Day 4- Kerala and women

(PW: This article is about women and abuse. Contains some adult material.)

It all started when many of my friends shared this post. It kept popping in my timeline and I kept avoiding it but then this morning it came up in a different conversation and I read it. It brought back so many memories. Mostly not good ones.

I lived in Kerala for 4 years. It is not a long time- I have lived in the US for 2 and a half already. But the difference is I lived in Kerala in those crucial years of adolescence, when one learns a lot of new things about themselves and the world, when a child has his/her first harsh clash with adulthood. For the most part, I have very positive memories of Kerala (if it were not cliched, I'd have called them green memories). Beautiful place, stunning after the rains, sweet sing-song language, etc. Our school was among the most conservative, but I didn't mind it all that much. So until this morning, when anyone asked me about Kerala, I had nothing but praise to say (it's my dream retirement place btw. It is so beautiful I'd love to go there when I want to relax and appreciate the beauty of nature, and would actually have the time to do it.) It is amazing that I had forgotten.

I had forgotten the extensive chauvinism that pervaded every inch of existence there. Now don't take me wrong, I am not saying that Chennai is by any standards less conservative or more feminist. But maybe it's because I talk about Chennai often, or maybe because the details blur in time, but it all came rushing back as I read the post. And the surprising part was not the reality I remembered, it was the fact that I had forgotten.

I find that amazing because I have not forgotten most of the details of my Kerala stay. From the streets to the junctions to the faces of the innumerable people I knew there to individual events and experiences- most of it is still fresh in my memory. However, it seems that when something is out of sight for a while, one tends to forget the nastier details in light of the overall good effect the place had. 

Now you might wonder- what could I have possibly forgotten or left unnoticed? Why did I mention chauvinism in relation to a place known for 100% literacy, high education rates among women, and especially known as traditionally "matriarchial"?*

Let's get to some details.. (all based on personal experiences, so the usual statistical issues of small sample set, etc. might apply)

Those kids in Besant Nagar

Eliot's beach: In all it's glory. And dirt.

(This is in reply to this post on Indian Express and will make much more sense if you read that post first. )
Disclaimer: This article is meant to be mostly humor and an alternate viewpoint, no offense to the author of the post I am replying to or any Chennai-ite. Also, I used to be a Chennai-ite myself, and am still unable to call any other city "home". I do not mean to say that Chennai is more unsafe than any other city but I disagree with the fact that it is not unsafe. Nor do I mean that Chennai is worse than any other city, just that there is more to it than the surface.
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Every girl in the world ought to grow up in a city like this, one that doesn't frighten her anymore, because she is too numb by now.
 
For a reason that is obvious to anyone who knows me, I often say that I am from Chennai- because though I didn't always live there and wasn't even born there, I am of this city. I often say that this city belongs to me, though of course real estate agents and politicians will tell you otherwise. I imagine that I always knew these streets, that they were never new to me- which is ridiculous because they were indeed new to me when I was 3 or 4. I imagine that I've never gotten lost, that I always knew where I was going- something even more ridiculous considering I usually stumble when an interviewer asks "Where do you see yourself 5 minutes from now?"

I first came to Chennai when it was Madras (and it always shall be, to me) and I was the youngest 6-month old in the world. Of course, 5-month olds were younger than me. I grew to be young and ridiculous like only little girls can be. And young girls. And women. And men. Strike that out. I think most young people ARE ridiculous anyway. I never lived in a hostel in Madras, but you couldn't tell the difference. I was hidden away with my brother at home, where I had to be back from the playground by 7, even though the playground was visible from our balcony. Where I used to wonder why the auto-driver who dropped my friend to school made unnecessary, uncomfortably prolonged eye contact that somehow made my skin crawl, even at 7. Where my mother would panic about her daughter's safety if I returned 15 minutes late from the nearby stationery store. She never told me why, she never told herself why I guess, but Madras was still part of India.
My life was mostly between school and home, and then paatu class and home, of course escorted by someone. The one time I travelled the 500 feet between home and paatu class wearing an imported knee-length skirt that some America-settled cousin had gifted, 2 stranger aunties stopped me to advise. And one old lady actually yelled at me for being a bad girl and not following our culture, a phrase I got to hear far too often in later years. I had been 10 then.
I don't know how your friends were decided upon in those days. If you ask me, I'd say with no rhyme or reason. We played hide-and-seek and lock-and-key and paandi and an obscure game called Fruit's cut with people whose names we would forget the next day. And yet, the most unlikely of friendships would spring up between such playmates. With the intricate politics that I then thought only children are capable of.

