The Decent Indian Male

October 21, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Feminism, Women 53 Comments

***

A lot of men on my Facebook timeline have been sharing this link to a New York Times article enthusiastically, happy that at last, someone is speaking up for the ‘decent Indian male’. You know, the one who doesn’t go on a rampage raping everything female in sight but is instead the checked-shirt wearing office-goer who is tirelessly working for his family. Like the guys here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYSbIhIChQ

Kafila has already written a rather caustic critique of the article, but I still want to write my two rupees worth. As has been pointed out in the critique, I think it’s quite a simplistic view to classify men as either the feral types (who are curiously from the lower classes) or the decent husband/father types.

I’m sharing my airplane + baby experiences here as the NYT piece uses it as evidence (?!) to show that decent Indian males exist. ‘Strong familial commitment’ is apparently the trademark of the Indian male, never mind that the family itself is the site of much gender-based violence in our country. I was terrified of my first flight with my daughter. She was eight months old and I was really worried about managing her on the airplane, especially if she were to start screaming non-stop as I’ve seen some babies do. She was at the stage when she needed to be breastfed to fall asleep and even though I had feverishly pumped some milk for her for the flight, I was worried about whether it’d be enough. And as I’d suspected, she began to demand a feed when we were on board. I’d come prepared. I took out a shawl, draped it around myself, and began unbuttoning my shirt to feed her.

I was on a window seat. An old man was sitting on the aisle seat in front of me. He was traveling with his wife, kids, and grandkids. He turned around and started staring at me. He knew very well what I was trying to do and he wanted to catch a glimpse of my breasts. I didn’t want to shout because I didn’t want to wake my sleepy baby but I did whisper to M about the situation. He asked the old man in a loud voice if he had a problem and he said ‘No, no’ and turned back. His family didn’t react. I spent the rest of the flight observing this old man checking out the air-hostesses, feeling furious about what he’d tried to do.

Women breastfeed publicly in India routinely – something that’s not so accepted in the West. But are we free from voyeurism when we do this? I’ve seen plenty of men staring at women who are breastfeeding their babies on public buses in Chennai. Yes, it’s part of our culture to accept a woman breastfeeding in public but it’s also part of our culture to condone the men who stare at them lasciviously when doing so. The old man wasn’t a hippie traveling by himself to Amsterdam. He was traveling with his entire family and none of them bothered to react to what had happened. The Indian man on the bike with his kids in front and wife at the back will stare at the girls on the road because nobody will shame him for doing so. The presence or absence of familial connections makes no difference at all.

The NYT piece talks about the good son who loves his parents and takes care of them. Okay, so how many of these good sons will tolerate it when their wives want to be good daughters? How many of them will move houses to live with their in-laws and become their instant carers, cooking and cleaning for them even if they are treated badly? How many of them will be fine with their wives sending a part of their salary to their parents?

Indian men apparently venerate mothers. I had a 26-hour labour before giving birth to my daughter. My face had turned purplish-black because of the exertion. I was being wheeled into the OT for an emergency C-sec, 39 weeks pregnant, my water broken, still dripping on to the sheets. On the elevator that was taking me to the OT were two hospital attendants who were staring down my over-large hospital gown, hoping to get a view. So much for the mummy sentiment.

Yes, it’s true that M spoke for me in the airplane situation but I’d have been happier if I hadn’t needed the ‘protection’ in the first place. What about women who are single? Who don’t have fathers/brothers/husbands to say ‘Main hoon na’ every time they step out of the house? I don’t need the symbolically-loaded vermillion that appears at the end of the ICICI ad for me to be respected and treated as a human being and not just a female body.

I don’t quite get the point of the NYT article – is it to say that not all Indian men are bad but there are some good ones, too? To start with, I don’t think anyone is saying all men are jerks or that all Indian men are jerks. It’d be foolish to make a generalization like that. But it’s important to recognize that even if the men in your life love you and care about you, they can still hold patriarchal beliefs that give the men who want to hurt you the sanction to do so. For example, a husband might ask his wife to wear a dupatta because he doesn’t want the men on the road to molest her. He’s performing the role of the protector, caring about his wife’s well-being. He might not be the sort of man who molests a dupatta-less woman on the road either. But what he’s doing is giving sanction to the man who will molest his wife because she’s dressed in a way that both of them feel was ‘asking for it’.

