The Scapegoat

In February 2006, a Sudanese man married amidst great media attention. Having been caught trying to have sex with a neighbour’s goat, it was deemed by a council of elders that the accused would have to pay the owner a dowry of 15000 Sudanese dinars and, of course, marry the goat.

When asked to comment on the issue, the owner Mr. Alifi, who had caught the accused red handed, said that the elders had not felt the need to involve the police. The dowry would suffice for the loss of the goat. The marriage of goat and man (who according to the owner were still very much together) was of course necessary because the goat had been ‘used as a wife’. (Source: BBC Article)

The phrase ‘used as a wife’ troubles me. Deeply. Why do I know that if this can happen to a goat, it can happen to a woman?

The Bitter Burden of Silence

Child Sexual Abuse is one of India’s secret crimes. We don’t speak it’s name, vaguely saying “child abuse” or just indicating by our scandalized, shamed faces, full of fear and secrets, crowding about the name like ants around a morsel of rice, voices rising over the shrill piercing scream that brought the crowds, drowning it out, the air abuzz with talk, words flying, afire with shame, louder and louder, rising in a spiral until, finally, there is silence. Deafening silence. The deafening silence of the millions of Indian children who are confused by the somewhat uncomfortable way that Uncle chose to show his affections, the weird way that Master-ji chose to reward that solved Math problem, the man next door who pulled his pants down the other day.

The Reversal of Gender Roles in Viraha Bhakti

O Ascetic, think hard

And figure it out:

Is it a male or female?[1]

The Fairy’s Grim Tales

Fairy Tales are very telling pieces of fiction. A conspiracy hatched by our parents, in collusion with Disney, of course simplifies these complex and mostly female-centric tales of human life, into candy-sweet Barbie versions where every story ends happily ever after. No one ever tells us how the Little Mermaid, pining in her abusive and unhealthy relationship, ends her life rather than kill the man who uses her. Meanwhile, we all sing “Someday my Prince will come”, hypnotized as a beautiful dark haired child-woman draws water from a well on TV.

One Hour

(An immaculate living room. An old grandfather’s clock stands at one corner. A man of about thirty-five, paces around the room, holding a lit cigarette in one hand. Takes a puff once in a while. He looks from door to clock and from clock to door every once in a while. Clock strikes eleven. Man stops walking, to watch the clock strike. When it finishes chiming, he drops his cigarette in an ash tray and is about to light another one, when the noise of a car coming to a stop outside the door is heard. He looks up and puts his cigarette away. He stands still, his eyes on the door waiting. He rubs his hands together as footsteps are heard. A moment later, a woman walks in through the door, and walks past him as if she does not see him. Man turns as she walks by, looking both surprised and irritated. Woman ignores him and walks towards another inner door).

Woman: Shanta! Shanta!

Man: Shanta must be asleep! Do you even know what time it is?

Woman: (ignores him) Shanta! Set the table.

Man: It is past dinner time, if you have not noticed.

Woman: Shanta! Where is that girl?

Man: I don’t like this!

Woman: (Finally turning to look at him) What?

Man: I don’t like this.

Woman: What don’t you like?

Man: My wife walks in at an odd hour and refuses to even look at me.

Men, Manly Men.

 

It’s time to focus on liberating that sad, oppressed group that so often gets overlooked in feminist writing- the straight males of this world.

 

The last thing I’d want to be is a straight man. I can’t imagine living a life that is so fettered and limited.

 

I’m not being sarcastic. Frankly, as a woman in this particular time in history, from my particular socio-economic background (which I assume most readers of this blog also share), I have a hell of a lot more freedoms and options in life than my straight male brothers and friends.

 

Womanhood as Masquerade: The female devotional voice in Viraha Bhakti

Introduction:

 

If they see

Breasts and long hair coming

They call it woman,

If beard and whiskers,

They call it man:

But look the self that hovers

In between

Is neither man

nor woman

O Ramanatha.

 

The Year in Recap

A lot of things must have happened last year that made every feminist bone in my body want to yell. After all, starting Sa, was a response to the several times I had come home and ranted about all that was anti-feminist about life. So, here’s the list. Do feel free to suggest any incidents from your own experience in the comment box.

Chastity’s mutilated daughters

Among the privileges of having a feminist and a doctor for a mother is that one grows up, not merely hearing of the “big bad world” where the wolf would eat up one’s grandmother, but fully prepared for it, and shaken down, corners rubbed, ready to meet with equanimity the world’s imperfections and one’s own. I can’t have been more than eleven, when Reader’s Digest featured the inspiring story of an African supermodel (whose name lamentably, I’ve forgotten), who had made a career in a very demanding industry, out of almost nothing but hard work. There wasn’t much I did not understand in the story. But I did have one question, “Why was it important in the story that the lady hurt every time she had her period?” Hurting during your period, I thought was a regular affair. But my mother then explained to me that she hadn’t been talking about menstrual cramps. This lady had been a victim of what UN websites call FGM – Female Genital Mutilation, now a recognized form of violence against women.

Stigma

When I was a student at the government general hospital at Chennai, I found many things about the hospital quite mysterious, intriguing and revealing. It was an old establishment, standing across central station since the British moved it to that location after the Anglo-French wars in the eighteenth century. Ever since it has grown around the initial structure that it was, keeping pace with the times but still retaining the spirit of the old, in its proud corridors, inspiring classrooms and –here, I must say- romantically attractive, but very impractical old clinics, that are now hidden behind the glamorous façade of the new Tower Blocks.

Yes, behind the twin giants- symbols of medicine’s imperial power in Chennai- and nested in the midst of these old buildings, is one department, that is secreted away to safeguard the identity of its patients – the Department of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. And while, patients in all other departments have to fight their way in and out through one narrow door, this department, enjoys the dubious distinction of having five doors, none of them obviously placed and is more popularly known by the number assigned to it by hospital records than by its name. Such is the stigma that is attached to these diseases.