It was around 8:30 a.m yesterday. I was making the second cup of tea of the day for me. This tea needs be absolutely perfect for my day to go well. You see the first cup is like a quick fix after 14 hours of caffeine withdrawal and it is required to get the brain cells started in the morning. I gulp it down while multitasking – getting things ready for breakfast, boiling milk, cutting fruit or glancing through the newspaper headlines. But the second one – this follows breakfast when the morning chores are complete and I have the house entirely to myself having seen people off to work.. Now no compromises on this one. The colour has to be the right shade of brown – a little darker than ochre and a shade lighter than russet to be precise - with the right amount of sugar to set off the bitterness of the tea and enhance its taste and the temperature has to be perfect . Total ZEN. Ask me for anything after this and it is yours.

So it is important that I stay focused while making it because even a few seconds this way or that way can spoil it all and ruin my day. Now my architect was thoughtful enough to place a couple of windows in my kitchen in strategic angles so I can get a view of what goes on in the street while I am in the kitchen. So I was making tea and looking through the one that gives me a clear view of the crossroad junction at the beginning of my road and presently a young girl came in view – jeans, a short red kurta and red stole. About 19 or 20, definitely in college or just out of college. I saw her glance in all directions as she approached the junction and I thought she was looking for an auto to hire. The road was quite empty at this time on a Sunday morning. And she turned toward the pavement. Now I am familiar with men doing it all the time in preparation of using the road as a public toilet but this was a girl, a well-dressed young one and I decided that this can’t be her intention. I kept watching as she took out a plastic carry-bag from her purse, pulled out a coconut and broke it on a stone on the road. I have no clue what this was about as I have only seen people break coconuts outside temples. May be some kind of superstition – a way to get rid of evil spirits. No problem. Coconuts are bio-degradable. A cow might even eat it for breakfast. So I had no issues with that.

But what she did next, that was unpardonable. No less than all those crass men urinating on the roads. She started crossing the road pretending that someone else had broken the coconut there and casually tossed the plastic bag on to the middle of the road . Now this really got my goat. An 'educated young girl' throwing a 'plastic' bag in the 'middle' of the 'road'. Too many unforgivables. And the nonchalance with which she did it suggested that she was n’t even aware of what she was doing. As if that was just the way one is supposed to dispose bags after their utility is over!
I wanted to catch her by her red stole and drag her back and make her pick it up. But unfortunately, by the time I turned off the stove and managed to reach my gate she had gone past two houses. I clapped my hands and shouted ‘hellooooooooo’ but she did not hear it or ignored me leaving me to seethe over my second cup which was ruined in any case.

I do not know if I might have been less angry if she had at least shown some signs of guilt while throwing the bag in that manner or tried to do it stealthily like the way she looked around while breaking the coconut. No, she tossed it confidently as if she was flicking off a leaf from her kurta and walked on. This apathy is more dangerous. And this apathy from a younger, educated person is even more disgusting.. When I take a walk in our neighborhood park, sometimes I see small kids throwing biscuit wrappers around. They don’t know better, so I tell them to use the garbage basket. Usually they are brought there by young girl-maids who take care of them and they don’t know better either due to their lack of education. But at least they comply when you tell them a couple of times. But what do you do with people who know that they are not supposed to do it and still do it because they could not care less or there is no real penalty for doing it. Perhaps it is a good idea to have fines for littering the way countries like Singapore have. You try to reason with our ‘educated’ people and tell them why it is important to preserve our environment they don’t care. They always want someone else to do it all before they can do their bit. But tell them that there is a fine and they will fall in line. But then again enforcement of any rule or law is always a problem in this country.

Is it something new or is it part of our psyche – a part of being Indian? Was this the reason why our ancestors invented punishments by Gods when you violated rules and codes of conduct?
‘You are to keep your surroundings clean – otherwise the Goddess of wealth would be annoyed and decide against living in your house.’
‘You are not to waste food because it is an insult to Goddess Lakshmi who would curse you to a life of hunger.’
I thought that all this was to instill a sense of discipline among people who lacked the privilege of education and the ability to reason. But education doesn’t really seem to make a difference especially when people are so selfish and apathetic and cannot see beyond the tip of their noses. We need culture-specific solutions to these global problems. Tell an average Indian that it is bad for your environment. he can't understand why it concerns him/her. But tell him that it is bad for his family and fortunes, he will sit up and act."Only a threat to them and theirs and their material well-being will work with these people to shake them to do something for common good.

