The Yelling Universe

I am firmly of the belief that it is always our 'estranged faces that miss the many splendoured thing.’ The Universe is perpetually and incredibly busy spinning in and out of black holes and untiringly trying to talk to us and show us things. It is obviously as persistent as we are dimwitted.

But in all our lives there comes a time (quite a few if you are a willing and quick learner) when the Universe loses its patience, holds you by the scruff of your neck and makes you see. Or yells out its message at the decibels of a jagrata loudspeaker in South Delhi. And once you do manage to hear and see, you can never be the same person as you were before.

Of course this very excellent theory is based on my personal experience. And though robust research would not count self admission of changed attitudes and perspectives robust enough  I shall tell you anyway – that’s why I am writing this blog.

Some time ago, the immensely popular Bollywood film – Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham was showing on TV for the ‘n’th time. And being the ardent film buff that I am I was watching it with my daughters for the ‘n’th time.  I shall tell you only as much of the films story as is necessary for this blog.

A rich boy meets a less rich girl. Both are attracted to each other and also equally aware that when it comes to marriage (most Bollywoood films head in that direction) the girls family will not be considered equal to the boys family. Moreover, the boy’s father is grumpy, arrogant, cold and distant and the boy naturally hesitates to tell his father who he wishes to marry.

The girl’s father on the other hand, is a widower, an amiable and virtuous man, a good and loving father and provides his two daughters with a spontaneous and boisterous upbringing. He owns a picturesque and profitable sweet shop in Chandni Chowk– an ancestral family tradition of this Dilliwala family-and completes the stereotype of the vibrant and vivacious Punjabi household.

To cut a long story short, the untimely and sudden death of the girl’s father pushes the boy to take a decision and he informs his father of the girl he wishes to marry. As expected, after the standard melodrama and histrionics, the boy is disowned by his rich and bad tempered father. But the boy stands by his true love and leaves home to marry the girl he loves. Years later, we are told he takes the girl and her sister to far away England, sets up his own business and provides very well for his wife and her sister.

Now every time I had watched this film earlier, I would go misty eyed at this part. The course of True Love would always bring tears to my eyes – how brave the boy – all alone yet so honourable in love. How dignified the girl in her sorrow. How heartless the world. But this time the Universe was ready for me. At this point of the film, it caught me the scruff of my neck and screamed. And instead of going misty eyed, I thought – but – what happened to the sweet shop in Chandni Chowk?

This thought sauntered in and took up residence in my head. The tears disappeared rapidly. Hitherto unknown thoughts made their presence felt. And now, instead of the linear direction of True Love, numerous multi dimensional and parallel versions of possibilities was what I began to see. Let me describe a few:

Version 1:

Grief struck at her father’s death, the girl realizes she has been foolish in neglecting to learn about the business. She sells her chiffon sarees and pearls on OLX, raises enough money for an MBA course, puts the faithful retainer in charge of the sweet shop for 2 years and decamps to Singapore, younger sister in tow, to obtain the MBA degree.

5 years later, she wins a prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award and her sweet shop gets added to the list of Places to Visit in Delhi on The Lonely Planet.

Much richer now, she marries the faithful boy and joins his business as an equal partner.

Version 2:

  The two sisters are heartbroken with their loss. They go to the reading of their father’s will with a heavy heart but sit stunned as the few lines are read out; “ I have done my duties as a father. Now you need a mother. Since you have none, go to the Eternal Mother – at any of her pilgrimages – She will show you the way.”

The obedient girls did what Babuji told them to do. Makemytrip gave them an excellent deal for Kolkata so off they went.  After visiting Kalighat, they wandered around the city and it seemed to them that every second shop was a sweet shop. And what a collection of sweets! A hundred ideas sprung up in their minds in that fertile soil of many generations of ‘halwai’ genes.

One day, as the elder bit into a Baborshah, she asked the younger – “Are you thinking what I am thinking?”

The younger, giving due respect to the succulent malpua she was eating, nodded vigorously.

Seven years later, the sisters’ new food tourism project won them the Business Innovation of the Year Award. The girls were 7 times richer than what they started out with.  They also had amongst the two of them seven new admirers and the older was in the process of choosing between the new and the old.

Version 3:

Intrigued by her son’s commitment to his unusual choice of a girl friend, the boy’s mother decides to meet the girl herself. As soon as she enters the colourful, warm, welcoming home behind the sweet shop, she is acutely aware of the absence of women in her own home and life. As the two girls fuss about her, she slips into a dream, thinking how easy life would be if there were more women with her.

Quietly, surreptitiously, a clever little voice that was waiting exactly for this moment, whispers inside her head, “There could be, you know – all you need to do is work!”

Seven years later, the two girls and the boy’s mother own a hugely successful sweets catering business. It wins the Business Diversity Award as it employs only women. Its transport department has only women – women drivers and delivery girls. The milk men are milk women.  They bank with an all female bank branch. All the chef and cooks are women. Women customers get wonderful rebates.  At the award ceremony, this unlikely trio holds aloft the trophy and exclaims – “Celebrate Women! We do!”

The father and son, sitting in the audience, one still grumpy and the other ecstatic, clap their hands.

Version 4:

Wandering around in what feels to her like an empty house, the girl realizes the enormity of her misplaced priorities. Instead of singing in lonely places, she should have been helping her father. Instead of dancing at the victory of the Indian cricket team, she should have been building her business. She decides to take charge and organizes a memorial service for her father. After the memorial service, she has a dream. In her dream the white clothes of the people, the strings of green leaves and marigold flowers (her father’s favourites) merge into the Indian flag. She realizes that her faith in the Indian Cricket team was misplaced patriotism.

