Tale of a proposition

It’s kind of late in the day, but then what the hell.

I was reading the other day about the voting demographics for “Prop 8“, and curiously, the Obama phenomenon, looks like, turned decisive there too:

1. The Obama candidacy meant much more African American turnout than usual

2. The African Americans voted 2:1 in favor of (invalidating same sex marriages) Prop 8

And considering the margin of difference, who knows what would have happened, if the voting was “usual”.

Of course, all “what ifs” are useless, and many simplistic. There was also a huge young turnout, including white Americans. And although I didn’t get the figures (my internet connection hasn’t been helpful), I’d think that they would have voted more against than for prop 8. So the exercise is purely academical. Besides, voting is a voting. What would have happened if smaller number had voted, wouldn’t by any stretch have been any more democratic.

But that’s not the point. The point is, the same people who are so passionate about their ‘civil rights’, are voting, 2:1 against someone else’s civil rights. It’s a worrying statistics. It tells us of total compartmentalization of perception of pain. Only our pain matters. Only our pain is valid. Other people’s pain, even when it doesn’t encroach on our liberties, is irrelevant. What matters is their prejudices, and how it affects us. Never, our prejudices, which affect them. Wait! Our prejudices? But we are free of prejudices. Only they have prejudices. We have “beliefs”.

In a sense, Obama, by staying noncommittal on Prop 8 has delivered the  first real change. I guess, one can’t complain him of only talking — he done it without even talking.

I shudder to think what the voting statistics and demographics would be, if a similar proposition were to be put to test in India. For one thing, it would not be anywhere close to the 51-49 race that it’s been in California. It will be something more like 90-10 (with city demographics probably something close to 70-30). May God bless America.

The majority African American position, if I were to characterize it a little frivolously, is:

“Man, why do them motherfuckers treat us like second class citizens, man. It’s not like we’re one of them fagots or something!”

That kind of sums it nicely, doesn’t it?

PS: More interesting tidbits (from Democracy, Religion, and Proposition 8):

“Proposition 8 was enacted by a vote of 52% to 48%. Those identifying themselves as Evangelicals, however, supported Proposition 8 by a margin of 81% to 19%, and those who say they attend church services weekly supported Proposition 8 by a vote of 84% to 16%. Non-Christians, by the way, opposed Proposition 8 by a margin 85% to 15% and those who do not attend church regularly opposed Proposition 8 by a vote of 83% to 17%”

That begs another what-if. What if the African American’s hadn’t been converted to Christian faith, and still had their pagan faith. Would they still have voted 2:1 against?

Homosexuality: a meta (or non) normative take

This post started as a comment to Sakshi’s post for the ongoing blogathon (which I heard about, thanks to Sakshi) on the subject of homosexuality. It’s a well written post, in the sense that it expressed the right sentiments — people’s sexual inclination should be none of anyone’s business. And in that sense, society needs to accept, if not respect, the choices and move on. Yes choices.

However, after making a claim about homosexuality being a challenge to the normative, rather than being abnormal, Sakshi makes a stronger appeal:

Normative needs to include all forms of sexualities.

This got me thinking. [It's been a while since I'm writing a real non-fiction post, so bear with me if I'm not coherent]

The poor little IITians!

Indian television media es-special today seems to be the proposed fee hike by the IITs. For the uninitiated (are there any?), the IITs have proposed a fee hike from 25k per annum to 50k per annum. And there is a widespread concern (the same channels would like us to believe) of what will happen to poor but brilliant students.

Have they heard of the Kota System? The factory charges 50K for JEE coaching (correct me if I’m wrong), and is responsible for about a quarter of selections to the premier engineering institutes of the country (again, correct me if I’m wrong). That’s just “one” institute. Now I’d be curious to know how many of those who clear IIT JEE have not opted for any expensive classes. How many do not come from previleged social classes (upper-middle class and above).

Without those figures, the debate is useless. But who’ll tell that to this great Indian Tele-media circus?