I am sure that is the thing that a crossroads-coconut-breaker would relate to. Had someone told her that there is a ’dosham’ for using plastic or throwing it on the street, she might have be terrified about throwing it. I have always lobbied for getting rid of superstitions but if that is the language people understand I am all for inventing and popularising a few of them – some dosham for indiscriminate use of plastic and bad karma for littering and for spitting which would follow you up to seven births or some such thing. I am sure the message will hit home. We just need to get a few swamijis to collaborate and we can have a clean country in no time.
We have so many of them already – a couple more can’t hurt especially if they help to save this planet. We seem to have so many rituals for pleasing other planets which are supposed to control our lives while forgetting the only planet that matters, this mother earth which is our home.

All through my childhood and teens I wasted a lot of time and effort in pleasing people around me. Somehow it seemed important to keep everyone else happy even if it meant neglect of one’s own happiness. Part of this behaviour could be blamed on nature but lot of it was nurture. In the environment in which I grew up a girl was never allowed to forget that she would one day go into another house and it was very important to be accepted by everyone there by winning them over with one’s kindness, generosity, and willingness to sacrifice and put one’s needs after everyone else’s. And the training began in one’s own house from a very young age. Looking around one saw that it was the norm in the family – women who slogged away from pre-dawn to late hours in the night for the family, women who suffered in the hands of in-laws and husbands and never complained. Living in a family steeped in traditional ways, the injustices were not obvious. It seemed just the way of life and a very normal one at that. And the irony was that these very same women who were victims of traditions were also its chief guardians and keepers of culture. It was their duty to ensure that the traditions were preserved and passed on to successive generations!

True, these traditions were attributed a lot of significance , symbolism and mysticism in order to make them worthy of being preserved. It is all about packaging right? Like a jihadi suicide bomber feeling important about his mission and expecting reward in the life after, women carried on the yoke of tradition and even felt proud of it.

I do not know exactly when but somewhere in my 30s I began to question traditions and began to discard practices which did not seem relevant to my life. I had no problem removing the mangalsutra or not wearing a bindi or not observing fasts (vrats) to ensure my husband had a long life. As for brahminical practices such as madi, echil, pathu and theetu, I discarded them the moment I had my own kitchen.
For the uninitiated , these are Tamil words and I only know the Tamil words for these practices and this is what they roughly are.
Madi is when you ensure purity of the occasion with a head bath and wearing washed clothes that have been untouched by anyone who is not observing madi. In case of accidental contact with someone who is not in a madi state, they bathe again and wear fresh madi clothes or wet clothes to renew their Madi. This is a superior form of untouchability not to be confused with the untouchability practised among castes and was constitutionally abolished.

Echil ( literally meaning Saliva) is mixing food from one another’s plate or touching anything with the same hand while eating food. For example while eating, if you touch the vessel containing rice with the hand that is being used to eat , you have sullied all the rice in the vessel with your echil. Consequence: it becomes unfit for consumption by others and has to be entirely consumed by the person who has sullied it or thrown away. So every time you have touched echil you have to wash your hand before touching anything else with the same hand.

Pathu: Cooked items are usually not mixed with uncooked items like curd, milk, salt, water, oil etc. You cannot touch them with the same hand with which you have touched cooked items. You touch the vessel containing curd with the same hand which has touched the cooked rice and all the curd becomes Pathu and cannot go back into the storage but has to be consumed or thrown away. One is supposed to wash hands every time after touching pathu items and before touching non pathu items. Complicated? ya, if you entered a traditional brahmin kitchen it would be full of people obsessively washing their hands between handling items pathu and non-pathu.

