CLICK LIT

Kitne Ajeeb…

Anshul Chaturvedi, 13 April 2009, 07:00 PM IST

I confess I write this in a slightly cynical frame of mind. But again, that is generally the norm, so it wouldn’t have been very different if I’d done so at a later point of time.

But I am more cynical than I usually am, over the past few weeks, with the way in which we seem to be unable to resist the appeal of harping on ‘Indian culture’ and ‘Our values’ and ‘Indian family values’ and such stuff. As if just using such catchphrases amounts to some sort of sanctification of a lot of things which, more often than not, aren’t so holy. We need to seriously wake up and smell the coffee. Or whatever.

Between the fairly overhyped (extreme right wing?) Ram Sene beating its chest in anguish at the Pub culture to (socialist?) Mulayam Singh deciding to combat the national menace of mall culture, we have a wide variety of people who are concerned about preserving Indian culture, in fairly bizarre ways. I don’t think they have any clue what they are talking about. Equally, I’d like to make it clear that I do not find much sense in the line of argument that responds to any such cultural conservation exercise with an exaggerated “don’t they knooooow this is the land of Khajurao and the Kama Sutra, deeaaaar, how can they even saaaaay such a thing?” For me, Khajurao isn’t the defining point of my Indian-ness, frankly. But neither do I think that those who go ballistic over someone walking into a pub or wearing ‘provocative’ clothing or having a coffee in a mall are contributing a pennyworth to our culture’s preservation. Assuming, of course, that there is any logic to the theory of ‘preserving’ cultures as if they were pickles, and that exposure to the elements, unless they are kept in tightly sealed containers, would cause them to spoil.

And where is the illusion of the “great Indian culture” in everything that isn’t happening in a pub or a mall or a public park coming from anyway? We need to look inside the “traditional” part of our society first. Going by what Madhur showed us in Page 3, we’d tend to assume that the page 3 world is the place where ajeeb rishte abound. Well, yes and no. There’s no pretence of great sentimental association there, nor an artificial quest for ‘respectability’. It’s a give and take, after all, a fairly uncomplicated one at that – and that too for the ones who are part of it for reasons beyond just letting their hair down.

From what news reports have recently showed, you would think the actual rishtey in our society are increasingly the ajeeb ones – stories of daughters being repeatedly sexually abused by fathers are popping up from all across the country after the Mumbai tantric’s episode hit the headlines last month. Story after story began to come into print – in the last case that I read, a 40-year-old father raped his 4-year-old daughter. Now, that isn’t so bad, is it? After all, there’s no perverse western influence at work here, is there? And the tantric’s proclivities cannot be a western influence either – he, any case, would be appropriately ‘marked’ with the trappings of religion and social sanctity. These fathers may not be pubbing or malling or not damaging our social fabric in any way that our political class is concerned at. They would come across as nice, respectable family men – they are ‘family’ men in more ways than they should be, sickeningly so, but till the day the case hits the headlines, the simple fact of their being ‘family’ guys makes them so respectable, doesn’t it? As opposed to, say – Hai Ram – a live in couple? Tsk, tsk!

Over the past few days my mind has increasingly been drawn to the hypocrisy in the whole concept of the ‘traditional’ Indian family values. What tradition?? And Indian society’s obsession with family has a thousand internal contradictions. The Mahabharata’s fundamental premise is about brothers killing brothers, about putting what is truly right above what the tag of a relationship is. On the other hand, Draupadi is “shared” between almost half a dozen brothers and it is her brother in law who attempts to strip her in public – after her husband(s) gamble her away, no less! Karna, a character who had more – well, I’ll just say guts – than most characters in the epic, is “illegitimate”, so he needs to be generally disowned for the family’s good name, and can only tell his mother that she would have five sons standing at the end of the day, anyways. He is the outcast. What role the “legitimate” Nakul and Sahdeva had in the whole tale still mystifies me, but they were allowed to hang around everywhere since they were above board, I guess. What genuine family bonding! On the other hand, when Yudhisthira commenced his final walk in the Himalayas, at the end of which he was offered the option to ascend to heaven in his earthly body itself (at least this is what I remember of the tale), all his brothers and his wife fell along the way, and each time he stated a flaw in their character to account for it. It was just a mongrel that walked with him all the way. Yudhisthira apparently declined to go to heaven leaving the dog behind. A stalemate occurred. Anyways, it turned out that it was only a test from the gods’ side, and all ended well. But the irony of the dog and he being the only two standing together at the end is not lost, on me at least.

The Ramayana is not very family-friendly either, is it? The entire backdrop for the exile came from within the extended ruling family of Ayodhya. And while Bharat (and Shatrughan, who, like Nakul and Sahdev, seems to be talked about primarily for being related to those who mattered) thought that he should worship his brother’s footwear, Ram himself was not particularly fastidious when it came to equations between other pairs of brothers – Bali had to be killed by Ram for Sugriva to get his crown, and when it came to Lanka, the popular saying Ghar ka bhedi Lanka dhaaye serves to give Vibhishana a permanent recall value, even if by means of a quite a left handed compliment. At the end of it all, what was the entire Lanka episode about, if a washerman’s perspective – not his own – was enough for Ram, the King, to ask Sita to now bring certifiable qualities? All it proves is that our obsessiveness with people thinking socially well of us, no matter what we may individually stand for, goes back a long, long way.

I think we handle our ‘social’ values somewhat in the same way we handle the power hierarchy. In visual terms, I sometimes find the red beacon on the vehicle and the red bindi on the forehead to be statements in a fairly similar tone – symbolising (a) respectability and legitimacy and (b) ‘keep off’ status! Or is it closer to the red dot on gchat – so-and-so is socially busy, you may be disturbing…?! We are, after all, obsessed with ‘status’ messages, socially and personally, and the ‘tag’ of a legitimate relationship is so socially aspirational, the way the safe government job is in the cow belt interior – even more so in recession time! Kitne Ajeeb…