The purpose of the articles that have been cropping up on the state of Indian women is not to vilify the Indian man. The purpose is to open the conversation on the state of Indian women in the first place – a state that many men have been aware of but have chosen to remain silent about till all these articles began appearing in the international media. Instead of being aggrieved that this image-damage is happening, how about acknowledging the truths that you see around you every day? How about sharing these articles as well instead of just football news and the Indian-men-are-so-nice sort of pieces? How about considering giving up your ‘privileges’ to create a more equal atmosphere at home and at work? How about you stop believing your job is done once you’ve ‘protected’ us? How about realizing that your job, as is ours, is to work towards creating a society that will not require us to be protected?

And Women

October 3, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Feminism, Women 11 Comments

***

I attended a 2-day seminar on Gender Studies at the University of Pune. The theme of the seminar was interrogating how gender is understood, researched and taught in the academia. It was a good two days for me. First of all, everyone thought I was a student, so I felt absurdly happy. Since I’m on Mummyji mode for 24 hours a day usually, this was a welcome switch of identity. I’m pretty sure when I become really old, I’m going to be one of those annoying young-at-heart people who wear Hawaiian shirts and act Bohemian. 

Anyway. I’m just putting down my thoughts here on what happened at the seminar. It’s in no particular order because I didn’t take any notes.

Apparently, the academia has woken up to the need for including a gender perspective in all disciplines. Earlier, there was a debate on whether gender should be taught as an independent discipline or if it should be mainstreamed with all other disciplines. The current approach is to do both. So you can study gender by enrolling in a Gender Studies program but if you don’t care about gender or aren’t aware about it, you will end up studying it anyway even if you take up, say, Law. This is a laudable goal but the way it has been implemented (or not) is just sad. What has been done is a token addition to the curriculum of many disciplines that carries the title ‘…and Women.’ So if you were doing Economics, you’d study a unit on ‘Economics and Women’. A study of these units shows that the approach is to just talk about the ‘position of women’ and not really explain what gender is and how it influences knowledge production among other things. 

There were papers on Women and Science which I found quite interesting. The professors who presented these papers claimed that the women scientists they spoke to were completely clueless about gender and believed that Science was a gender-blind discipline (I wondered if they’d never heard of Rosalind Franklin and what happened to her). I live in a neighborhood in which many of my neighbours are women scientists and I’ve found my experience to be sort of different – the women I’ve met are largely aware of gender issues and actively read and discuss gender when it comes to their careers. They might not all be self-identified feminists but I don’t think most of them believe gender is irrelevant to doing Science. However, though this awareness is there, it doesn’t translate to doing Science differently or actively opposing systemic inequities – there, I could fully relate to the paper presenters.

Another angle explored in these papers was the difference between teaching gender to an urban audience and a rural one. One of the professors from TISS discussed her experience of teaching gender to students of IIT Mumbai – while these students, most of them from upper caste/class, privileged backgrounds, had no issues discussing gender, they were uncomfortable with talking about caste identity and how it intersects with gender identity. However, in rural audiences, it’s easier to discuss caste than it is to discuss gender. Another professor mentioned that it was difficult to discuss sexuality with a rural audience but equally difficult to discuss caste with an urban audience. 

The most interesting part of the seminar for me was the paper presentations done by students – male and female. They spoke about how their lives had changed after being introduced to the concept of gender. One girl spoke about how she found it impossible now to read a book or watch a movie without analyzing it (I could fully empathize with her there!) – apparently, her favourite book used to be Gone With the Wind and now, she can barely read it without finding a hundred things wrong with it. A boy spoke about how he used to go home every day at 11 in the night and his mother would make him fresh food and do the dishes after he’d gone to bed. How it had never occurred to him that this was wrong. And after studying Gender, he insists on cooking and cleaning after himself – though his mum finds it appalling that a boy should enter the kitchen! He also spoke about Rakshabandhan and how he doesn’t want to celebrate it any more. His sister is nine years older to him but since childhood, he’s been led to believe that he should protect her ‘honour’ – he spoke about how many brothers believe their sister’s sexuality is their business. It seems he told his sister he didn’t want to celebrate this any more but she insisted, so from this year onward, they’ve decided to tie rakhi to each other! 

Another boy, from rural Maharashtra, spoke about how the conversations in his boys’ hostel revolve around objectifying women and how he used to be an active participant in those. But post-gender awareness, he finds it unbearable to listen to such comments. Apparently, he tries to tell his friends not to speak this way but they call him names and exclude him from their circle, so he is unhappy about that. 

