Women victims of emotional blackmail

WOMEN VICTIMS OF EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.

Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Pepsi CEO, once said how difficult it is for women to manage two fronts –home and office at the same time. She did not mince her words. Priyanka Chopra recently said she is not talking of equality in biological terms but in equality in treatment in office or at home. However, are not women themselves responsible for what and where they are? Women empowerment is not what they need. They need to look inside and figure out how they have allowed themselves to be victim of emotional blackmail and appeasement.  

Motherhood is the greatest gift to women and that is their strength also and the best part is they know it. However, this very gift turns out to be a handicap also. Women are emotional by nature and men know how to cash upon that. Men might use it a ploy to confine them within the household. They get so emotionally charged to believe that they only can raise children. True, men cannot give birth and breast feed a child but that does not mean they cannot raise a child at home. Many are doing it by choice or compulsion. But they will somehow manipulate women who end up in raising children and managing the household throughout their life. This is one of the tools men use to put them in place and not compete with them in the elite job market. This has been going on since ages and women have been lived in make believe world of their own. The strength becomes their weakness.

Another way of blackmailing women is to make them believe that they God’s own creation. As if men were created by Satan. Women are made to believe that beauty and grace is their jagir. All that is beautiful and graceful ends at their feet. For a change they are compared with all that is beautiful by poets and writers but at the same time told that there is nothing more beautiful than woman. Women are made to live in the world of their own where nothing should harm their beauty. No one talks of inner beauty. Beauty lies in physical appearance and women would do anything to look beautiful. Again their strength becomes their weakness. Our TV serials add to the myth by showing women in their best dresses and make up even in sleeping mode. They are always decked in their best dresses, jewels and accessories. Thank God they are not wearing heavy makeup while on duty as a police constable or army sepoy.  Keeping fit and looking presentable is fine but why upgrade their inborn features? But no, they will spend hours before the mirror, spend fortunes spa and try to look different every single day. Men are good at exploiting this weakness and somehow convince them the twists and turns, stresses and pressures, dust and smoke, burning heat and killing chill are conspiring to take away their most precious asset-beauty from them. Once the physical beauty is gone, everything is gone.

The third twist is in spreading the myth that beauty and brain do not sail together. Well if it really happens, it is because they tend to give more attention to their physical features than to their brain cells. Here again they are blackmailed in believing that their place is at home and they need not strain themselves needlessly. As a child they are always told-Paraya Dhan. By the time she is 10, she is reminded what she should do and should not do. She is taught to cook, stitch, knit, and do all house hold chorus. By the time she is 16, it’s time to look for a groom. A good percentage of girls in colleges are there not because their parents want them to do higher education but because they are yet to find a suitable match. The moment they find a suitable match, it’s pack up time from the college.

There are many ills in our society but the way girls are conditioned to believe in their role in society makes them victim of all types of oppression. As grownup, very few try to fight and remain in their make believe world of motherhood and beauty where there is no room for anything else.

Times, however, are changing and women are excelling themselves not only at home but in wild, wild world outside. This only strengthens the point that it was always possible.  

THE ALLKNOWING AND ME

THE ALL KNOWING AND ME

Please don’t take me wrong. By all knowing I do not mean the Almighty. I mean a friend of mine who has a knack for raising questions and seeking answers for them. Yesterday night at about 10 p m he arrived without any notice as usual. Well friends need not give notice but then there is some etiquette. I fear him as much as I respect him. Fear, because he can drop-in any time and respect because as I said he is all knowing.

To cut it short, he knocked at the door and called me by name and I had no option but to open the door. Before I could offer him a seat he shot – do you know what is the space between the eyebrows is called? I said I duuno. He said –what is the metallic or plastic end of the shoelaces is called? I said I dunno. He asked –what is cry of a new born is called? I said –cry. He said wrong! He asked what is the dot on an i or a j is called. I said –dot. He said wrong. He asked many such questions and I had no answers. He castigated me for my lack of knowledge even though I call myself an educated person. I offered him a cup of tea in the meanwhile, anyway.

Long back, travelling in a Mini Bus in Kolkata the school girls sitting on the row before me were chatting. One of them said it is not at all necessary to know everything. For example if we want to know the trains between Kolkata and Delhi we can find out from the Railway Time table or enquiry when we go. No use knowing things that we do not or may not need.

She had a point.  It’s better to know what is actually essential. As it is becoming tough to pass the exams, why increase the load?  

But it was different with this all knowing friend of mine. Every time he met me he made feel inferior. There was so much to know and so little I know. I thought enough is enough and I must confront him in one of these days.

He turned up one evening and as usual asked what the oldest language in the world is? For a change it is Tamil but I said Mother tongue. As expected he said wrong. I countered-no, I am right. The oldest language cannot be other than mother tongue. The first mother in this planet talked to her first born in a language that no one knew but the child understood it. It has continued since then. The mother and child speak in a language which is oldest, eternal and universal. How can any other language claim that position?

He has not visited me again since then. Now what is my fault?