Hell, the mess bill of a typical IIT student runs up to about 12-18K per year (that was 7 years back, I’m assuming it would be 1.5x more now), out of which 5-6K is canteen – that’s Colas, Milk Shakes, Burgers, and the likes. Add to that cell phones, eating outs, booze, cigarettes, bikes, multiplex tickets, branded clothes, shoes and so on… Do the math. And you’ll know we’re subsidizing the well to do (I’m not even counting the future potential). Yes, a few poor/lower-middle-class guys do manage to enter there, I’m sure, but that’s no longer the typical IITians, and it would be much easier dealing with them as economically backward students, with scholarships or soft-loans. They do not justify a blanket subsidy to the rest 70-80% (and I’m being conservative, in my guesstimate). Again, I’d be loved to be proved wrong.

A Whole Lot of Love

It’s in such times that I curse myself for still sticking with my good old bare-basic mobile phone which doesn’t even have a camera.

As I was driving through the Goodluck Chowk (as it is fondly known because of the lovely old Irani hotel – Goodluck Cafe, although I’m sure it has some big name like Sambhaji Maharaj Chowk or something like that) I noticed a bunch of policemen standing all over. Must be 20 or so. The first thing that crossed my mind, given the recent events, was that maybe some MNS supporters pelted stones or something like that, to celebrate the recent victory. But the policemen looked pretty relaxed. Then I remembered the famous Archies shop. Oh, it was safe and sound, don’t worry.

Amazing site that was, though: a line of policeman outside the love-merchants. I visualized the Police singing “whole lot of love”, while some goons (sorry self-chosen cultural police) singing “we will we will rock you”. Love rocks.

Literary questions

It’s no secret that Amitav Ghosh is one of my favorite writers (not just Indian favorite writer). So on a Sunday morning I checked the Hindu Literary Review (which is another favorite of mine) and there was this Ghosh interview, I had to read it. The interview probably deserves a blog on its own, but what got me more interested is a reference about “Anxiety of Authenticity”. So I dig it up, and there it was: Vikram Chandra’s piece entitled, The Cult of Authenticity.

Some time back I wrote a blog, The Unintentional Exoticising, that tried to do a Devil’s advocate, or rather sympathized with another Devil’s advocate. At that time I wasn’t aware of this Vikram Chandra piece, or I wouldn’t have bothered writing that blog. True, the piece is slightly (?) long and repetitive and even polemic in nature — the last kind of inevitable after the barrages from the other side, yet it is a much needed voice from that side — the voice that we need hear a tad more often, to compensate for the noises from the other side of the other side.

Chandra talks about this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” predicament of the Anglo-Indian writers, a vernacular as pure Vs english as impure generalization, identities of cosmopolitan Indian writers, futility of notions of Indianness and authenticity and so on. The issues of “intent” are covert, but they interest me, always:

It apparently never occurs to Dr. Mukherjee that style is something that one feels in the pit of the stomach, that Narayan may be interested in a minimalistic representation because it grows from the marrow of his Malgudi bones, that perhaps when Narayan sits down at his desk with his pen and his paper, he is not thinking of his pan-Indian or international audience, not any more than Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver were thinking of their audiences in Ghaziabad and Vishakapatnam when they chiselled their laconic turns of phrase. But no, in this understanding of the universe, to write in English is to be transparently vulnerable to the demands of the market, any market. And conversely, to write in anything but English is to be preternaturally chaste and upright.

It’s a pity that the essay is so long that one is prone to jump forward just when he actually delivers the punch.

All art is born at this crossroads of ambition and integrity, between the fierce callings of fame and the hungers of the belly and the desires of one’s children and the necessities of art and truth. Michelangelo knew this, and Ghalib knew this. There is no writer in India, or in the world, no artist anywhere who is free of this eternal chakravyuha, this whirling circle that is life itself.

