Bell Bajao Blog
"If someone dislocated your jaw..." published on Bell Bajao Bloginstead of being happier, women today seem to be leading more stressful lives.
I was recommended this article in a tweet by myownniche.
I couldn’t understand why the author felt women today are unhappier than earlier. I feel women today are happier than they have ever been in the past.
Today they can even be happy if they have no children/no sons, no husbands, no blessings from elders when they study/work/raise daughters/are widowed/ marry/divorce/remarry etc.
Here’s the article in black and my response in red :-
The way women have stormed the male bastion is heartening on the face of it.
Why storm any bastions? The idea should be to simply do what one has the aptitude for, interest in and what makes one feel good. This applies to men also.
There is hardly a career option that women have not taken up and proved that they are as good as, if not better, than men.
Why compete or prove? One need not prove equal competence to deserve an equal chance at happiness or justice. The old, the children, the differently-abled, the over achievers all deserve an equal chance to happiness and justice.
Also men should not be made a criteria. One just needs to be oneself, sometimes that might mean doing something generally only men (or only women) have been doing.
Feminists should be proud of what they have achieved in terms of gender equity. However, instead of being happier, women today seem to be leading more stressful lives.
Are women leading more stressful lives today than they were earlier? I find women (and everybody else, since we are all connected) are happier today, and when they are not, they are able to do something about it today. Like the author could. (Unless their circumstances forced them to live in another era, then they are not today’s women anyway).
Young girls are encouraged to be competitive, career-minded and financially independent. As young women they start equating career with fulfilment, while getting married and having children is often seen as wasting their lives.
Neha Chhikara’s case is just one example of thousands of girls who even today are made to feel that getting married and staying married is the only thing that makes their lives worthwhile.
Girls and boys all benefit from happy family lives. Girls are made to believe that unless they are married and have children sons they are wasting their lives, that is why dowry, dowry deaths, female foeticide etc still continue.
All young people should be brought up to be financially self reliant. Financial independence helps in refusing to marry into a family that asks for dowry. Financial independence also empowers a victim to walk out of abusive relationships.
Family vs. career
Sitting across my table at a popular coffee shop is a young woman advising her soon to be married colleague not to get pregnant. I get the feeling fertility is a disease.
It isn’t. Barrenness (sterility/baanjhpan) is not a disease or a curse either
When the contraceptive pill was first introduced, it was a triumph for working women, a symbol of liberation. Women then were keen to get on it; today we know the side effects include “blood clots, diabetes, depression or anxious emotional states” and many women are keen to get off it.
Other means of contraception should also be explored no doubt. The blessing is not the pill, but contraception. Anybody who thinks contraception is not a blessing should try to stop using it (having half a dozen or more children does not automatically indicate great parenting skills.)
Is the family of any significance in today’s world, where women often give paramount importance to their career?
A family should be a support system for all the members – including the women. It is unfair to expect one person to contribute and stay dependent while others enjoy the support and self-reliance both.
All family members do not have to prove how much their family means to them by giving up their careers/dreams/ambitions etc. Nobody should need to, not even women.
I quit my job, because the satisfaction (and money) did not justify leaving my young one with a maid. The juggling act between the home and the job would leave me exhausted and stressed. The security of having a stable marriage, a spouse who is extremely supportive, accommodating and totally committed to the marriage and the fact that in case of any eventuality, the family finances had been planned helped me to quit.
The author made a choice.
Not all parents work for financial security. Some parents love their jobs and sometimes taking a break means being left behind (they enjoy making and reaching goals) – so if the parents (yes, dads too) find it difficult to manage a career while taking care of a small child; they both need to share the responsibility. Ideally this should be decided and planned – contraceptives help in planning a family.
Friends advised me to get back to work and warned me of having an “empty nest syndrome” once my son moved out for higher studies. Does that mean that I neglect my son for the first 17 years of his life? I am happy and satisfied with my decision to remain a stay-at-home mom.
Not all mothers would be so happy to be stay at home mothers. That does not mean all Stay-at-home-mothers are better than all working mothers.
Also empty nest syndrome is still a possibility. It’s good for mothers to have their own interests/hobbies/passions/careers, otherwise they might feel the children ‘owe’ them something for their ’sacrifices’. Sometimes they even like to have the right the choose the child a life-partner who would be more suited to the parents than the child. 
As I move around the locality we now stay in, I notice that only cars and drivers at the school busstop at pick-up time. I still cherish my son’s happiness on finding me waiting at the bus stop. He and I would then walk the short distance home hand-in-hand.