Girls like me who were nerds and bookworms, girls who weren't. Girls who were the best pick of Antakshari teams, girls who were great at getting tenth-standard-akka-anna gossip. Boys who would pull our pigtails, boys who wouldn't. Boys who we kicked under the bench when they annoyed us, boys who kicked us back. We all became friends. We laughed together and borrowed each others' pen-pencils and boasted about our latest fancy water-bottles, not knowing that these uninhibited conversations would not last forever.
And together we learned about this city. We walked uncertain, in large groups, ran across L.B.Road not holding hands, clung to the handrails as we took the 29C, learned how to not notice what those annas were saying, though we probably would not have understood if we had listened- we just knew they weren't right. We laughed at the girls who put on Peter-accents, and learned to get scandalized about boys and girls talking. Or standing alone. Or looking at each other. We learned to denounce people who drink, people who did "only" an arts degree instead of engineering, pretty much people. We learned that being a vegetarian made you "pure" and that you must always eat well before you visit a relative, especially if they are richer. We learned the infinite acting that adults do- games against people, games against games, vicious hatred beneath benevolent smiles.
We ate whatever we wanted and some of us grew fat and hated ourselves for it. But not as much as we hated those of us who ate and did not grow fat.
 
We shopped for Dairy Milk and Lacto King in corner potti-kadais and begged our parents to let us go watch My Dear Kutti Chaathan by ourselves. We ended up going with 2 adults as escorts. And when a group of us decided to go watch King-Kong by the time I was 18, we knew better not to dare look at the hooting boys that would lurk in the dark of the theatres. We had been taught love was a bad thing often enough not to dare fall in love in these streets or have our hearts broken. We watched the Adyar signal's face marred with a fly-over, watched Singapore Shoppe close and thought the world was over.
 
We all have images in our head that only grow sweeter with time, but some that always send a chill down our spines. For me, it is the memory of my walk to Eliots which I did so often I don't know which day I am thinking of. It is possibly the time I knew I was leaving Madras to go to college. All I wanted that day was to stand at the shore, let the humid air wash over me like the water washed my feet and silently talk to the Bay of Bengal. Silence? Did I say silence? I hadn't known what it was then. Madras is never silent. The memory is still fresh and I can almost see the creepy old man walk by- and though he meant no harm, Madras had taught me to be scared of anything and anyone who was not educated, white-and-white class. He did nothing, said nothing, but the fear still tingled my spine. The chill today is not because of the man, but because of the fear I felt then. The number of times aunties worried about me walking back home after dark, the number of subtle sentences they said about school-van drivers and shopkeepers being dangerous without quite explaining how or why- nothing could frustrate a curious young happy girl more- had all instilled a nameless fear of the new in me. Something I took very long to outgrow.

I also remember the number of neighbours who judged us on wearing jeans instead of frocks or cutting my hair short. I remember the time when we were watching a cartoon movie and my friend's mother walked in during a bad scene (the cartoon bunny was kissing a cartoon girl-bunny), her anger reaching catastrophic levels as we small children cursed ourselves for not changing the channel fast enough.
  
