Dear Reader
On any given topic, there are any number of discussions about its pros and cons. But, when it is about marriage and women!! Well! you may remember as many ridiculous, hopeless, humourous, insightful, dark, humiliating jokes as you want. It occurs to me, even as I sit typing this right now, how interesting it is to talk about a commonly--I mean 'globally'-- accepted institution that is redundant but since we can't think of a better method, we continue to engage with it only to feel exasperated!! I am talking about 'marriage' of course!!
Just yesterday I watched the movie 'Lapata Ladies'. The questions that tickled me while I watched in admiration were 'What would happen to the family if and when the much-questioned woman of the home vanishes and more importantly, what happens to the woman? And, this is 21st Century and are we still to wonder about the gender equations in a marriage?!'
There is a popular anecdote about this: One evening, the husband comes home only to be surprised by the open gate and muddy verandah. Wondering why this is so, he is shocked to see the door of his home open wide and the living room unkempt and dirty. he is now worried and calls out his wife to no avail. He peeps into the kitchen hoping that she must be creating a new dish for the family or else, how to explain the messy home? Not seeing her there, shouting her name, fearing the worst, runs to the rooms upstairs--the children's room is tousled, to say the least. Worried and hopeless, rushes to their room only to see the wife happily reading a book with a mug of coffee on the table next to her!! Angered, he asks 'Why did you not answer me? Why is the home in such disarray?" So, the wife calmly replies 'Every day you ask me what I do anyway at home. So, today I decided not to do anything and take care of myself!' Well, at least this is what happens to women when they go missing from home!! Reality check about attitudes to home and home-makers.
It's not that the absence of men does not affect families. No! It's not that!! Children, especially, after a certain age, don't see their parents as father or mother. It's 'parents' for them- not a divisible or divided individual. It's not about good old patriarchy or the case of a felonious man deceiving the gullible woman (remember Charles Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux?). Most cinemas that centre women are more about the 'coming of age of the woman and her selfhood' from different perspectives be it Thappad, Ghar Ki Murgi or The Great Indian Kitchen. The literary lineage-- Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and Tagore's novel The Wreck explore different perspectives of human relationships in a marital relationship.
'Lapata ladies' manages to balance the thought and the feeling--the head and the heart in their respective places--focusing on the right questions of education and financial independence of women rather than decrying against the old foolish patriarch shouting 'jaagte raho'!!
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Well written Rekha
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