He would fill me in with his activities in school-studies, friends, games, et al. I would tell him about my day and although he is much grown up now we still continue and enjoy this ritual. I treasure my bank of such happy memories. The pride and satisfaction I get when I collect his academic report is far greater than the satisfaction I got from collecting my pay cheque.
True these are moments to cherish. And the mother who gave up her career and chose this must do so willingly and happily.
Do you think it would be good for the society if all the women once again stopped having careers and stopped participating in politics, law making, medicine, research etc? Fathers are natural guardians of their children according to the Indian law – you don’t think they would like to do their bit of parenting too?
Measure of success
Why is staying at home treated as a misfortune and domesticity a punishment?
It should not be. Unless the woman was forced to do this it is not a punishment.
Money paid for goods and services adds to the economy but do raising children and supporting the family have no value because money is not involved? It is said that a healthy child is neutral to the country’s economy but a sick child is good for the economy. A woman’s contribution in terms of housework has no effect on the economy.
This is one of the reasons why women feel the need to work. A homemaker’s contribution is seen as no contribution. Even dowry is seen as a substitute for a non-working woman’s income.
But what is paid to hired help is included in the calculation of the country’s GDP. Are money, career, and power the only measure of success? Family, health, love and memories should count much more. Shouldn’t feminism mean greater power, freedom and, above all, greater happiness for women?
Women have always worked but unfortunately greater power does seem to come from working, contributing outside the home and being economically independent. Husbands are known to put down a woman who stays at home; their opinion is considered less worthy because they have no idea “how the outside world works”.
I know of women who are living with abusive spouses because there is no financial independence and also there is a lack of confidence about the world they have never stepped out into. It is essential for everybody to be able to support themselves financially and in every other way.
I realise this post is long (1418 words!)…. might prune and update it
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But not to those who are using his movie release and his popularity to get our attention. And I hope he doesn’t either… but if the state fails to make him feel safe in expressing his opinion (irrespective of whether or not we agree with those views) and if he submits, that’s understandable too.
Today on the TV, Shahrukh Khan said,
“….I even apologise to my kids, in case I submit because of all my partners and people that I love in this film ….it will be really sad that I won’t be a good enough a father…
It is not nice for a Hindi film hero to say this … scares me to say anything because our stakes are very high and I would like to apologise to Karan Johar, I will apologise to Kajol, and I am immensely sorry to all our business partners that because of what I say or what I believe in, their film and their work is going to be affected.” [Click to watch]
Bollywood has brought others in the past to power. It was found profitable to make Amitabh Bachchan aplogise.
The only way it can backfire is if the star respects his democratic rights too much to glorify bullying. I hope we see that happening. My best wishes to SRK.
This video sums up what’s happening.
I copy pasted this from here. I wish information like this was a part of our Social-Studies syllabus. More than anything it reinforces some simple facts which feel instinctively right and fair, but which our social conditioning, unfortunately makes us see as wrong. So here’s to some healthy unlearning 
I loved this site, do also take a look at, ‘Domestic Violence: Myths and Realities.’ And here are easy to understand tips ‘For friends and parents- how you can help.’
‘Recognising Abuse’ is something every young girl person should read. In most cases of sexual violence the attacker might be known to the victim, here’s Resisting Violence, Step Two: Know Your Boundaries. Read more here.
And now read below to find out for yourself (or click to read at the original site)…
What are some characteristics of a healthy relationship?
Equality
- Equal decision making power
- Shared responsibility in the relationship
- Neither partner restricts the other to gender roles
- Outside support networks of friends and family for both partners
Communication- Sharing of thoughts and ideas
- Opinions of each partner are valued equally
- Each partner listens to the other
- Partners use respectful language and gestures, even in disagreement
Trust- Partners are honest with and believe one another
- Both partners accept the validity of each other’s feelings
- Partners are dependable
Safety- Partners are emotionally supportive and encouraging
- Safe sharing of fears or insecurities
- Respect for each other’s physical space
- Physical force is never used to assert one’s will or as punishment
- Each partner supports the other’s goals, feelings, friends, and activities
- Partners accept ‘No’ and their partner’s right to choose his/her sexual values and limits
1,411 is the number of tigers left alive.
How many tigers did we kill (and how!) to have reached this number?
My cat, sher ka mausa, plays exactly the way this adorable tiger cub is playing
Created by nature specially for human viewing 
When there were ‘enough’ number of tigers, we could afford to hunt.When there was no immediate risk of ‘nature’s balance’ being disturbed, no food chain worries, and no risk that future human generations might miss out on the joy and beauty of a live tiger (created by nature specially for human viewing) we could kill a tiger. Now we can’t because we might find ourselves inconvenienced if all the tigers die.