There were many others who spoke about the changes – big and small – that had happened in their lives because they studied Gender. I remembered that time in college when I woke up to all of this and how remarkable it had seemed that I’d spent nearly twenty years of life being so oblivious to the obvious. The students said that they felt like misfits at times because they couldn’t get their families or non-Sociology friends to understand their views. I remember feeling that way, too, though most of my friends were thankfully like-minded. And I no longer feel like a misfit because I can’t enjoy a movie without breaking it down – I’m happy I do that.

Not surprisingly, the boy students who spoke about breaking out of stereotypes got more applause. Even from me. It was just wonderful to hear a man openly identify himself as a feminist and mean it, his face all red with passion. True story. But later, I chided myself because this is a lot like fathers getting medals for changing diapers while the mothers who gave their blood and bone don’t get any such awards. 

Overall though, I found that most people were using woman’s perspective and gender perspective synonymously. To start with, there is no such thing as a ‘woman’s perspective’ – women aren’t a homogeneous group and we all have several identities. And then, it’s not as if gender constructs exist only for women. They exist for men too, and for all others whom we tend to marginalize because they don’t fit our ideas of male and female bodies. Further, there was absolutely no representation of sexual minorities. Maybe this isn’t surprising – while we celebrated Shakespeare’s bisexuality and Ginsberg’s homosexuality and Adrienne Rich’s lesbianism in our BA class, there was no LGBTQ support group in our college. Forget a support group, it was taboo to talk about the existence of sexual minorities outside of the classroom. And while we questioned ideas of ‘modesty’ and ‘honour’ in class, we had to sign a contract with the college that we could be punished if we wore clothes that were not ‘modest’. There wasn’t much on this aspect of the academia – how is one supposed to teach gender when the administration is sitting on its ass braying out the message that girls need duppatas?

Attending this seminar has made me want to do my PhD now. Maybe I will…hmm.

 

What We’re Reading

September 25, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Children, Children's literature, GBM 6 Comments

I haven’t reviewed any children’s book on this blog and that’s a bit of an irony because I’m constantly searching for mommy bloggers who have reviewed my books. We read quite a few books in this household, so I think it’s only fair that I review them and give other authors who may or may not be obsessively Googling their own titles like yours truly, a bit of joy.

Bringing up a child has been a tremendous learning experience for me as a writer. The picture book is a great medium because in the really good ones, everyone in the family finds something to enjoy. Take GBM’s all time favourite book No, David! by David Shannon. She’s been ‘reading’ this book ever since I can remember. It was given to me by N, long before I became pregnant. I loved it but it was only after I read the book with my daughter that I truly got it. No, David! is a book that has a bunch of pictures with David, the nearly hairless, wide-toothed, skinny boy, doing things that he’s not supposed to do. And the text comprises of David’s mom’s admonishments – NO, DAVID! SETTLE DOWN! DON’T PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD! and so on. The illustrations are huge. Wonderful ones of David picking his nose, David running down the road naked, David with his toys all over the floor. And my daughter LOVES it. These are things she does all the time and David is her partner in crime. When she sees the page on which David has drawn on his wall, her eyes go to the crayon scribbling she has done on our walls. And she giggles. The book has grown with us as my daughter has grown. There are new elements that she picks on in each phase. The ending is lovely. As a parent, it offers me redemption. The book ends with the mother calling out to her son, ‘DAVEY!’ and then on the next page, he’s lying in her arms and she says, ‘Yes, David, I love you.’ GBM mimics this often. Holding out her hands wide, yelling DAVEEYYY and running into my arms. And I feel forgiven for the number of times I’ve said NO to her that day.

I’m reviewing two Tulika books today and I will continue to review more children’s books here as we read them. Her current favourites are Let’s Go! and What Did You See?  Let’s Go! is by Anthara Mohan and What Did You See? is by Nandini Nayar. GBM loves vehicles of all types, especially trains. Let’s Go! is essentially a counting book and it has children jumping, leaping, and hopping out of various vehicles and in the end, getting on to one big train! The text is minimal and the illustrations are nice and big (Rajiv Eipe, take a bow!). Care has been taken to introduce diversity – spot the woman in the colourful purdah, the blind boy with his stick, the boy on the wheelchair, the women car drivers – all nice touches. GBM loves the kid on the wheelchair. But her favourite kid of the lot is the tiny, brown one on the railway station who looks slightly mad and delighted. She’s also fascinated with Balan Tea Stall. Let’s Go! works at so many levels – the child learns to identify vehicles (the difference between a scooter and a motorbike, for instance), figure out public/private transport, count, absorb different movement verbs, take in different types of bodies and I’m sure unravel a lot more as we read it again and again. GBM is not two yet and this book is meant to be for 2 plus, so I’m pretty certain that we will read it differently in the years to come.

