Honour And Being Honourable
Artie lives in a house that will be called
upper middle class or better by any standards. Well to do, two children, one of
each sort, both well educated and so on. Dream life - and in a wealthy country, too.
Friends that speak their own language - not so easy to find and keep up with,
but this is an old batch when the Asian involvements of U.S. necessitated
bringing experts over from everywhere, and these people are from a region of
intellectual concentration. Arte should and mostly is pleased with life, except
there is no one to give to, the children are grown up and the local culture
leaves gaps - if now there is a daughter-in-law that would be a subjugate I am
unaware of it, but then there was no such immediate prospect, and besides the
NRI children in U.S. want a local and not an imported wife as the first
generations do - for them an NRI girl is a compromise.
Artie is very proud of her
children - but there are differences in the ways of pride she holds for either.
The daughter, apart from being educated and doing fine, "never kissed
anyone in college" - how does she know? Well, the culture Artie stems from would keep an
eye on one's own, and a girl who does such things is immediately reported on,
talked about around discarded as far as consideration for orthodox goes. Or at
least there was a spy in this case that reported he saw everything that was
going on, and this girl was untouched according to his report. So Artie is
proud she has brought her up well.
The son, of course, is another
story. "I don't have any illusions about his personal life" Artie
sort of glosses over what she means when she is extremely angry about having
watched an intelligent film about problems of migrant labour and their
travails, and while there was no explicit scene as one would take normally in a
non Indian film, what was clearly given to understand - that the wives left
behind have problems too and are not always able to wait pristine - is what has
made her uncomfortable, since it so happened her son watched it too, and she
found watching an adult albeit clean film embarrassing to watch with him.
"I am not under the illusion he is a virgin, but -" she is angry
about having been so very embarrassed inadvertently.
She talks about how many beautiful, some even
famous, girls back home are available for asking to be brought over to marry
him; about the daughter she is picky too, but she marries locally, and that is
cause for pride as well, the daughter has chosen well on every possible count.
How would she accept a local girl for a daughter in law, I wonder.
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Rg was a little more honest about her
willingness for integration. Her husband was brought up monolingual and so has
switched over to the local language - and she has given her two sons names that
will get absorbed with no trouble locally. She confides that she would not mind
if they shorten their names to local convenience, and I understand it was the
intention all along. Hence the fashion for certain names.
She confides that certain worries exist where
children absorbing local culture goes. These people are midstream absorbed
already, it is not a question of food adjustment or even other normal fads. It
is only about concerns every parent should have - drugs and so forth. But, she
says, she would be understanding if they date, and are late coming home. I ask
her if she would feel the same way about a daughter. She is not sure.
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This wave for those new names suddenly
sweeping across the NRI and therefore the Indian films as well - it matters
less to them if the names are not always considered auspicious and that was the
reason for them not being traditionally common.
Raahul for instance - it was the name of the
infant son left behind by the troubled Siddhaartha who went away on his path to
find answers and returned only as Gautama Buddha, which is: Most Enlightened
(Gautama) and One Who Has Comprehended (Buddha); Raahul, however, had no father
except in name, due to the father having gone his way and not returned to his
duties to the family - which were not, have never been, considered incompatible
with his aspirations for spiritual growth and achievements, and there were
other instances of men who did do it all; Janaka was one, much known and
respected too. So Raahul was left an orphan in effect even though not poor and
not without people to care for him. And therefore naturally, historically,
traditionally Raahul has been avoided as a name for a son. It is not considered
a happy name.
But when one looks for a name that sounds
similar to the dominant culture such names become common and some new names get
coined to sound similar. Such similar sounding names have been around for a
while - a century, nearly. It is only when one thinks about what they mean and
why they were given those names that anomalies are clear.
And it is not only NRI but indigenous
population as well when their ambition is to be as westernised as possible even
though living in India - the local westerners might never get used to the rules
one has to live by when actually there (no servants, do all work oneself,
everyone is equal at least theoretically, children meet peers with no parental
supervision in teen years, no noisy parties at home, driving with rules --
those who live there face all this; here they drive anyhow, imitate bar culture
but hold noisy parties at home, ...). These give names that are out and out
meaningless often, except in copying one outright. So NRI population is really
holding onto a ship's rail in midst of ocean, comparatively.
