Schooled to be ideal wives

What a perfect start a dreary Monday morning – this post from Uma where she says there is hope for her yet. Ho to the wide open spaces of Bhopal.

I had blogged about this a long time ago – here it is for your Monday morning amusement – I cannot find the original link on the Hindu where this article first appeared (August 31, 2003) – but this piece appeared on rediff around the same time… But his ideas are now gaining popularity outside Madhya Pradesh. He recently held a 10-day camp for youngsters in Ahmedabad and Junagadh in Gujarat and will soon visit Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Uma, let us not rush to pack our bags for Bhopal – just hang on there, and carry on being the imperfect bahu and biwi – there ought to be a camp in Bombay soon…

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Puzzle : why do all the K women fall under one of these two groups :

devi (goddess; she is patience personified, willing to give her all for her family, i.e her husband’s extended family of brothers, their wives, assorted uncles and aunts and their near and dear ones and…. you get the picture)….or,

dusht (wicked; the bad woman, who simpers all the time and wears saris with sleeveless blouses, elaborate bindis and dreadful eye make-up – the more garish the eye, the more wicked)

What we used to know as the goodies and the baddies……

Have wondered for long and fruitlessly about this….. have finally cracked it….

The first category of women viz. the devis have attended the “training school” outside Bhopal, set up to school young girls of marriageable age (have a look at typical descriptors here on this matrimonial site – they embrace a large range from ‘body type’ to ‘diet’ to ‘family values’, ) to be ‘ideal wives’, and by extension daughters-in-law.

The Hindu today (August 31, 2003) carries an article on this “institution” under the heading Trends…. I shudder to think, is this The Shape of Things to Come ??

It is, the article says, an institution set up to train women to surrender to the powerful in the family – the husband and the in-laws.

Read what one of the institution’s pupils has to say …..is teaching us how to keep our minds and bodies pure, our tempers in check. Right, the surefire way to a successful marriage.

The head of this institution (who, surprise, surprise is a man) has authored books on this topic – Grahasth Mein Vyavaharik Jeevan (Practical Married Life) for one. For the uninitiated, this book scatters many pearls of wisdom, such as too much sex is the cause of diabetes and tuberculosis among men .

Diabetes ??? AIDS maybe? but Diabetes ? The author goes on to declare, men build societies and women build homes…..

Or break them…. If the dusht types are allowed a free run of the household…. These woman have obviously not attended this institution….. and therefore, manage to get their way within their married home, winning everyone’s hearts and trust along the way…..

The author/head has other plans too…. Training ‘boys’ in this area….. (yeah, right…. Try telling ‘boys’ that too much sex is the cause of diabetes and TB…. I can see you are going to be very popular…..)

Moral of the story : head for Bhopal this winter (summers are unbearably hot there…. Or is the ideal woman supposed to ‘adjust’ to everything??) if :

– you are the wannabe devi type, who is willing to grin (and occasionally cry and challenge the baddie) and bear it, and
– you have the patience to wait for your reward –viz. having the entiiiiiiiire family fawning over you and calling you devi, and
– you don’t know where to start…..

Or, if you just wanna keep that eye make-up on and chill with your Bacardi and have everything but the last laugh (who cares, these ‘mega-serials’ go on for years anyways…..), stay on where you are…..

Now, where did I hear this was the age of instant gratification ?