Previously published on 20th October, 1983
The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about women and sports. She said, “I’m not in favour of women jumping, shaking, running, exhibiting their bodies in front of men.”
I was a bit surprised at her attitude. Yet, I wasn’t worked up. Personally, I am not interested in sports. I have this attitude towards sport: ‘If somebody wants to play, let her/him play. And leave me alone.’
Every morning we look at the world through a man’s eyes. We do so by scanning the newspapers which contain news that are gathered, reported, chopped, edited/blacked out, opinionated, and photographed mostly by men.
What’s wrong with a media manned by men? Nothing as such. It’s just that the picture it portrays is incomplete or slanted at times.
While walking down the busy street or waiting for a rickshaw and trying hard to ignore men’s crude stares, I am often overwhelmed with a sad reflection: things haven’t changed.
I then correct myself: men haven’t changed. These are the same odd glances I braved as a teenager. Commuting to college and back home in public transport had been an ordeal and going to Bohri Bazaar dreadful.
How would it feel if your younger sister got married first. Quite an embarrassing question to ask and, for many, equally difficult to answer.
Before I venture to ‘dissect’ this ‘sensitive’ social query, let me make myself clear on one issue: I am absolutely in favor of marrying off younger daughters if elder ones are not getting any proposals. Needless to say, it’s quite a norm these days, i.e., marriage of younger daughters while the elder ones remain single.
As I sat in the stuffy hall, watching pretty faces and splashy colors of a predominantly female crowd, waiting for Act II to start, I heard a plump, bespectacled young woman exclaim during the intermission, “What cheap stuff! Such crude characters! And see how the people are enjoying it! Ach…”
I glanced at the high-brow, jet-set lady, her enormous bust and tawny neck. ‘Of course she doesn’t need a dupatta.’ With no ill-feeling towards her dupatta-less Raphaelesque presence, I smiled as I remembered one of Ismat Chughtai’s defiant characters – a young girl when told to wear a dupatta, kicked her feet in anger, grimaced and blurted something to the effect (when her Amma couldn’t hear her): “I don’t need a dupatta. Only flat-chested girls need to wrap themselves up carefully in thick dupattas.”
As a woman you have to brave many a storm. And the list of minor emotional crises is long. But those keep fading from your mind as you grow stronger.
There is one thing can never forget. Your first menstruation. How can you? The shock, the horror, the trauma. The degree of intensity many differ for each of us. But intense it is – certainly!
Social fantasia beamed on PTV make me squirm many a times. Soapy stories of the worst kind, they usually revolve around women who are either weak or wild – damaging stereotypes that subtly strengthen wrongful images of women.
PTV’s popular stereotypes: rural woman. Meak, submissive, pitiable creature, with no control whatsoever over her destiny. If wealthy, she is vile and creates trouble for others. Lower-class urban illiterate woman. Pushes her husband into corruption. Else indulges in petty jealousies and social gossiping. Educated middle-class woman has nothing to do except NOT to get any suitors and be a burden to ageing parents. If married and working, plays havoc with her married life. Upper-class women: frivolous, immoral, pretentious.
Sometimes it seems to me as a people we score poorly in problem-solving behavior. That is, we often exhibit a lack of initiative and mental synthesis to attain a goal when faced with a situation of some complexity.
We have a tendency either to ignore the problem altogether or shove it under the carpet. By no means do such tactics shield us from the effects of something gone wrong. A problem, in fact, if not solved creates a myriad of other problems.
She got married when she was 20. If only she would have said “No, I don’t want to get married right now. I would rather study.” But she didn’t say it. She could have had her way. She had that will to fight.
But I guess the idea of getting married appealed to her. It was exciting and romantic. Besides, her mother was too anxious to marry her off as her father was old and about to die. And she wanted to be done with that cumbersome task in his lifetime.
Zeenat Hisam 