International Women's Day 2020: When things change, do they really remain the same?

International Women's Day 2020: When things change, do they really remain the same?

PRIYA PATHIYAN looks around popular culture and ponders whether the more things change, the more they remain the same

Priya PathiyanUpdated: Monday, March 09, 2020, 01:02 PM IST
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ManishMansinh

The Mahatma said affectionately, “I learnt the concept of Satyagraha from you, my feisty better half.” The spotlight may have been on actor Arif Zakaria saying these words as MK Gandhi, but everyone’s eyes were trained on Zeenat Aman, who was making her stage comeback after a decade and a half with her portrayal of Kasturba.

It was the debut performance of their play Dearest Bapu, Love Kasturba, which is headlining The Great Indian Theatre Festival, an ambitious project produced by BookMyShow, which showcases more than 50 plays starring over 50 fab actors in 150 shows across 25 Indian cities.

That night, it was a full house in the plush Tata Theatre at the National Centre of Performing Arts in Mumbai for this much-awaited play, written and directed by Saif Hayder Hasan.

With just two actors sitting almost motionless on two sides of the stage and clips from the lives of the characters they essayed, the play threw light on some personal insights that brought alive their personalities, quite disparate from the public persona.

So, though the production was rather gimmicky and Zeenat’s clipped and confident English didn’t quite convey the komal Kasturba we all expected, I found myself reading between the lines to imagine what their real selves would have actually thought of each other.

While the world saw Gandhi, the visionary and leader, perhaps his wife had a very different perspective. There’s been a lot of speculation about his complex relationship with sex and the various experiments with celibacy, penance and indulgence.

A few lines from one of Kasturba’s letters in this play touched upon this aspect, but just skimmed the surface. Would the real-life wife have had more to say about it? I wonder. You see her in pictures, his partner for several decades, meek and motherly. She’s the epitome of what many in India call the ideal wife, the perfect woman.

The sort who stands by him through thick and thin. The type who is uncomplaining even when her husband’s life uproots them and takes them across continents; who is accepting when the man she married at 13 and had four children with turns celibate with her at 38; who wears the rough and heavy khadi clothing his ideology prescribes even though she finds it difficult to do any household work in it; who doesn’t even rebel when he denies her ‘Western medicine’ when she’s ill.

At one point in the play, Zeenat’s Kasturba admits, “I did not know how to deal with you. Your ever-growing idealism clashed with my conservative upbringing.”

So, though he was lauded as a great soul in public life, no one held him accountable for his personal excesses. And this is often the case with many men even today.

Peel away the public face of couples that may seem modern, happy, equally invested in their family, and you might just encounter the same obsolete attitudes — a subservient wife, a husband who steamrolls over her dreams and desires, a family that expects much too much of her and much too little of him.

You see everyone, from mothers-in-law to maids, children to salespeople, deferring to the man of the house, the breadwinner, the power source, the decision maker, even when the cog wheels of the family system are actually greased and kept in motion by the woman, who often operates from behind the scenes, allowing her husband to be the star.

This imbalance of power leads to building resentment, like we saw manifesting in the recent film called Thappad, starring Taapsee Pannu.

Where, after years of managing the household and nurturing the husband, a supportive wife’s world comes crashing down in one moment. His focus on himself and unconscious contempt of her literally come as a slap in the face in front of all their friends and family.

Making the burden of all the little injustices that stemmed from his entitled behaviour too much for her to bear. We may not all need a slap to feel the slowly mounting fury against a dad, a brother, a husband, a colleague, a boss, even a friend… who continues to overstep the line and ‘manspread’ in more ways than one.

Twenty-three years ago, my very first published article appeared on the Women’s page of this newspaper. Titled ‘Men: The Weaker Sex’, it was supposed to be a humorous piece that attempted to shine a spotlight on lopsided gender equations.

A male colleague at the time took it quite seriously, got into a major debate with me and labelled me ‘feminist’. Today, when the woman in me takes stock of the world, she wonders what has changed after two decades. Yes, there’s now a Women’s Day.

Celebrated by acknowledging female achievers and recommending special indulgences like spa time and Sunday brunches to all of us. But, does true equality of the sexes come from sops or ‘days off’ from being taken for granted? I’ll take appreciation and autonomy, a vote and a voice for us every day, any day.

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