And while he’s at it, he even questions the questioners motives:

… the most vociferously anti-Western crusaders I meet are inevitably the ones who are most hybrid. It is these comfortably situated citizens, these Resident Non-Indians, who, beset by a consciousness of their own isolation from “Real India,” feel an overpowering nostalgia for an Indianness that never was, for a mythical, paradisaical lost garden of cultural and spiritual unity…

Intent again, albeit through a excerpt by Jorge Luis Borges, who ends up dismissing intent as insignificant in the larger scheme of things:

I believe, moreover, that all the foregoing discussions of the aims of literary creation are based on the error of supposing that intentions and plans matter much…. Therefore I repeat that we must not be afraid; we must believe that the universe is our birthright and try out every subject; we cannot confine ourselves to what is Argentine in order to be Argentine because either it is our inevitable destiny to be Argentine, in which case we will be Argentine whatever we do, or being Argentine is a mere affectation, a mask. I believe that if we lose ourselves in the voluntary dream called artistic creation, we will be Argentine and we will be, as well, good or adequate writers.

And Chandra chips in with this fabulous one-liner:

To be self-consciously anti-exotic is also to be trapped, to be censored.

In the end Chandra asks, “How should a writer work, in these circumstances?” and comes up with his own answer: ignore criticism, beware of praise, write freely, don’t think about either audience or critics, be local and global at the same time, be fearless, and most of all covet the goddess, of good writing. The answer couldn’t have been more difficult.

Wikipedia: The coin has too many sides?

The recent (actually not so recent, but ongoing for sure) debate on Wikipedia post the Seigenthaler fiasco has thrown light on larger issues, and in that sense, the fiasco was a blessing in disguise, but for Mr. Seigenthaler — who has all the reasons to be upset.

In Wikipedia, academia and Seigenthaler, Danah Boyd, among other things advices not to throw the baby with the bath water.

I am worried about how academics are treating Wikipedia and i think that it comes from a point of naivety. Wikipedia should never be the sole source for information. It will never have the depth of original sources. It will also always contain bias because society is inherently biased, although its efforts towards neutrality are commendable. These are just realizations we must acknowledge and support. But what it does have is a huge repository of information that is the most accessible for most people. Most of the information is more accurate than found in a typical encyclopedia and yet, we value encyclopedias as a initial point of information gathering. It is also more updated, more inclusive and more in-depth. Plus, it’s searchable and in the hands of everyone with digital access (a much larger population than those with encyclopedias in their homes). It also exists in hundreds of languages and is available to populations who can’t even imagine what a library looks like. Yes, it is open. This means that people can contribute what they do know and that others who know something about that area will try to improve it. Over time, articles with a lot of attention begin to be inclusive and approximating neutral. The more people who contribute, the stronger and more valuable the resource. Boycotting Wikipedia doesn’t make it go away, but it doesn’t make it any better either.

A perceptive reader has raised an important disctinction that has to be kept in our mind while thinking about these issues:

The issue isn’t accuracy per se. It’s accountabilty. WP may be on the whole more accurate than a paper encyclopedia. But it’s easier to hold an institution or person accountable for an inaccuracy.Perhaps this idea of accountability is a misguided notion, but I think it undergirds much of our ethical framework. To the extent the WP framework allows for anonymous posts, its structure undermines this check. You can’t sue anonymous. And I would expect that if the WP folks have done a decent job drafting their submission policy, they pretty much diclaim liability for anything submitted. So while the community polices accuracy, nobody is ultimately accountable.

And then there is Wales’ own defense that’s quite interesting (from the same article, I’ve lost the original reference)

Imagine that we are designing a restaurant. This restuarant will serve steak. Because we are going to be serving steak, we will have steak knives for the customers. Because the customers will have steak knives, they might stab each other. Therefore, we conclude, we need to put each table into separate metal cages, to prevent the possibility of people stabbing each other.What would such an approach do to our civil society? What does it do to human kindness, benevolence, and a positive sense of community?

When we reject this design for restaurants, and then when, inevitably, someone does get stabbed in a restaurant (it does happen), do we write long editorials to the papers complaining that “The steakhouse is inviting it by not only allowing irresponsible vandals to stab anyone they please, but by also providing the weapons”?

