Miss Conduct E02 - Rukhsana Sultana

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If you’re from Bangalore (or have spent any real time in the city) you would have heard the phrase “area boys”. To put it really simply, your area boys are friends that you have made, mostly in the close vicinity of your place of residence. To be an RT Nagar area boy, for instance, would mean you likely grew up in RT Nagar. And the friends you made there would probably go to your school or your tuition classes, jam with you, watch cartoons with you on Saturdays, whose parents would feed you, and whose cricket balls would cause mild-to-severe head trauma. The idea of an area boy is rooted in the carefree adolescence of Bangalore youngins -- it signifies a sense of friendship, family, belonging, and even purpose. 

To say that Rukhsana was an ‘area boy’ would really trivialise everything she did. She was a member of Delhi’s elite, at the peak of Indira Gandhi’s reign, making merry with her son Sanjay Gandhi, and using her position of influence and power to terrorise tens of thousands of Delhi’s poor and destitute. And yet, her close friendship with Sanjay Gandhi (and his inner circle) evokes the lightheartedness of your average area boy -- you are thick as thieves, loyal to a fault, and essentially bound by blood. The only difference is that while your RT Nagar area boy will happily smuggle cigarettes into your parents’ house, Rukhsana would instead line up unsuspecting men to have their reproductive rights taken away from them. 

Woah, that took a dark turn, eh? In any case, we hope you enjoy this episode! 

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Love (platonically),

Ragavi & Nisha

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