Should it hurt to be beautiful?

Last week, I had chanced upon a used book store, running a 90% off sale. In all my excitement, I had walked away with a big bundle for a steal. It can’t get better than to have a shelf lined with books, you are yet to read or re-read for the love of it. It felt great to own the books, I so remember having enjoyed through the borrowed old latte-colored pages of Arcade, Eloor and Senthil libraries. As I digress to what this post is meant to be; I am reading snow flower and the secret fan a novel entailing Chinese women. Half way through -- the vivid descriptions of foot binding left a deep and painful impact on me.

In this regard I dare to be countered – Aren’t the pencil heels doing tardily what foot binding did irrationally? Aren’t we continuing to succumb to what the society prescribes as beautiful, though we have come a long way to stand up for what we believe? It opens up a whole new arena; of things that one does or has been doing to be beautiful, to be marriageable, to be hooked, to be famous and to be more feminine than feminine can be!

The acts of neck extending rings and painful piercing among tribal women in various parts of the world are well known. Of one such, I had witnessed were the deep holed elongated earlobes of older women in Kerala, so much so that the heavy blob of dangling gold could easily cut the soft flesh and many a times it does. If bronze-neck-stretching-rings and rib-breaking-hour-glas-shape-rendering corsets are looked upon as a thing of the past; fairness creams, silicon implants, gamut of make up options, plastic surgery and liposuction are the modern woman’s answers for perfection. And they hold evidence of the fact that beauty always comes with a price; the price of losing oneself in it.

I must confess I have not fared too well either. I endured ear-hole-widening a few months back to be able to wear jewelry for my wedding and continue to undergo a monthly routine to momentary spasms of waxing and threading; my threshold of pain ends there. One might say I am mixing grooming with inexplicable extremities. But then, the scale of pain and scope of sprucing up have been murky and almost undefined.

For, if -- Beauty lies within and Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder; so long as the beholder is blinded with the emphasis this world offers to pulchritude, the within bit is evidently lost in our quest for beauty.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Found this news item. Latest Head shrinking fashion device

The modest hypocrisy

I half-distractedly turned the pages of the book I have been reading to sleep for the past one month. I lifted my eyes to see the little ganesha idol, amma had sent me, sitting corpulently on the window porch. Belonging to a class of non-religious, yet non-atheist genre, I simply adore the paunchy god, who seemed to smile at me at that moment. Beside him were the pile of ten rupee notes and one rupee coins, I had bribed him to initiate a gambit of selfish requirements a long while ago.

It reminded me of the reverend Ganesha in my drawing room back home, who I would pray and recite prayers to, only on the tonic exam mornings. The kabir das dohe comes to mind –“dukh mein sumiran, aur sukh mein kuch bhi nahin.” It left the inkling of a god-fearing mind and I soon plunged back into the book, shunning the semi-guilty feeling.

It made me wonder if a little hypocrisy is more imperative than acceptable in life. It may range from how far we express our innate religious instincts to habits we possess or clothes we wear or how far we hold our tongue.

One of my oldest experiences of setting double standards was facing orthodox relatives. At the age of ten, I would obediently listen to amma and aspire to know if pottu should be always worn in front of Uma periammai or I must unquestioningly fall at Murli mama’s feet. Having told how to behave, because of the gender I belong to, rather than for my whims as an individual, I didn’t possess the liberty to defy traditions or unexplainable practices like most of my counterparts of the opposite sex in the family could; including appa. He would never be asked why the ‘punol’ always slept on nails behind doors, but adorned his chest only when elders accompanied us to temple.

When the phase of helpless rebel had weaned off, I had mastered the art of harmless two-facedness. If a pretentious humbleness could mean peace later, it must very well be done. One such instance was the jubilant 25/25 in the unit test in mathematics stuck to the fridge, making a proud daughter to amma; little did I know that Ramu mama’s arrival was to burst my bubble “Girls are very bad in doing maths. How come you seem to have scored well?” No sooner had the uncalled for been uttered, amma pinched me to keep more words to myself. I had the plastered indignant smile accompanied with the words much unlike me –“Well the paper was very easy.” Looking back, picking a feud then, might have spelt ruin of family ties for years to come.