What Did You See? has a slightly crazy mamma and this is probably why GBM identifies with it so much :D It’s a book about a kid whose mum asks her what all she saw in the zoo, making all the requisite animal sounds and movements, only to find out that her daughter hasn’t gone to the zoo yet. She’s going only tomorrow! In the process, the mother jumps like a monkey, roars like a lion, dances like a peacock, and does much much more. And understandably, in the end, she flops to the ground like a bear. The illustrations by Soumya Menon are wonderful. She’s managed to make the mother’s expression mirror that of the animal she’s imitating so effortlessly. The book subverts the usual mother-child situation in which the child is relentlessly asking questions with excitement while the parent answers in monosyllables. It’s funny! We visit the zoo here often and GBM could imagine the whole scenario very well. Right on the first page, before the story even begins, there’s a spread of animal tails. GBM loves to identify whose tail belongs to whom. She also likes to look at the flamingos in the back cover who don’t really appear in the story. The other details she likes are Meera’s kudumis, Amma’s dupatta, her bangles, and her bindi. 

Though I complain sometimes about how many times I have to read these books every single day, I’m secretly enjoying myself so much. GBM sits on my lap, her head bobbing with excitement, the curve of her cheek expanding as her favourite page comes, the fresh whiff of baby soap in my nose…how much more sunshine does one need?

Whiny

September 24, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Angst 24 Comments

***

I’m tired of whiny people. Suddenly, I seem to be meeting whiny people wherever I go. I feel like a character out of The Sixth Sense. Except, I don’t see dead people everywhere. I just see people who think they are better off being dead everywhere. It’s not that I don’t want to listen to other people’s problems. But it gets super boring when it’s apparent these people have no intention of doing anything about it other than just whining. 

Much of this whining is about how their lives are so boring. I mean, okay, if you wanted a life that was unpredictable, you should have become a soldier or wildlife photographer or T.Rajendar. You call these people out for a movie and they’ll tell you they are soooooooooooooo busy cleaning the house. Then they’ll whine about the fact that they have to clean the house. They’ll also add that nobody else in the house cares about cleaning the house. I don’t get this. So what if you don’t clean your toilet this weekend? Only you seem to care anyway. Or if you really really really care about your toilet, why are you whining about having to clean it? When you die thirty years from now, are you going to be happy thinking about the number of times you cleaned that toilet? They’ll tell you they haven’t watched a movie in months or years, even. How it’s simply impossible to go watch a movie because…oh wait, they have to clean the toilet. Fantastic. 

You call them out for dinner, they’ll tell you they can’t leave their spouse or child behind as it’s ‘family time’. Look, I get it. I’m not a beaded gypsy traversing across the globe. I have a husband. I have a daughter. I love them both very much. But why does every weekend have to be spent that way? Especially when you are going to whine to me next about how you never get to go anywhere? 

 

What’s the big problem in going out by yourself if you are so bored? Instead of thinking of the million obstacles you imagine are in your way, why don’t you think of three ways in which you can make yourself happy? Very Vivekanandaesque, I know, but it really isn’t that complicated for most people. It’s just that it’s easier to whine than to push yourself out of the rut. The truth is, your happiness is not anybody’s top priority. It has to be your own. If you keep waiting for someone to descend from the blue skies to change your life and make you happy…well, you might just end up creating a new religion but nothing else.

SO. Okay, all the Whiny Houstons, I’m telling you now. I’m NOT interested. I have problems of my own. Did I tell you about the tragic time in my life when my toilet hadn’t been cleaned for TWO weeks? No? Listen… 

 

Allo, Allo

September 18, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran GBM, Random Rangan, Work 10 Comments

***

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here. This is a quick I’m-not-dead-yet post.

Mayil Book 2 is done! We’ve sent it out to the publisher (Tulika) and we expect the book to be out in October. Writing Book 2 was a fairly peaceful process. Of course, it involved some days on which my daughter tried to pull my hair out or break my laptop, but I’m used to writing while fending her off by now. I’m an Octopus with many limbs. 

N and I are happy with the book. We’re happy with the way in which Mayil has evolved *sniff*. I took the daughter to the Tulika office on our Chennai trip. She picked up Mayil from the rack and said ‘Amma book!’ Woohoo. That’s my Nobel prize. She can also say ‘Mayil Will Not Be Quiet’. Which I think is a pretty big achievement for somebody under the age of two. We picked up a big stash of Tulika books and we’ve been reading them on loop. 

