Swings & Roundabouts

Fellow blogger and one of my oldest mates, apu tagged me on this. And she says we have good ole Ams to thank for it. As it is a tag, I’d like to tag my fellow fem bloggers – Suj, Dee, Premalatha as well as my fellow mommy bloggers – Mad Momma and Tharini, as well as Kishore to take the baton from me.

Right, now let’s get started. What is feminism, exactly? According to the dictionary, feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Feminism in an Indian (or desi) context is a wierd thing. It is like Antartica – everyone knows what it is but no one wants to go there. To most, life goes on as it always had, as if feminism never existed.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I realised what feminism truly is and that I am a feminist only after I started blogging actively. Till then, I was going along with the Antartic effect. Having been brought up to be fiercely independent, I did not question my right to do things my way. I always thought that that was mostly thanks to my folks’ outlook towards most things concerning self and sibling. But I realise now, it is thanks to them being feminists (in their own setting) that they could go with the choices they made, which in turn made it easy for me to go with my choices, my way.

But to many, this is not the case. I have heard of many, many cases where the girls were so ‘protected’ that many had hardly ventured into the Big Bad World on their own. S frequently jokes that I had a lot more freedom growing up than he did!

In that sense, I feel feminism is linked to your basic freedom as a child. If you, as a girl, are raised as an equal to your male siblings, then you (and your siblings) will grow up to think the same way. If, on the other hand, you are told right from the time you were a child that you must defer to your male siblings or that they come first, then chances of both sexes retaining this and forming a template to their lives, is very high.

So, what has feminism given me. Well, it has given me the right to be me. I can be my own person and not be defined as someone’s child or wife or sibling or mother. I can be my own person, in my own right, charting my life the way I want. It lets me be what I want to be. Heck, it gives me the right to make that choice. It puts me in the driving seat of my life.

This basic right is denied loads of women across the country. For them, the alpha male has to make the decision – should they work full-time, do they stay at home,
can they do this or should they do that. Every time a woman is unable to act independently, she is denied the right to freedom.

In my opinion, feminism is synonymous with freedom. And for feminism to truly flourish in a desi setting, it is imperative for not just the women, but the men to become feminists as well.

Read Ams’ and Apu’s view points.

No, this is not the sequel to the much-acclaimed Driving Miss Daisy. This, my dear Chennaivasis, is the story of the battle we wage every day – on our roads. I am not talking only about their condition. I am, of course, talking about our road sense – or lack of it.

Though our country can never ever say with pride that its citizens are good drivers, I think gradually the standard has degenerated into absolutely appalling levels that these days it is a wonder if you can set foot outside home and come back unscathed. A casual bang to the side of your vehicle, courtesy a whizzing scooter is the norm.

While driving, we are supposed to look out for each other. Bah humbug, say the drivers. It is one mad dash to get from one point to another. To quote a popular holiday website, the traffic lights in India resemble the start of a grand prix race, with each vehicle vying for pole position. If only our roads were as good as the ones in Monaco! No wonder there is an increase in the number of people interested in becoming Formula 1 drivers. After all, they get practice every day!

One can’t put all the blame on Chennai drivers alone. The roads play a major role in this mess. And a right mess would describe the city roads perfectly. Huge craters in the middle and massive trenches along the sides are so yesterday. The latest accessories to the Chennai road are iron girders – and lots of them! Thick, long iron girders are plunged in the middle of the road, with the trench being strategically placed to make it unfit for traffic to pass in either direction. Add the monsoon (Thank you, Lord Varuna, for your bounty!) and you have one big water feature.

Of course, the usual adornments such as the Veeranam pipe, smaller pipes, random wires and posts, vast quantities of dug-up mud, chunks of tar road and the ever popular garbage sundries all make our road a thing of beauty indeed! One wonders what must go through the minds of the Onyx workers each night, as they toil to clean these excuse of our roads.