Theetu: This is the opposite of madi. It is a state of impurity when you have not had your bath. it is also observed for a certain number of days when there has been a death or birth in the family. During this period the family does not celebrate festivals or do puja (prayer). A mensturating woman was also considered impure ( theetu) when she had her monthly periods and was isolated. There has been a lot of discussion among Indian women bloggers about this practice in the past month and I am not about to add to all the fuss about a natural biological function in a fertile woman's body.
As far as I know it was essentially a practice among brahmins who were also great observers of madi. I refused to be isolated even as a 15 year old and if that made their gods angry, I was willing to face the consequences. But my sister in law told me how she had to sleep in the bathroom on ‘those’ days because they lived in a small house and there was no extra room where she could be kept isolated. As a teenager she spent those days in fear of cockroaches and rats that had a free run of the bathroom. That made my blood boil. I am not sure if God was happy with her family for treating her like that on her most vulnerable days. Enough said about my thoughts on the practice of isloating mensturating women.

Anyway as I said, I have discarded all these practices many years ago. I keep a safe distance from all these traditions in my normal day to day life and it poses no problem to anyone around me. But when there are occasions when I am forced to be part of functions which involve people who are deluded to be keepers of tradition and culture, I have trouble. I have a choice to pretend and follow tradition and please them or be true to myself and be unpopular. Not just unpopular but I also end up hurting their sentiments. Recently we had a family reunion and a wedding in the family was being discussed. I was shocked at the meaningless ceremonies people wanted to have and the amount of money budgeted for the same. I can understand their insistence on the basic rituals but when they introduced new practices because ‘everyone is doing it these days’ and justify it as a ‘new tradition’ I opened my mouth and became instantly unpopular.
N.e.w T.r.a.d.i.t.i.o.n? do you see the irony, the oxymoron?
If you do not, here is a definition of the word tradition:
1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)
(thanks: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tradition)

It doesn’t matter that I or the other person can afford the additional expenditure. It does not matter that by silent acquiescence I can keep a lot of people happy. I do not want to be guilty of being a party to some custom which may become part of ‘tradition’ in the coming years adding to the financial burden of some middle-class tradition-fearing parent in the years to come. simple? sensible? Why is it so difficult to get it across to otherwise intelligent people?

Traditions can be a security blanket when you need something to give you a sense of comfort and belonging. This probably explains the enthusiasm with which the Indian diaspora religiously celebrate festivals in their new homes - celebrating Holi, when it is not heralding spring in their country of residence and Sankranti when it is not harvest time. Tradition can provide a framework for one's life, it can give guidelines but the minute it begins to oppress a certain section of people, it requires re-examination. There is something seriously lacking in your tradition if it needs fear and authority to keep it alive and if it falls flat on its face when faced with rational examination. Such traditions should be questioned and it is ok to discard them if they make no sense in the world we are actually living in. They were observed for a certain reason in earlier centuries and are obsolete in today's context and it is better to shed the excess baggage. That is the only hope for what is good in our tradition in the 21st century. Or else the baby will get thrown along with the bathwater. But I guess that would be ok in the cause of Madi ! ( just kidding hehehe)

I frequent a departmental store which has one swinging door to enter and exit through – you know the type you push from either side to open? Around this store you have two five-star hospitals, three or four offices of MNCs, and one of the top management schools of the country. Why are these details important? So that you know the type of clients that visit this store.
You’d expect a minimum level of courtesy, manners and sensitivity from such people? Wrong.
Every time I go there people are walking in and out of the swinging doors never once holding it open ever so slightly for another person to enter or exit but letting that door swing back rapidly right on their face if they are not careful! If they have to exit, it does not matter who is on the other side – senior citizen, child, pregnant lady or a someone carrying a child – it is the same. Push the door and let it swing back without even looking back.

When I mentioned this to a young person he laughed and said “chivalry is dead and the feminists killed it.” Chivalry, who said anything about Chivalry? True there are fewer damsels in distress today needing knights in shining armours to protect them. They are quite capable of taking care of themselves, thank you. But what has that got to do with simple courtesies and good manners from either sex - why throw the baby out with the bath water? Holding doors open may have been part of chivalrous behaviour but it is as much simple manners and good behaviour. I expect that in women as well as men. Are those dead too? That would indeed be a sad day for humanity. If anything they are needed much more today than ever in human history.