N has been working on Nirmala and Normala, the graphic novel we’re publishing with Penguin. I can’t wait for it to be out. N’s illustrations rock, as usual. After the launch of this book, we’re planning to scoot somewhere and have a proper holiday i.e., do nothing and just stuff ourselves. 

I’ve been doing a lot of writing work for a company that makes educational content for schools and also runs programs in classrooms. It’s work I thoroughly enjoy doing – lots of picture books, poems…and even a play! It’s nice to know that somewhere, some place, you are making a difference to some tiny kid’s life. 

In between, I met most of my family at a wedding in Bombay. Most of my cousins were there and it was wonderful to catch up with them all. I was the eldest in the group since the ones who are older than I am are in the US now, so I felt like a grand old lady. GBM had a whale of a time. We went for elevator rides at the hotel and danced for the CCTV. If that place ever gets bombed and the police watch the footage, they will see a deranged lady singing Oruvan Oruvan Mudhalaali and pretending to be a dancing horse next to an obviously delighted toddler.

We celebrated Onam on Sunday. GBM ate pappadam from her banana leaf and nothing else.

That’s all for now. 

 

Have a Good Time in India, Sister

August 26, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Feminism, Gender, Travel, Women 26 Comments

***
I was in Chennai for a week, catching up with friends and family. I wasn’t online much as a result but the little time I did spend surfing, I read Rose Chasm’s account of sexual violence in India and the reactions and responses to her piece. Then there was the Mumbai gangrape, of course. At 6 PM in a busy city that never sleeps.

I read Facebook posts on why we’re protesting rapes happening only in metros. I read pieces on racial stereotyping. I read comments that said Rose Chasm didn’t talk about the good things in India enough. That not all Indian men are perverts.That it’s possible to have a good time in India, after all.

And at some point during that week, I slapped a man who hit me on my chest as I was walking down the road. No, my vacation wasn’t spoilt by this incident. This wasn’t the first time I was molested and it will not be the last either. Pretty darned sure of that. I’ve learnt to accept it as part of my reality. Like masala dosa and bad roads.

Yes, it’s possible to have a good time in India. I met up with my classmates from college for lunch at Mainland China. I took a cab, arrived at the restaurant, and spent two happy hours catching up with all the gossip and laughing over everybody’s weight gain. My dad texted me asking if I’ve reached though. Because a driver belonging to the cab service I used had kidnapped a girl earlier this year. I replied saying I had and resumed conversation with my friends. This is how you have a good time in India if you are female. A gentle reminder now and then that you could be a victim any moment, planted in the middle of Wonton soup and Chinese tea.

Later that day, I met up with my closest friends in the evening. We went to a pub. Just four women, hanging out together, laughing our heads off and gorging on onion rings. It was 10.45 PM by the time we left. There were auto guys right outside. N and I took an auto back to her house together. The other two shared another auto. We reached safely, all of us. Yes, we followed the rules – text each other when you’ve reached, sisters. Just in case the auto takes a diversion and you end up being the girl in the newspaper.

You see, we knew very well we were indulging in ‘dangerous’ behaviour in India. Late night. Women coming out of a pub. Taking an auto. Oh the immorality of it! Oh how we were asking for it! Yeah, we’d calculated the rape risk in our heads. We do it every time we have to interact with anything male. It’s automatic, this calculator. But we still went out and had a good time because. Well, we’re just as alive as the bunch of boys who were having a good time in the place we’d just left.

But what about the man who molested me? When did that happen? Not in the pub. Not when I was with only-women. Not at late night. It happened at 4 PM, under the unforgiving brightness of the Chennai sun, on a busy road, when I was with my husband.

We’d just got off a bus and M was walking ahead of me to catch an auto. I was keeping my eyes on him and I suddenly felt a sharp jab on my chest. I turned around immediately and caught the expression of triumph on the man’s face. He was a young guy, a student. He had his college bag on his shoulder and an ID card around his neck.

I went after him, shouting every expletive I knew. He tried hiding behind another man but I was yelling my head off and everyone was looking. I asked him if he made it a point to molest every woman he saw on the road. If he thought he’d never get caught. I didn’t ask him if he didn’t have a mother or sisters. Because it’s irrelevant. I don’t need anyone to think of me as their mother or sister to not be molested. People stared but nobody said anything. By then, M had realized something was going on and was walking back. I told him what had happened. He went to the guy and started shouting at him. As I looked at his face, his eyes frightened like a trapped rat, I knew this was the moment I had waited for all my life. I slapped him across his face. Not just for this one incident but for all the times in my life when I’ve been groped, hit, pinched, ogled, and flashed. All those moments when I wished I had reacted but had been silenced and shamed. But not today. I told the guy to think about the slap every time he felt like molesting any other woman.