Today, when I return to Madras in my head, I am happy in a way that makes sense- the city has grown and matured into Chennai. I am happy that the traffic jams are not half as bad as Bangalore or Mumbai, and happy to see the fewer uptight stares at girls in shorts. I hear people speaking Tamil and being nice to each other in their typical friendly, hypocritical way and I could burst into tears of joy. I miss the double standards and undercurrent of things never said, as much as most typical authors miss Idly and filter coffee.
I am reminded of the naive girl I once was and all the things I thankfully will never be, because I got out and saw a little of the world and learned to laugh at myself without taking offence. I wish every girl in the world could grow up in a city like this- that teaches her the complexity of human thought so early in life, that teaches her management-school-level-hypocritical-networking so early it becomes part of her system. A city that doesn't frighten her, because by now she is cautious and numb. That makes her feel like all of this, this business of life is something we will get better at deceiving.
When you are young in Madras, the sun is always shining down on you at 36-42 degrees Celcius and the sea breeze somehow always finds a way to irritate your sticky sweaty skin. It is not hard to imagine that this is how life will always be. That you will always be with your friends laughing, jam-packed in an auto and believing that what you know is the end of the world. That there always will be a cheerful, infectious syncopated beat playing in the background, along with aachaaramana maamis who are offended by their servant maid's daughter accidentally touching them, and who believe that a girl with a period is worse than a human being. That at no point in time do smiling people in colour co-ordinated outfits start dancing around us except in a movie.

That there are different ways to look at the same thing. Always.

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Edit 1: After one of my friends mentioned, I realized what was not quite right about my post. I was saying "Chennai" in places where I really meant Madras. Corrected. 

I shouldn't be here

(This is the 23rd post of the one-month challenge I gave myself!)

While I was at Georgia Tech, I participated in a survey for female students, intended for high-performing women who were not completely satisfied with their achievements. (Turns out that was in September! How time flies!)

Think of yourself (or if you are a guy, get into the shoes of a woman you know very well.) You are a high achieving woman- you went to a good college/grad school and performed excellently. Or work for a reputed organization and are regularly lauded for your work. And yet you feel that you don't deserve it. "I'm not smart enough for all that, I don't know why everyone says I'm good- I am doing well purely by chance". 
When someone praises you for a good job done- you think "I have done nothing at all. I just got lucky that whatever I tried worked". And when you get a salary hike or a promotion or a new offer, you are scared to tell people- you know it's superstitious, but you feel that telling people is going to screw it up. In fact, you feel that you have just been lucky so far and are going to fail tomorrow. Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed by a task, you imagine you are going to fail and be the laughing stock of the office. When you see a  small problem you can't fix, you think "I can't do this. I'm such a fake."

'I shouldn't be here.'

Well, THIS feeling is called the impostor syndrome. (No, I am not starting a series on different syndromes. I promise.) I was surprised they have a name for it, because some of these feelings are pretty common.

At first, I thought many of this is simply perfectionist behavior. But then I asked one of my friends (a guy) with about the same qualifications as me to fill the survey. And guess what- he did not feel any of the things I mentioned in the last paragraph. He was worried about details, didn't think he had done anything great with his life (common for any ambitious person), but he didn't think that the praise he got was undeserved. He had never once felt he had got anywhere by chance! Contrary to that, most of the women I know admit to having felt one or more of these things at different points in their lives.

Anyway, like a true grad student I read a paper which tries to explain why this syndrome is more common among women. The short explanation is that many women achieve a lot but grow up hearing that they are not good enough (or not hearing that they are good enough) compared to the men around them. This creates a subconscious low self-evaluation that keeps nagging them even when all the evidence points otherwise. The explanation sounded a little roundabout and sort of Freudian to me. But then, with no other explanation available, I will have to accept this I guess.

In any case, after all that reading, I began to consciously notice whenever I felt any of these things and try to push out such thoughts from my head. Which is why I decided to write about this for all the women out there. It is easy to think you are going to screw up and everyone's going to think you are an idiot. But the more you pump in confidence into yourself, the more you will appreciate yourself AND have the world appreciate you! 

If ever you think 'I shouldn't be here', just remember- you wouldn't be wherever you are if you didn't deserve it! In fact, the 'I shouldn't be here' is true in a different sense- you shouldn't be here because you are better than this. You can get ahead of 'here'. And you very much deserve to!

Colors

(Trying to write short story-poems. So far, I wrote two with a 195-character limit. I hope I will be able to do them with the Twitter limit soon. Posting the second one here. Inspired by Terribly Tiny Tales.)

Orange, blue, yellow, red.  For the first time she noticed the beautiful colors flashing by. 
In the last minute of her life, the rape victim lay on the dusty road. Loving life- one last time...