I guess therein lies the problem – the Onyx cleaners do their bit while we are sleeping. Come morning, we see the clean roads and our hands just itch to start throwing things! We do have to give something for the poor guys to clean every night, don’t we? We don’t want to deprive them of their likelihood!

You know something? I have always wondered at the volume of mud that lies surrounding the road trench. Even after they are covered, there is still a 2 feet surplus sitting all around it, making it a mini hillock. What puzzles me is that 2 feet surplus. Where did it come from? I mean, it was dug out of the same place and the lovely corporation guys have put it all back in, haven’t they? So where did the extra bit come from, the bit that sits atop like a crown on the head? Did they dig somewhere else to get that bit? Is there an unidentified crater somewhere that has contributed to this trench?

Ok, now I am digressing.

We have identified the problems – bad roads, worse drivers. So, let us all take a moment and think. Road users – we have to stop battling one another. We all have to get from Point A to Point B. There is no point in going like a bat out of hell, only to be caught at the next signal. We might as well go slower – and safer.

Do move to Sholavaram if the spirit moves you. Bullock cart men, please exercise your pets when the city has gone to sleep.

Meanwhile, corporation Annas, please don’t wait till the roadways department lays the road to start digging. Feel free to get in there, be first! And can the wizard who sunk in 8 feet of iron girder into the middle of T Nagar’s Dr Nair Road please put up his hand and explain the mystery behind it?

Brothers and sisters of Onyx, in addition to night shift, please do work on occasional day shifts too. Then you can actually catch us red-handed, making a missile of a banana peel and missing the bin by a mile.

Lastly, can somebody please stop all the timer clocks at the signals? Even Michael Schumacher doesn’t race everyday!

[First published under 'Desi Diaries' at ChennaiOnline on Nov 9, 2004.]

Anita could still remember the day clearly as if it were only yesterday. She was five years old and along with the rest of her Year 1 classmates, had been to the Theosophical Society in Besant Nagar for their school field trip. She remembered looking up at the huge trees in awe and felt tiny in comparison.

At the end of the trip, a surprise lay in store for Year 1. The lovely people at the Society had packed a sapling of a banyan tree for each of the children, a lasting memento of the day. There were gasps of excitement when the presents were handed out.

Anita couldn’t wait to get home! As soon as the school bus dropped her off in the corner of her street, she raced off with the frail sapling held fast in her little hands.

‘Mom! Mom!!’ she screamed as she ran in.

‘Don’t scream Ani, you will wake the baby up. Your mother just managed to put him down for his nap.’ said her grandmother.

‘Ok, granny’ answered Anita and tiptoed to find her mother.

Her mother was there in their room, holding her brother. Anil had just turned two and was such a terror. He took ages to fall asleep and even then, he woke up screaming at the top of his lungs if you made the teeniest noise.

Her mother turned around as soon as Anita opened the door and smiled at her daughter. ‘Sh’ she motioned with her finger on her lips and slowly put Anil on his cot and stepped out of the room. By the time her mother came out of the room, Anita was hopping from one foot to another in barely controlled delight. ‘Mum, look what I’ve got’ she blurted out, shoving the bag up her mother’s face. Mother managed to grab hold of the bag with its precious contents and examine it herself, before her daughter did any serious damage.

‘Do you know what this is, Ani?’ she asked.

‘Yes, mum, I do. It is a baby banyan tree. I learned about it today. Can we plant it please?’

‘Well, alright Ani but you have to promise something first’ said Mother.

‘Yes mum anything’ interjected an eager Anita.

‘You must take good care of your baby tree. It will be like your baby from now on. You must water it, protect it and look after it properly, all by yourself’.

‘Yes, mum, of course mum. Can we plant it now, can we can we?’ chanted Anita.

Mother laughed her tinkling laugh and off they went into the back garden to find a place for Anita’s baby banyan. They finally decided on a spot well away from the main path as well as the compound wall. Mother used an old ladle to dig a hole while Anita lovingly set her tree down it. They both covered the roots with moist soil and sprinkled a little water on it. Mother had to curb Anita’s enthusiasm lest she flooded the poor plant on its first day.