One smartie even told me that it is a cultural thing . We don't do such things in this country. Men always walked in first and women came behind. Yes they did but it was in those days when danger lurked everywhere and men went first so their women and children were not exposed to it. How do you argue with someone who doesn't even know this? There may be hundred arguments in favour of bad behaviour but good behaviour needs no justification - it is just the right thing to do, period.

To be ‘considerate and caring’ – is it only for the girl scouts? Not for the rest of us? At school one of the first things we were taught was to let others pass and not rush. Older girls always ensured that the teachers and children got out before them and the younger ones picked up the habit soon. It seems to me that nobody teaches them these things today. In fact I have seen some parents telling their children to rush and push out of international flights in order to get to the immigration counters first – they show them how to do it by their own example. Getting up even before the flight has come to a complete halt, opening overhead storages, blocking walkways – name it. And it is n’t just the labourers coming back home who block the area around the luggage carousel making it impossible for others even to look if their boxes are there – many of them work in MNCs and have impressive degrees. After a long haul flight everyone is eager to go home but elbowing, pushing and blocking are not the best of solutions to expedite matters. Granted that the facilities and services at the airports are pathetic but we make it worse for ourselves with our behaviour. Put a seemingly gentle and soft spoken Indian in a situation like this and see his worst come out – ‘it is “me” against the rest and I am getting it whatever it takes’ seems to be the attitude.

This generation is highly competitive and they want to be ahead of every one everywhere. Try waiting at any pedestrian crossing without an automated signal or a policeman and see how many vehicles slow down to let you pass by – even if it is a school-going child or a senior citizen trying to cross the road - not just the buses and autos driven by the choicest boors but the plush ones driven by uniformed drivers and by smartly dressed yuppies of both gender. We are all in a hurry and there is no time for meaningless delays - meaningless as they are not going to help us get ahead in our career or finances. It is no excuse that others are like that and you'd be a fool or (the even more descriptive) "loser" to try to be different. I don't know. I'd rather be rated a 'loser' than lose my manners and be a winner.

While I can at least understand ( not accept) this behaviour in the above situation, I cannot understand it at a super market or a multiplex cinema hall. Here there is no hurry to get out but simple apathy and lack of manners. Funnily the doors of the auditoriums in this cinema hall in Bangalore has no stoppers. So invariably the door keeps swinging back and people push it and get out and let it swing back in your face. I always hold it for the next one to pass but the next one just walks through and then I am left holding it forever or until someone observant comes along . Young college girls and boys, yuppy men, older gentlemen, middle aged ladies – no distinction. No one thinks of the next person in line. It is I, me and myself only.

Today’s life is on the fast lane and we all seem to be hurrying from one thing to the next all the time. But it is sad if consideration, courtesy and good manners are the casualties in this race. Life may be short but not so short that there is no time for simple courteous behaviour towards one another. Meantime I will still stand holding doors while people nonchalantly walk past. After all , as the wise one said:
The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones.

On March 8th I saw a couple of Bengali films on Women – ‘Charitra’ which focused on the issue of rape and 'Diu konya' which showed the success story of two women who changed a poverty stricken hamlet into a prosperous community through their spirit, initiative and hard work. The films were part of a festival sponsored by justfemme.in , a women-centric online magazine. Please visit and join hands in their endeavour by writing on issues you feel strongly about.

Rape can be traced to several underlying causes – sexual frustration, perversion, an act of revenge and as an exercise of power. The revenge and power elements are born out of the social stigma that attaches itself to the victim of rape. She is considered ‘defiled’, ‘fallen’ and unchaste. She is a symbol of dishonour for the family.
So if you want to shame the family rape their women. If you have a caste dispute, go rape their women and subdue them and show your power.
If the community thinks a woman has not been following their rules, punish her by rape and have her head shaven off. She will be brought in line.
If a man rebels, rape the women in his household and mangle his pride forever.

