A few days ago, I wrote a surprisingly controversial post about a baby girl who had been buried alive, in Andhra Pradesh. Stupid me, I thought everyone would find such news abhorrent. But, in a shocking and to some, sickening twist, it would seem that condemning infanticide is wrong because it is more important to engage in the worst sort of cultural relativism.
Disagreeing with a man’s choice to bury his newborn granddaughter alive would be Western and especially Feminist stupidity. Are you perplexed? Wondering what I am going on about? Ah, then enjoy the following amuse bouche of comments from a few lurkers and readers, which that post inspired:
Dont get carried away by sensationalism
Everyone has it bad in India. you’re the only one who choose to single out the plight of women and measure it by YOUR western standards. It MUST be measured by Indian standards, i.e. the plight of Indian men, children, grandpas, grandmas, the whole society. Everyone has it bad in India, not just little girls.
just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards…If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness.
Poor people will do anything to survive. As long as its their family, and not anyone else’s, no one has a right to interfere.
you, possessing such a craving for attention, would rather start a thread focused on a single baby, a TOTALLY isolated incident, just so you can feel better!
Yes, I felt much better after that depressing thread, especially after I naively attempted to offer a counterpoint to it while proving that feminism can be a desi concept, too. As one of you said via email, after wading through comment-sewage, “I can’t believe there is so much misogyny and so little outrage here.”
::
Isolated. I thought of all those apologist quotes when I read the story which MasterVK was alert enough to submit to our news tab earlier today, about another newborn baby girl, who was also found and rescued:
AHMEDABAD: Her feeble cries help almost drowned in the din of the heavy downpour near Kankaria lake on Monday. Until a fireman found the newborn baby shivering in the rain, abandoned mercilessly without a piece of clothing on her body!
The child’s cries had gone unheard for hours and she had turned pale, lying in the incessant rains, near Kankaria lake. The baby was found by a team of firemen led by Rajesh Goswami who heard the faint cries early in the morning when they embarked on duty to check the oxygen levels in the lake.
Instead of the fish, the firemen found the freshly delivered girl who was dumped from the womb straight into the lake to die. “The girl did not have any clothing on her and had turned completely white. We had become sceptical about her survival,” said Goswami.
The firemen first thought of waiting for the police but were alert enough to realise that any wait may compromise the life of the infant. The fire personnel immediately took the girl to L G Hospital where she was admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit. “The girl was hypothermic as her temperature had dropped due to exposure in the rain. She was also covered in sand,” said Dr Abid Vijapura, assistant professor in the paediatrics department.
Dr Vijapura said that the girl was probably delivered at home as her umbilical cord was cut non-surgically and tied with a thread. “Her condition is stable. We have screened her for infections and will treat her accordingly,” he said.
I’ll close with a different quoted comment from one of you, because I hope someone else declares similar fifteen years from now:
Every time someone (sometimes me) reprimands my 15-year old daughter for her highly “spirited” personality, I can’t help but think that she was born on the streets of Kolkata (one can only guess), spared infanticide, and turned over to an orphanage at the tender age of 5 days.
Just look at her now!
:):) I have no beef with the post lots of perrrty pictures; the dailymail is funkier and not above throwing massive amounts of alcohol on wounds…so me likes.
Anna,
I agree – the dads staying at home phenomenom was much more common in families where the wife came first & sponsored a husband who had difficulty finding work or translating their profession in India to the U.S. If the closest Malu family was >100 miles away, did your family interact with other Malayalee families on a regular basis? If not, where was the vitriol coming from – family members? Anyway, I am not saying that it was “common” but on the east coast at least there were enough cases where it wasn’t truly shocking. I agree with Solution – the revolutionary part would be the stay at home dad that took care of the kids AND took care of the household chores. Of the stay at home dads that I knew, the wives were still responsible for the majority of the housework, cooking etc.
Glass houses, read your link and I think their premise; “In short, having a man whose primary function is not as alpha male breadwinner, but domestic drudge just ain’t sexy”…is bullsh*t!!!
If you read below they give a hint at what the real problem may be, but you have to be able to read between the lines, like a sleuth, to find out…
Here you have it. He’s not doing the washing or tidying the house. He thinks taking care of the child is enough and expects his wife to pick up the slack on household duties. Well, well, well, the times they are a changin’ baby. Remember when career dads wanted to come home to a clean and peaceful home every evening with their wives waiting at the door all prettied up like a supermodel? Guess what? Maybe women want the same. Ever think about that?
