Good morning, folks.
Forwarding the latest blog I posted on the FaceBook yesterday. It deals
with 3 mistakes Indian women make in their life and is being forwarded
with the Moderator's kind permission.
Been blogging in FB regularly on a variety of topics. Would indeed be
glad to touch base with AI members on this platform too.
You can find me listed as Sudhir R Shenoy (sudhir.ko...@gmail.com).
And, do let me have your frank views, please.
Rgds
RS
+ 91 98 472 76 126
PS: Cockroach, Sant Roach Das etc are names I have ascribed to myself
throughout the blogs. :-)
--
Three Mistakes of a Bharatiya Nari's Life...
Cockroach's observations on critical handicaps Indian women need to
overcome at once.
Indian womanhood has been deified in the Hindu mythology as
personification of patience, determination, strength, courage and
marital fidelity, the examples being Sita, Savithri, Draupadi and
Kannagi. History too abounds with tales of how Chatrapathi Shivaji's
mother inculcated the values of patriotism and valour in her young son
and how Rani Lakshmi Bai led the battle against our colonial invaders.
The Indra Nuis (Pepsi), Chanda Kochhars (ICICI Bank) and Kiran Majumdar
Shaws (BioCon) of the modern corporate India are also inspiring icons
for youngsters of both genders.
This post, however, is not about the 1 % of the Indian womanhood that
breaks the glass ceiling of gender stereotyping and stratification who
may achieve and enjoy true autonomy of some sorts. It has been my
unhappy observation, culled from life experiences of my numerous female
friends and societal trends, that the average Bharathiya Nari makes one,
two, or, in the worst case scenario, a combination of all the three
cardinal mistakes illustrated below, in her life, irrespective of
whether she is the traditional docile, doe-eyed, door-mat type or the
hep, urban, educated and economically independent and confident type.
* Dependence on males for physical safety
Truly reminiscent of the oft-quoted-but-out-of-context Manu Smriti,
which held forth that the woman has to be in the "care" of her father,
brother, husband or son at the various stages of her life, the 21st
century Indian woman still largely leads a male-dependent life, as far
as her physical safety is concerned.
While this arrangement was, may be, suited for a time and space where
the woman remained "safely" hearth-bound, the modern woman has
necessarily to venture out into the big, bad world for survival and
success. Implying, unfortunately, that she needs to countenance constant
harassment, ranging from the emotionally degrading eve-teasing, to
physically traumatic threats like stalking, molestation and rape.
Whether it was poor Soumya (who attempted to resist bag-snatching in the
deserted Ladies' compartment of a local train in Kerala and got brutally
raped and murdered by the disabled assailant), Sonu Sinha (national
volley ball player who was thrown out of a running train by three
gangsters who tried to snatch her gold chain and has now become a
cripple) or the numerous call-centre agents who routinely get assaulted
in the metros of India, the situation is uniformly alarming for the
Indian woman who is not trained to be independent when it comes to her
safety. (It is a moot point that even the Indian men are equally
vulnerable, but, the patriarchal nature of the society somehow gives
them a safe passage.)
The wide adoption of Internet, the ubiquitous camera phones and morphing
technologies have increased the vulnerability of Indian women. Their
privacy and modesty is now under threat from invisible enemies such as
concealed cameras, hacked email ids and mobile phone-based tracking and
stalking. Very few of the actual cases of Net-based slander or blackmail
actually get reported to the CyberPolice, as the first instinct of the
victim is to limit the damage to her (and her family's) "reputation".
But, the dark underbelly of the whole issue about safety of Indian women
is domestic violence. It has always been there, be it in the form of
dowry harassment, incestual advances or drunken abuse. This hardly shows
outside homes as we are very good at maintaining the facade of domestic
harmony and closed-knit families. Which implies, the Indian woman can no
longer rely even on the "dominant" males in her life, as laid down by
Manu, for her basic safety.