Ok all this happens “out there” not in our families – more in uneducated, caste- dominated societies steeped in prejudices . We are educated, urban and more broad minded . So what is our attitude towards a rape victim?
We all show the right reactions when a rape is reported – we are outraged, we condemn the criminal and agree that he deserves the harshest punishment . We feel sorry for the victim. If we encounter one in the course of our daily life we would help her as we would any disadvantaged person.
I don’t wish this for my worst enemy but just for the sake of this discussion, if it were to happen to us or someone in our own family, would we be able to treat it as an accident and get on with life as before? Can the husband treat his wife with the same level of respect and love or would it somehow be tainted? (remember the film Ghar?) What about the rest of the inner family and extended family? Would they treat her without any reservations – would she still be treated as the Patni , the Grihalakshmi? Or does an accident somehow make her less of a woman. In the film, a victim who has been accepted by her family is asked this question if everything is normal between her and her husband and she breaks down and says : "no, what is broken doesn't get mended forever." The equality is gone. She is somehow inferior.
How many of us would go public and report the case? and how many families would think of family ‘honour’, sisters and sisters-in-law to be married and try to hush it up?

Among other dimensions of rape, the film explored if it is the besmirching of her character which makes rape so terrible for a woman even more than the physical violence she experiences. This actually works in two ways – first to keep all women submissive and if she is a victim, to keep her quiet for fear of social stigma.

What are the normal noises one hears from the ‘system’ when there is a rape?
Girls who dress with modesty don’t get raped.
If you are too aggressive you tempt men to rape you thereby exercising power over you.
A woman invites rape by venturing alone in the dark in lonely,less frequented places.
You cannot control what others do but you can be careful for your own safety.

Standard devices for keeping women submissive and dependent. When I was growing up, I constantly heard this statement on why a women needed to be extra careful :
Whether the thorn falls on the cloth or the cloth falls on the thorn , it is the cloth that gets torn so protect yourself.
The tear that they were referring to was the damage to one’s reputation and consequent damage to life.
It is bad enough that she has been physically violated and subjected to a crude form of violence. But she must prove that it was not consensual intercourse , that she did not do anything to invite this . And even after all this she is deemed a “fallen” woman – fallen from the high standards of chastity that a woman “must” have. She is defiled - she has to live with the stigma of a fallen woman.

And to prevent rape, we want to restrict the movement of our women - don't walk here, don't stand there, don't dress like this or that, don't go out after sunset, don't , don't, don't. It is simple logic that you cage the animal that poses danger to others but here we let the animal roam freely and cage the potential victims. Restrict a woman’s right to walk freely, talk freely, laugh freely and dress as she wishes.
Elementary, huh!

When a policeman asks a rape victim , as in the film, “what were you doing there alone at that time?” should we not be turning back and asking him why people should fear to go to any place when we have a paid police force. Isn’t every rape in a dark alley a sign of failure of the police system? If I have to stay locked in the safety of my house after dark why do we have the police? To provide security to the ministers ? Is the legal system all about punishment after the crime?

If you see the reports of rape there doesn’t seem to be any common reason – the victims are from all age groups, all social strata and there are cases where girls are abducted from outside their houses and taken to these lonely spots and raped. You can observe all the don’ts and still end up being a victim because it is not about what and who you are; it is about who THEY are.

So why bring up issues about a woman’s character when she is the victim of rape? Why does an accident have to become a lifelong cross she has to bear? The way a society views a rape victim can itself go a long way in helping her - to heal, to get back to her life with less emotional trauma. Above all it will encourage them to come forward and report the cases and not suffer in silence and also ensure that the animals are brought to book. And detach the notion of honour from rape and you take away the sense of power that these perverted men derive from a rape.

In the 60s , Jayakantan wrote a story called “Agnipravesam” where a college girl is raped in a car on a dark rainy evening . On seeing her state when she reaches home, her poor widowed mother immediately senses what has happened. She takes her in and simply pours water on the girls head; then she tells her to treat the water as fire and feel pure again and forget the incident.

Agnipravesham indeed - being through the horror of a rape is worse than passing through fire and surviving it. She is a victim, a survivor and there is nothing dishonourable or fallen about her. If anybody should feel fallen, it is the entire system because every incident of rape is a sign of the failure of a system to protect its constituents.

