Unruled Notebook

Sharath Rao’s friend wonders whether staying back in the USA – or in general, in a foreign country outside of India – is an option the Indian women are more keen to exercise than the Indian men. Abi thinks it is an interesting point of view.

I think so.

Not only the Indian women, but I have heard and witnessed of cases where women from other non-US countries (say, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan), having a more conservative and women-breathing-over-the-neck-of-other-women system, also have similar opinion.

Indian bred young women are an oppressed lot. Unsurmountable and debilitating is the regular and constant heckling and harassment that they receive from their mother, mother-in-law, the general neighborhood women or the under-the-tree-goddesses for their ordinary daily life “excess”. Sample of the “crimes” include being late from office; waking up late in the morning; speaking their mind; talking to “other” men; wearing a jeans or any “distracting” dress that their older women folk didn’t wear in their times; laughing or farting out loud in public. It is only too obvious that the present generation Indian women perceive an oppression by other older Indian women with an outmoded perspective of woman’s life and mission in general, leave alone the ills of “male dominant” society.

As requested by Sharath in his post to gather counter-examples support for his view point, I don’t have any. But I now give specific examples that I have come across in India and the USA supporting the view of Sharath’s friend (thanks Abi for clarifying this – see 3rd comment).

Names in the following anecdotes are changed but the instances mentioned, issues raised and persons involved are for real. (The name change is done to keep with the tradition by the Silly Indian News papers while reporting issues involving women, although everyone involved in such instances – the reporter, the reader, the woman – fail to see the use of it.)

Kruthika Sonpapdi hits off well with her mother in law, when they two are alone. In fact, they even go shopping and manage to buy the same things only twice. But the moment Sonpapdi, the son, enters the picture, things go berserk. The mother wants to dominate and keep most of Sonpapdi for her, as seen by Kruthika. The mother in turn complains to Sonpapdi that he is being eaten away for good by the haughty Kruthika. Kruthika feels she should have stayed in the USA where Sonpapdi was sweeter.

Radhika Molakaipodi loves her work and the upwardly mobile society that she is able to move in because of that. For her the most dreaded part of an year is when she goes for “vacation” with her husband to India. When she overstays for a day in her parents’ house, her in-laws get upset and grumble. When she does the same with the in-laws house, the feeling is reciprocated by her own parents. Add to it the kids who demand pizza every other day and complain about the roads being dusty and the toilets dirty. Ironically, vacation is the only time she feels “totally stressed out”. She doesn’t want to return to India and end up keep facing this thing daily in her life.

After selling his silicon valley stocks in the right time before the dot com bubble burst in the USA, Britannia Biscuit returned wrongly to India (given his name, shouldn’t he have gone back to Britain?). His wife, Mary Biscuit tried hard for two years to settle down in India. Since she is educated she also wanted to work like her husband. To manage this life-style, she left her two kids in the neighborhood day-care.

And promptly became neighborhood dog food.

She was ripped apart for not taking care of her children. Her love for her children, her husband, her family, was questioned in random order. Even her morality was suspected (look at the way she wears the lipstick; she certainly is on the lookout for the dollar biscuit) by some typically ignorant mangy dogs.

Mary wonders whaat is the probelem with these laadies, if she chooses to organize her life by having her children in the day-care. If the neighborhood or the in-laws are so particular of her not leaving the children in the day-care, why don’t they offer to take good care of the children? Mary Biscuit, like any other educated Indian women who have stayed in the USA for some years before and after marriage is unable to understand how one can deal with one’s relatives and their conservative social outlook and garrulous gossips. She doesn’t want to live in the same house or locality with her relatives as she sees that as a loss of privacy.

Mary and Britannia are ready to pack themselves back to the USA in the first opportune moment.

Shobha Ammagondu and her family, which includes her husband Ammagondu, her two school going daughters and 350 boxes of american stuff made in china, planned to move to India after ten years in the USA. Her in-laws promptly sold the house flat that they owned and lived in until then and moved to a rented house. Once the Ammagondus moved into India, Shoba’s in-laws wanted to move in and live with them happily. Her husband is for it as he has nothing to lose. Shoba, a career oriented woman, couldn’t see eye to eye with her in-laws (in this case, both the man and the woman) in all issues related to work like staying up late in the office, not cooking at home daily, sleeping late in the weekends etc. Neither she nor her in-laws could stand this longer and she wanted to go back to the USA forever, while her in-laws wanted her to “come back out of the USA” forever.

A temporary truce is reached with her making her husband move in with her parents (who are a bit more progressive)!

Sridevi Thayirvadai (formerly Pachadi) is a housewife, who hadn’t even completed her UG degree before being married off to an “america software mappillai (groom)” by her parents in the hope of her having a good life. She realized her parents intentions, only too well. Once she is in the USA she got soaked into the “shorts” wearing, sans-thaali (mangal sutra – sacred thread proclaiming marriage), foot-long eating, tang sipping, weekend shopping, Honda accord desi community.

She now is Dam sHoor she can’t gel with her parents or in-laws back in India.

Wouldn’t she be the chief conspirator of her thayirvadai husband’s death by not wearing the thaali for a day in India? In the name of a tradition that is immune to the utilitarian demands of the times, why the heck should she wear the madisaar – nine yards of insulation wrapped to keep her innards always molten and sweaty? And anyway, doesn’t she have a right to lead her life with her thayirvadai the way she wants it? Can’t she be peaceful for some years before the old folks in India are really invalid, when she probably be ready to tender them.

And finally, Lakshmi Gomadha is an Indian cow who doesn’t want to live amidst the oppression that she suffers from in the name of holiness. Example? She is made to wear a red color dot on her forehead, although she is never able to see it to know of the color or the reason it is kept there. She is also pissed off at not being able to piss without that being collected and either drank or sprinkled over their heads by silly superstitious humans. Damn, she cannot even shit peacefully. Humans get so mixed up of output and input these days. She wants to leave India forever but certainly not for the USA, where she is awaited to be made into a Big McCow.

In general, I totally agree with Sharath’s friend on his viewpoint. Irrespective of they being housewives or working women, career oriented by themselves or career supportive of their husbands, young Indian women prefer the freedom of living outside India. They have a point resisting a move back to their “mother”land from outside.