Once the deed was done, they both sat back on their haunches to admire their handiwork. Anita had sparkles in her eyes and it gladdened her mother’s heart to see her little daughter so taken up by a tree. She thought to herself that the fascination would last about 4 days before she forgot all about it and moved to the next one.

Mother was so wrong, remembered Anita. Anita never broke the promise she made. Every morning before she took her bath, she used to rush down and water her tree. It also got a special wave goodbye as she rushed out of the house on her way to the school. Anita also remembered how her father, on seeing his daughter’s interest in her tree, got her a huge book all about trees. It was big and colourful and so full of interesting stuff. He also took her to the local nursery the following Saturday, where they got the proper food for the tree. They had a grand time that weekend, preparing the manure and sprinkling it and generally getting very mucky.

As Anita grew, so did her banyan. Soon, the tree became her friend, her confidant. It was there to listen to her woes after her first big fight with her best friend, in Year 7. It also stood by sagely as Anita sobbed her heart out after she got her heart broken by the boy from the next class. Its leafy branches seemed to hug her like real hands and cheered Anita greatly.

Years went by and the tree grew strong. It became a place of refuge for Anita. She used to run to it when she was told off for fighting with her brother. Once, when she failed History and her father yelled at her for the first ever time, Anita climbed up her tree and sat amidst its comforting branches, drying her tears. When her father came in search of her, he felt oddly poignant to see his daughter getting comfort from her tree.

The tree also patiently comforted Anita when her best friend’s father got transferred and they moved away to a different city. It was there when Anita poured her fear of the impending Board exams and how she was afraid she might score very less, disappointing her family. It waved its leaves in glee when Anita scored 90% and hugged its big trunk.

It was also there, listening, when Anita confessed her first ever crush – her new neighbour, who was a real cutie! Anita was sitting right under her tree, engrossed in her M&B, when he popped his head over the wall and said ‘hi’! She almost swallowed her tongue!

Anita thought back to her 18th birthday party. Her parents had arranged for a special treasure hunt and she followed clues all around the house – they had hidden the best gift in the squirrel hole in her tree. In the evening, she had a great party right underneath its huge branches. Father had strung a line of paper lanterns all over the garden and it was like magic!

Her tree – not only did it bring her joy, it gladdened the hearts of her family’s too, with its stoic presence. And now, she has to leave it and go away! The very thought broke her heart. Why did she have to get married, she had no idea. For months now, she had argued with her parents, grandparents and the rest of the family and finally, the fight had gone out of her. Rajeev seemed a good man and was the son of her father’s old friend. Her parents were very pleased with him and even Anil thought he was ‘cool’, which was high praise indeed. Anita didn’t like the idea of being put on display like she was prized cattle and thank god she didn’t have to sing and dance as well! She didn’t know who would have been more embarrassed if she had broken into song, herself or Rajeev! He seemed real soft-spoken and quiet but she assumed it was for her parents’ benefit.

As Rajeev had to report back to work in a fortnight’s time, the preparations for the wedding took place in a frenzy. Mother was permanently out on shopping trips, buying clothes, jewellery or Tupperware. As she watched the things for her piling up, a strange feeling overtook her. As Anil wheeled in her shiny new suitcases, she fled to the sanctuary of her tree.

‘What did I do?’ asked Anil the world in general. ‘I thought she would be pleased!’ Father gave her ten minutes to brood and then came to her. Huffing and puffing, cursing his ripening age, he climbed the tree, wheezing ‘I am getting too old for this, Ani’ and got a grudging smile back.

‘What’s wrong, Ani? I thought you liked Rajeev’, he said.