I am further confounded by the cloak of needed duplicity as to how far can one go with it? It is often that you are expected to wear this cloak not just with people who hardly matter outside closest family circle, but sometimes with family or to be family as well. A classic example would be that of “meet the parents” when every pretence carries with it the jeopardy of working against you in future. And ironically, necessary pretence is more than welcome to make that first impression.

Another instance of well delivered profess, is the constant anxiety to be a daughter/mother/wife every economically and emotionally independent woman in this world undergoes. The world around her refuses to comprehend her as a woman but as everything aforementioned. I am sure, I will not be believed if I were to state that she clandestinely feels like a woman above everything else, which she carefully envelops with what her nearest world expects of her. It only varies to what extent she can be unassuming to express it.

It bewilders me to put myself in a state to walk this line between ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘modest hypocrisy’. When does one turn into the other, takes a composed yet mature mindset to decipher. As, I still linger in the aura of life as ‘me’ ahead and not as being an expected ‘she’; I say the line is a cake walk. But when the mind is puzzled to transition from ‘me’ to ‘she’ I am but apprehensive of what waits ahead.

It happens only in India

First it was the efforts from political bodies to impede sex-education in schools, singing the saga of “Against our culture”. Followed by; the country divided on the reservation system. Murthy pelted for the ‘Nation Anthem’ row. And; now the government wants a piece of the women civil servants menstrual cycle. Every issue did create a storm in the tea cup in its own engaging way. This is what I had to say about the latter to the BBC. However, I was a wee bit late and realized I had submitted it after the debate was closed!

Having read about the new appraisal forms, the Indian Government is requesting from the female civil servants, to reveal exhaustive details of her menstrual cycle, I second the words of Sharwari Gokhale, environment secretary in western Maharashtra state, in stating that I am grossly “gob smacked”!

It is often ironic to see the hypocritical lines between “personal” and “non-personal” drawn by the patriarchic society of India and hence the government too. This issue cannot be shunned away as just another feminism gimmick, but fends far into dealing with ones personal feelings as an individual and civilized citizen. Further it also questions the extent to which any employer can involve in employees’ lives and how BIG can big brother be?

It has been and is a common practice to undergo a gambit of medical tests before joining a company as an employee, in India as well as abroad. Believing oneself to be a healthy citizen with no adverse health dimensions that can prove detrimental to fellow employees, we undergo the rigorous tests quiet unquestioningly and ignore why is it that we are being evaluated beyond our abilities for an office cube in the multinational firm. One cannot forget the real-life based movie of ‘Philadelphia’ where ones life as an employee is ripped away because he is diseased with Aids. It cannot be far from realizing that such incidents go untold and unreported, which are pretty pertinent in today’s corporate scenario, where one hasn’t accepted diseases like Aids without looking at it as a stigma.

In such regard, a woman’s menstrual cycle is being treated by the health ministry as something beyond a natural phenomenon. It is as relevant in life like urinating or cleaning ones bowels. It is never that one is expected to elaborate details of this kind to any superior for any reason whatsoever. It leaves the arena open for further intrusions of adversely unacceptable nature. The appraisal does not clearly define the motivation behind recording vital information about one’s bodily behavior. If such imperative facets of ones life is not ones own, then we may be redefining the very meaning of ‘personal life’.

One does not arise to such situations as being of a particular gender. Therefore even this concern cannot be sidelined as a woman’s subject. It is no different from a situation if men were asked to enumerate on his testicles, for health ministry specified reasons. As lawful citizens and loyal employees one should not be humbled to live a transparent life, because the employer wants so. On such a note, I back the women civil servants in India in their quest for instilling privacy into employee life.

God’s (dis)own country??

It has been more than ten years since I stopped watching the news on Malayalam channels. Apart from the communist party’s hooliganism, never-ending strikes, a series of political leaders’ overviews and some unruliness of the unemployed male population the news had nothing worthwhile to tell you. I was tired of listening to my father rant watching the news “oh the state has gone to the dogs” and I stuck to asianet for the movies and songs which the conservative and decent part of the Kerala film industry still continues to produce!

I have spent a good many years of my life in Kerala and I am thankful my memories are of times spent as a child and everything innocent and happy. Other than these, I only feel remorseful contempt for ‘ende keralam’* which only seems to worsen by the day.

