Women’s
Day Musings
The
8th of March each year is observed
globally as Women’s Day in honor
of women for their qualities of courage
,compassion, and resilience and in recognition of their rights to equal
opportunities, education, and respect . Women leaders like our own Indira
Gandhi, Margret Thatcher, Sirimavo Bandaranaike inspired awe and fear in men including
their male counterparts . Indira Gandhi was even called the only Man in her
cabinet which in my opinion is not acceptable. Such description puts man on
a higher status for the woman to break the glass ceiling to claim equality - a notion very antithesis of the spirit underlying Women’s Day
My
adoration of women began early in my life and lasted till I
married one. For most married men, a sense of fear of the wife develops affecting their
relationship. Even the most courageous husband
appears afraid of his better half. Incidentally, the phrase better- half for the wife seems apt because the man’s other half is filled only with fear for
her. Mythology is silent about Gods who
have their spouses in half their bodies referring to them as better halves.
Most
husbands who outside their homes act and roar like lions become meek and weak like lambs in the presence of their wives. There
is the famous story about a queue of men
outside the Pearly Gate waiting for
admission to Heaven when the person managing the queue asked those who feared
their wives to stand in one line and the others in another line. All lined up
in one line except one man who stood alone in a separate line. When
asked whether he did not fear his
wife, he answered that that his wife had told him not to stand in the same line
with others! Or the other one about a
man who avowed before the idol of Ganesha that he would break a hundred
coconuts if the journey he was going on with his wife would be safe. At this the wife was furious with rage and gave him a
look with her eyes brimming fire. He
shivered and hid his face from Ganesha with a hand and whispered to her that it
was only a “Jumla”
In
Bharat , we had followed the principle of man superior, pun unintended, at home till the radical,
worldwide second wave feminist movement in the late 1960s through the 1980s alerted
us about equality of genders, not merely
for voting but also in house chores like washing, cooking and baby- sitting,
etc. However, governments in Maharashtra , Bihar, Tamil Nadu etc. do not seem to be convinced by this equality argument. They pay cash, provide
free ride in Buses and Metro only to women. Are they too afraid of women ?
Try as I might to get my wife treating me like husband of yore, I confess I have failed. In the formative years of our married life, I would
follow the laissez faire policy, which in one of my books on political science,
was explained as “let the sleeping dogs lie” policy. But not anymore, after nearly sixty years, I now gather some courage
to air my opinion on domestic, national,
international issues and topics ranging
from local vegetable prices in APMC market in Mumbai, MeToo campaigns in Mollywood
and elsewhere, destruction and construction of places of worship, global
warming, water seepage seen on the Taj Mahal and other miscellaneous matters
like Chandrayan, the comment of our PM that the present era is of peace and not war and yet two
of his friends have not heeded leading to the ongoing Iran-US-Israel War.
While I willingly share all my opinions with my wife, she more often
than not turns a deaf year and lo and behold, shows deep scorn. This has led me feel total disappointment
since even the one closest to me fails to acknowledge my extensive wisdom and
all the good qualities I possess and
exhibit. While I was in service in semi-government offices and later as
faculty in management training/education institutions, I used to receive,
expectedly of course, encomiums about my intelligence and
oration from my subordinates and students respectively. Now even
the group of senior citizens I meet in our Cooperative Housing Society
have stopped praising my erudition in Hindi despite
being a Tamil.
All the above notwithstanding, what
disappoints me the most is that my wife
does not appreciate my astute political analysis vis -a -vis
Karnataka elections or my insightful interpretation of the New Education Policy
2020 or NCERT’s rationalization of school syllabi or my profound musical
heritage. The last talent extends to all forms of music ranging from classical
Carnatic to Hindustani to film music and even the jingles in TV advertisements
like the one on Rajasthan’s march of progress.
During our morning ritual of sipping coffee
at the dining table when the social distance between us is narrow, the
wife sits like Rodin’s statue ”The Thinker”. The invigorating coffee sets me narrating
to her one or the other of my virtues. Nothing moves her and she sits there as if to prove the old adage
that No Man is a hero to his Woman. At the most, her response on these
occasions is confined to listing my tasks for the day such as cutting
the sturdy 2 kg yam for making chips, buying groceries including broomstick and mop
cloth or getting the Society electrician to repair the non-functional geyser
switch in the bathroom. As if this was not bad enough, she would point
out to my dhoti slipping often and chide
me to tie and secure it firmly so that I
don’t walk like Mammooti and Mohandas in Malayalam films holding one end of the dhoti.
Like the Feminist Movement, I wish there was a
Movement of Anguished Husbands to secure for them dignity, acknowledgement, and
forbearance of their qualities of peaceful co-existence with their respective
wives.