‘Oh dad! It isn’t that! I wanted to work – get a job, earn pots of money so you and mum can retire and go on a world cruise or something. Get Anil that Tag Heuer watch he craves. I wanted to do something to ease your burden, instead of adding on to it. I don’t know, I wanted to do so many things – now it feels like my time has run out!’ finished Anita in a flood of tears.

‘Oh Ani!’ soothed Father. ‘Is this what is worrying you? I know you wanted to do s many things. It touches my heart to learn you wanted to do so much for us. But your mother and I have our own dreams for you too, Ani. We want to see you married and settled with your own family. Rajeev is a good man. He will help you grow into the person you want to be. Just because you are going to be married, it doesn’t spell the end of everything, you big silly!’

‘Yes, dad – but I haven’t done anything for you’, sobbed Anita. Father could just hold her, helpless to stem his daughter’s tears.

At last, its time. All her bags are packed and placed in the boot of the taxi. Rajeev was joking with Anil about the contents of her suitcases, wondering if she had rocks in there. Anita hugged her mother and could feel her eyes welling.

‘I wish I could stay here with you and be your little girl forever, mummy’ she whispered.

‘You will always be my little girl, my dear’, replied Mother, planting a kiss on her forehead.

‘Go with our blessings, sweetheart’, said Father. Even Anil suspiciously looked like he was going to cry.

As the taxi slowly moved away, Anita leant out of the car window and waved to her family for all she was worth. The house was getting away from her and then, slowly her beloved tree came into view.

There it was, where she and Mother had planted it, all those years ago. She could see Father’s lounging chair under its shady branches, with the sun glinting off Mother’s reading glasses, which she had once again left on the chair.

Anita could feel the worry in her stomach disappearing slowly. She knew that, though she was leaving her family and going away, her tree would be there, always. It will forever be there in the backyard, giving them shade and breeze on a hot summer’s day. More, it will be always be there with her family, a piece of her, comforting them whenever they needed.

Anita waved for the last time, with a lighter heart. It was going to be alright after all, she thought and gripped Rajeev’s hand warmly.

Quiet giggles in a corner
Shared jokes
Laughter and Yeats over a samosa
Bust-ups and making up
Those were the days when anything went

Angry words soon forgotten
Insults that never stuck
Fights and arguments the norm
But the feelings remained the same

Time passed
People changed
With it, the nature of friendship

Words became barbs
Looks did kill
Patience and love, non-existant.
This isn’t friendship
This isn’t relationship
This
is nothing.

And so,
here we are today,
asking
what price friendship?

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat – make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing – or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one – him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project?
Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!

(This post is in response to Amrita Rajan’s post “I Am A Feminist (Blogger Gets Death Threats)”

Last year, when my dad learnt of my latest love, blogging, the first question he asked me was: are you a feminist? This seemed rather strange, coming from pater and I went ‘I dunno, maybe’ shrug shrug. To which, he replied ‘well, you either are or you’re not.’

I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Rather like Ams, my initial image of a feminist was a bra burning, unshaved armpitted woman and (even though I did not frequent beauty salons frequently!) I did not think I was one. Typically, I Googled ‘feminism’ and felt I agreed with most of what Wikipedia states a feminist ought to be. I was rather surprised to note that I am a feminist. But since that day when the bulb burned brightly inside my head, I have felt rather comfortable and even proud of being one. Like the Mad Momma stated in one of her posts, feminism has made it easy for me to live my life my way. Though I am forever haranguing S about a lot of his and his family’s beliefs, it is the concept of feminism that has made it possible for me to even think so.

Though to a lot of my fellow Desicritics, feminism is an ugly word and a feminist is generally considered on par with the seven plagues of Egypt, to most of us women (and to the rational men out there), feminism is a genuinely fantastic concept.