It felt awesome.

M asked me once we found an auto if I was okay. I told him I was super happy. And I was.

M and I had noted down his name and college. When I got home, I mailed the college. I posted about the incident on Facebook. One of my friends got me the contact details of an official from the college. I texted the person about the incident. He called me the next day, was apologetic about what had happened (though it wasn’t his fault), and assured me that he would inform the management about it. I didn’t file a police complaint because I was leaving the city the day after and didn’t think I’d have the time to follow up.

The next day, I met up with friends again for lunch. We discussed what had happened. And the Mumbai gangrape. Among other things. We laughed a lot. By the time lunch was over, I felt ten years younger.

We flew back on Sunday. It was a good trip, one of my happiest. Yes, it’s possible to have fun in India if you are a woman. You just have to wind your head around the fact that you can be raped any day, any place, in any circumstance. But just have a good time till that happens, sister.

The Thing in the Room

August 5, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Writing/Editing 17 Comments

***

I saw it for the first time seven months ago. At that time, I didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t been sleeping very well and I thought my mind was playing tricks on my eyes. And anyway, it was so tiny. So helpless. It just lay there, looking at me stupidly. Before I could say anything, call out, it was gone.

I didn’t tell anyone about it. Who would believe me? Then I began seeing it more often. And every time, it was growing bigger and bigger. I didn’t know what to call it, so I just called it the Thing in the Room.

I didn’t know when it would come and when it would go. But I was so lonely that whenever the Thing appeared, I felt my spirits lifting a bit. We didn’t talk. I mean, what can one possibly say to a Thing? I didn’t even know if it was real. But it was nice to have its company. I watched TV with it.

As I looked at the Thing more and more, I realized that its eyeballs were huge. There was something strange about its face. It was crumpled. But the eyes…the eyes were always watchful. And they often watched me.

I thought of the Thing as my friend. That’s how pathetic my life was. One day, when I was watching a pointless News show, I noticed a sudden movement in the corner of my eye. I turned. The Thing was creeping around the room slowly. I don’t know why but that terrified me. So far, the Thing had never moved from its place. It didn’t know how to. But it had learned. I saw how strong it had become. It was feeding off the house somehow.

It was creeping around the couch now. The noise it made…I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t smooth like the slither of snake belly. It was jerky. Like a small animal shuffling. But it was getting good at it.

The Thing suddenly became aware that I was watching it. It looked up. For the first time, I saw it smile. It was horrible. It had no teeth. The awful pinkness of its empty gums filled me with dread. And then, the Thing began creeping towards me.

I couldn’t move. I watched as its hand grew larger and larger. It was over my head now. And then, effortlessly, the Thing picked me up. And I was inside its mouth.

***

‘Oh my god!’ screamed the mother. ‘Hurry!’

The father arrived five minutes later, after saving his powerpoint presentation.

‘He’s actually SWALLOWED that fish!’ she yelled hysterically. ‘I told you to put the bowl somewhere higher!’

The father laughed, looking at the empty fish bowl. Then, looking at the mother’s expression of horror, he modified his face slightly.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, consolingly. ‘I’m sure he will poop it out.’

‘Can you Google and see if it’s okay for a seven-month old baby to eat a goldfish?’ asked the mother.

‘Yes,’ said the father.

Their son was far from being distressed. He looked delighted with himself.

They went to the hospital anyway.

Lean In

July 24, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Children, Women, Work 19 Comments

***

I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In recently and quite enjoyed it. I thought it was an engaging and sensible read, though I wish she hadn’t tried so hard to be politically correct all the time. But I do understand where she’s coming from – there are just so many articles and arguments about what women should be doing that it’s nearly impossible to say anything without offending someone or having someone point out that this is not true of ALL women. Obviously, nothing one can say can be true of ALL women – there are way too many of us for any such homogeneity to exist. And we all have multiple identities – of caste, religion, class, community, nation and so on. 

This carefulness apart, I thought Sandberg made several good points in her book. There really is no need for a woman to stop being ambitious because she assumes someday, when she has a family, she won’t be able to accommodate her ambition along with them. The book also provides a great reading list for those who want to study the research cited in her book more extensively.

But the one thing that I wish Sandberg and many others talking about this issue discussed was how children can help you in your career. So far, everything that I’m reading is about ‘managing’ children and career. How children needn’t demolish what you’ve built up so carefully. But though the argument is that a career can co-exist with a child, one gets the impression that this is like asking a rabbit to co-exist with a tiger. The tiger, undoubtedly, being the child.

