[ad_1]
Monday: Over the weekend, the Gujarati side of my extended family was particularly busy on our WhatsApp group. My mother’s cousin, Biren bhai, has been behaving like it is his son’s and not Anant Ambani’s pre-wedding festivities. In the past, he has escaped a few punches from my husband’s Punjabi relatives when, in an inebriated state at a family function, he declared, ‘The only thing you people are good at is balle balle. What do you know about business? Let me tell you all great businessmen in India are Gujarati! You people may have muscle power, but we have brain power. My bapuji always used to say that in business, Sindhis sell and Punjabis buy, but the middle person who makes a profit is none other than a Gujarati.’
Jamnagar making news on the global stage because of the Ambani celebrations has made his heart swell like a pea-stuffed kachori. Not only has he been posting pictures of the three Khans performing together on stage but has also posted a video of Mark Zuckerberg gushing over Anant’s watch with a comment, ‘Amara Facebookwallah has also never seen such tope class items.’
Tuesday: Men, in human or robotic forms, seem to share similar instincts. In a bizarre incident during a live event, a humanoid, after declaring, ‘I am Muhammad, the first Saudi robot in the form of a man,’ allegedly extended its hand towards a female reporter and patted her bottom, causing her to step back in a shocked protective gesture during the event.
Wednesday: In between forcing my little one to swallow her flu medicine, training the dog to pee anywhere but my bed, and checking a deck my company is sending out to advertisers, I continue attending the Ambani festivities in what seems like a paradigm time warp through Instagram. I spot the three Khans performing together and the man of the house singing a robust song. He then performs a punching dance step that he repeats 33 times with so much force that it feels like he is about to dig another oil well through the stage and into the Jamanagar soil. I see Rihanna’s reportedly somewhere between Rs 66 to 74 crore barefoot performance. Her act, though, is not half as grand as Nita bhabhi’s performance of the Vishwambhari Stuti dedicated to Ma Ambe, an avatar of Goddess Durga.
Thursday: Reports of a tourist gang-raped by seven men while travelling with her husband in Jharkhand go viral. In a post now taken down, the bruised woman recounts her ordeal to over 200,000 followers. Her bio states that she and her husband have travelled to over 60 countries on their bikes. She has been reported to say, ‘I have been travelling for the past six years across the globe but have never faced such issues.’ According to the National Crime Records Bureau, an average of 90 rapes are reported in India every day. The figure could be higher because so many cases go unreported. We have all seen female wrestlers protesting sexual harassment, reports from Sandeshkhali where women were exploited for years, the early release and garlanding of Bilkis Bano’s rapists, and what has been a profound influence on women’s rights movements, the Nirbhaya case. There are very few women who will tell you that they have not been leered at on the streets or groped in crowded places. Sexual assault and harassment are not isolated to India, but the duality is further highlighted each time we witness the two different sides of our culture. On one hand, one sees goddesses being honoured, and, on the other, the plight of so many of our women. Perhaps it calls for a deeper exploration because unlike most western religions that have a certain masculine energy, our goddesses are as revered as our gods, and yet the respect we have in our culture for feminine divinity does not translate into her flesh and blood avatars. We seem to be a land where animals, trees, women-everything is worshipped, and nothing is sacred.
Friday: I call my sister to wish her and say, ‘By the way, it’s good that we didn’t change our last name and retained our identity as the Khanna Sisters. Have you seen the news? If we had changed our last names after marriage, we would need an NOC from our husbands to return to being a Khanna again.’
We both have daughters, and we wonder if after they are married, they will change, add on, or stick to their already hyphenated last names. How odd that these questions won’t even arise regarding our sons. The same way that we have always been worried about our girls and not as much about our sons. Keeping the room door open when the tuition sir comes over; ensuring that the school bus has a female chaperone; making sure that as little girls, they were not alone with even men from the extended family; and, along with all this, trying to strike a delicate balance between teaching them to be on guard and yet not be frightened of the world.
My sister interrupts my meandering thoughts. ‘You are talking about last names, but what about all the taam jhaam we will have to do. The bar is now set very high after the Ambani events. If no one else, then at least Biren bhai will judge us,’ she laughs.
I reply, ‘Well, I can’t dance like Nita Bhabhi. The last time I tried dancing to ‘Tamma Tamma Loge’ during the pandemic, I think even God didn’t want to see my uncoordinated footwork because I immediately fell down and fractured my leg. My husband can barely stay awake after 10 pm, and we both get anxious about hosting dinner parties for over 20 people.’
I pause for breath, ‘If my children really want me to be happy, then the best thing they can do is just elope. Arre, in all this, I forgot why I called you in the first place. Happy Women’s Day, sister!’
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
END OF ARTICLE
[ad_2]