Twinn Swan

For the past ten days, I’ve been watching small snippets of Bollywood movies. Since 2010, I’ve noticed a trend towards over sexualisation. What was considered ultra scandalous in the 70s is normal now. Not only is it normal, it is the baseline with which Bollywood is currently functioning. I won’t admit to enjoying Bollywood for it has never quite been my cup of tea.

Before this era of over sexualisation, there existed an era of conservatism. Before we criticise or even glamorise this era of ‘modernity’ and ‘freedom’, we must ask ourselves, was the era of conservatism that came before it a glamorous one?

I have been watching the Indian television series Stories by Rabindranath Tagore on Netflix. It is more arthouse than commercial, more thoughtful than sleazy. Tagore was and still remains one of the literary giants of India. When it comes to the series I am slowly making my way through, nowhere is his commentary and critique more stark than the very real role that the daughter-in-law has. It is she that ‘changes’ families and has to adjust to a new life, usually under a tyrannical mother-in-law or an elder sister-in-law that is foul-mouthed and abusive.

Watching these movies, one gets the sense that the hierarchy was too strong and too entrenched for egalitarianism to even be considered a possibility. Like an actor in one of these shows, you were assigned a role in real life and you just had to play it.

The son figure, especially if he is of the ‘modern’ variety, shows compassion towards his wife’s plight and predicament. But then there are other sons, who are as or even more tyrannical than their mothers. The advice that is given to the bride that is being sent away is always the same, “That is your family now. We are no longer your family.”

These are stories, yes, but they critique the oppression that festers in a joint household with many generations all living under one roof. The matriarch of any household is usually a mean women. In some stories, she softens with time. In other stories, she remains bitter till the very end.

Most of these stories are set around the late 1800s. There are details that I notice in the stories that would be much unthinkable to a woman growing up in the ‘modern’ world. The wife touching the feet of her husband and seeking his blessings The husband’s role, regardless of how cruel or clueless he is, is enshrined as a sort of divine figure in the household. The disputes that arise between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are the stuff that many a soap operas are based on.

It is also ‘a given’ in most of these stories that the wife will give up any and all dreams that she had before she married. If she pursues them, it will be in secret. The daughter-in-law’s focus will shift to taking care of her husband and his family. In many ways, she–and her self-identity before marriage–will cease to be. The stereotype is that her life before marriage was simpler and far more blissful than her life after marriage. It seems to be how these stories are structured and crafted.

Should I be shocked and appalled by these stories? In some ways I am, in other ways I am not.

I see, in these stories, an echo of the lives of my foremothers. How relevant are they to the life that I am currently leading? I must say, I feel sadness when I see these stories. I feel sadness for I see all the limitations that society put on what a woman can and cannot do based on its flawed morality. I also see that modernity is equally flawed. Over sexualisation cannot be a solution to gender oppression.

What does it mean to be a woman? We haven’t been able to answer this question despite all the progress and strides we’ve made. When I meet people from the older generations, it is business as usual. The hierarchy gave their lives structure and stability, even if it was oppressive for everyone involved.

The only conclusion I’ve reached is that in an environment such as this, we can only ever be actors cast in a play pretending to play a role that we received through the power of providence.