The only way the Indian female can ensure her safety today is by
acquiring skills and confidence at both the individual and collective
levels. On the one hand, she needs to have basic self-defence training
and carry around simple, but effective weapons like Pepper Sprays and
Stun Guns (Tasers). She needs to know the basic precautions to take
while using public rest-rooms, changing rooms in malls etc and how to
check for bugging devices. She needs to keep a list of emergency
numbers, like those of Police Control Rooms, CyberPolice cells,
AntiHarassment Cell at the office etc and should have the guts to use
them when required. She needs to educate herself on the various
technologies and gadgets that could intrude into her privacy and of
legal protection she is entitled to.
On the other hand, she also needs to organize herself into self-help
groups at the local level and network with other such groups through
social networking platforms to share updates on legal and other remedies
available to combat crimes against womanhood. This kind of organization
is easy to create and easy to spread, both at the regional and national
levels, thanks to the reach of the Internet and other communication
devices.
Remember, the perpetrators of crimes against women are bullies and
bullies are easily cowed down if their victim, aided by her sister
fraternity, turns back to fight, rather than flee. It will be difficult,
and, take some time to change the psyche of the predatory Indian male,
but, as Elizabeth Gilbert notes in her book, "Eat, Pray, Love", which,
incidentally is a book I recommend to all the females I know, Italian
men have changed in the last 20 years, from being lecherous and lewd to
being the perfect gentlemen now. So, there is indeed hope, if only the
females could seize the opportunity and act collectively.
* Insufficient effort to create alternative emotional support
mechanisms.
Traditionally, the family has been the basic security net for Indians,
socially, economically and emotionally. In fact, it is the presence of
the functional family and community structures (based, strangely, on the
much-maligned caste) that has continued to provide such essential
support mechanism in India, relieving the Indian government of an
onerous responsibility of providing expensive social security
infrastructure, as in the USA.
However, the institution of the family is breaking down here too.
Urbanisation, migration and nuclearisation of the family has eroded the
influence of joint or extended family and community in the lives of
their individual members. While this has given the individual a larger
sense of autonomy over his or her life, it has also robbed him or her of
a vital support mechanism - the emotional security net, which is
something we do not miss at all till things go horribly wrong with our
life, like may be through a business failure, job loss, serious illness
or disablement.
This has naturally affected Indian women more than men. The Indian woman
has traditionally relied on her mother, sisters or aunts for emotional
support whenever the husband and other persons in his family have been
unable to provide the same. She has not been conditioned to trust those
outside of ties of blood, and, hence often lacks good friends with whom
one could discuss personal issues. The friends one has during the school
and college days usually drop out of contact after marriage and the new
ones one acquires at office, neighbourhood or kitty parties are, for
most parts, superficial acquaintances with whom one may discuss movies,
clothes or such trivial matters. After all, it is a miniscule percentage
of Indian women who are still comfortable discussing personal issues,
relating to their health, marriage, family and relationships, with
anyone, be it a friend, a medical professional or her lawyer.
The modern Indian woman does not also have the emotional stamina of
either her mother or her grand-mother, or access to the support
mechanisms they had, including their implicit trust in God and
deep-rooted belief in Karma, which somehow absolved one of the
responsibility of trying to solve the problems and bear the setbacks in
life in resigned stoicism.
So, with the pressures of being a super-woman at home, at office and
more so often now, of being a single parent, build-up steadily, and,
since India still stigmatizes a visit to the psychologist, she just
pulls on till she breaks. Stress-related disorders are higher among
women and are manifest as chronic or acute ailments, often undetected or
undiagnosed for long.
Modern life demands one to have multiple levels of security nets, beyond
the ones traditionally provided by the family and the community. The
Indian woman needs to consciously cultivate good friends, with matching
emotional quotients to survive in the stressed urban existence of India
today. She could also take recourse to electronic communities, mailing
fora etc on the Internet to discuss issues anonymously. Creative
pursuits, whether it is writing or gardening also provide releases for
pent-up emotions. Of course, there are also options like practicing
Yoga, Pranayama etc, but, one needs to stay clear of dubious spiritual
persons, who primarily target vulnerable women in their commercial
practice of spirituality.
