class of students seems to be more evident in that class, with the seniors dividing themselves into different classes, consciously or sub-consciously. There are people doing presentations, whom I have never seen before, because of how low key they are in class. There are the people who are always voicing out their complains, but always under their breaths and never the courage to speak loud enough for Rosemary to hear. Then there are the girls on the right side of the lecture theater, the top of the food chain. They are the lions of the savannas, the tigers of the Indian forests, the jaguars of the Amazon. They are at the tip of the food chain, thinking themselves as the sole and rightful ruler of the whole ecosystem at school, and nobody should stand above them, only below.

It was not difficult for most people to set their eyes on that group of girls, which consists of about seven or eight. The same seven or eight chauvinistic pigs would gather together in the corner and talk amongst themselves throughout the whole lesson without any sign of exhaustion. Topics seem to be inexhaustible amongst them, and you start to wonder how it is possible to have so much things to talk about. We've seen this sort of people in high school movies, with the cheerleaders marching down the corridors, or the football players hanging out next to the football fields. They rule the corridors, the running tracks, the gym, the cafeteria, and pretty much every inch of the school compound if they want to claim their rights. That is the of people these chauvinistic pigs are, living in their own sugar-coated world, thinking that they are superior to everybody else and thus, not obliged to be considerate at all.

It has been a weekly practice for the cohort in COM337, to have presentations of various chapters during our lessons. I was lucky enough to have their full attention during my presentation on the first week, but the same cannot be said for the other groups whom I have seen, struggling to gain the attention of the other students while those pigs chattered away under their breaths. 'Under their breaths' is really quite an understatement, considering the fact that they are so distracting that nobody is able to focus on the presentations at all. But it's not like they mind the irritated glares, the frustrated looks, the soft sucking of the tongue that makes the "Psst" sound whenever somebody feels annoyed. They go on with their small talks, they carry on with their gossiping, oblivious to the rest of the world who have already brandished our swords to cut them into a dozen pieces.

In a way, you cannot blame them for having this illusion of being at the top of the food chain. They do dress the way the people at the top of the food chain would in any society, and they certainly play the parts very well. The girls in this group are our seniors, only in the number of years spent in this school. Mentality wise, they are probably a few evolution cycles away from us, trotting around their own clearing of small talks with their flashy wardrobes and their carefully curled eyelashes. They hardly wear enough clothes to cover up themselves, treating the school as a fashion show of sorts. I mean, our COM337 lessons are usually at nine in the morning, you start to wonder where these pigs actually found time to dress themselves up - if you call those clothes hanging from their shoulders, dress at all. Believe me, when a guy says that the girls are dressing too little for their own good, they are dressing too little for their own good. A little skin is nice, and a little cleavage would be great. But to have half your breasts flowing our of your dress and your spotted butt cracks showing from your pants, it's not beautiful anymore. It's vulgar.

There is that girl in the back of the class, always brushing her hair back with the back of her hand for no apparent reason at all. It's like the habit of biting one's nails, she brushes her hair to make sure that her pretty little face is shown properly to the rest of the world without any obstructions. Her top is usually translucent in nature, showing the tip of bra she wears to school. Pink ones, purple ones, and today she was wearing a white one with small flowers dotted all over. It doesn't take a pervert to notice such things, because my fasting Malay friends noticed the same thing - and they are supposed to be free of such sensual pleasures. You can't blame a woman to look at a man's penis if he is streaking in the middle of a soccer field, can you.

If prostitutes around the world has a template, it must have been modeled after this other girl in the group. She wears close to nothing most of the time, with her shorts reaching just below her butt cheeks, and her top covering just inches above her nipples. They are always rolling off her chest like the curtains to a staged play, eager to show off the actors and actresses. But the problem is, none of us are really very interested in seeing what is underneath those clothes. You see, I believe that a girl with a great body is way more attractive when she tries to cover things up. It gives her that sense of mystery, that elusive quality that becomes so attractive overtime. However, if you are showing off your bosoms every week by wearing close to nothing at all, it just seems to the rest of the population that you are trying too hard to show off. Besides, it doesn't matter if you have the breasts of Salma Hayak, or the ass Jessica Alba. If your face looks like the leftover turkey from the Christmas last year, nothing else matters anymore. Nobody is going to put a plastic bag over your face when admiring those bosoms of yours. Admiration usually involves the inspection of the whole body, and you fail miserably in the face category. Though, it's not like you pass with flying colors for the rest of the body anyway. You are just - simply put - ugly.

Then there is the chief of all chauvinistic pigs. She is Napoleon in George Orwell's Animal Farm, the leader of the pack, the fattest of all pigs, the dictator, the obnoxious fascist, the bitch. I've seen her during our orientations, smoking a cigarette while she sat by the side of the road, explaining the rules of the game that we were about to play that day. There she sits in the corner of the lecture theater week by week, wearing pretty much the same kind of clothes and staring into nothingness most of the time, if she is not chattering away with her friends behind about some other bitch in school or the latest cosmetics. Her excess fats flow out from either side of her tight jeans, and this point is not redeemed by the fact that she has a face that looks worse than a road kill. Place a raccoon in the middle of the road and wait for a truck to run over it. The remainder of the raccoon is probably going to look like Brad Pitt and George Clooney combined compared to her face. Despite the presentations going on, she would sneeze like an earthquake, laugh like a parrot, snort like a wild boar with a twig up its ass, and stare into space like a child with severe dementia.

There are times when the bunch of us would feel like stabbing those girls in their eyeballs, or shave those breasts off so that they can't flaunt them in the future. It is just one of the many things that I fantasize about doing, in contrary to what they may want the male populations to be fantasizing about. I would imagine them in a puddle of blood, with a kitchen knife stuck out of their chest and their eyeballs poked out. It'd be quite a sight, and I am sure the rest of the class will aid me in the disposal of the body. I've already made an elaborate plan to dispose their body at the forest just across the road. We'd have to find a student with a van that can fit seven to eight dead bodies in the back, and we are going to arm ourselves with gas masks and gloves, just so that we do not become contaminated with their chauvinistic shit.

Until that day comes however, I suppose that we are going to be stuck with the group of bitches in class. As if the semester is not hard enough, these bitches have to make it even harder to live through week by week. I am just waiting for somebody to shoot them one by one with a shotgun, or hoping for Rosemary to give them all big fat zeros on their report cards. There are times when I dislike Aaron's sudden outbursts in class, taking the whole justice thing too far. But I'd like to see him in my lecture, to see how he is going to put those pigs off with his unique ways. Justice shall be served one way or another, and let's hope that it happens soon enough, before my sanity evaporates into thin air.