Mahabharata.. and women..

(This post is the 6th post in the one-month challenge I gave myself.)

Mahabhaaaarat... (or Mahabhaaaaratham)- I can still hear the title of that epic series which I used to rush to watch every Sunday morning. I don't think I ever saw the series fully, but I definitely heard the songs. But unlike most people whose introduction to Indian epics is Doordarshan or Amar Chitra Katha, my first introduction to the Hindu epics were a different set of books given by my grandfather. (Of course, not counting the versions that different people in the family had told me) They were a very interesting read and I guess they got me hooked to reading mythology.

The thing I love about mythology (not just Indian) is that these are stories that have survived generations of people- millions and millions of people- who lived their very different lives, who heard some version of the stories just like I did and then added their little mark to it. Just a small change there, just a simple line here that makes you look at one character differently. It is astonishing to think that these stories touched the lives of a villager in Ashoka's kingdom, a flower seller girl in Akbar's reign, and then us- born out of the Internet age. Unlike hardcore philosophy and religion which are often sheathed away from the eyes of the common man (because of how abstruse they are), mythology is supposed to bring the ideas to the masses- through every day events that people can relate to. Through songs. Through stories.

Of course, like most people I know, I loved the Mahabharata much more than the Ramayana. As a story alone, the Ramayana is too ideal. Too serious and too straightforward. And has a hero like itself. Ravana is probably the only guy with any gray within him.And the narrative is almost simplistic. But for a few points where people debate on whether Rama was right- nothing much there.

The Mahabharata, on the other hand, is in a whole different league. For a story written centuries ago (as claimed by historians), think of the layers, the millions of metaphors, characters and scenarios. It is almost like Vyasa wove the different colors of the human fabric in intricate design and made a beautiful garment out of it. The number of ways in which each story intertwines with the others, the situations come back in unexpected ways, characters face dilemmas and still each line, each small move is significant to the story is- in one word- brilliant. (This last line, i once mentioned to a friend and she thought I was talking about Harry Potter. My answer is- yes, Harry Potter is pretty complex. But imagine what you would get if the HP series was given to a country that has 27 official languages and hundreds of tribes who went on adding to it and taking from it over hundreds of years- that's the complexity Mahabharata has!)

Well, I could go on like this in semi-poetic prose, but let me get to my point. The reason I wanted to write about the Mahabharata is because every other day I see it from a different view. Every new tale I hear about it makes me rethink the story. (A month or so ago, I had a long discussion about how Dhritarashtra's character is very interesting- he is the one guy who can't see anything and yet has power. Also how his insecurity plays so much of a role. I almost wanted to rewrite a version of this epic from his viewpoint.) What I read yesterday was an answer on Quora about Draupadi and Karna. I will let you see the link for yourself, but this led me to another link called the Bheel Bharata (Bheels are a tribe in India) where the author mentioned one interesting point- Mahabharata has very strong women characters.

That's something that had never occurred to me before. That this old epic has many incidents that are governed by what the women do. (From Ganga and Sathyavathi to Kunthi to Draupadi. Arguably, it is Sathyavathi's father who gets a promise from Bheeshma, but Sathyavathi is the reason the story begins.) One could almost say that it is the women of Bharata that run the story- the men are merely there as side characters. Pawns. Of course, that's not completely true, but one could view it that way.

Interestingly, the article mentioned that Ramayana's women are not that strong. I agree that Sita and Draupadi are poles apart. What they represent as women are very different. But I still think Ramayana is also a plot where women hold the strings- Kaikeyi, Manthra, Shurpanaka. Why, every important turn in the story is started by a woman!

So ya, I find it very interesting that- apparently, even in those times they knew that though the hero is the man of the house, the plot of life is always driven by the women :P

Tomorrow: Improving teaching in India

Taken for granted

I am one of those women (or do I still call myself a girl? :P ) who would never consider a career of being a housewife. Even when I was in primary school, I could not imagine spending my life in the kitchen. It is not that I despise being a housewife- just that it always felt like I could do "more" with my time and it is not the thing for me. Notice the more. I'm one of those people who agrees with what Romney almost said (yes, finally one thing that I agree with Romney about)- that working women do "more" with their time.

