“Women menstruate. Get over it!”

For how many more years will we follow an archaic practice in the name of religion and God?

I am appalled. And heart-broken.

Over dinner yesterday, someone visiting us shared the horrifying story of how a young lady in her extended family is being ill-treated by her (the lady’s) in-laws. We know the young lady to be very talented and so it was particularly hard to stomach her story.

Apart from being asked to follow meaningless, archaic, rituals, in the name of religion, the young lady, I understand, has to face the ignominy of being isolated from the rest of the family during her periods each month. Apparently, she cannot even read a book in the time because that would mean “polluting Goddess Saraswati”. However, it appears that she can go to work because her income goes to supporting the family. Seriously, things can’t get more pathetic and hypocritical than this!

The young lady is an engineer; she works at a large MNC. She is hardly 27, so I presume her in-laws may possibly be in their 50s; which is, they belong to my generation. What gets my goat is that someone my age, in today’s world, practises a ‘custom’ that tramples on the self-esteem of a woman. And we are mute spectators, unable to do anything to stop this atrocity? How will we step into someone’s home and question them, when the girl herself is not protesting the treatment being meted out to her? Her father, her mother and her brother too don’t appear to have an issue there. So, how can we, “rank outsiders”, get involved?

I just don’t get it. You need a woman to be your son’s wife, you need her salary, you need the grandchild, but you don’t think it is important to respect the woman for who she is?

To be sure, I know so many young people who stand up for empowering women. But I guess their crusade is often directed at the uneducated, underprivileged segments of society. What do we do when in our elite, educated circles, folks my age behave in such a regressive manner? Would the in-laws of the lady have allowed it if their daughter was treated the way they are treating their daughter-in-law?

On a wall, opposite to the Russian Cultural Centre on Kasturi Ranga Road in Chennai, there’s a graffiti that screams out a message, loud and clear, for all of humanity. It says: “Women menstruate, get over it!” I wish someone painted that graffiti on the walls of this family’s house.

The wall graffiti opposite the Russian Cultural Centre in Chennai

Honestly, I am lost, I am appalled, I am heart-broken. And I am clueless. I believe all I can do is pray. With due respect to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, I pray that my land rises into a heaven “where, without exception, women are respected”.

Let us please disallow any practice that takes away a woman’s dignity

Here’s a humble plea…let’s co-create a better, equal, world.

At an engagement ceremony in the family on Sunday, I witnessed, helplessly, as gender inequality played out. The mother of the groom, a single parent, was discouraged openly by the priest, from leading the ceremony from her family’s side. Her friend and the friend’s husband were “allowed” by the priest to lead the ceremony though. The implied message was that a male member and his spouse alone could lead this “auspicious” event. Single mothers (separated or widowed) may not, I inferred, lead. Interestingly, neither the groom nor his mother protested.

I didn’t volunteer to offer my perspective to the groom or his family because I am not very close to them to have known if they would be open to my “interference”. From the way everyone was so “comfortable” with the conduct of the ceremony, I am quiet sure they may have resented my “intrusion into their space”.

Even so, I am sharing my thoughts here to highlight the responsibility each of us has to throw out archaic practices which, in the name of religion or tradition, disrespect a woman, take away her dignity and treat her with a contemptuous bias. I don’t understand how an unrelated male leading an engagement ceremony is more appropriate, relevant or acceptable than a single mother – for heaven’s sake, the boy’s own biological mother! – leading it? I seriously don’t get it. This incident only reiterates in me the belief that a lot, lot more has to be done in the area of gender equality – and a lot of it begins in our homes. I wish the groom, a strapping young man, had stood up for his mom – who has given her all for raising him and his sister – and invited her to preside over the ceremony. It would have ushered in a progressive, refreshing, new egalitarian era.

I am not suggesting here that we turn activists at all family dos and social events. Activism is not necessarily required in all contexts; we also don’t have to be belligerent and aggressive. We can and must learn to put our foot down firmly on such practices that are clearly outdated, distasteful and stupid. I am sure if someone from the groom’s family had told the priest that the groom’s mother would lead the ceremony, he would not have had a serious problem. And if he had had a problem, he could have been reasoned with – either by talking him out of his regressive logic or by reiteration that he must conform to his client’s brief and expectations. Surely, the priest could be made to accept that choosing to accord dignity to a single mother is not blasphemous; because without her, there would be no son, no groom!!

Lest I sound preachy and hypocritical, I must disclose and reiterate here that I do have a dysfunctional relationship with my mother. I talk about this openly. Yet, I have not disrespected her at any time; I may not value what she has achieved or agree with what she has done or does, but I do respect her for always going out and doing what she believes in doing. I am also very grateful to her for having brought me into this world and for having raised me and for teaching me the alphabet. We have different outlooks to Life, our values are not in sync and so our chemistry has never worked. My way of according her respect is to let her be who she likes being without intruding into her space with either my presence or opinions.