Ha ha ha. The irony of it all. Now maybe men can begin to understand how very hard it is to be with a child all day and make sure they are safe at every second, AND clean and cook and look sexy at the end of the day, as if you are not completely exhausted physically and mentally drained after having no intellectual stimulation from another adult!
The women aren’t leaving their husbands because staying keeping the homefront burning is not sexy, they are leaving them because they think, by virtue of being men, they can get away with only “baby-sitting” 8 hours a day and their duties stop there.
Now maybe men can begin to understand why after a loooooong day of child-rearing and drudgery, a woman is often not psycholically in the mood for sex at night, what to speak of having the energy levels it requires to make good love.
I love it!
The sad thing is that this article is part of a conspiracy (that I clued into from the very first sentence) to get men to STOP doing their share of work in the house by saying, “guess what, you’re woman says she wants you to do it but really she thinks it’s not sexy”.
Wrong!
I don’t know of ONE single woman who does not get psychologically turned on by their man doing housework. And if he can do it a cute little pair of boxer shorts that accentuates his booty, or a “wifebeater” T – Sheeeeeeet! Baby it is ON!
Guys, don’t believe this Daily Mail propaganda.
Show your woman that you care and you appreciate by not only doing your “share” of the chores, but going that little extra mile that says, “I understand”.
Now THAT is an afrodesiac!
Am I right or wrong girls?
Bah! Humbug!
There are few things sexier than a confident man who has a good sense of who he is and who can calm a screaming toddler and soothe a crying baby while finding that lost pink crayon for his worried 5-year old and all the while keeping his sense of humor intact.
Case-studies in general delve on the newsworthy. I didn’t see any big-picture statistics that make you step back from the highlighted family in this article.
Confounding factors should be wisely removed from the picture as precautions, factors such as negative, disapproving friends/relatives; high-stress jobs (even if it means less pay and bringing the standard of living a notch or two down).
Solutions, isn’t your husband/boyfriend/lover African American? Just asking.
malathi, as for responding to that article, it was in the Daily Mail for crying out loud! The top of its homepage today has these gems:
I’d really like to hear from the people here who were raised by stay at home dads. Did your dads do the cooking and chores like stay at home moms do? Not to criticise anyone’s dad, but it would give a bigger picture of what “stay at home dad” means to various dads.
I would be really suprised if even half of the 70s stay at home dads did even just the cooking.
Nowadays, in 2007, I think it would be more common for them to do the cooking, and even some of the housework, but all of the cooking and housework? I find it hard to believe that the majority of stay at home dads feel it is their “duty” to see to it that the house is clean and peaceful for their returning wife at the end of a day at work (as is evidenced above in that Daily Mail article). I’d love to be proven wrong though.
Yes Rahul but they also broke the Deathly Hallows ’embargo’ story which the BBC is now running…The barrier of high/low media is blended in the UK..but hey whatev wrap your fish in it it’s all good.
yes, Rahul, I saw your point just after I posted.
glasshouses, sure. The tabloids in the US broke the Gennifer Flowers-Clinton and the Limbaugh drug stuff (to the extent that you consider this, or the Harry Potter stuff, interesting stories), not that they are incapable of scoops, but they also keep throwing stuff on the wall till something sticks. It’s even worse on these kinds of opinion pieces (more like flames), and the Daily Mail has an uber-conservative slant in any case despite all the titillations it peddles. I’m sure it definitely helps fish-and-chips to go down easier though.
Yes, regularly. If only because there was nowhere to buy atta, 777 rasam podi, khayyam (sp?) et al where we lived and my family only ate Southie food every day (read: mallu food…there was no thayir sadham at my house. Pootu, idiappam and nasty velarika yes, lemon rice, no).
I think one of the reasons they were relieved to get away was to escape life in a fish bowl and the gossip which clouds the tank like so much goldfish poo. Now, I feel like a fraud Mallu, but hey, I’m making up for lost time–when I asked my mom for a mundum neriyathum last year, to wear to my first Onam ever, she nearly fell over. Then she mutely handed one to me, started to say something, thought better of it, shook her head and walked off muttering something like, “Why are my children so veird?” 🙂
awww….
A N N A, is it common that Mallu Catholics are vegetarian? I have no idea what khayyam and mundum neriyathum are. In Tamil, mundam is usually an abusive word that means idiot.
To paraphrase Erma Bombeck, community – the ties that bind and gag!