Whoever, still cares to call kerala “gods own country”, I wish to shake them up and let them know that the Gods decided to disown us a long-long time ago. It depresses me to see my land so blessed with rain, fertile harvests, rich culture and traditions; scenic beauty fails to make a mark in any way. If at all kerala is in the news it is for the 100% horny movies, high suicide rates, increasing rates of atrocities against women, child molestations, excessive poverty, thousands admitted for intoxication, leaders in liquor consumption, pathetically unemployed, towering labor costs.

I happened to read this article in ndtv today that talked about the 'Alcohol consumers "welfare" association' in kerala and how they are trying to get the government to sell liquor at subsidized rates. I must confess it scandalized me to say the least. When the nation was progressing to produce professionals, economy was soaring high elsewhere; men in kerala lie deliberately ignorant to the world to be satisfactorily inebriated.

There is a lot that goes untold and un-reported in the popularly read newspapers like ‘malayalam manorama’ and ‘mathrubhumi’ who claim that such news ‘cannot be mentioned in public’. It is a known fact to every kerelaite that a woman can’t walk the streets alone, leave alone going to movie theatres or travel alone. My hometown of Trivandrum is known for the job-less street mongers who can’t help but whistle a tune or two at every woman aging between five and fifty. I have avoided public transport because of the atrocities men aging from fifteen to eighty inflict on the female passengers. If this is not enough, this write-up of experiences of six women journalists describes the ‘way kerala treats women’. End of it I felt ashamed to be coming from such a cruel place which held no respect for the women folk.

I recall the incident; my aunt experienced walking down the busy street of MG road in Cochin. A teenager had the balls to blow kisses to her from the opposite end. Overcame with rage on this brat who had not even started to shave, she had crossed the road to slap the boy right across his face. It got me thinking if society in kerala had grown to accept imprudence of any kind?

It is high time kerala stopped hanging on the 1991 report of it being the highest literate state. If there is any land more illiterate on civilized rules of a land, it is kerala. What can you say about the state when people recall it for the porn stardom, voluptuousness and hypocritic sexism? I am sure I am not the only one who is pained watching my home-town wither away in the hands of indecent men who are turning the god’s land into a living hell!!

*My land kerala

Dress Code

“A set of rules specifying exactitudes of etiquette on an Indian female student, such that the fellow male students are feeling satisfactorily unprovoked”.

This; is the very old unwritten rule of the education system in engineering colleges of Chennai. Colleges like Sa****ma have been pioneers in this regard who are even rumored to have spies watching their students to live upto these ‘standards’ even outside the college premises. I wonder if the education system needs to spend so much time over penalizing the girls, just because it doesn’t trust the men!?

I had read one of those articles a few months back, which make you feel so cheesy for having read it. This one talked about the need for lesser co-educational institutions in India reasons being – “pretty faces distract the youth, women are responsible for instilling men with dirty thoughts, it hampers the growth of young men who are the future generations”. Firstly the one who wrote this doesn’t seem to understand what education is. Secondly his lame reasons might be the outcome of his experiences as a student. Thirdly you can’t miss the tinge of uncalled for male chauvinism in between the lines.

End of the last paragraph I had this cartoon in mind with a girl strangling the guy with her ‘dupatta’, the intimidating picture the author gave about female students. At the same time the thought crossed my mind, if dupatta was all that was needed to cleanse the minds of Indian men, why wasn’t that happening?? I think of another cartoon with a girl wiping the dirt off the guy’s mind with her ‘dupatta’ and a heap of already used dupattas lying on the floor.

I still recall the day in my first year of college when the girls were asked to assemble in a separate classroom and lectured on how our outfits could “provoke” the guys in the class. What followed were the rules as stringent as length of the dupatta and the kurta which are “unprovoked-able”. It was ended with the threat of a hundred rupee fine if any girl was seen wearing jeans or violating the aforementioned rules. College life had seemed bleak and ugly all of a sudden. Was it all about saving your virginity from a bunch of incorrigible hooligans on campus??