Sunday’s incident leaves me very baffled. I am not sure how we can garner support towards changing attitudes and mindsets. So, I make a humble plea. I wish, as a people, we have more conversations on this subject. I wish people stand up for gender equality instead of being button-holed by shallow reasoning in the name of God, religion, tradition, culture and society. I just wish we all co-create a better, equal, world…

 

Don’t allow or suffer injustice

On this Podcast, I share a very personal experience. Learning from my own inability to have stood up for Vaani, I champion why our women must be respected and given dignity. It begins in our homes. When we see injustice happening, we must always remember we have a choice not to suffer it.

Listen time: 8:32 minutes

Expunge any practice that disrespects women from the face of the planet

Any home or family that alienates its women is regressive.

I was shocked to read a friend’s post on Facebook yesterday. She was attending a wedding in the family. And she was disallowed by a family elder, ironically a lady, from participating in the ‘mehendi’ ceremony, because she (my friend) had lost her husband a couple of years ago. In another episode, a friend who is pregnant and is due to deliver in a month, said her family wants her to postpone her ‘maike’ visit (to her maternal home) because a distant relative had passed away on her husband’s side – so until the period of mourning was over, she could not ‘carry the stigma/shadow of grief and death’ into her own home. In another horror story we have heard, a woman was disallowed from inviting her divorced sister home, by her mother-in-law, because a young, divorced woman was “capable of corrupting the minds of the men” in the house.

For heaven’s sake, we are in 2016! Well into the 21^st century! And we still have such cruel, crude, primitive, biased thinking that is prevalent?

I believe we have an urgent need in each family to examine how our women are treated. I think more than in workplaces, we need a policy in our homes to ensure that women are not harassed in the name of God, religion, rituals, tradition and culture. And as in the case of all three women, whose stories I have shared here, it is often, unfortunately, women who either directly try to alienate other women or partner in such alienation. When I was much younger, I rabidly fought a lot of this discrimination against Vaani (and her family) by my own mother – but I lost out every single time. This is one of the principal reasons why I choose to remain detached and distant from my side of the family – to protect our own inner peace and sanity. I wish I had been stronger then. But at least over the past decade or so, I have been championing this thought that any home or family that does not give equal opportunity and respect to its women has to be condemned unequivocally.

Last year when my father-in-law Venks passed on, and we were readying his body for cremation, the priest asked me if any of Venks’ grandsons were around. This, as I understood it, was to light the source fire from which, notionally, the funeral pyre would be lit. I told the priest that two of Venks’ grandsons were on their way from different Indian cities and they planned to reach the crematorium directly. Since the source fire (in an earthern pot) had to be lit at home, I suggested that my daughter, Venks’ granddaughter, be allowed to light it. But the priest would just not agree. We got into a dignified but vocal debate on gender equality that lasted several minutes. Finally, I backed off, because I didn’t want to hold up the proceedings that were being led by the priest in partnership with Venks’ son, my brother-in-law. However, when it came to bid the body goodbye, all of us were asked to notionally ‘feed the body’ (vai-ikku arisi). I invited my daughter too to do it. The elders in the family and the priest didn’t quite appreciate this. For, per them, unmarried girls must neither feed the body nor see it off. Not only did Aanchal take my cue and ‘feed Venks’ body’, she and Vaani accompanied the cortege to the crematorium and literally saw Venks off. I am very proud of the choices my wife and my daughter made. After all they were close to Venks too.

I must confess here that although social norms, banal traditions and dogmatic rituals are all stacked up always to favor men, it is the women who are more resilient that us men. I say this from my own experience of fighting our crisis – without Vaani on my side, I would never have made it this far. And in almost every story around us, whenever I have met sensible, sensitive, compassionate men, I have always found them acknowledging this truth. The other day I was chatting with Gregory Jacob from Dubai (his family’s story of surviving a traumatic phase of bankruptcy is now a famous motion picture in Malayalam – Jacobinte Swargarajyam – in which Nivin Pauly plays Gregory’s role). And Jacob had this to say: “Amma is the backbone of our family, she is the warrior queen, she has been the pillar of strength for all of us. I guess we men aren’t really fireproof after all!” I can’t agree with him more.

I don’t want to preach. I just want to make a plea. Let’s be the change we want see around us. Let’s get rid of any thought, practice, ritual, tradition or custom that alienates a woman. And let’s start from our own homes!   

 

 

A Life lesson from Neerja’s father, Harish Bhanot

Don’t allow anyone to do injustice to you and don’t suffer injustice.

