The Great Divide

We live in strange times. Our generation – yours and mine – coincides with an era in the evolution of the Indian society that is contradictory and polarized at best. We claim to have a modern and contemporary outlook towards everything in general. We tout gender equality, indiscrimination and such things. We say we aren’t even a little bit flustered when we are beaten by a member of the opposite sex at our favorite sport. And yet, we dream of that big car we’ll get as a dowry if we become engineers or doctors. We shun, or gape unabated at the girl in the bus whose cleavage shows. We discourage our wives from working just so she can wait till late in the evenings for her beloved husband with a cup of tea and pakodas at the ready. Yes, dear random blog reader, we Indians are a confused lot.

I say Indians in particular, because while one half of the society accepts and understands what development really means, the other half has one foot firmly planted in the past, confusing loyalty for one’s religion with fanatism, and equating a love for our culture with intolerance and chauvinism. We have ‘restaurants and bars’ that have the inevitable drunk tottering out at midnight and don’t look twice, while if a girl or a woman is spotted having a beer, we make a mental note to go back to our friends and talk about how our culture is going to hell, with a wide eyed audience rapt in attention.

Being a ‘mallu’ I have had the opportunity of scrutinizing what is paraded as the only matriarchal society in the country. Kerala is a state that supposedly has the best gender ratio, with more women than men, per thousand people. People tell me how it’s a sign of gender equality; and subsequently I sneeze because I am allergic to bullshit. Gender ratio means nothing. It’s an inconsequential statistic that just does nothing beyond showing that we don’t commit female infanticide. Hurray for that.

We do, however, curse our luck and start buying jewelry as soon as a girl is born, so that we can proudly show to potential suitors the heap of gold they get as a reward for marrying our daughter. My own concerned relatives have advised my mum that since my sister is approaching ‘marriageable age’, she should stock up on gold. My sister and I, however, have the good fortune of having a mother who all but slaps them in the face, but I am sure the vast majority cannot say that. Call it intelligence or common sense, I somehow fail to see why parents should assume that the sole reason a girl is born is so they can virtually choose to have/buy the son of their dreams, when she is of marriageable age. Or why most parents are convinced that their daughter does not have any aspirations beyond loyally serving her husband’s every whim.

A spinoff of the above phenomenon comes to mind. A friend of mine you may be acquainted with – Ajay – raised an interesting point. While we as men are entitled to openly say we ‘want some’, it is generally considered taboo for a girl to express her sexuality in any way. While I suspect a part of it is voluntary, a much bigger part of it has much to do with how it has been engrained into our society that girls by nature should be shy, timid and ‘ladylike’. Boys, on the other hand, can be perverted, vulgar, and a downright pain to the neighborhood as a whole, but are seldom questioned for anything lesser than a rape. This blatant flouting of equality also has direct implications on our everyday language - a guy who frequently changes partners is called a ‘player’, while a girl who does the same is labelled a ‘slut’ – a term with strictly negative connotations. Another example is how, mostly in the northern states, any girl/woman who is a rape victim is shunned by society which conveniently assumes, in keeping with our ‘culture’, that the girl must have somehow initiated the attack on herself.

Being ‘modern’ and ‘forward thinking’ calls for more than a couple of clubs in the neighborhood, or a franchised American coffee shop next door that serves rum balls. It can be done only with a drastic restructuring of the society as a whole. With numerous lessons in tolerance and indiscrimination to our kids. With giving an individual credit for what they are, and knowing there is always potential beyond heaps of gold and a marriage to a celebrated young bachelor. I think it is up to us, the future of India, to bridge the gap between theory and practice and try and take our country, with all its diversity and culture, smoothly into the 21^st century.

And leave nothing behind.