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Once my Father complained to me that when she turned 60 (she is now a booming 90) my Mother made the famous proclamation:
My Mother happens to be the first feminist in our extended family. I use 'feminist' in the positive sense of 'fighter for equal rights'. She was not allowed to go to school after she bloomed. In our Muthukur Village School there were hardly any girls continuing and finishing their schooling and sitting for their School-Final Exams. There were girls with pigtails in the earlier classes, but by the time you realize you are falling in love with them, they just vanish one day to be seen next only on the dais of their marriage pandal.
My Mother's sisters-in-law (co-bahus) did the same with their daughters...it was a matter of false prestige. My Mother defied the prevalent norms and her eldest daughter came first in her SSLC and went on to do MBBS and then MD and married an IAS Officer. The rest of her six daughters followed the trail blazed by their Didi and most of them turned post-graduates and Ph Ds.
Seeing this Muthukur Revolution, her co-bahus defied their husbands and sent their Nellore girlings to College and then University (one of them runs her own software firm in Bangalore)...you know how it is...once the dam cracks, the breach gets widened by the day till the dam bursts.
So, that is the background of her proclamation that all men are like insects...
I later asked her why.
She said that they treat their wives as "mere baby-laying machines"...implying insects do so...but I doubt it.
And she cited the example of herself and her co-bahus...the eldest had eleven pregnancies including miscarriages and still births and not-so-still births and she died in her last childbirth of a still-born babe when she was just 30. Another co-bahu survived her 'miss-and-master-carriages' after nineteen pregnancies including fallopians. Mother's own score was 8 of whom seven survived including this crazy blogger (sort of).
This is not just a South-Indian norm...Englishmen were no better...Edward Lear was the neglected twentieth child out of 21; but they had quite a few lady-queens...with my Mother's full approval.
I kept quiet...one doesn't defy one's parents openly.
But the fact remains that till date no man has ever succeeded in single-handedly laying babies (or for that matter even with both hands)...some co-operation is required even for male insects...
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I haven't read the works of Tulsi Das (not the Kaan-Poor one, but the Benaresi), and so beg to be corrected.
My learned friend Tyagi used to quote what was supposedly one of TD's atrocious verses which goes something like:
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Once my Father complained to me that when she turned 60 (she is now a booming 90) my Mother made the famous proclamation:
"Men are like insects"
My Mother happens to be the first feminist in our extended family. I use 'feminist' in the positive sense of 'fighter for equal rights'. She was not allowed to go to school after she bloomed. In our Muthukur Village School there were hardly any girls continuing and finishing their schooling and sitting for their School-Final Exams. There were girls with pigtails in the earlier classes, but by the time you realize you are falling in love with them, they just vanish one day to be seen next only on the dais of their marriage pandal.
My Mother's sisters-in-law (co-bahus) did the same with their daughters...it was a matter of false prestige. My Mother defied the prevalent norms and her eldest daughter came first in her SSLC and went on to do MBBS and then MD and married an IAS Officer. The rest of her six daughters followed the trail blazed by their Didi and most of them turned post-graduates and Ph Ds.
Seeing this Muthukur Revolution, her co-bahus defied their husbands and sent their Nellore girlings to College and then University (one of them runs her own software firm in Bangalore)...you know how it is...once the dam cracks, the breach gets widened by the day till the dam bursts.
So, that is the background of her proclamation that all men are like insects...
I later asked her why.
She said that they treat their wives as "mere baby-laying machines"...implying insects do so...but I doubt it.
And she cited the example of herself and her co-bahus...the eldest had eleven pregnancies including miscarriages and still births and not-so-still births and she died in her last childbirth of a still-born babe when she was just 30. Another co-bahu survived her 'miss-and-master-carriages' after nineteen pregnancies including fallopians. Mother's own score was 8 of whom seven survived including this crazy blogger (sort of).
This is not just a South-Indian norm...Englishmen were no better...Edward Lear was the neglected twentieth child out of 21; but they had quite a few lady-queens...with my Mother's full approval.
I kept quiet...one doesn't defy one's parents openly.
But the fact remains that till date no man has ever succeeded in single-handedly laying babies (or for that matter even with both hands)...some co-operation is required even for male insects...
******************************************************************************************************
I haven't read the works of Tulsi Das (not the Kaan-Poor one, but the Benaresi), and so beg to be corrected.
My learned friend Tyagi used to quote what was supposedly one of TD's atrocious verses which goes something like:
"Cows, untouchables,
Drums, and women...
All of them
Deserve to be beaten"
A fundamentalist in the audience asked him: "Why holy cows?"
[This reminds me of the Russian Jew who went to his Emperor and complained that he heard His Majesty's Home Minister order: "Kill all jews and barbers." Upon which the Emperor is supposed to have wondered: "Why barbers?"]
Anyway, Tyagi said TD was upset with women because he was chased away by his wife one dark moonless night when he swam across the roaring Jamuna river and swung himself into her upstairs bedroom catching a good old snoozing snake dangling from the bedside window tree thinking it was a rope, like a veritable Tarzan.
Something there...
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I end this episode by mentioning one of SDM's several sotto voce verbal atrocities:
"Beautiful women never take up Theoretical Physics"
I don't agree...
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