Excellent post by Cee Kay, ‘I am not that mother’ dissecting the furore over Amy Chua’s ‘Tiger Mother’ article - and on whether it reflects mothers’ insecurities and need to prove their own parenting skills.
Miss me, anyone?
Yes, I know it’s been more than a month since this blog was left unattended. (I have been blogging over at Women’s Web though - some recent posts: In praise of SAHMs and In the name of tradition).
Life has been busy, and that is an understatement. Women’s Web went through a revamp and has a much busier content schedule now. Plus, I have begun working with a friend to speed up the site monetization - currently, it is entirely self-funded, and while I am trying to not run through money like many of the dotcom-2000 guys did, running a site takes a decent amount, and I won’t be able to sustain it for ever.
On the personal front - a big move happened - from Bangalore to Chennai. The husband got a pretty good job offer from a big IT firm, but the role wasn’t available in Bangalore. After much agonizing over it, we decided to take the move. The Women’s Web team still being virtual makes it easier. I am surprised though by how different and un-homelike Chennai feels to me, despite the fact that I did a good bit of my schooling here, and even worked in this city for 2-odd years.
It’s been about 10 days since we moved in, and the first movie we caught here is the new Danny Boyle ‘real-life’ based one, 127 Hours. I don’t feel adequate to reviewing it - go watch it though; the way the story is narrated is very interesting if you have some patience to wait for the build-up. Rahman’s soundtrack is unusual and superb and James Franco is very good as Aron, the lone hiker who gets trapped in a canyon for 127 hours. (There are some spoilers ahead, though not too many.)
What intrigued me about the move is how Aron, stupidly (as he acknowledges) cuts himself off from any chance of rescue because he has not told anyone where he is going to be hiking - this, despite the fact that a co-worker has asked him and his mother has tried to reach him before he left. Nor is this the only such story I have heard of. There is a series about real-life narrow escapes called I shouldn’t be Alive that airs (I think) on Discovery - and time and again, they show such stories where the guy/girl in trouble has no hope of rescue because no one knows which area they are hiking/travelling in, or even that they have gone somewhere for the weekend. No one even thinks to report them missing.
Going by these narratives, Aron’s story is not unusual. I know the American culture places a huge premium on individualism, but somehow, it seems a little saddening to me. In 127 hours, Aron’s family clearly cares a great deal about him, yet, he doesn’t see the need to let anyone know where he is. In fact, one senses a reluctance to let anyone know. I cannot imagine any young Indian man or woman in that situation, even those living away from their families in metros. We are not in general big on travelling alone, and even if we did, surely someone would know if one was going to a remote place - a friend, a roommate, a sibling? I am not at all sure that individualism in the sense of such isolation is a great thing, even if self-imposed.
One could ask, but what’s wrong with it if it makes you happy? I don’t have an answer to that, but it still makes me uneasy. What do you think? Is it ‘normal’ for human beings to live in such isolation?
On that note, I’m going to wind up this post. And yes - wish you a very happy and productive 2011!
p.s. I hope to be blogging here more regularly from now, although a lot of my women’s issues blogging will probably move to Women’s Web, and this one continue to be more a books/ travel/personal sort of blog.
So, it’s been 4 months now since Women’s Web was launched; it’s been good going, but there is SO MUCH MORE to be done! I’m at present working on identifying some of the weak spots and also, to understand what readers like/dislike about the site.
And that’s where I need your help. If you are a regular or occasional reader of Women’s Web, please take this real-short 5-question survey - it will much help me gauge what is working/what needs to change. Thanks so much (and again, don’t forget to take the survey!)
How many of you have watched the many “family movies” of the 70s and 80s? I’m talking about these melodramas involving large families, scheming mothers-in-law, “modern” daughters-in-law, “henpecked” fathers-in-law, helpless husbands torn between all the other participants,
and always, always, always
One very evil mama. (For any non-Indian readers here, a mama is a maternal uncle in most Indian languages).
The mama character was usually depicted as a shiftless fellow leeching off his sister’s household, the sister being the all-powerful mother-in-law of the family. Being jobless, his main focus would be to try and drive wedges between other family members and especially between the new DIL and others. His ultimate objective would be to keep his own position as his sister’s advisor secure and thus guarantee a lifetime of living free off someone else.
I have to wonder - why was this mama so popular with film-makers and by inference, audiences?
My guess is that this mama figure succeeded well for so many years because he tied in deeply with people’s notions of what “family” means. Traditionally, family always referred to a man and his parents, his wife, his children. For a married woman, family refers to her husband, her in-laws and her children. Of course, women did not abandon ties with their natal homes, but there were very strict rules about the limits that had to be maintained.
Daughter visiting parents - good. Daughter visiting parents too often - not good. Parents visiting daughter - good. Parents visiting daughter too often/staying with daughter - not good at all. (There are Indian matriarchal/matrilineal communities too, but they are an exception).
Staying at a married sister’s house is a gross contravention of these societal norms, and interfering in her family - even worse. Such a mama makes for a ready villain, indeed.
Could there always have been deeply-registered fears in Indian minds about forces that could break up a family and by extension its land, its wealth? Perhaps undue influence by women’s’ natal families, represented by the mama character, was seen as one of these forces.
That is worth thinking about when you consider that two of the great villains of Indian tradition - Kamsa from the Bhagavatam and Shakuni from the Mahabharata - were both mamas.
I love the epics - the Ramayana, the Mahabharata - and all the hundreds of stories related to them. I love the way in which you can have different versions of them and say, oh, but in this version, Rama doesn’t really send Sita away. The epics have other uses of course - they are the stories that tell us what we (as a people) value, and how people should live.
The epics are in a sense the lessons that our ancestors have passed down to us. How wonderful is it that we should be able to draw on the learnings built up by people over a few thousand years of civilization? Few other peoples in the world today can boast of this. This is the sense of wonder that the epics evoke in me and make me proud to be Hindu - not in the narrow-minded sense of Indian culture is the best and we have nothing to learn from anyone else.
Recently, I gifted my dad a copy of Gurcharan Das’ ‘The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma’, a book that I plan to borrow. It is a book that (I think) draws on the Mahabharata and places its moral lessons in the context of contemporary times.
Which set me thinking, is there a way to draw lessons from the epics in a more nuanced, less literal way than is normally done? One of the ‘big lessons’ of the Ramayana is that of absolute obedience to one’s parents, a lesson that must cause discomfort to most individuals living in modern times. Dasaratha exiles Rama to 14 years in the forest, in order to keep a pledge that he makes to Kaikeyi years before, and Rama obeys. Without question. Sita follows him into exile, although after much argument.
From a feminist perspective, it is possible to look at this episode as the maintenance of a patriarchal order where son obeys father and wife follows husband (rarely do the epics look at obedience to parents from a woman’s perspective).
Yet, another way to look at it is through the lens of affection. Does Rama unquestioningly accept exile not just because that is a son’s duty, but because of his love for his aged father ? Because that love does not allow him to let his father be an oath-breaker? Does Dasaratha’s own love for his son (which the epic mentions repeatedly) compel its reciprocation? From this perspective, the lesson is not so much about implicit obedience as about the power of love, although the former is what is usually taught us as children.
I have no ‘point’ to this post really, except that it is really possible to read the great epics in many more ways than one.
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