Women and single mothers under the great Indian cultural lens

Before you begin to read this note, I want you to know that I hate the warmongering and homophobic attitude of America as much as I hate the male-chauvinistic, hypocritical Indian dogma. So this is not a hate-filled note about Indians, but a frustration about the backward attitude of some of my fellow Indians. There is nothing wrong in adopting good practices even if they are from someone you hate.

A recent FB thread about judging single mothers based on their marital status or their number of relationships sparked this note. As a child of a single parent in India during the 1980s-2000, I have “enjoyed” a unique position in the lower middle class society. Let me begin by saying, a single mother, separated from her spouse is treated very differently from a widowed mother. For widowhood makes matters clear to the Always Inquisitive Desis (Indian) about the nature of the relationship between that woman and her man (interpretation: at least he didn’t leave her willingly). A single woman – now that’s a different matter. Always Inquisitive Desis (hereafter, AIDs) do not know if she drove him away because she was too controlling, or whether she was a bad wife, or if something was wrong with her. Again, I emphasize as my friend, Samhita Sunya noted, the AIDs refers not to all desis but a fair majority that is still deep-rooted in male chauvinistic practices some even calling themselves egalitarians.

In my mother’s case, my father couldn’t keep his hands to himself and by that I mean he flirted with anything that was of the opposite sex and probably slept with any member of the opposite sex that agreed to sleep with him. The clearest conclusion of AIDs: I wonder what she did to drive him to such ways! Never mind that AIDs consisted of women whose only duties were in the kitchen and the bedroom. Never mind that the definition of education for females was - a pastime until of legally marriageable age or the appropriate groom comes along, whichever was earlier. Never mind that AIDs consisted of teenagers and older men who molested young girls when the opportunity came along.

I am not trying to wash the dirty linen of my beloved middle class Madras of the 80s. The purpose of this note is to point out how we have not shown an iota of progress in our outlook. Recently someone said that single mothers in India are revered like goddesses because they act both as mothers and fathers. Sorry. I don’t know what kind of India this person lived in, but I grew up in an India where women were encouraged to choose professions that were female-dominated (“We need a teacher as the bride because she will bring home money but will only work with women”). They were asked to sit separately and not touch anything/anyone during their periods, not even fix their own food and wait for someone to feed them, and displaying to every visitor of the house that they were bleeding (“That’s only for your own good… You are unclean during those days... because you need to rest those days”). I grew up in an India were women were groped in public, pushed to embrace shame everyday as unknown hands and other body parts played on their bodies while traveling by buses and on the roads. I grew up in an India where sometimes the verdict for a man raping a woman was that he marry her. I grew up in an India where even rape was used as a raunchy scene in the movies. And yet, we claim that we worship women! Oh yes, and how!

In my very first blog, I talked about the irresponsible nature of people like Shashi Tharoor who write, “Why don’t women wear saris more often? They are so beautiful. But our women seem to embrace the foreign culture so much or wear the salwar kameez influenced by the Mughals.” They simply get away with it by saying, “It was just a note. Nothing more.” Last I checked, the suits/pants/shirts/jeans or kurta/pyjama were not worn by Raja Raja Chozha or Ashoka. When I asked whether men knew how difficult it is to dress modestly in a sari without showing one’s midriff and travel in those buses tilted at 45° because of the crowds, my Indian guy friends said that I should take it easy. A friend of mine was eve-teased (a term that belongs only to India, my dear AIDs) on her way to school and she cried after reaching school. The ever-so-supportive teachers consoled her by telling to take it easy and that the reason for this was really her, actually, the hem length of her skirt (which, FYI, was below the knee). This is how we continue to worship women! And we have been taking it easy ever since!

In a recent FB post an American woman was put on trial by AIDs. May be she really was a bad parent, who am I to judge? But one has to give it to our AIDs for first judging her because she was divorced and was eating up her husband’s alimony by buying gifts for her child (stop the presses). Then for having remarried and remarried (seriously stop it). And because she didn’t display genuine interest in her child’s education like our beloved desis. This must mean that she is trying to get the affection of her child through money and gifts! Yes, the love of our desis is so much that they interfere and split up their child’s sweetheart well before marriage because she is not good enough (a friend’s case) or because she is too good (another friend’s case) or threatening to stop their child’s funding if he chose to study philosophy which he so desired instead of medicine (another friend’s case) or taunt their daughter-in-laws just because they can (several, several cases). We only want what’s best for our children unlike those nasty Americans.

Does a woman not have the right to divorce her husband? Our women are culturally forced to stay with their men even under abominable circumstances. The situation is not as bad as how my mother was treated in the 80s but still, the divorce of today needs a reason that convinces our AIDs. The man has to really do something wrong e.g. sleeping around, physically abusive. Even then, they have a council where they try to talk to him into changing because they need to salvage this at any cost! Somehow falling out of love or becoming belligerent such that everyday feels like hell seem to be inadequate reasons for divorce for our AIDs.

Does a woman not have the right to look for other partners? If one relationship does not work why can’t she look for another one? Some people are lucky in love and some aren’t. Is one a golden number? Just because our culture forces us to stick together with someone for life, which means that we teach ourselves to love that person doesn’t mean we have the rights to apply our backward cultural lens to judge other women. I know several Indian couples who have not shared intimacy for several years (11-25 years that I know of!) and the wife becomes sexually frustrated. Yet she lives with her husband because she does not want their child to be distraught, is afraid of being judged by AIDs, and will not find help at her parents’. (Again, I did not snoop around for these data. They were told to me in frustration) This is anecdotal but is not different from reality. Indian women are taught to adjust so much that they lose their individuality. In my generation, our mothers were actually called as “X’s daughter” when they were young, “Y’s wife” when they got married, and “Z’s mother” when they became mothers.

My mother, an iron woman who fought against all odds of the society and lived her life on her own terms, passed away recently in a very sudden manner. And yet, the legal heir of the woman who was cheated upon, ill-treated, and who finally cast her marital “bliss” away by walking out was her beloved husband because they did not formally divorce. The law is blind, understandably, but people are insensitive, un-understandably. At her funeral, questions started popping out, “Where is your father?” “What really happened between them?” “He is the rightful heir.”

I am probably lashing out in my grief, but my frustration is real. I am tired of our men and women stereotyping and judging other women based on what they see, based on their narrow horse blinker of a traditional lens, based on how much these women conform to their definition of a woman. am tired of our AIDs’ colored recollections that women are worshipped as goddesses in India. And finally, I don’t understand this NRI obsession of anything Indian being good and most things American being bad. If you hate it so much, why are you living in this “god-forsaken, morally backward” country?