Having gone through pregnancy, labour, and breastfeeding quite recently, I can vouch for the fact that all three are immensely exhausting. Young children are difficult to look after unless you have a supportive family or paid help. I work from home and there have been instances in the past when I’ve been really frustrated by the demands made on me by my daughter – physically, mentally, emotionally. 

But, I’ve also come to realize that I’ve learnt so much from these experiences. Lessons that have helped me in my career growth. Yes, I did say growth. Since I’m yet to read an article on children and how they can help you grow in your career, I’m just going to write down my own experiences. Let me include the mandatory disclaimer: yup, I know this ain’t true for all women but like I said, nothing is.

1. Body: I’ve never been prouder of my body than I am now. Physically, I feel super strong. I’ve never felt like this all my life. There is something about being near-naked in a room full of strangers without any of them looking at you sexually that liberates you. I’ve learnt what my organs are actually for and I’ve stopped feeling the need to be conscious about myself. This has been a confidence boost in everyday life, too. Yes, I have a C-sec scar and I have stretch marks on my stomach. I don’t want to get rid of them because they remind me of what I’m capable of doing with just brute strength.

2. Mind: I’ve never been calmer than I am now. When there is a situation in which I need to act quickly, the order in which I need to do things forms inside my head magically. These instances happen quite often because for most part of the day, I have to watch my daughter by myself. So if she throws up, poops on the floor, has fallen, is throwing a tantrum etc etc, I have to deal with it all by myself. Since my priority on the list is to calm her down first, I don’t get agitated myself. Staying calm has never been one of my talents, so this is a big learning for me. It’s helped me deal with people who are being difficult at work. I am a lot more patient than I used to be. When disappointments on the work-front come up, they don’t prey on my mind the way they used to. I look at them in a detached way, learn where I went wrong, and move on. Because there’s a puddle on the floor I have to clean up.

3. Life: While I knew from childhood that I wanted to write, I was never sure about what I’d like to do for a living. Soon after college, I wanted to be in the NGO sector. Then it was the corporate sector. Then I wanted to own my business. Now, I’ve realized that I’m not cut out for any of these. What I want is the freedom of a freelancer. It may not seem like such a great deduction but it’s been quite enlightening for me. I really don’t think I want to become the CEO of anything. Not because my child will block my progress but because I’ve realized I really don’t care about being topdog. I want to make a decent amount every month because financial independence is important to me but I don’t care about not having a team or having anyone report to me. I want to take classes on the side. How I figured this out is by analyzing if I wanted to go back to an office job – and the answer is no. I want to have the time to do nothing and be still. And yet, make money. Luckily, the nature of my job makes it possible for me to have this. 

4. Spouse: One point Sheryl makes in her book is that you need a supportive spouse to be able to grow in your career. I think M and I have become more supportive of each other post-baby. We’re better at handling issues and are more sensitive to each other’s feelings. Even if there is a fight, we can’t stay icy for too long because the daughter will do something to crack us up. I know for a fact that if I do change my mind and want to become a CEO someday, M will be there to cheer me on. There is something that definitely changed in our relationship (for the better) in those long hours of labour at the hospital.

5. Memory Loss: I suppose this should be part of ‘Mind’ but I think it deserves a number by itself. I used to be the sort of person who could remember a lot of details, unnecessary ones mostly, about a number of things. Many of these would serve no purpose other than annoying me. Now, a lot of things are just blurry. I focus on only what’s important for the moment and do it. As a result, my mind is rid of a lot of clutter. I started getting absent-minded during pregnancy and am now at the stage when I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday. It’s great.

6. Focus: I’m very focused about my work now. If I want to write a story today, I will write it no matter what. I will find a million ways to get it done, no excuses. I no longer take my work or skills for granted.

Overall, I think I’ve become more productive, less dramatic, more organized, and content with work.

The Things We Do For Love

July 19, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Children, GBM, Travel 11 Comments

***

The last post seems to have generated quite an interest in how one does road trips with a baby. M and I, before we became parents, were very light travelers. If we were flying, we never had check-in baggage. If we did a road trip, we had a backpack. We never understood why our respective sets of parents arrived for 3-day trips with gigantic suitcases filled with sundry items. Now we understand. Post-baby, traveling like one is saving up for a famine becomes a habit.

Now we have an Alto, not a Tata Sumo or a truck that might have made things easier, but believe me, the list I’m going to put down here does fit in. Somehow. This is a list only for GBM’s stuff, so I’m not including the measly bag that M and I take with our stuff in it.

