Surveying the Indian woman? Rubbish!

Last night I was watching a ‘serious’ discussion as part of the ‘State of the Nation’ surveys conducted by CNN-IBN on women across the country regarding different issues. The topic was ‘Morality and the Indian woman's mind’.

Let me quote one of the participants:

“This agenda of liberation that women have—which has come with financial freedom and changing roles—has made them prisoners of war in confines of morality. They want to free out of that. A prisoner of war is good only when he is free. I am not sure if the survey indicates that (women believe) marriage is a freer of women and live-in relationship enslaves them.”

Good. Except for that huh comment…like when a POW is free s/he ceases to be a POW. And how smart is it to call women prisoners of war…who is at war? No one knows. It just sounded so smashing tough that it made the grade.

This is a so-called ‘modern’ woman. Now let me get to the bottom of it. The survey showed that 48 % of Indians women want a ban on inter-caste marriages and 50 % want a ban on inter-religious marriages.

I would like to know how anyone can ask such a question in a survey at all. Who has given the media groups the right to butt their noses in what would amount to a legal provision? You might say this is hypothetical. Fine. Then, hypothetically the query ought to have been: do you believe in such and such marriages? We are not living in a dictatorship where we can have banning on certain kinds of alliances.

Now comes the ‘let us scrape the surface’ scenario. The above-mentioned modern woman, wearing two strings of pearls with a black outfit, who spoke openly about live-in relationships, about pre-marital sex, said that she would not be comfortable as a Hindu to be married to…uh-huh…a Muslim. Yes, she said it. She also added that she was being politically incorrect, which immediately made her feel veryyyy brave. This is not political incorrectness; it is prejudice. Her reason: The two religions are completely different ideologically. Yeah, sure. Like Hindusim is ideologically the same as Catholicism and Zoroastrianism. Come on now, we can see through this…

So would a Hindu be comfy marrying a Hindu from a ‘backward’ community? Or with less education? Or whose financial status was not good? Or who did not socially fit into one’s idea of an asset? All this because the gods are pretty much in agreement?

Worse, the anchor, known to be liberal who usually baits right-wing politicians, did not counter-question the lady. She just accepted it.

And this sort of nonsensical acceptance is what is passing for debate on television and numbing people’s thoughts.

On and off - 1

Not on…

One kid dies in India every 15 seconds

25% of children dying worldwide before the 20th day after their birth are from India

33% of the world’s underweight children under age five live in India

India accounts for 43% of the world’s infants born with a low birth weight

These are the latest statistics from ‘The State of the World’s Children-2008’ report by UNICEF.

You can bet that none of these will be considered issues to be dealt with. Our government and political parties are still thinking of what we should do with Taslima Nasreen, spy satellites, and the Left wondering how Left it ought to be.

In 15 seconds I could not even type this, and to think a baby died already?

On…

She was bent over. The moment she came out of the dentist’s room she gave me her new-denture smile. “Today I went in first!” she said in Gujarati.

“Ah, you remember?” I replied in the same language hesitantly.

I had been there a week ago and was taken in first.

She pointed to her head, “This still works well.”

“And I thought there was something special about me that you could still recall.”

“Haan, te bhi…that too!”

It was the most marvellous cackle I had heard in a while, and from a 93-year-old, I later discovered.

My dentist said, “Look, she has made your day.”

Yes, a brief glimpse, a remembrance, a reconnection…enough of life to sink your teeth into.