Apu’s World

Just something beautiful which I wanted to share. Via the very-interesting Indian By Design blog, which I discovered recently, I came across this artist and her work. I  doubt I’m ever going to be able to afford original art, but if I could, I would love to have this one up on my wall. I love the way she has made that creature part bird-part fish yet wholly identifiable with!

Pic courtesy Chidiya Udd. That’s the link to the picture on the artist Kavita Arvind’s website. Do go there and check out the other work. Isn’t it amazing how she has created something which looks so simple, yet has such depth to it?

apu In General

The 65th Carnival of Feminists is already up at Green Gabbro, do go over and read what promises to be a great collection of writing; I’m also delighted to announce - the 66th edition of the Carnival is being hosted on Yours Truly. This edition is due on Oct 8th; I will wait until 8 p.m Indian Standard Time before putting it up, so that folks West of us (in Europe, the ME, Africa or in the Americas) have a little more time to submit; For those to the East (in Asia or in Aus/NZ), no worries.

I don’t have a theme, but I would be giving preference to blogs which haven’t been as well represented in the Carnival before (and have interesting stuff to say). But even if you have been featured plenty of times before, don’t hesitate to send in your entry - it may just mean a bigger Carnival!

You can mail me the link to your entry at apusworld AT yahoo DOT co DOT in or use the submission form here.

apu Women & Feminism

I like Jane Austen. Though her works are placed in prudish English settings and her endings conventional, I like her complete mastery over the depiction of that hierarchical society. I also like her heroines - Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse - who are just that little bit off-centre, even if they end up doing the ‘approved’ thing of the day, i.e. getting married to a man with the right amount of money and family name behind him. But I’m wondering if Fanny Price from Mansfield Park is not a more interesting heroine than the ones from the more well known novels.

It’s a long time since I read Mansfield Park, but I recently watched it on TV - the History Channel’s production. Naturally, since it was made for TV, much of the complexity of the original story was stripped away. Still, I could not help feeling that in a sense, this was a more “true” story and Fanny Price a more ‘real’ heroine. For those who haven’t read or seen it, the basic plot is: Fanny comes from a somewhat poor family, and is sent away to a wealthy aunt and uncle, the Bertrams, where she lives as part companion and part househelp. The main story deals with Fanny’s life at the Bertrams, her closeness to the saintly cousin Edmund, the antics of the cousins Julia and Maria, and the stir caused by tne entry of fashionable neighbours, the brother and sister Henry and Mary Crawford. In true Jane Austen fashion, all sorts of combinations in love are proposed (and disposed), before Fanny and cousin Edmund realise that they are meant for each other.

But - what makes it edgier than the other social novels, is Fanny’s precarious position on the social ladder. As a woman from a ‘good’ family, it is unthinkable for her to go out and earn her living. At the same time, she does not enjoy the unearned income that an Emma Woodhouse does. Even the Bennetts of Pride and Prejudice, may be somewhat hardpressed, but not poor. Perhaps the closest in circumstance is Eleanor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility, though even there, the safety net is better. In Mansfield Park, when Fanny visits her own home, the poverty is in stark contrast to the ease with which the Bertrams live, and which Fanny has become accustomed to. For a woman in such a position, what is the only way out? Marriage, of course. Marriage in this context, is a somewhat desperate, maybe even sacrificial act - the giving up of oneself for a stable life with dignity.

Fanny rejects Henry Crawford’s advances - she has always been somewhat suspicious of his character, her suspicions confirmed when he elopes with cousin Maria (after she has married someone else). But there is no such flaw in cousin Edmund, who has always been her friend and confidante, in any case. It’s all well that ends well, and the lovers are united. But, I couldn’t help thinking. Does Fanny Price really, really love Edmund Bertram, or did the fear of descending into poverty, somewhere have a role to play?

When conversations happen about whether the world is progressing, I think we can’t forget the kind of dismal choices most women had! Today, it seems fantastic to think that earning your own living could have such a stigma attached to it, but I guess that was how women from well-off families were kept under control. Even now, in rural India, it is well known that upper-caste families pride themselves on women not setting foot outside the house. (A long but very interesting study on masculinity, violence and related stuff) In this context, I found Fanny Price a fascinating heroine, even if Jane Austen could never bring herself to give her a different sort of happiness.

apu The Literary life

Last evening, I made my way to the BEML area near Indira Nagar, to visit someone who had undergone a minor operation. I was passing through the always-crowded Old Madras Road, when an ambulance started sounding urgently. The siren went off again, and again, and again. In India, of course, we don’t really have the systems yet where ambulances get priority on roads. Thankfully, no one tried to overtake it - but no one could give way either; the road was jam-packed with no space to move. And then, a good distance before the Old Madras Road - Suranjan Das Road intersection, everyone just stopped - the signal was taking ages to clear. The ambulance kept booming away. When we finally reached the intersection, the cop on duty called a red again, just as the ambulance would have cleared it. Shouldn’t there be some mechanism for ambulance drivers to plug into the traffic system and alert cops ahead so that their side of traffic can be cleared soon ? 