Outdoor stuff

Pram (this is not a must these days as GBM walks runs competently for long distances.)

Raincoat

Clogs

Diaper bag with extra set of clothes, diapers, wipes, tissues, towel, rags, trash bags.

Backpack to carry easily accessible food for the day.

Potty-related Stuff

Portable plastic potty

Dettol

Detergent

Diapers

Wipes

Diaper rash cream

Rags (we are potty training GBM now, so she’s mostly diaper-free these days. The rags are to clean up any accidents she might have.)

Hygiene stuff

Low stool (convenient for you to sit on for bathing and cleaning the baby)

Baby soap

Baby shampoo (in case she throws up and it lands in her hair – has happened before)

Eucalyptus oil (we’ve been putting a few drops in GBM’s bath water ever since she was born. Apparently it prevents colds. And even if she does get one, it clears up the nasal passages.)

Powder

Clothes (as many as we can stuff in, especially waist-down items)

Towels (always take two)

Comb

Baby toothbrush

Baby toothpaste

Food stuff

I’ve never given GBM any tinned foods so far. Neither have we given her food from outside that much – she has chappatis sometimes and once in a while, a bit of pastry. But everything else is cooked at home. The only processed food I’ve given her is a cereal called Weetabix (wheat flakes) which can be mixed with hot milk and sugar for a meal – this is something I give her only as a last resort. I prefer giving her food I’ve made myself when we are traveling as well so as to prevent episodes of diarrhea, indigestion etc. There’s nothing worse than traveling with a sick child!

Steamer

Mixie (I don’t grind GBM’s food any more to make it easier for her to swallow. This is only used when I want to make things like milkshakes)

Flask (to carry boiled milk from hotels we stay in)

Utensils to fit in the steamer

Tongs

Spoons/plates

Lime squeezer

Scissors

Knife

Cutting board

Ghee

Stapler (we carry the items below in little covers and staple them back after we’ve opened them)

Sugar

Salt

Fruits (GBM loves fruits – we usually carry apples, bananas, pears, peaches)

Vegetables (carrots mostly)

Rice

Dal

Oats (GBM’s favourite)

Weetabix

Boiled egg (this we take for Day 1 and get from the hotel for the rest of the days)

Juice bottle

Water bottle

Giant bottle of boiled water

Raisins (if GBM gets cranky, there’s nothing like a raisin to put her in a good mood again!)

Home-made murukku (made by the MIL, definitely not me!)

Vim soap

Scotch brite

Emergency Stuff

Medical file with her vaccination records

Medicine box

Thermometer

Band-aids

Assorted items like seashells, cows, noise-making toys, photographs to keep baby entertained if she goes ballistic.

I think that’s about it. Oh wait.

Two sucker adults to lug all this around.

Break

July 18, 2013

Sowmya Rajendran Random Rangan 13 Comments

***

We went on a five-day road trip across the Western Ghats. In peak monsoon season. It was breathtakingly beautiful. There were waterfalls everywhere. Trees. Grass. Birds. Flowers of strange shape. Frogs. Crickets. Mosquitoes.

Seafood. I ate prawns like I’d never live to see another day again. I had indigestion the next day but it was worth it.

I sat on top of a jeep for a safari, feeling slightly foolish but mostly delighted, as the jeep went through the roads in the town and school children giggled at me. I imagined I was on a Persian magic carpet and it felt great.

The daughter had a whale of a time. She figured out that we’d stop the car if she said she wanted to do potty (yes, we traveled with her little plastic potty). So whenever she got bugged of being confined in the car, she’d say she had to do potty. And then, she’d sit on her potty on the side of the road happily watching the cars zoom by. This is probably the only time in her life she can do this, so I was fine with it.

Regular people thought we were nuts, of course.

I had a surreal experience. In Malvan, I had a conversation with a woman in Hindi. And I didn’t even realize I was speaking in Hindi. I’m pretty sure my Hindi was atrocious but still, this is a big deal for someone so Hindi-challenged as I am. After I was done and realized what had just happened, I felt very elated.

I didn’t use my laptop for five whole days. My phone didn’t have signal for most part of the trip. Only one of the hotels we stayed in had TV. In all, it was good for my brain.

Of course, by the end of the trip, I’d had enough of natural beauty and just wanted my lumpy bed back. I’m not such a yooohooo-youth any more. But I’m glad we took this break.

Now I’m back to the regular grind. Yesterday’s sambar and day before’s bottle-gourd. But an omelette can still save that meal. Tra la.

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