We have no doubt that everything in nature is created for human convenience.
It just doesn’t occur to some of us that tigers/black bucks/all creatures have as much right to this planet as we do. In fact no matter what tall claims we make, pigs, cows, snakes, bees, dogs, cats are no less dear to nature than we are.
I have no hope for the Tiger, but for those who do, here’s what you can do to save the tiger.
If you wish to blog about it like Hitchwriter did, find free, high resolution images here.
Listen to the Tiger’s anthem here.
Just when I blogged about our attitude towards mothers, in cases of teen pregnancy, here’s another horrifying piece of news,
To save herself from the ignominy of being a unwed mother, a 16-year-old girl left her two-hour-old baby girl to die at a park… near a water tank wearing minimal clothes. The child was bleeding and even the umbilical cord had not been properly cut. Following pressure from her family members …after the baby was born around midnight, she took her baby from her sector 5 residence and left her near the water tank at sector 9, [Click to read details]
Another news article says,
A 16-year-old girl was arrested for allegedly abandoning her day-old baby girl after giving birth on Wednesday night …A case under Section 317 of the IPC has been registered at the Sector 9 police station. [Click to read more]
Why isn’t the father arrested? Isn’t he equally responsible?
This must be traumatic for a 16 year old. Do we have special laws to handle such cases?
The way I see it, she must have found herself isolated. She needed medical and emotional support. Instead her family let her go out two hours after the delivery to abandon the baby, bleeding and cold. The baby had turned blue when she was found. They probably did not know that they could give the baby up for adoption.
What if the trauma, physical and emotional, and the postpartum depression drive her to suicide?
Is that a solution? A moral lesson to all the other immoral girls perhaps, because the last line in one news article said,
“There has been a growing number of such incidents in Faridabad town with five pregnancies out of wedlock reported in the past three months.”
To some Indians that is the biggest concern here.
For anyone who says the 16 year old is at fault, I would say if she knew or understood the consequences of what she was doing, she would have at least used contraception. We do not think a 16 year old can drive, drink, vote, marry or take decisions, but we are ready to arrest her and blame her for being a victim of ignorance and bad judgement.
And what about the father?
Perhaps the parents feel they had no choice. And now who would marry a girl with a baby, bad reputation and a police record? (And goes without saying, No Marriage No Life, for an Indian woman).
Now would it not have been lucky for this girls if she was born in the West?
Link received by email.
“There were 71 pregnancies per 1,000 U.S. girls aged 15-19. In 2006, 7 percent of all teenage girls got pregnant…”
Teen pregnancies are often quoted as an example of the degeneration of the US or the Western culture. Are teen pregnancies unheard of India?
I don’t think so. The difference is that most teen mothers in India have no choice or control over their pregnancy or their bodies. A lot of them are undernourished and are under pressure to give birth to male children.
“According to official figures, over 68% girls in the state (Rajasthan) are married by the age of 18.” (And the Rajasthan government wants to register child marriages, making it tougher for the couple to get out of these marriages. They should be helping them make informed choices!).
A college friend’s mother once told us how she slept through her marriage ceremony, she was too young to stay awake. But she was not from Rajasthan, she was from Tamil Nadu.
My new maid says her 17 year old daughter in law has grown up to be taller than her son, they had not expected this when they married them in their mid-teens, but it doesn’t bother them, there are many such couples in their village, near Lucknow, in UP.
Another 25 year old domestic helper in Pune had three kids, 9, 7 and 5. She said was born the year Ms Gandhi died in 1984, so how old was she when her first child was born?
I have blogged about another domestic helper, married at 12, to a 20 year old unemployed man (Maharashtra). She supports three kids and an alcoholic, sick but violent husband. She asks her mother now, if she and sisters were really so much trouble that the mother had to get rid of them so cruelly.
Yet another one in Punjab was married as a kid to a much older, abusive man but she escaped, came back home and refused to go back.(I blogged about her, here)
Each of these women are unhappily married. They were pregnant in their teens. They live with verbal and physical abuse. Many of them are working more than they should, each of them is underweight (none more than 40 kgs) and most of them are earning.
Compare this to teenage pregnancies in the US. The girls are not necessarily married. They are unlikely to be forced to get married.
They can choose to have the baby or abort the baby – their health will be a huge consideration here, and a priority.
Despite the disapproval, they need not kill themselves to save their families’ honour.