Rama and Harish Bhanot – both have passed on Picture Courtesy: Neerja Bhanot Archives/Internet

Yesterday, I watched Ram Madhvani’s brilliant biopic on Pan Am flight purser Neerja Bhanot (1963~1986) – ‘Neerja’. And I cried twice. Once, at the theatre, when Neerja (Sonam Kapoor in an unforgettable performance) reads out the letter that her first husband Naresh, undoubtedly a poor human being and an MCP, wrote to Harish Bhanot. And the second time I cried when I thought about that scene again, later in the evening, while sitting on my couch at home and nursing a drink. The letter is a cold, brutal, factual expression of how women are treated in our country, in some of our families. I cried the first time because I could relate to every word in that letter – because that’s how my mother has always treated Vaani. I cried the second time because I felt guilty that, in the early years of our marriage, I had not succeeded in fighting the injustice that was meted out to Vaani and me. And that’s precisely what Harish Bhanot teaches his daughter, Neerja: “Never allow injustice to happen and never suffer it.” I wish I had known this back then – that I must not just stand up, I must stand firm, even if it was against my mother, for Vaani. I wish I had stood firm the very first time that Vaani was treated unfairly.

I am not saying this by way of justifying my insufficient action at that time. But the context in a typical TamBrahm – perhaps in most Indian families it is so – family of the 60s/70s/80/90s was that the daughter-in-law shall slave it out. And the mother-in-law will dominate. The son shall not speak up to the parents even if it meant standing up for his companion; because how dare you let down your mother in front of your wife? Besides, this lousy logic that ‘all mothers-in-law will have problems with their daughters-in-law’ and ‘it happens in every home’ was used to smother the fires. In our family particularly, no one dared to question the source of all things fractious and manipulative – my mother! And every time I tried, whenever an episode of injustice happened, I failed miserably. Each time I tried to protect Vaani, I would be shouted down in a long-drawn, physically draining, and often-times violent too, completely uncivil war of words. That my mother and I had a poor chemistry, that in deference to her wish, we are staying in ‘their’ home in the first 18 months of our marriage, didn’t help matters one bit. We had to pay for phone calls that Vaani made to her parents and we had to pay for the food that her family members consumed when they visited her. Vaani was never allowed to use the washing machine and she had to wash everyone’s clothes by hand. The maid was sacked on the pretext of being a perpetual latecomer – but the ‘real’ reason was that since Vaani was now expecting a baby (Aashirwad) and was going to be at home, ‘let’s save the maid’s salary and put Vaani to work’. There are countless horror stories that can fill a book and that consumed several nights of our early, young, adulthood owing to the domestic strife we had to face.

It is possible that I may be appearing to be petty recalling all this here, after all these years. It may also look like I am being uncharitable to my mother who may not necessarily have grown up, though she’s certainly grown much, much older. To be sure, for my own inner peace, I have forgiven her long ago. But the truth about Life is you can forgive people but you can’t always forget what happened to you (I have shared more on how this can practically work in my Book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’; Westland, 2014). That part of ‘Neerja’, the letter-reading scene in particular, brought back painful memories that I did not want to ever revisit. Yet, this is not about my past, this is not about how heartless and remorseless my mother’s behavior has been, this is about a lesson that no one taught me then. In fact, I didn’t even know there was a lesson. But upon reflection I feel everyone should know this one lesson – even if you don’t learn anything else in Life: You, and only you, are responsible for your inner peace, dignity and happiness. Don’t allow anyone to do injustice to you and don’t suffer injustice.

You don’t have to always fight – as I foolishly tried to for years – with a view to avenge your detractor or change the person, you can simply walk away. The biggest power we all have, the simplest option we all have, is to get up and walk away from a situation or a person that hurts us or makes us unhappy. We don’t exercise this option because we wonder how society will look at us, we think of how that person will feel if we walked out. I have learnt, from experience, that how you feel is most important to your inner peace and happiness. If you feel something’s not right, something unfair is happening, stand up, say no, and leave.

It’s time all of us made a sincere effort to change our lives and our world. Especially the way we treat our women. Spouses, companions, friends, parents, siblings, family – whoever you are, if you must stand up for your lady, do that. As the father of a young, adult, daughter today I can relate to the pain that Vaani’s parents must have felt seeing her go through what she did and seeing me so helpless – they knew I loved her do deeply. I definitely don’t want my daughter to ever go through what Vaani had to experience. And this time, I know I will not just stand up, but stand firm.

There’s a part of all of us that is always wanting to be warm, willing to adjust, open to accommodate and ready to tolerate. But let all the warmth, adjustment, accommodation and tolerating happen at a practical, material level. And let it stop there please. Don’t allow anyone to affect your dignity just because they are older to you or more powerful – whoever they are. Because when you allow that you end up becoming unhappy. Your inner peace and happiness are the only wealth you have – protect them till your last breath!