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Sometimes one is merely conveyed a message
about an event, without a comment; one has to either tow a fine line in
gathering how it was felt or thought about or one has to know the people
intimately to know or even to ask. What one gets from news sources can be seen
summed up sometimes in films - but that is not very often when the culture
involved is not confident about its own ethos enough to show the realities as
they are, and the films show a cleansed, what-should-be version of what is;
which is not always with negative motives either - what people see on screen,
whether TV or film, is often taken the other way, as ideal to be followed, or
common practice and hence of merit, or at least subconsciously influencing - we
have all known reports of criminals following a clever idea from a film,
haven't we, in news reports? Showing a cruel reality should not get to spawn
more of the same, so it is not always bad to embroider it, to show wrongdoers
punished, at the very least.
There haven't been too many films about NRI
girls - and in the context it is true of those from the subcontinent - in UK
and their travails of growing in a society their parents brought them up in
with the added proviso - go to school here but dress like one is expected to
back home, work here and be a credit to your community and family but don't mix
beyond the hours we prescribe as allowable for you, be smart as the ambient
society (haircut, make-up) but marry only within the pattern allowed, not like
the ambient society and certainly not into the ambient society.
Perhaps the various extended NRI communities
have behaved differently in U.S., or the stink would have been all over long
ago. In other countries - U.K. and Canada for instance - it has been as
shameful a history even recently as can be. There have been a few reports on
TV, and perhaps a film or two, the latter glossing over the horrendous nature
of crimes committed within the community. The films are extraordinarily
popular, one has gone on to make a record run of ten years - and however
artificial that record, however propped up the run, it still is true that the
film is popular enough. That has more to do with reality that is glossed over,
and the silent tears materfamilias crowds lets flow in the dark over the story
of their daughters (another recent one has more merit in various ways, and was
tremendously successful too, but lacks the touch of gruesome that catapulted
the first one from mediocre to phenomenal in terms of success).
Why this huge lid on daughters? Why is it ok
for sons to fool around, and forgivable to bring home a "foreigner" wife (which really is a local bride, when one lives away from home and the new bride is from somewhere around the corner), but not ok for a daughter to have even friends, and murders let loose if
they have a marriage of their own choice?
It is not always neither everywhere so in
India, nor has it been prescribed in ancient times much less practiced. Ancient
Indian prescription is for grown up girls - young women - to choose either with
the counsel of parents and elders or to go with their own hearts, and both are
equally valid routes of choice of a partner, with further mentioned eight
methods of weddings, including a secret one where only Gods are witnesses. The only
one way that is not recommended, merely mentioned, is when the woman is
kidnapped and the union is without her consent, and that is condemned but still
gives her the rights and privileges of marriage in full. That is, she is not
punished with a diminished status for crime of abduction and forcing her that
is committed by another or others.
She has less dignity today in the
circumstances where she is a daughter in a country considered foreign for the
purpose and the ambient society considered too free, too liberal, for the expat
community. The community perhaps is fighting the last bastion of what little
control they can retain over their lives, which is to force women into what the
men like and keep them under control, or else they might not feel like men.
Since when is it the definition of manhood to
control women?
Perhaps that has been taken as without
definition by most societies - because they have not thought about it.
In ancient Indian tradition,
though, it is power and control more than anything over oneself that is the
definition of manhood. If you are provoked by a word, a dress, beyond control
without your mind's consent, with your inner being protesting, you hate
yourself and transfer the hatred to the woman and attack her - that is the
common scenario, source of much condemnation of women all over the world
whether Europe or west Asia, in religious and common terms. India, however,
prescribed that you as a man retain control of your mind and your actions no
matter what, and if you have intentions to not keep away - and the woman is not
wife of another - then you first obtain her consent, and then take
responsibility for life before going ahead, or else you are not man enough and
any actions of yours are those of a less-than-man, not much more than insect.
It is not to claim that today everyone is man
enough by those standards - but to remind that those are the standards, and
that is what it meant to be Aarya, amongst other many rules and ideals. Race and colour of skin had
nothing to do with it – that was a false association made by a culture incomprehensive
of the very concept inherent in the word from Sanskrt.