No, instead we acknowledge that the verb “to allow” does not apply in such a situation. A restaurant is not allowing something just because they haven’t taken measures to forcibly prevent it a priori. It is surely against the rules of the restaurant, and of course against the laws of society. Just. Like. Libel. If someone starts doing bad things in a restuarant, they are forcibly kicked out and, if it’s particularly bad, the law can be called. Just. Like. Wikipedia.
I do not accept the spin that Wikipedia “allows anyone to write anything” just because we do not metaphysically prevent it by putting authors in cages.

There is : Why the media can’t get Wikipedia right
Then there is Wikipedia Watch!

The most recent addition to the debate is: The real issue: Wikipedia can be better:

Comparing Wikipedia to Encycolpedia Britannica and concluding that they are comparable and, therefore, that Wikipedia is better because it allows more democratic access to authors is like concluding that a mule is superior to a hinny because the former is more common than the latter. For the record, a mule’s parents are a female horse and a male donkey, while a hinny is the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey and less common than mules.

And more importantly:

I think that Wikipedia’s raison d’etre is founded on excellent grounds, that anyone should be able to contribute to a single record of the knowledge shared by humanity. It’s incredibly productive to create a proving ground for knowledge.

The part 2 Making Wikipedia better takes it further, with some very pertinent points:

The greatest problem with the Wikipedia, in my opinion is that it inherited from the encycolpedia the notion of a single entry about a given topic. Wikipedia must encompass differences of opinion much better than it does. Rather than have a single entry about controversial topics, such as George W. Bush or sociobiology, the most productive approach would be to allow the reader to see contending views-—more than two of them, as life isn’t binary—presented as a series of articles under the same heading.

Going by the signs, the debate is just heating up, and I have a feeling this won’t be a worthless debate…

How the hell did I miss this?

The IIPM saga has everything that could interest me: dubious claims, mainstream media’s silence on issue that could potentially affect thousands of Indians, blog-mutiny, corporate interests, a martyr … And still somehow I missed it.

To cut the long story short: IIPM (The Indian Institute of Planning Management) advertised in major Indian dailies claiming many things many of which were questioned by the teen magazine JAM. Then an Indian blogger Gaurav Sabnis posted a link to the article on his blog and repeated some of the things in this blog.

Things started getting ugly by this time when Gaurav got a legal notice allegedly from IIPM. A blog-mutiny of sort started and Gaurav and Rashmi Bansal (JAM’s editor) started getting lot of abusive messages on their blogs/mail. Meanwhile IIPM started pressuring Gaurav’s employers (IBM) threatening that “their students will burn laptops that they bought in bulk from IBM, in front of the IBM office” (from Gaurav’s blog). Gaurav meanwhile chose to resign sparing his employer the dilemma.

Desi-pundit has a nice blog that gives lot of updates, some promising. All in all it’s a clear-cut case of blog-journalism at least offering a fight and the mainstream media doing what they do best — behaving like the Ostriches that they are (the only IIPM search hit I find on TOI, is this: (last 30 days!) IIPM going global to set up centres!). DNA at least took notice and so did NDTV.

I think this is an ideal opportunity for Indian bloggers to take a stand (and it’s commendable the way they have rose up the the occasion!). IIPM has all the rights to go to courts, but if they want to use pressurizing tactics, it’s media’s responsibility to report it, to cover it. Since the mainstream media is taking the IIPM’s side covertly by not speaking on the issue at all (surely one can’t expect them to do it, for they are the one’s printing those ads that started it all, and earning revenue through them — so no point in expecting them, the tabloids that have sold themselves years back, to act against their own commercial interests) it’s responsibility of the fringe media to make so much hue and cry over it that it all at least looks fishy, and people ask questions.

No one knows how blogs will affect the society in general. This is just one of the many wars that will decide. Can cynicism wait for a while?