Which is why, in this day and age, I was shocked to learn of Kathy Sierra. Once again, it was thanks to Am’s post on the topic that brought this to my attention. Like her, I didn’t think of myself as a feminist but once I realised I was, it was a good feeling. I am sure Kathy did not set out to be an X-Woman type of feminist, burning bridges hither and wrecking havoc thither. Nor was she planning on doing a Lady Godiva, to bring the idea home to the masses. She is just a blogger like most of us, blogging away about things she felt strongly about. For her troubles, she has been receiving death threats.

Death threats! The whole phrase sounds absolutely crazy to me. Which regular person gets death threats? They are for the likes of Saddam Hussein, Dubya or other assorted loons. They are not for average Jo Bloggers like us! And who gets off sending bloggers crappy stuff like these anyway?

Lord knows I’ve moaned long and hard about the pain the Von SIFfers of DC are, with their irritating habit of blaming everything from war, famine and pestilence on this scrounge of feminism but even they don’t stoop to such levels. I think it takes a special sort of wacko to launch this sort of attacks on another person. Worse if the criteria behind the choice of victim is that they should have boobs.

I blog about the most inane things in my life – what I made for lunch, what movies I saw, even about the time I took a toss coming fast down the stairs. I also blog about the most important aspect of my life – my son. I am now horrified at what sort of world I have thrust him into. I am sure he is going on blithely, betting on mummy to keep him safe and sound, whilst I am putting his pictures and stories of his antics on the blogosphere. The same joint that now is inhabited by these sick people. What the hell have I done?

Poor Kathy is now reported to be too petrified to even leave her home. How awful! What is her crime here? Her blog is about stuff like mind mapping and crash course in learning theory, for fuck’s sake! What is so threatening about that? Why the hell should that prompt the enterprising netizens to drop in some death threats?

What sort of twisted world are we barrelling into? Whatever next? My mind boggles!

(To answer your question, Ams – yes, I am a feminist and am proud to be one.)

March 5 was a big day in desi blogosphere; on that day, a hoarde of desi bloggers took on that giant named Yahoo! (India) and toppled it. Three cheers for these strong women!

What had happened was this: these enterprising yummy ladies have set up some fantastic food blogs, replete with great pictures of some mouth-watering creations. One of them, Mahanandi even won the IndiBloggers award for the Best Food Blog! If you see her blog, you’d know why – fantastic pictures, simplistic instructions the most inept cook can follow and some great recipes are what this food blog comprises of. The blogger, Indira, obviously takes great pains with her content and its authenticity.

But one of the foodie bloggers, Surya Gayathri, got a rude shock one day when she discovered that Yahoo! had pilfered the images and content from her blog and posted it on the Yahoo! website – with no permission and certainly no acknowledgement. This tale of woe was narrated by fellow foodie bloggers Indira and Inji Pennu. What this plucky bunch did next is super: they got round all their friends and used the power of blogosphere to gun down the mighty Yahoo! They started a ‘Start Plagiarism’ campaign, which quickly gathered momentum and on March 5th, staged this online protest.

One has to just click the links above to see how many people joined them in this protest. The blogs also put up some nifty cartoons to drive the message home. It is no wonder that Yahoo! quickly capitualted when they ended with egg on their faces. They retracted their filched recipes and sent an apology to Surya Gayathri.

Of course, they used the time-tested defence of pointing the finger at some other partner website.

“The reproduction of the recipes, which were taken from a blog in Malayalam run by a housewife in Kerala, in Southern India, sparked an online protest among bloggers.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the reproduction of the content was inadvertent and blamed the incident on a company it hired to develop content for its Web site, Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd.”

Yahoo! is not the only site to go down the filching route to beef up its content. According to these bloggers, sites like Sify, Bawarchi and other food websites are not above lifting the images and using the content to suit their purposes.