They can continue to meet new men, maybe marry, maybe work, maybe live on their own, maybe live with their parents.
Their culture doesn’t like teenage pregnancies either, but it doesn’t abandon or ostracise one of the two responsible for these pregnancies.
So why do we think, are the teenage pregnancies in the west bad, and teenage pregnancies in our country fine?
Is this because these teen mothers are married? Does that really benefit the mother or the child? Perhaps the mother has a father’s name to give to the child? (Can’t think how else it could be better for the mother or the child since they seem to have very little emotional or financial support). I would say the mother’s name is (and should be, specially in such cases) enough for the child. Mahabharat supports this. E.g.Kaunteya/ Kunti-Putra. Where ever the law doesn’t support the mothers, it should. Neena Gupta and Sushmita Sen are both single mothers and doing fine.
Secondly even if we ignore that most Indian teenage mothers are undernourished and miserable, what kind of life are these married (with parental approval) teenage mothers likely to give to their children? They have little say in the children’s lives. I would say Juno made a much better and far more confident teenage mother.
And most importantly it’s the mother’s body and her choice. In India she has no rights over it. Just like she has no rights over anything else in her life. Or even a right to her own life. How can a culture claim to respect women and mothers when it forces them to abandon helpless babies in garbage heaps simply because they are not married to the father!
Or else they can always take their own lives to prove their respect for a culture that doesn’t respect or value them.
Women in Punjab are warned, “Dheeyaan dee maa rani, bhudhaapey bharey paani”, meaning, ‘a mother who has girl children lives like a queen when the girls are young, but in her old age she has to fetch water from the well’.
This sums up our attitude towards girl children in India.
How does a mother who has daughters live like a queen?
Many Indian parents believe that their little girls must prepare for the hardships that await them in their marital home. Illogical as it sounds, this is taken very seriously. I remember my mother arguing against this. She asked a well meaning ( 
) aunt if she should also train her daughters to live without running water and electricity, because who knew what hardships future held for them.
Ever heard of self fulfilling prophecies? Daughters are literally conditioned to accept a life with endless ‘hardships’ and to live without complaining or fighting back. Neha Chhikara was one such daughter.
So depending on the parents’ whims, girl-children are trained to perfection in the art of washing clothes, running errands, doing the dishes, cleaning, cooking, (many girls are cooking for an entire family at ten) and taking care of younger siblings. This makes life easier for the mother, and so she is said to live like a queen. Hence, ‘Dheeyaan dee maa rani’.
This also means that often girls are either not sent to school or they must make sure they finish the chores at home first.
If the mother has no sons she must accept her fate – no sons, no support in old age. She must do everything her daughters were doing till they got married – including, if required fetch water from the well, hence, “Budhaape bharey pani”.
When my dad was admitted in ICU a visitor noticed us walking over to the hospital cafeteria for sandwiches, and asked, “You have a daughter, she should have cooked and packed something from home!” She did not think I should have cooked. No other family member was expected to have cooked either. And definitely no male member need have worried about our meals.
We have a very clear hierarchy in matters of house hold chores. And we have convenient logic to justify employing young daughters in endless, thankless, physically exhausting and time consuming house hold chores. When we talk of tough competition in academics we are not considering how much tougher it must be for girls who have this added responsibility. Why not everybody pitch-in and do their fair share? This post, on NGI, speaks about the same attitude.
An elderly relative recalls how their five brothers held ‘parantha eating contests‘, while the sisters, (who obviously could only eat when others had finished eating) sweated in the sweltering hot summer kitchen. If the sisters protested, it became a means to annoy and tease them. Mothers looked on indulgently, proud of how well the boys ate.
One hears things like, “You may become an engineer or doctor or a big-shot at work, but every woman has to cook and clean…” so the parents train them from childhood.
Once I went to study with a friend, we were in the middle of some discussion when her younger brother reached home, threw his cricket bat on the carpet and demanded ‘nimboo-paani’. She immediately dropped the books and went into the kitchen. I asked her if her brother couldn’t make nimboo-paani (he seemed fine) for himself. She looked uncomfortable. Her mother had once slapped her because a boy, a class mate, came to drop her home after an extra class in school. Later she had got another slap when she asked what she did wrong.
The same mother now calls her to complain about how the spoiled son is indifferent to her. She was a ‘queen’ when this scholar of a daughter was young, but now she has to ‘budhape bharey paani’ because her daughter in law was not raised to prepare for hardships and has moved to her own house.