Not common at all. My family is actually Syrian Orthodox, not Catholic, and it’s uncommon to be veg among that denomination, too. Most Malayalee Christians are blood-thirsty carnivores, not even omnivores. 😉 One of the reasons why I was under less pressure to get married was because for the majority of Mallu Catholic/Orthodox/MarThoma boys, my diet was a dealbreaker, which was fine with me, since I felt the same way about their demands that I cook (and thus presumably touch) flesh.
It was a religious thing for my Father– a permanent lent, if you will. I also think he was deeply influenced by his childhood best friend, Swami, who was an Iyer who lived nearby…when you’re the 10th out of 11 kids, you want to get away from all that chaos. 🙂 Swami’s parents were his beloved second set and he was the only non-family member/Christian ever to eat with them. This possibly explains why we’re such strict veg (and why I wash my feet before entering my house).
Mundu neriyathum is a very old, traditional outfit which almost no one wears anymore. It’s different from a Kerala sari or “set sari” in that it’s two different pieces; the bottom is like a veshti. “Mandan” means idiot in Malayalam, mundu means veshti. 🙂
Almost forgot– khayyam = asafoetida
i dont know jack about mallu food. is avial mallu food? i have a mallu friend that turned me on to avial.
AFAIK, avial is totally mallu food. 🙂 Mmmm, drumsticks. And carrots. You can have the chembe/cheppankizhangu. I hate that shit.
Thanks for the clarification, I was under the impression that Mallu Christians ate meat, which is why I asked. The story of Swami and friends is very Malgudi-esque 🙂
Ah, it is perunkaayam in Tamil.
PIndaUS (sorry if I got the caps wrong), avial is technically mallu food (maybe Palghat?) as is jack(fruit). Tams have incorporated avial into their cuisine, though.
As a mallu catholic man I can confirm vegetarianism being a deal breaker for a long term relationship. I dont know any Mallu Christian of any denomination who does not eat fish / meat at least once a month. Beef is extensively eaten by Hindus in Kerala quite unlike the rest of India. Mallus love their fish & meat 😉
Permanent Lent – penance of the highest order. Fantastic penance. May his soul RIP.
Intermarriage amongst Syrian Catholics and Syrian Orthodox is not uncommon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Orthodox_Church
Mundu neriyathum is often wore on Traditional occasions, these days only on Onam and Nov 1 (Kerala founding day). It is a great turn on for many mallu blokes to see a girl in such attire. Probably coz it is rare.
I hope no one attacks me for saying this (keeping my fingers crossed), but I am very uncomfortable* with the models of masculinity being offered by Malathi, Solutions (Pardesi Gori) et.al. I’m trying to keep an open mind but I still can’t fathom this whole house-husband, Mr. Mom bit. It just seems like too much of a role reversal to me. And it seems like some of you women are trying to decide what male behavior should be all about…in other words, control us. Which to me is always a red flag. I’m trying to tread carefully here since ANNA’s father was a stay-at-home dad, and I mean no disrespect to him whatsoever, in fact from whatever she’s revealed here to us about him, I admire him a lot.
*Uncomfortable in a general sense, not in any of the specific cases mentioned. If a man chooses that lifestyle and is happy with it, and with his relationship with his wife, then I have no problems with that particular individual’s choices.
linzi #179: didi’s work in bihar is very inspiring. i’m looking for places to volunteer next year; thanks for sharing. and this, of course, is very resonant:
hmm…my community never incorporated anything in their cuisine. we were either eating narrowly defined tam food, or “foreign” food. “foreign” food is anything else.
i meant jack($hit)
Amitabh, do you mean that you could never see yourself choosing that role? 🙂 That’s what it read like, to me.
Amitabh, your discomfort comes from imagining yourself in that role. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean everybody experiences the same way. I experience discomfort thinking of myself as a doctor working with blood and internal organs; thankfully not everybody feels so about the medical way of life. And the commentors above are not out to control all men, it’s only their preference.
That said, I’m in favor of society — in average — performing roles according to traditions; because traditions evolve in line with our instincts and our capabilities; forced equality does not settle right with me. Individual preferences and instincts of course vary widely, and so as most of us agree forced inequality is most bad as well — there should be freedom for people to explore their way of life.
That’s a laugh. Are you for real? Whatever.