Don’t get me wrong here. My idea is not to preach the necessity of giving women the right to wear anything they want in college. I understand and respect the needs of institutions to have dress codes. But enforcing standards to prevent certain men from howling, hooting or getting deviated or getting distracted doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Those pervert minds cannot be changed with a circus tent like kurta and shawl like dupatta supposedly protecting your femininity!

It is every woman’s responsibility to not let her be a prey to the vulgarity of certain men; be it in the form of eve-teasing or actions of luring to be used. But it leaves me to wonder, if education can’t produce civilized citizens, then what can? I clearly remember the article in India today magazine, where the police commissioner of Delhi concluded that,” the average Indian male’s mentality has not grown with the rise of independence among women, which is the reason for the increased atrocities against women”. The statement was backed by a picture of two women wearing party clothes. It left me guessing the time it is going to take for the “average Indian male mentality” to outgrow the perverse shell and the time for women to put their safety ahead of glamorous independence. As long as this doesn’t reach a perfect balance, men will continue to target women and a thousand odd to-be-female-engineers in colleges of Chennai will continue to be punished for not following the un-provokable dress-code!!

Womanhood and the Like

It was a sundry experience; I had, watching the movie 300 last Saturday. Raving about its picturesque entertainment apart, I believe the film makers had gone a long way to appease the female audience. Here was the role of the queen of Leonidas who was an unmatched sensuous, audacious, sharp and patronizing partner to the King. Having watched a myriad of off late Kollywood and Bollywood dramas, where so-called commercial cinema meant a zillion shots of a woman’s Torso, a Casanova hero and grotesque skin show in the cheesy name of “item-number”, 300 seemed to respect the very existence of a woman in every man’s life and in the man’s world.

When someone said – “Behind every successful man lies a woman”, I believe it meant way beyond the carnal pleasures she offered, and much into the assurance and solace she provided. I am reminded of the story of Sudha Murthy, wife of Narayan Murthy, who found a place in workshops of Telco and in the heart of JRD Tata for her daring gesture to take up a male-preferred job. Later she gave up her career for Infosys, her husband’s venture. Women like her have proved that womanhood is all about being daring, composed, wise and elegant.

I am no feminist; neither am I a believer that every man on this earth is a MCP. For the very same reason, I think that reserving 35% seats for women in Engineering colleges is no less a discrimination on the basis of sex. Incidentally on Women’s day last week, I caught myself arguing with a colleague on women managers. He seemed to believe that being powerful and stringent to get work done was completely unfeminine. I countered the statement, insisting on the pressures of being a woman in a male dominated environment and yet succeeding because of their level-headed temperament and not because they seek equality and neither because they were born as women. I exemplified it with Indira Gandhi and the remark on her as “the only man in the cabinet”. End of it I wondered if this debate would ever have a true winner.

I recall the little incident as a six year old, which left a mark on me till this day. It was the evening of Krishna jayanthi and the house was laden with the aroma of ‘palaharams’ of sweets and everything mouth-watering. But the ambrosia was taboo until the pooja. I had overheard my aunt remark that if children ask for the sweets before it was offered to the Gods it was acceptable to give them. Overcome with childish greed I had dared to ask for a bite to which my mother not only vehemently opposed but left a comment that it would have been agreeable if I were a boy child, but being a girl I was not to ask. I had turned a helpless rebel after that, not understanding why the boy cousins enjoyed certain luxuries in the family that we girls didn’t. I later consoled myself that what my mother meant was girls were milder in disposition than the boys.

Seventeen years and later, the very scenario seems poignantly satiric to me. I wonder if I am caught in a sea of transitions; A world of independent single mothers, hardworking super-moms who manage Multi Nationals, women who are expressive about their sexuality as much as about their wit, women underrepresented and wanting equality in the man’s world. I am not blatantly independent to walk the 'altar' alone. Neither am I a coy undercover, who can’t handle life the way it comes. It leaves me guessing as to when will us humans, live as humans and not as man or woman.

As I find a few answers and feel strangely discomfited doing so, I simply boil it down to I as an individual with identity, passions, dreams and destinations. I am happy to see this world as a woman and enjoy the phases of femininity without complexes of a weaker or stronger sex. I am contented to be able to run the mile, chase away shadows, follow my dreams and wear a happy smile. May be that’s the true meaning of feeling like a woman!