Yoga today is followed as fashion coming home
to roost having toured from AU to CA - but it is not just exercises and
relaxation, not a way to just pass time. Yoga literally means union, and what
is meant is union of your exterior self with your Inner Self, the Divine in
you; and control of your outer self is a first step towards the transformation
that is intended by the union of your soul with the Divine.
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When you seek to control a woman - wife,
daughter, sister, or stranger - ask yourself if you feel less than a man unless
you terrorise women, children, old and handicapped and weak, and if you are man
enough for you in your own consciousness why is it necessary to prove it by the
terror you wish to let loose and control others?
Why does it diminish you to treat them -
anybody - as equal humans, whether they are different on grounds of race or
gender or size or whatever?
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Perhaps if you saw and understood
the view the ones you terrorise have of you, you might reconsider your view
that terror and control established your manhood and gives you respect.
Often they view you as deluded
and use it for their own means, and it is so easy too - cater to you, make you
dependent psychologically, manipulate you and so forth; this is true of most
"dominated" cultures - whether women or servants or whatever. While
you, the masters, see them as less and those you pay for, they see you as
helpless as a baby and dependent, and ridiculous - but they would not let you
know for worlds, of course. They know they have it hard and yet can manage to
do without you if needs must - and too that you cannot manage without them.
Just think of how many men really
prefer being really single in the truest meaning of the word - that is,
celibate, in control, able to manage a clean household and cook, much less take
care of children. Plenty, in fact, exist, but do you know any? Most take the first woman who
will do - and pretty much the same is true of those masters that depend on
servants too. Widows and divorcees not only manage longer or even forever, they
even prefer it so, more often than are forced to.
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When we were young and being brought up away
from the home town, the colony we lived in had elopings occasionally, and the
results were mostly of a pattern. The girl's family disapproved, refused to see
her and acknowledge her, and was upset; then there was a child and they melted
straightaway and were fawning over the baby and celebrating the
now-firmly-established-together couple. Marriage is considered final in Hindu
tradition, and this is not to say marriage as per Hindu rules - but then any
marriage by any rules is valid by Hindu tradition and rules - and so the girl's
parents and relatives might be unhappy but if she is married she is married,
and a disapproval can only amount to refusing to carry on the existing
relationship with her in terms of meeting.
Other communities have other ways - some have
prescribed divorces in their tradition, and so use all sorts of ways to get the
girl physically in control to get her divorced by force and married to one of
their own choice; others wishing to emulate them in their notions of control
and "honour" but lacking the apparatus in their tradition to have
divorces resort to killing the girl in question, first and foremost, and often
the groom and more.
But why does your "honour" depend
quite so much on what someone else does? Doesn't that take away control of your
life away from you and into everyone else's power? Why give it? And moreover,
why is your "honour" disassociated from your own actions, however
ignoble?
Shouldn't it be a measure of true sense of
honour that you are unlikely to strike a weak and unarmed person, much less
woman or child? Shouldn't it be a matter of honour that your women and children
trust you, and love and respect, rather than be afraid and repelled? Shouldn't
it be a matter of honour that they know you would not stoop to ignoble acts or
even thoughts, and be concerned if their own selves measure up? Shouldn't it be
a matter of honour that your sons are brought up to be men, in the true sense -
not in the sense of male in human form?
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The second, more recent film on the topic has
seen much success, unforeseen but acknowledged. It is due not in a small
measure due to the character of the young man as it is sketched and as it
develops, (and the way it is portrayed so well too) and not because the boy
back home gets the girl after all - it is not that he gets her, it is that he
gets her the right way, having won her heart for the right reasons, without
violence or coercion or even a crass seduction.
It is not only the girl but the audience fall
for him completely, since he portrays the values and speaks out too in favour
of doing the right thing. The rest is decoration - which is not badly done but
could have been better in many parts in many ways. Still, it is the core that
was good, and audiences of India are no fools. They voted out despots without
delay and fools too, every chance. They vote with their pockets too, for good
value. Glamour fools but not often - and falsehood, not likely. This film had a
true hero, and a girl with a mind, too - of her own.
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