I am not controlling anyone or attempting to dictate the social norms or starting a revolution. Together, my husband and I decided to embrace certain hurdles life threw at us, and make the best of the unique opportunity instead of crying/worrying that our lifestyle doesn’t fit the pattern society expected us to follow. My husband hasn’t lost his “masculinity” nor have I lost my “femininity”/motherhood in the process. Nor do we think this is the only solution for all the world to follow.
ah, Anna has said the same thing; sorry I hadn’t read your comment.
HyperTree, so would you describe yourself as a traditionalist libertarian? 🙂
Rahul, yup that’s me 🙂 The concoctions that India throws up I say.
I don’t know if any of the men mentioned in this thread–who are switching things up and doing the “unexpected”– necessarily thought they were going to grow up and do just that. I know that as much as my father delighted in his nieces and nephew, he didn’t plan to stay home with us. Sometimes, life is such that you are forced to make a choice because what’s best for your family trumps everything else. In our family, something horribly traumatic happened with a new babysitter and that was it. My mother loved her career. My father, realizing the only way a parent would be at home was if HE did it, sucked it up and gave up his position, because as he would remind me every time I pissed him off, “knowing you were safe was more important than anything”.
Actually, it was more like, “Knowing you were safe was more important to me than anything! That’s why I quit my job! And you, you can’t even __________”
a) win a spelling bee b) do trignometry c) practice piano regularly d) be obedient and humble like you should be, you punk-ass little brat whom I gave everything up for, so that my blood pressure could be high, I could get no sleep and I’d have indigestion for the rest of my life!
Yeah, it was usually “d”. 😀
A N N A, (a) and (b) are related. It is trigonometry.
No, my husband didn’t. And neither did I, as a dreamy teen, day-dream of a stay-at-home-husband.
But you know what, when it came down to makign that decision, it wasn’t as difficult as everyone else imagined or assumed it to be. It is a rich experience for him and he totally loves it, and wonders how much he would have missed if he has just a regular life. And this is the reason, why when I am back from work, he even frees me of all my other domestic responsibilities so I can spend my hometime just taking care of the kids, so I won’t miss out on the fun and bonding.
If you know teens who did, please send them my way.
what, you want more love than that you get here? 🙂
My dad is 93, a very successful barrister. And no, he did not stay at home but spent lots of time reading with us (5 kids and perhaps 6 cousins). He helped everyone with school work, taught us to ride bikes, CLEANED the toilets daily, including after the servants. He taught himself to cook at 70. He still stitches buttons and holes in his khadi shirts. All the grandchildren (American and British) prefer him to their parents, after all he diapered all of them without ever telling the baby what to do and when. He let the kids paint his terrace, eat mud occasionally. He bathed them patiently if he felt they were crying with the mom’s or nanny’s inexperienced attentions. Also sat up at night with crying infants and then went on to work at a stressful law job. By the way, we were allowed to do pretty much what we liked in the house: paint walls, draw anywhere, turn furniture upside down, wear what we liked, even to weddings. We are all pretty conservative in behavior and professions! (Engineers and writers!)
Actually, it was more like, “Knowing you were safe was more important to me than anything! That’s why I quit my job! And you, you can’t even __________”
a) win a spelling bee b) do trignometry c) practice piano regularly d) be obedient and humble like you should be, you punk-ass little brat whom I gave everything up for, so that my blood pressure could be high, I could get no sleep and I’d have indigestion for the rest of my life!
Yeah, it was usually “d”. 😀
Anna, it is interesting to me the tidbits I get about your family. Some of the things your father says is shocking to me…but that is not b/c I haven’t heard them, there was a lot of mallu cuss words in my house. But really I hated it and it really affected me negatively. The above statement your dad made is also an attitude that my father took, as many desi parents. But I find it so emotionally harmful. You seem okay by it all, but maybe you can look back and laugh and that helps you to heal? Or maybe you aren’t bothered by it? When my father made/makes above statements like that, it still can hurt.
hypertree and amitabh, i am not for completely eradicating this view, because it still makes some sense. i think this split of tasks developed mainly because women, as the ‘lesser’ sex, were historically not allowed to work. naturally, it made sense for the women to use their time at home to do certain tasks, while men went outside the home to work. even today, if a man happens to be the spouse who works more, or is the only one working, of course the wife (assuming a heterosexual partnership) should be the one to take care of tasks at home. however, now that women are working outside the home in higher numers, many household burdens still fall on them, as traditionally these tasks have been performed by women. what i take issue with is this idea that these household tasks are inherently feminine, when they clearly are not (e.g. professional cooking is historically only the work of men – so why make a distinction between the public and private domains as to this type of work?). even if the women are full-time stay-at home wives, some men refuse to do any of these household tasks – cooking cleaning etc – even minimally, because it is women’s work.