Home, exile and ramblings

The questions of home, or nationhood come into open, ironically, in the absence of one. Irony is, of course, purely human. We always long for what we have lost. Tibetans who have been living in exile probably know it better. Pico Iyer’s, Experiment in Exile (Time Asia) gives an account of Dharmashala, a settlement of Tibetans living away from home.

Dharamsala is not really a community, in short, but an experiment, in which the Dalai Lama and the people around him craft a new incarnation of Tibet—a Tibet 2.0—that aims to be modern, open to the world and, for the moment, outside of what is traditionally, physically, Tibet. The idea reflects what one sees in Shanghai, in Vietnam, even in Cambodia: out of hardship, people will try to create possibility.

This is probably a bigger irony. While the intelligentsia in India debates the notion of nationalism, and whether it is just a concept blindly copied from Europe, for those who’re trying to recreate a sub-culture across the boarders, away from their home nation, the notion of nation that they’ve left behind and haven’t gone back to in years still remains the distant dream around which their lives are centered — at least for some of them.

When I look in on the Dalai Lama one morning this past spring and ask him what qualities Tibetans can offer fellow refugees around the globe, he says, after a careful pause, “Maybe, first, hope and determination.”

That culture can be preserved, if even away from home is what he was talking about? For he has reportedly said later:

“If you make the effort, for example, to keep Tibetan-style long hair in the heat of India—unrealistic!” The famous laugh breaks out, as he contemplates the absurdity of holding onto what is no longer useful and not moving with the times. But in terms of a way of thinking, not just of living—a language and a set of ideas—”these things are worthy of being preserved, and can be preserved.”

But aren’t way’s of thinking a byproduct, largely, of history of regions, and hundreds of other local variables? When a culture is preserved outside of its home, does it grow? And if it grows, is the result hybrid (and non-local) and if so, isn’t one of the basic aims lost? If the insistence of preserving an endangered culture outside the native homeland is praiseworthy, what about the insistence on preserving an endagnered (even if to a lesser degree) culture inside its homeland? Why does that become retrospective or anti-modernization?

Pico Iyer emphasizes that:

“The idea that lies behind all the activity is a planetary one: Tibetans can offer a model to Kurds, Palestinians and many others who have lost their own homelands, by showing that cultures can be sustained in exile as long as they are constructed inwardly.”

And when, and if, they do, do those new places, the brewing pots of this test-tube culture so to say (and I don’t mean it derisively at all), become their new homelands? Do they become homes? What is the nationality of those in exile, and their future generations, if they can practice their cultures more freely at these newfound homelands? In a sense, is it not the same dilemma that Indians who have migrated to waste for various reasons have to confront with, especially the next generations? And lastly, what about those for whom exile is cultural, not political or geo-political? What do they call their home?

In-spite of (or probably because of) all these questions that crossed my mind, it was a beautiful piece worth reading.

Scattered Thoughts on International Women’s Day

Once you get used to your own cynicism, like I am, you tend to dismiss offhand things without really looking at their value. It’s not for no reason that Oscar Wilde said Cynic is a person who knows price of everything and the value of nothing!. In the present times when everything from Sania Mirza (with all due respect to her temperament and talent) to Indian Idols (Ditto) is hyped, it’s hard not to be cynical. In times when there is one or the other day always working overtime for the Hallmarks and the Archies, it’s hard not to be cynical about the xyz day. And yet, the extreme cynic that I am, I think if world needs a day, it’s a Women’s Day. No, it’s not a conversion of a cynic .

In a TV-Debate on a Marathi channel centered on the International Women’s Day, the only Male panelist who was fighting the lost cause of the patriarchal system, was arguing for Stree-Shakti (Women’s Empowerment) as opposed to Stree-Mukti (Women’s Liberation). His point was that women’s liberation is unnecessary and indeed a wrong approach. He hinted at Vinoba Bhave’s ideas of Women’s Shakti, and yet, when asked how would someone who is not free realize the power, he was speechless.
I said fighting for patriarchal system is a lost cause, not because patriarchy is dead. Anything but the opposite (however my secondary point is lurking right here, to be addressed later). What’s changed in the urban intellectual context, is that the patriarchy has gone underground. It knows there is no point to debate — after all they hold the card yet. In public discourse, fighting for patriarchy is as prudent as fighting for Holocaust denial in America! But that doesn’t mean that you need to change your houses — after all what has intellectual stands have got to do with day to day living?