She changes her wardrobe to designer khadi, revamps her shop to sell traditional Indian sweets, made the traditional way. Seven years later, the shop has seven franchises in seven different cities. In seven seven star hotels they conduct traditional Indian sweet making courses. The two sisters are featured on the cover of Time magazine, “The Sisters Sweet” And the lover boy, being allergic to khadi, designer or otherwise, has had to exit this version.

You see, after the Universe has done yelling, you don’t quite hear the same. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol will no longer be the same for me. But I don’t mind, because in their place spring up a thousand ladies and gentlemen all doing the many splendoured thing.....

Domesticity. And radical social change.

A long time ago, a friend of mine and I sat talking about our future. At that time life was just opening up in a million exciting ways and exploding in all directions – both good and bad. We sat on a little wooden bench in a tiny shed in the remote and stunningly beautiful hillsides of the Chhotanagpur plateau wondering what the future held for us. Twenty years down the line who would we be? Where would we be? We felt it may be an easier task to have a hold on what we would not do, rather than what we would. And my friend and I then set ourselves 3 indicators, which we swore to avoid.  These indicators, true to our then somewhat romantic and intellectual pretensions, took the detailed shape of these 3 visions:

1.    We were standing in a poorly lit kitchen, hair coming loose from a hastily tied bun, wearing a synthetic saree with a blouse that was not matching, cooking over a blackened ‘kadhai’. We looked fatigued and virtuous.

2.    We were running after our infant children, with morsels of food in our hands, pleading and cajoling them to eat a little – just a little, ma. We looked dumpy and virtuous.

3.    We were meeting after 10 years and our conversation was limited to nappies and recipes. We looked vacuous and virtuous.

We made a pact right then, and promised to avoid doing all the above three and use these as our indicators of failure in the years to come. Our joint horror of domesticity, the influence of Bollywood and our own rather non conventional mothers are visible in the details and nature of these three indicators.

Did we succeed? I would say yes. Has it been easy? No. The pressure to conform is immense.

In the twenty years that have elapsed  since that day, my friend and I stayed faithful to our pact. We have stuck to avoiding our indicators, sometimes slipping close to one, sometimes making herculean efforts to avoid another and often, standing aloof and apart and watching with disbelief as other eminently sensible friends and family ticked off one indicator after the other. “Why can’t you be like everyone else?” has been a comment we have heard often. “Why can’t others be like us?” my friend and I have wailed.

And in these twenty years, these carefully detailed indicators (our apologies to all readers who wear synthetic sarees) have turned out to be one of the most potent influences in my life. Every time convention and custom called one of these indicators would rear its head. For example, as I prepared for a parent teacher meeting, chose a plain saree and tied my hair in a severe bun to look the role of a sincere and hardworking parent, one of these visions would rise up in all its melodramatic flamboyance,  and  I would hastily back track. Mostly I have arrived at parent teacher meetings looking, well, let’s say, different from everyone else in the room.

Just in case the reader is beginning to imagine us as anarchists or feminists or activists or all of them together and pictures of austere, angst ridden, dowdily dressed, statistics quoting middle aged women are beginning to take shape in your head, let me assure you that only the middle aged, feminist and activist bits are true. Both my friend and I are proud home makers and contented parents to 2 children. Our homes are full of things we love – books, music, children, friends, family, dogs, gardens, paintings, maps, food and more books. We have travelled the world. Like most others, we have had our share of good times and the bad. If you meet us now, you will see two contented, eccentric, determined women, with a clear and usually singular opinion on most things in life and not shy of voicing them, ready for a good laugh and a good trip, a good book and a good cup of tea. We are mostly tranquil, sometimes grumpy and yes, a few times also sad. We have our kitchens (excellent ones, mind you) but have not been limited to them. We have our children (lovely ones, you’ll see) but have not been limited by them. We have our conversations (soul satisfying, as always) but they are never virtuous. By our standards, we succeeded.

And since this is a blog about my own experiences, I cannot end by only telling you that we succeeded. I must tell you how I succeeded.  Here then, are my tried and tested strategies of response when conformism and virtuosity are leaning heavily on your door. Mostly such bulwarks of social stability exist in the form of the general population who spend an immense amount of resources trying to get you to follow the herd. When they do,

1.    Learn to smile. But smile knowingly and enigmatically. Most people find women who smile knowingly a little scary, if not creepy. Do note the difference between smiling ‘nicely’ and smiling ‘knowingly.’ The latter has an element of superiority. Smile especially in times of anger. Hide your anger, but show your smile. When I have responded with anger, the argument has turned righteous and virtuous, and I have been left isolated, furious and worst – I have lost the argument. But when I have remained silent and smiled slowly and knowingly, I have always won the argument. Additional benefit of this strategy: Enjoy the confusion one creates by choosing not to respond exactly at the time when people are gathering around to watch you explode. 

2.    Pick a non committal word or phrase that allows you to respond, but not give anything away. Like “Really?” or “Is that so?” or “Indeed.” My mother tongue, Bengali has an outstanding phrase in this category –“Tai, na?” Apologies to my non Bengali speaking readers – it is almost impossible to translate. The primary objective here is to refrain from committing to anything you will regret later and/or participate in a pointless argument. The combination of this phrase with Point # 1 or with a raised eyebrow can give you 95% success.

3.    Have role models of who you do not want to become. That works better than having role models of whom you do want to become. If social pressure becomes too much and you start thinking of replacing your one dish party menu with a 4 course sit down meal, instead of sensibly completing the chapter of the book you were reading, train yourself to respond to this situation by remembering Auntie M.

4.    Have the correct friends. This one is the most important.

Since you will definitely benefit from this short hand book on initiating radical social change, do return the favour and share your strategies too.