In recent times people have been reminding me that it is time for me to graduate to the status of a mother-in-law. When they approach me with proposals for what they consider to be "suitable" girls for my son, I do not know how to react.It seems so inappropriate. Some have even asked me what kind of a girl we are interested in (you know the slim, fair,"good" family line of criteria!) and I have had to disappoint them terribly by saying I have not thought about it at all. It seems beside the point what the parents want because ultimately what matters is what the boy and the girl want.I am convinced that arranged marriages will not work for the present generation young adults. They want to be the ones to find their partner and do not want to delegate it to the parents which is very good and very mature.And given the strong individualisms and egos of this generation, it is necessary that they know each other well before they take the plunge.

What interests me is not the matrimonial deals but the relationship changes in the two families after the marriage. Knowing that my turn would come sooner or later, I have in the recent years been a keen observer of the relationship dynamics between the young adults after their marriage and their parents. A few blogs I have visited over the years have also given me a perspective on some of the issues.But since there are more d-i-l bloggers and less m-i-l bloggers I find that we are underrepresented in the cause and decided to speak on behalf of my ilk.

While most girls seem to ensure that their closeness to their side of the family, especially parents remain as close after their wedding, parents do not seem to figure too much in the consideration of the boys.Particularly if the parents are financially independent,emotional dependence of ageing parents doesnt seem to figure anywhere in the considerations.They seem to only think of themselves, their career, the girl and their life together even when they are the only child of their parents. And when the sons themselves don't care the daughters-in-law do not make that extra effort to bond with their in-laws who become complete outsiders in many cases. One of my relatives with a similar experience told me "in earlier days we brought a daughter to our house when our sons married . These days we send our sons away to his wife's house."

I am not saying that the girls should become outsider to their own family after marriage like our old customs dictated.It is wonderful that even in cases where marriage may put a geographical distance to the family the emotional bonds remain just as close. But why is it too difficult to see that the relationship between parents and children are the same on the other side too and make that little effort to integrate into the other side of the family? I have known girls who are extremely popular and affectionate with their own family and friends but who'd like to maintain a distance with their husband's family just so that they are not taken for granted. I understand that these may have been formed on watching some bad saas-bahu relations between their docile mothers and tyrannical grandmothers or in their neighbourhood or on Television serials. But isn't it unfair to prejudge a person based on her role even without giving her a chance? And when you approach the relationship with sucha prejudice, how much chance are you actuallly giving it?

One of my friends collected speciality saris from all regions of India for 5 years before her only son's wedding to present to her daughter in law at the wedding and the girl told her ,"No mummy, these are not my type of saris." Another had her gifts of jewels rebuffed in the same way. Why? what is the big deal? In official relationships we bend over backwards to please arrogant bosses and go out of our way to be good team players - why is it tough to give in a little to please an old lady who gave birth to your husband and perhaps played a large role in making him all that you love about him today? There are issues when you should learn to stand up for your rights or put your foot firmly down but emotional intelligence is also about knowing when to give in a little without feeling insecure.

If only the young girls would try to give the relationship with their husband's family a fair chance in stead of typecasting people based on their roles! and if only the boys would learn a lesson or two from their own wives on how to treat their own parents! Old age is not about comforts and luxuries but about feeling loved and wanted and it takes very little to please parents most of the time.So if you ask me what my expectations from my son's wife would be, it is just someone who would give me as much chance as she would give her mother in our dealings.
Is it too much to ask?

Watched an iranian film - Leila. A very insightful portrayal of a woman who is forced by her mother-in-law to share her husband with another woman because she cannot bear him children.Her husband finally gives in to her pressure only on condition that she would not leave him because he loves her very much. But in spite of all her strength she is unable to stay in the same house when he actually brings home another woman as his wife, even though she herself had given him her approval. The plot would fit as well in any Indian televison serial or film except that in this film all melodrama had been totally avoided and the feelings of all concerned portrayed sensitively.

Being a woman I could relate to Leila very well - her sense of guilt ( though entirely stupid) at her inability to be a mother and her inability to share the man he loves with another woman.But my son who watched the film along with me was completely outraged at the idea and the stupidity of the women and their whole approach to the issue. He could not believe it when I said this was as common in India even among the Hindus.