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I reached BEML gate and sat down on a small platform outside the BEML office, to wait for my husband who was to pick me up from there. A young boy, about 10 or 11 years old, looked at the platform cautiously,  dusted it with his handkerchief to ensure that it was clean and then planted his butt on it. The next second, he spat on the pavement below. Two minutes later, he got up, looked around, perhaps waiting for someone, then - repeated the entire process all over again. Look - Clean - Sit - Spit.

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My husband picked me up, and a little ahead, we spotted a fruit vendor. I decided to get down and pick up some fruit to take the invalid. The man turned to me with a bright smile, and wished me, ‘Namaskara, Madam’. I looked behind me - perhaps he was wishing someone else? Then I looked at him closely, perhaps I knew him from somewhere else? I didn’t. Wished him back. The next customer stopped, and he wished him again, cheerfully. Perhaps this man instinctively understands something, both about courtesy and about selling.

apu In General

I’m not a parent myself, but all around me, friends seem to be having children and coping with the challenges of raising children, often in nuclear families, with very little outside support. So, while I haven’t yet gone through the diaper-changing and losing-sleep routine, I have seen enough of it to appreciate how hard a job it can be. Which is why, a lot of the time, this working mom versus stay-at-home mom debate doesn’t really make sense to me. Why point fingers when the task is intrinsically time consuming and every parent has to make the choices that work best for them?

This doesn’t of course mean that I am blind to the gendered nature of choices. The fact is that even when the child has moved beyond the breast-feeding stage, it is almost always mothers who will make compromises in their careers. There are many reasons for this - motherhood and childcare have traditionally been closely tied up, men’s roles as fathers are defined differently, women still tend to marry men who earn more than them etc etc etc. Much as it would be nice to see a more equitable distribution of roles, I don’t see the point in blaming individual cases or choices. For that equitable distribution to happen, there have to be more systemic changes including better day care and a more positive attitude to men taking off time from their careers at workplaces.

But, I’ve spoken about all that before, so thats not what this post is all about. Rather, this post is about the Myth of the Full-Time Mom, something triggered off by the recent, ridiculous speculation on whether the American Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, can hold down an important job while caring for her family. (Shefaly has a good post on it here). The underlying assumption seems to be that a good mom is someone who has only one role - she must be MOM, and nothing else. Somewhere, this view seems to be sanctified by tradition, that oh, mothers have always ‘devoted’ themselves in this manner. Such views are not hard to come by, in the Indian context as well.

I thought it’s worthwhile taking some time to debunk this myth and strip it of this respectability provided by an invented tradition. For starters, we are making some huge assumptions, by thinking that families in the olden days (when this devoted mother presumably existed) were in anyways similar to ours. If two children or even just one child, is the norm today - let’s not forget that before easy access to contraception, even 8 to 9 children was not so rare. In a family with 8 to 9 children, where elders would also need to be served and taken care of, and extended family would frequently visit - I bet it would be hard to find the mother who could provide minute by minute attention to any individual child.

I’m not implying that there was any less affection - simply that this notion of mothers catering to children every second, possibly didn’t exist, except as an idealised fantasy. If anything, parents (both mom and dad) provide much greater attention to children today, with more labour saving devices, fewer children and more money to go around. My understanding of earlier times is that children often just grew up on their own. There would always be some elders to keep an eye around, one of the advantages of living in a joint family, but that’s about it.

Secondly, this whole debate about the SAHM versus the working mom and who does a better job, and whose kids grow up better, completely misses the point that for a majority of women, working or not working has never been a choice. The Myth of the Full-Time Mom is a middle class myth, because it is only us middle and upper class women who can afford it! Mostly, women from poorer classes cannot afford to be full-time moms. This is not to say that their children benefit from it. If you go to a construction site, you’ll often see the women carrying heavy headloads while their children play in the dirtiest of surroundings, hands and feet coated with the dust from the site. But - they do the best they can, with what they’ve got. So, in a sense, middle and upper class families have the luxury of one person earning enough to support the family. They  can also decide that both parents would ‘like’ to go to work, if they can find other options such as a good maid or daycare (which they can afford) or a grandparent who’s willing to look after the child. If not, usually the mother stays home. Some luxuries may be sacrificed if her salary is not available, but the family is not ‘deprived’ in any real sense.

In a way, the SAHM is a private good, paid for by the relative affluence of the family. This doesn’t of course take away from her contribution - child rearing is a difficult and time consuming job which has to be done by someone, whether in-house or partially outsourced. The point of looking at things in this somewhat clinical manner is to try and drive home the fact that there is nothing inevitable about being a full-time mom. It is a choice driven by children’s needs, by circumstances, by affordability and by societal norms. Full-time parenting can happen when the circumstances are right for it; it won’t if the situation doesn’t allow for it. Let’s not buy into this myth of it being how things have always been done, how they should be done, or how it is the ‘natural’ thing to do.

apu Women & Feminism