Ah, back to the question, why do I think the world needs Women’s day? Quite simply because tokenism has its own value! The same TV-channels that make you wanna puke for the matter of fact portrayal of the great Indian patriarchy, even if for the sake of tokenism open up the debates on the man-woman equation. And those same couch potatoes who swallow the former get to hear the voices from the other side — a much vilified, much sidelined, and much mis-represented class of women — to the extent that it has become an oxymoron: the independent women.

Why I say patriarchy still holds all the cards, is that it leaves independent men to be pretty much alone. So it’s okay if a man doesn’t want to meet his inlaws for it bores him, being asocial, being whimsical, being arrogant. The patriarchy isn’t really threatened by that species — it’s immune to it. But the same deviations in a women, and the hell lets loose, even in urban educated families who pride upon their modernity — of clothes, of drinks and all the likes. It’s always the independent minded woman who is blamed for breaking the house — as if her husband is just a stooge. He even earns the sympathy of the system for the way the woman has cast a spell on him. It’s always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the failures of her kid. It always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the rising divorces. The patriarchy goes on, never stopping for a moment to introspect.

And now, we have gone to the next stage — already there is too much freedom, and all talk about feminism is irrelevant, a game invented by some lunatics who are misandros, if there is such a word! For our society has changed, is what I hear. Girls these days get the equal (and even more equal) treatment in the house. There are stories of husbands who cook and clean and share the burden told with oozing admiration for those men. They are the darlings of the patriarchy, for they prove their point — of how fair the world is to women already! And yet, one routinely hears stories of weddings paid for by the bride, of working women getting up at 5 AM to prepare lunch/breakfast for the hubby, who doesn’t believe making a cup of tea is really his cup of tea, of girls being paid less because they anyway don’t need that money — their husbands being paid well. There are countless stories in the same urban educated class, in our vicinities, we don’t even have to go to the slums.

Yes we need the stories of the helping husbands too, but what about the stories of their wives who are taking the equal share? Are they suddenly out of fashion because they aren’t empathisable material anymore? For it’s these woman who are the silent crusaders of the band of feminism that’s living what they preach — they have fought with the patriarchy, taken the bad-mouthing like a man (to use an extremely un-appropriate phrase), asserted their rights, and above all shown a tenacity that would make anyone proud! Well almost anyone, for no one seems to be proud of them. If it takes a tokenism, an International Women’s Day, for me to say it, so be it, but I’m proud of you girls. I am married to one such girl, and to whom I want to dedicate this blog! Saya, I’m proud of you!

And here is my one request to the womenfolk out there. The patriarchy is not about male domination — it’s about keeping the system rolling. For the MIL and SILs are as much a part of the patriarchy as are the FIL and BIL, albeit more so. So please take the International Women’s Day seriously and if you care about Women’s liberation or empowerment, start with your home. Make sure you are not part of the patriarchy. If all of you do that, the patriarchy will collapse like a piece of cards. Yes, some of us would help you out in that, but then how many of you can you really expect to help you? And the system wins because people given in a tad too easily. Don’t!

Scattered Thoughts on International Women’s Day

Once you get used to your own cynicism, like I am, you tend to dismiss offhand things without really looking at their value. It’s not for no reason that Oscar Wilde said Cynic is a person who knows price of everything and the value of nothing!. In the present times when everything from Sania Mirza (with all due respect to her temperament and talent) to Indian Idols (Ditto) is hyped, it’s hard not to be cynical. In times when there is one or the other day always working overtime for the Hallmarks and the Archies, it’s hard not to be cynical about the xyz day. And yet, the extreme cynic that I am, I think if world needs a day, it’s a Women’s Day. No, it’s not a conversion of a cynic .