Most of my friends' mothers are working women. Though not CEOs or anything, they are at least in some clerical position or the other. And I can remember at least 3-4 instances where said friends say- "unlike your mother, mine doesn't get time". I always use to consider that a legitimate argument. In fact, how many times have I thought that myself- that my mother has a lot of time? (Sometimes, I have tried to analyze this, but often I just get taken over by the idea that working women handle both home and work).


But, know what, that is just naive. No, really. Most housewives I know do a lot with their time too. It is just that what they do is not quantifiable, doesn't seem to have much impact, is in other words, taken for granted. My mother spends a lot more time at home but she is meticulous, she is very careful about the details. She thinks that reheating food is blasphemous, that every corner of the window sill should be dusted every week, that every meal must be freshly made (and if possible, the spices freshly ground!) and she is a perfectionist in her world. She may not be the greatest innovator or the "smart" hostess that many working women claim to be (smart because they can whip up an interesting looking dish out of MTR mix)- but she is indispensable. And our (aka mine, my dad's and my brother's) lives would never be the same if she hadn't decided to pour her time into fixing the details for us- details that are essential for us but which we always fail to notice.

Now I am not trying to say that working women are bad cooks or something- just that they have limited time to spend with their family, which they must apportion accordingly. Since housewives get more time to do household work, some of them do put in a lot of effort into it. Again, I am not saying all of them do, but the deep rooted stereotype in our minds that 'if somebody is a housewife, she is not doing anything' is simply untrue. To echo a line in the movie that brought me to this post "doing that would make us judgmental!"

As I said before, I find it unimaginable that I spend my life in the endless cycle of cooking and cleaning. ("One's life MUST matter, Dennis, beyond all the cooking and cleaning.."- Alexandra Roach as Margaret Thatcher in 'The Iron Lady'). I know I never will devote my life to supporting the lives of others in such a direct manner. But I respect the fact that there are people who are selfless enough to do this- not because they cannot do any better but because they see greater joy in it. THAT is the key thing I wish to say.

In a changing fast-paced cutthroat world, our generation (including myself) tends to think that just because somebody is not working, they are not capable enough. And as we rush through our lives with lack of time for each other, we forget the small ways in which we might be hurting someone who has been nice enough to spend their entire life for us. Capturing THIS was the essence of what made "English Vinglish" awesome! I am not reviewing it here, but I saw it today last week and I had heard it was good, but didn't expect to concur so much. I watched the Hindi version and all I could think of was my mother. And when I finished a few minutes ago that day, my amygdala was overworking (Yeah, yeah, I am doing the bioengineering showoff here.. Forgive me!)

The movie simply made me think of how my mother must be feeling amidst the three  of us who are always on our toes and not taking the time to appreciate her enough. Though her English may not be like Sridevi's there are many subtle ways in which we hurt her, and we don't even think about it. I also thought about how housewives get so caught in their little world that they don't get the time to update themselves about the world outside- so while the rest of the family becomes internet savvy and touchscreen friendly, they are still struggling to catch up. It doesn't mean they are slow learners, just that they never had the time or incentive to learn as much as we do. And then we laugh at them or get frustrated with them, when in fact helping us so much is the real reason they never caught up. So yes, the movie was awesome and I recommend everyone (housewives, children of housewives, children of working women who are friends of children of housewives and so on.. :P) to go watch it. In one word, it was "inspirational".

But the real thing I want to say is here- To all housewives I might have ever known and underestimated in any small way, however subtly or spontaneously, I am sorry. I know I shall never be in your shoes, but I will definitely try to respect your decision and you as a person. Above all, to my wonderful mother- Sorry for all the times we hurt you, however unknowingly. It is not fair to you and we try our best not to do so but  after all we are humans with our own foibles. You are a talented person and we are proud of you. And if we ever let you feel otherwise, don't take it to heart. We don't mean it. And what you have done with your life is a hard decision, one I would never take, one that involves more sacrifices than I care to even think about- we are lucky you did it. It is great. And we will try our best to never never do the worst form of ingratitude to you- taking you for granted! And yes, we love you!