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ShareComing out of a lively and interesting seminar on feminism with students of HK College of Arts, someone read to me a fascinating extract from The Road Less Travelled, the life and works of the extraordinary Vinodinee Neelkanth.
In an article published in a Gujarati newspaper nearly 70 years ago, Vinodinee asked the same questions that I pose before many of my listeners and readers. Sushila received her husband's first letter when she visited her parents' home shortly after her marriage. In it, he addressed her as 'Akhanda Saubhagyavai Dear Sushila'.
This form of address got Sushila thinking. By adding Akhanda (forever) and Saubhagyavati (a woman of good fortune) to her name, her husband had really wished himself a long life. A Hindu wife is considered Saubhagyavati only as long as her husband is alive. If she dies before her husband, she remains Akhanda Saubhagyavati.
Sushila tried to find excuses for her husband, but a worm of doubt crept into her mind. "Wasn't I a Saubhagyavati when I was unmarried? Was I an unfortunate person? My father loved me so much, my mother doted on me, my three brothers thought the world of me. On top of that, I studied up to the BA and never failed any examination. I won prizes at school. I think I was definitely Saubhagyavati before I was married."
Vinodinee's Sushila then thinks of all the women she knows who have wretched husbands -- loafers, good-for-nothings, drunkards, wife beaters -- who just because they were alive made her a 'forever fortunate' woman. Were any of them fortunate for being beaten or brutalised every day?
My thoughts were similar when I sat through the testimonies of 25 people affected by dowry brutalities or deaths, at a three-day conference called Daughters of Fire, held in Bangalore. Mothers of murdered daughters, women who escaped death and many others told stories of torment born of greed.
The dead women died with their husbands still alive. Were they then Saubhagyavatis, or the poor abused women all around, beaten and bruised by loutish husbands every day, or those who have to put up with philandering men who expect their wives to put up with their mistresses? Was it not the men who were more Saubhagyavan for having long suffering wives? Why then do we not suffix their names with the word?
Coming back to dowries, is that not a sauda, a dhanda exchange between the girl's parents and that of the family taking that 'burden' off their hands? Why then do we not see it merely as paying off someone to take a girl off our hands -- not so different from the frowned upon steelworker who also does business, albeit, with a variety of purchasers. Both are transactions about money. In both cases, the women, politely and socially accepted in one case, piously frowned upon in the other, become the merchandise. But no, one is part of 'our traditions' while the other is not!
Gauri Vrat is another such male convenience. To get a good husband --like Siva. (To my readings of the Shastras, Siva wasn't such a great husband anyway). For all the thousands of women who perform this, in the sorry belief that a girl's only salvation is in getting a good husband, what a lot of disappointments are in store.
Just a cursory glance at friends, neighbours and people around show how many lousy marriages there are -- unhappy, if not downright abusive. And if getting a good spouse was so important and this was such a sure-shot method, surely men would have been doing this as well. But no, men can always beat wives into being 'good', can't they?
And to end with another question of Sushila's -- if a widow is Gangaswarup (pure like the Ganga), then why isn't a man? Or is his philandering taken as a part of being male?