In a TV-Debate on a Marathi channel centered on the International Women’s Day, the only Male panelist who was fighting the lost cause of the patriarchal system, was arguing for Stree-Shakti (Women’s Empowerment) as opposed to Stree-Mukti (Women’s Liberation). His point was that women’s liberation is unnecessary and indeed a wrong approach. He hinted at Vinoba Bhave’s ideas of Women’s Shakti, and yet, when asked how would someone who is not free realize the power, he was speechless.
I said fighting for patriarchal system is a lost cause, not because patriarchy is dead. Anything but the opposite (however my secondary point is lurking right here, to be addressed later). What’s changed in the urban intellectual context, is that the patriarchy has gone underground. It knows there is no point to debate — after all they hold the card yet. In public discourse, fighting for patriarchy is as prudent as fighting for Holocaust denial in America! But that doesn’t mean that you need to change your houses — after all what has intellectual stands have got to do with day to day living?

Ah, back to the question, why do I think the world needs Women’s day? Quite simply because tokenism has its own value! The same TV-channels that make you wanna puke for the matter of fact portrayal of the great Indian patriarchy, even if for the sake of tokenism open up the debates on the man-woman equation. And those same couch potatoes who swallow the former get to hear the voices from the other side — a much vilified, much sidelined, and much mis-represented class of women — to the extent that it has become an oxymoron: the independent women.

Why I say patriarchy still holds all the cards, is that it leaves independent men to be pretty much alone. So it’s okay if a man doesn’t want to meet his inlaws for it bores him, being asocial, being whimsical, being arrogant. The patriarchy isn’t really threatened by that species — it’s immune to it. But the same deviations in a women, and the hell lets loose, even in urban educated families who pride upon their modernity — of clothes, of drinks and all the likes. It’s always the independent minded woman who is blamed for breaking the house — as if her husband is just a stooge. He even earns the sympathy of the system for the way the woman has cast a spell on him. It’s always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the failures of her kid. It always the independent thinking woman who is held responsible for the rising divorces. The patriarchy goes on, never stopping for a moment to introspect.

And now, we have gone to the next stage — already there is too much freedom, and all talk about feminism is irrelevant, a game invented by some lunatics who are misandros, if there is such a word! For our society has changed, is what I hear. Girls these days get the equal (and even more equal) treatment in the house. There are stories of husbands who cook and clean and share the burden told with oozing admiration for those men. They are the darlings of the patriarchy, for they prove their point — of how fair the world is to women already! And yet, one routinely hears stories of weddings paid for by the bride, of working women getting up at 5 AM to prepare lunch/breakfast for the hubby, who doesn’t believe making a cup of tea is really his cup of tea, of girls being paid less because they anyway don’t need that money — their husbands being paid well. There are countless stories in the same urban educated class, in our vicinities, we don’t even have to go to the slums.

Yes we need the stories of the helping husbands too, but what about the stories of their wives who are taking the equal share? Are they suddenly out of fashion because they aren’t empathisable material anymore? For it’s these woman who are the silent crusaders of the band of feminism that’s living what they preach — they have fought with the patriarchy, taken the bad-mouthing like a man (to use an extremely un-appropriate phrase), asserted their rights, and above all shown a tenacity that would make anyone proud! Well almost anyone, for no one seems to be proud of them. If it takes a tokenism, an International Women’s Day, for me to say it, so be it, but I’m proud of you girls. I am married to one such girl, and to whom I want to dedicate this blog! Saya, I’m proud of you!

And here is my one request to the womenfolk out there. The patriarchy is not about male domination — it’s about keeping the system rolling. For the MIL and SILs are as much a part of the patriarchy as are the FIL and BIL, albeit more so. So please take the International Women’s Day seriously and if you care about Women’s liberation or empowerment, start with your home. Make sure you are not part of the patriarchy. If all of you do that, the patriarchy will collapse like a piece of cards. Yes, some of us would help you out in that, but then how many of you can you really expect to help you? And the system wins because people given in a tad too easily. Don’t!