This win hasn’t come easy for these bloggers. When first notified of this content theft, Yahoo! reacted by deleting the offending content and hoping that no one would notice. When that didn’t work, the tactics took a turn for the worse, when

“they send their trolls, insulting many bloggers out there who supported us, very well knowing, we are ‘Indian girls’, we cannot stomach insults and we would cow down! I haven’t read so much filth which were put as ‘comments’ in my entire life. It caused me a lot of pain and anger and tears, especially when I saw the same type of filthy comments on couple of my friends blogs too! I, one time even thought of just disappearing from it all. It was that bad. “

When that failed, and news of the March 5th protest reached Yahoo!, apparently they tried to have a mini discussion with a select few. Bloggers like Inji Pennu stayed away from this and went on with their mega protest – and won!

This is definitely a big win for these spunky ladies and for us bloggers as well, who have been victims of plagiarism before. The precedent has been set and I can safely say, with due apologies to Neil Armstrong, that ‘this is one small step for a woman but a giant leap for the bloggers’.

But the reality is, these bloggers may have won the battle but the war is far from over. Combing through the Yahoo! content, many more instances of such pilfered content are apparently found dotted across the website. It seems that we have barely scratched the surface of this copyright issue. How are we bloggers to protect our content? Can anyone tell?

Edited to add: According to the latest blurb from Mahanandi, Indira’s blog, Surya Gayathri hasn’t received a personal apology from Yahoo! Furthermore, there are more instances of content and image theft by several Yahoo portals. So, these bloggers have decided to up the ante. Visit their discussion board at Dining Hall to join them in their protest.

Dowry – the very word conjures up some real ugly images in my mind. In this day and age, when we are advancing technologically in every which way possible, I cannot fathom why this despicable practice of dowry still exists in our country.

Every day, many fathers of the bride are put through the wringer, trying to amass enough wealth to buy ‘suitable’ grooms for their daughters. And many men happily sell themselves for a few lakhs of cash, jewels, vehicles and even property. That may sound real harsh but that is what dowry means to me. One can justify it any which way they want, but in my eyes, if you are going to marry a woman, then it should be for who she is and the last thing you should be accepting is her father’s hard earned money.

The father of the bride thus pays for the wedding and all its accompanying expenses, reception and a hefty dowry whilst the groom’s family give a sambhandhi virundhu or the in-laws feast. How fair is that? Why should marrying a girl off break her father’s back? Of course, the giving doesn’t stop then, does it? There’s the first Deepavali, karthigai, Pongal, New Year, Kaaradaiyan Nombu and the other gazillion deities’ birthdays, for which the poor father has to shell out new clothes and jewels and other appropriate gifts. Once the grandchildren start coming, they add another dimension to the spending spree. No wonder some dads let out a huge groan on the arrival of a daughter, if the arrival means a monstrous, life-long bill!

How does it all work out?

The dowry generally gets decided post-horoscope matching, when the families get together to ‘talk’. Most shareef families do go through the rigmarole of ‘Oh no, no we don’t want any dowry’, ‘But you must!’ etc. After a few minutes of arguing along similar lines, the groom’s family generally finishes with a classic, ‘well we do not want any dowry but we will not stop you from doing whatever you want for your daughter.’ How brilliant is that! In one stroke, the Rs 15 lakhs cash, jewellery for Rs 10 lakhs, couple of plots of land and a car are all labelled as ‘gifts for the girl from her loving parents’ rather than ‘dowry’ and the so-called bitter pill goes down easy. Masterful!

It is not just the lower income groups that get mired in this practice. Dowry is rampant in the mid-level and higher income groups than the lower ones. One of the most shocking things I found out after my own wedding was the concept of dowry for the sister-in-law. That really takes the cake. Apparently, the girl’s poor father generally gives the groom’s sister a chunk of money, apart from the requisite clothes for the wedding for herself and her family. WTF? Now we actually pay them to bully us? Or is it to make sure the girl doesn’t have to go through the ‘traditional’ bullying that the SIL is paid off?

What I don’t understand is, how do these ‘manly’ men justify this to themselves? Our men, who consider most things like a wife addressing the husband by his name as a slight, how the hell do they square it to their conscience so they are more than fine with the wife bringing in so much of money, jewels and property? Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t you want to buy your wife what she wants and thus show her what a man you are?!