I remembered a story that my friend A had told me about her grandfather. She is from U.P. and this happened in the later years of the 19th century. Theirs was a family of rich landlords. Apparently her grandfather's first wife could not bear children. So she insisted that her husband marry again but the man loved his wife so much that he said it was impossible for him to love another woman.But his wife kept insisting until finally gave in on condition that the woman should not expect him to love her the way he loved his first wife. So they found a young girl from a poor family (one of the many daughters of a clerk who worked in their house)and fed her well and raised her in the house in order to get her married to the man when she became a woman. In`a few years the marriage happened and she gave birth to a child within a year. The child was immediately taken away by the first wife - she would be the mother of this child and bring him up. What could the poor gilr do? She knew this when she consented to the marriage, didnt she?And in the course of years, she gave birth to more children too but all of them called the first wife as mother and their own biological mother as "chhoti ma". And whatever she wanted she could not ask her husband but had to ask the first wife as that was the husband's instructions! Finally she was 60 when the first wife died, this is when the second wife became the lady of the house. By then her husband was gone too!
I have often thought about the two women and wondered whose sadness was worse -
the first wife who had to let her husband have another wife and live in the same house or the second wife who had everything and still could call nothing hers!

Perhaps for many who are in their 20s now, this might all seem like fiction. Sometimes real people are much stranger than what fiction can come up with! And guess what, the first wife in my friend's story was also called Leela, Leelavati!

I meet them ever so often these days - Smart,qualified, witty, employed young women, extrovert, party animals - in short "eligible" in every sense but unmarried.Reason: they haven't come across the "right" man yet.Are their expectations very high? Do they want the looks of a Brad Pitt and the qualities of a Darcy and the wealth of Bill Gates preferably with the voice of Amitabh Bachchcan and the poetry of Neruda? Not really. They just want a man who shares their interests and respects their independence and is fun to be with.Or so they claim!
So I asked one of them if they mean to say that they haven't found any like that among all the men they meeet. She said that she hasn't actually had the opportunity to find out because none of the meetings has proceeded beyond meeting at parties and she doesn't want to make the first move and sound desperate unless she is sure that the other person has some interest in her! And I have a suspicion that the men are not making the first move precisely for the same reason. so you meet them everywhere - young, smart, qualified......eligible in every sense but unmarried!

So when I got the occasion to talk to a couple of young men, "eligible" and unattached, I asked him what the problem was, in order to get a male perspective.They said that the girls these days are great as friends but not so great as wives - they wanted everything and were not ready to make any compromises.

Probing further, this is what I understood.I dont mean to sound like one of those agency surveys which draw conclusions on sociological trends after interviewing 100 people, but I wondered if the root of the problem lay in the fact that in the past 50 years women have outgrown their traditional roles while men are still not ready to contribute as much to the domestic responsibilities. Is it to do with the mindset that acquiring the skills required around keeping house and managing children is a bit of a feminisation of the male which is considered a backward step for them while a woman moving into traditional male bastions is considered as a step forward for them? Even though the division of responsibilities between men and women started out without any value implications, the "women's territories" have acquired an implied inferiority over the years probably because they don't have the potential to bring any money to the family revenues. And so men do not see any value addition in acquiring these skills.Where possible they try to avoid it by outsourcing the service - cooking for example but there are certain responsibilities that one or the other spouse has to take on personally and it is still the woman who does it in the majority of the cases. And when some women rebel against this and question why it cant be the man who makes the career sacrifices for the sake of keeping the family together, men complain that these women want "everything" and don't give up anything!
But isn't it precisely what men have been doing all these years?

I do believe that definitions of marriage and family are up for major changes in the course of this century. The above issues are already a source of unhappy marriages and even divorces in some cases. And a lot of young people are nervous about making a the commitment to a married relationship - some say they are not marrying in order to avoid a divorce! Everyone wants more from relationships and are not willing to be restrained by societal norms in case they dont get what they want.

Good or bad, this is the reality. And like all generations, this generation will come up with its own solutions for these issues.And in the mean time,you meet them ever so often these days - Smart,qualified, witty, employed young women, extrovert, party animals - in short eligible in every sense but unmarried!