Whatever the means, the Indian woman needs to act, and, soon. Otherwise,
she will be an emotional wreck, which, in turn, could even adversely
impact the development of her children's personalities.
>Illiteracy of the financial kind.
India reveres Maha Lakshmi as the Goddess of wealth, and, ladies in the
family are respected as Her ambassadors. Paradoxically, the Indian
woman, except for the odd Chartered Accountant, hardly gets to have a
say in the management of her income or investments. Even the highly
educated, well-employed and economically independent women I know
"delegate" the responsibility of investment management to the primary
male in their life - the husbands. With disasterous consequences, too,
in cases when the marriage hits a rough patch or the husband meets with
an untimely end.
Time and again, I have been witnessing my female friends groping with
the cold reality of dealing with the tangled formalities of insurance,
investments, inheritance and of managing assets and liabilities in the
immediate aftermath of an emotional catastrophe like a marriage break-up
or death of the husband or father. They are not trained to handle this,
ask the right questions or deal with nasty johnies like the creditors,
and, inevitably, they reach out to another male, possibly a brother or a
brother-in-law for help, only to get conned again in the bargain.
There are umpteen number of other instances where Indian women have
realized, only long after the business empires of their husbands have
crashed, that they are now bankrupt. Others discover much too late that
their estranged husbands have cleaned up their joint accounts and moved
key assets to their own names before calling it quits. Street-smart
husbands are also known to have decamped after running up huge
outstandings on the add-on credit cards, leaving their wives, the
primary card-owners to deal with the bank and face legal action and a
downgrade in credit scores. Even the trust implicit in blood-ties become
suspect when her own brothers cheat her out of her rightful share in
inheritance.
This is indeed a somber scenario, and, cannot be rectified unless the
Indian woman decides to redefine the role of Maha Lakshmi in her family.
She needs to un-deify herself, get down from the revered, yet,
non-executive pedestal and get her hands dirtied, to put it
figuratively.
She needs to start dealing with the numbers that matter. She needs to
ask the right questions when the family decides on new businesses,
insurance policies, investments etc, keeping a sharp look-out for
possible risks and planning for emergencies and contingencies. She needs
to know all the assets, liabilities, bank accounts, etc held by her
family and in whose names these are held. She needs to know the laws
dealing with inheritance, transfer & registration of property, taxation
etc. In short, she needs to keep tabs on the financial pulse of her
family and watch out for erratic signals.
Otherwise, she is headed for financial trouble that more often than not,
threatens her own livelihood and comfort. She needs to do it, at least
for the sake of her dependent children. Remember, Maha Lakshmi can and
should morph into Maha Saraswathi or even Maha Kali as the situation
demands.
Now, this blog is not intended as a sermon from a cynic with horrifying
scenarios and a stern "Unless you do this...". On the contrary, it is a
realist's advice to the fairer sex, whether or not they are sighted or
sightless. My experience in the rehabilitation field and in counseling
have exposed and sensitized me to the travails of several disadvantaged
classes, and, I count Indian women foremost among them.
This is my lil gift to the silent, suffering Bharathiya Nari. I do hope
the female readers of this post would forward it to their sisters and
friends. And, I also hope the male readers would help their sisters,
wives, daughters and mothers correct themselves if they have made such
mistakes in their lives. We cannot afford to have 50% of Indians to be
challenged physically, emotionally and financially just because they are
not imparted the vital life skills to deal with emerging threats.
In fact, I would even advocate that Indian women should compulsorily go
through a Finishing School before they go out into the wide world. If
the Finishing Schools of medieval England used to teach debutantes such
skills as grooming, dancing, playing the perfect hostess, polite
conversation, art appreciation etc which were highly valued by the
aristocracy, The Finishing School that I conceive should focus more on
skills like self-defence, legal and financial literacy and the art of
networking for survival.
Do you think SantRoachDas.com should start such a Finishing School ?
Lemme have your enlightened views, please, since I mean this most
sincerely. Mind you, the Sant has no selfish motives in this venture, so
wipe those silly grins from your face, dears. :-) :-)
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