In these days of feminism and equal rights, practices such as dowry and the other hideousness of sati etc, have no place in society. A woman should be able to become someone’s wife and daughter-in-law purely for who she is; she shouldn’t need anything else to oil the wheels. Think about it: if the only way you can ‘get’ a ‘decent’ son-in-law is by paying hefty sums, then he’s probably not worth it!

Last Sunday, the three of us went to a fourth birthday lunch party. Typical desi get-together, with six kids and sixty adults gathered around a cake for a child’s party. Invitation said ’12 – 4pm’, so we timed it so we reached the venue by 12.30pm. Host was there but there was no sign of the wife or the birthday child, for that matter. They were home, getting ready. Right.

S tells me this is quite common in their circles. He has rarely gone for a party in his Telugu community where the host was at hand to welcome folks. They generally join the party at least an hour after the time specified in the invite, dressed up to the nines. My roof-top 21st birthday, with the whole family in the thick of things, threw him off, apparently. Why? Because we were all there – at the specified time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it was generally part of the host’s job description to welcome the guests and introduce one guest to another, get the conversation going and generally circulate so no one feels odd or left out. Wrong! If I go to a party, I am to entertain myself, make sure I introduce self to others if I didn’t want to be a social pariah. Whilst I am not saying that I will stand there like a pillar of salt till someone is presented to me like I am the Queen or something, I rather thought the hostess would do her bit too.

Now S and I are from different communities; he’s Telugu and I, Tamil. This poses no problem when we meet Tamilians as having grown up in Chennai, S speaks fluent Tamil but faced with traditional Telugus, we run into sticky wicket fairly straight off the bat. They cannot wrap their minds around our mixed-background concept – they start rattling in rapid Telugu to me and when I blink and say ‘no Telugu, only Tamil, pliss’, they give me a blank look and escape before I can say boo. Or if S is around, they stick to talking to him along, while I hang around like the handy fifth wheel.

What’s with the habit of talking to just the ‘head’ of the family and leaving the ‘tail’ to fend for itself? That pisses me off so much! I am generally a non-person, hanging back with a silly smile on my face while folks talk ‘matters’. Oh let’s not forget, they turn to me every half hour to ask if I have eaten. What? Am I there only to stuff my face? (Is it that obvious?)

Then there’s the whole segregation thing. As soon as we enter the party venue, S has to go and be with the guys whilst I have to do my sickly-smiley bit with strange womenfolk, who all, of course, know one another. Why should every desi party feel like a Muslim wedding*+, where the men and women are kept in different zones? Why can’t we mingle as couples? I have noticed this just amongst the South Indians; North Indian men don’t seem to have the need to leave their womenfolk around the same time they remove their footwear.

And the cliques! I tell you – women in cliques are vicious. Avoid them at all costs. I do. At every gathering, there is at least one coven of women, sitting with plates piled high with food and sharpening their claws on some poor socially inept souls like me. None would even dream of trying to take someone who doesn’t know everyone there like they do and taking them under the wing. Why bother when you can have much better fun cackling about them instead? They might leave their pointy hats at home to confuse the likes of me, but I can spot them nonetheless.

But what takes the cake about the whole shindig is, when I’d finally bid adieu to the host, hostess and the few who deigned to drop a few words in my direction, they would normally turn around and tell me ‘oh, you must visit us at home sometime real soon.’ That always makes me open my eyes wide in shock and I have to bite down on my tongue real hard to stop me from blurting: ‘For what? Another dose of this?!’

But, being the typical bharatiya naari, I grin inanely and say ‘of course you must visit us too!’ and run for the hills.

*No offence meant to any Muslims and their customs – just using the phrase as a way of explaining things.

Ok, never known to mince any words, this blogger lets it rip with his view re global warming etc. As it is a topic real close to my heart, I wanna make a post out of it.
So, check it out!