I find it difficult to believe that mothers who make their daughters learn house hold chores as a favour, mean well. If it was an unselfish gesture won’t they extend the same favour to the sons? Why raise some family members like life-long princes and others like ‘paraya dhan’?
Read another post about the same attitude by Apu here. Indyeah writes about the missing girl child here.
Edited to add on 25th – Monika wrote about her experience as a daughter of a three ‘dheeyan dee maa’ here.
And Shail’s tells in 55 words, the story of the girls who are allowed to be born.
My mom visited me the other day and the first thing she asked was to watch ‘Tere Mere Sapne’ at 1 pm. I groaned aloud and explained that with Airtel IPTV, she could watch any missed shows later also.
“Great then I also want to watch the last night’s show I missed yesterday!”
So my mom caught two shows I strongly disapprove of, one after another. We ate lunch while watching a group of women circling a peepal tree, praying for their husband’s long life and listening to Savitri’s story.
Savitri snatched her husband back from Yama, the god of death. (Even if we don’t hear of it, I am sure her husband would have done the same for her.) She asked Yama for a hundred sons… (and not one daughter) so he had to return her husband so she could have those hundred sons (no daughters). Now the entire nation seems to follow numerous examples like this, and everybody wants sons.
Gandhari in Mahabharata also asked for a hundred sons. Didn’t they miss having daughters? Sons are fine and good, but isn’t it fun for women to have life-long friends in their daughters?
I saw a friend transform. She had problems at home, and she didn’t seem to care how she looked or lived. She dressed conservatively, wore drab colours and seldom stepped out of her house.
Then her daughter grew up
During the last few years she took the mother with her to the gym, got her a haircut, both got a music teacher, they go for movies and shopping together, and the daughter gradually changed her mother’s entire wardrobe. This happens with many women. Grown up daughters become best friends and allies. My friend’s problems are still there but now she has someone who understands and stands by her. She also looks visibly more confident with her new look.
When we were teenagers, my mother used to say she had heard of mothers being close to sons, and wondered why nobody said anything about the amount of fun mothers have with daughters.
My favourite poem by Usha Pisharody says it so well!
For a Daughter I Wish I’d Had!!!
By Usha Pisharody
And a little girl is 19 now.
In the middle of a crowded Lajpat Nagar market a dog is heard yelping. The market halts, everybody is turning, and half the market is moving towards the dog. One leg lifted up but without any visible signs of injury, the dog continues to cry heartbreakingly.
One outraged voice asks, “Kisne mara isko?” (Who hit him?)
And then another still angrier, “Kisne mara?”(Who hit him?). Whoever kicked or hurt him stayed silent.
A vendor unloading huge bags from a rikshaw says, “Aaaja aaja, idhar aaja…” (Come, come here!) the dog stops crying and limps up to him. A woman offers him a kachori. The man unpacking his huge bags of woollen sweaters says (the way only someone from UP can say), “Yeh khayenge naheen!” (‘They’ will not eat!) The dog is no longer crying, wags his tail in response to the man’s proud declaration, and turns an adorably arrogant nose away from the kachori on the ground.
In another part of the cold, cold city somebody has wrapped this homeless dog in a cozy jacket (Photographs taken by my daughter).
Another dog who found a loving human …this jacket matches with Gabbar Singh’s jacket
Somebody not only gave this dog a jacket, but also made sure it was secured comfortably.
And this is Gabbar Singh enjoying a sunny winter morning…
[Dilwalon ki Dilli - Delhi is a city of people with warm hearts (or large-hearted people).]
Vikas Gupta blogged about homeless dogs in Delhi winters too, here.
We all agree that no child should go to school like this little girl is doing.
(click on the image)
Here is an opportunity to do our bit.
One of India’s most trusted and credible NGOs, GiveIndia is taking part in a competition on Facebook to win a US$1 million grant. The winner will be the NGO that gets the highest number of votes from Facebook users. The prize of $1 million will help put or keep 40,000 children across India in school for one year!
Imagine the IndiBlogger community coming together to spread the word and help the underprivileged children of India. The impact would be tremendous and together, IndiBloggers and GiveIndia would be able to gather the votes we need to win.
Voting in the competition is for one week only, from Friday, January 15 – Friday, January 22, 2010. Can we make a difference in the next 3 days?
The link for voting, where you can also see more details of the competition is
http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/338730
There’s been lots of talk about how social media can bring change and make an impact on the world we live in. Well, here is one tangible way for us to take a small action that could have a HUGE outcome.
In case you have more questions about this, please write to giveindiachase@gmail.com and a GiveIndia team member would be happy to reply.
Our votes can make a difference.