229-231 – ANNA, have you responded in a similar format before? i just had a deja vu moment, including the responses….ANNA, my dad made no such sacrifice for his kids, but he thinks the very act of giving us life entitles him to (d). his favourite phrase : children should be seen, not heard. yes, we kick it somewhat old school at our house….
PS, once I lived through something like this, it changed everything. What once enraged me, I can’t even contemplate, without laughing bitterly. The key is expectations…once I realized that TV families weren’t real, that everyone had problems, no one was perfect and that in his own way, my daddy had done 110% of what he was capable of…it was a tremendous release. All that hurt went away, and all that remained was sweetness. I wish you similar grace.
I’d give anything to be screamed at like that again, because of what it would mean.
Do you lose these bragging rights if you adopt. Angelina Jolie can have ’em all if that’s the case.
Ah, these are but one post stands. Nobody wants long term comment-ment these days.
ba-dum-bum!
actually, i could see the adoptive parents having even more bragging rights – i saved you from god-knows-what and this is what i get?! i do think in general that parents – biological or otherwise – get bragging rights for a lot of things – it’s a ridiculously tough job. plus, my own parents have dealth with a lot of BS from their own kids, and i don’t think most parents are dissimilar in this regard.
have you ever tried making your e-mail address available so someone can write numerous posts to you without a bunch of onliners listening in?
Just trying to be helpful here. And I am a married woman, so I can play matchmaker without being bashful. In fact, the meddlesome role comes with the status of being married 🙂
malathi mami, neengala?
malathi, you are many singles’ worst nightmare! though i don’t mind it so much, so long as it does not come with the usual side of pity and disapproval.
portmanteau (#220)
I highly recommend volunteering to work with Didiji (also known as Sister Jessi). She is great and doing so much. When I went I taught her first “set” of teenage girls, who studied everyday in all the regular school subjects, gardening, sewing and knitting, and English. I taught English (to the best of my ability with the sad Hindi skills I had at the time) and also geography, games, arts and crafts… creative writing.. etc. Since then she has been trying to teach a group of around 20-25 teenage girls these every year, and definitely needs volunteers. Here are some pictures from my time there, to give you an idea: http://www.flickr.com/photos/reluktantwarrior/sets/300825/
And for anyone else feeling inspired, she always needs volunteers and also relies on random donations to keep her stuff going, so if you feel like helping in anyway, contact her: mgajessi@hotmail.com
She is always happy to hear from people.
I don’t agree. Prove it.
Anyway, and it’s also not like just because a woman does not work outside that she has to do ALL the cooking and cleaning all the time.
How many working moms expect their stay at home husbands to do 100% of the household chores and cooking?
Likewise, just because a man works an outside job and his wife does not, does that mean he never should cook, clean, do laundry, etc? Even if you do nothing in the evenings due to fatigue from a long day at work, well, there is always Saturday and Sunday.
And remember when we were single and living on our own? We had to work AND keep our living space clean and manage to feed ourselves also – all by ourselves. So what changes for these men once they get married?
Belated condolences. Touched by the writing. Nearly cried.
ak, how can i forget all the embarrassment and humiliation I myself went through for several years–it wasn’t so long ago actually. So not to worry, i know that marriage is not for everyone, just as a stay-at-home dad, heterosexuality, adoption, a Gandhian way of life or geology are all not for everyone.
But the ‘pity’ factor is a two-way street. Singles look at married women as boring mother hens. But maybe we (as in mother hens with no time for make-up or the latest blockbuster) present our image that way so singles can run away from us in horror and disgust, find refuge in each other, and hey presto, magic 😉
But really, the Tamil mother hen/first-born/”feminine” side of me is beginning to worry just a teeny bit about Rahul–does he eat, does he sleep, does he get enough sun?
I did. For her, for her dad, for their beautiful relationship. For her mom.
But also for myself, for my own loss–not to death; but to stupidity, rigidity, coldness. As a daughter; as a mother; as the (sometimes insecure and isolated from society’s support system) wife of a stay-at-home dad.
I want no more from my own beloved children, Anna, for both my husband and I; no more than the love and respect you have for your dad. Not a damn thing more.
Probably not.
With a little bit of word-smithing (maybe remove the “factor”), Faith Hill or LeAnn Rimes could probably spin a million dollars from that line.
malathi mami, he is apparently practicing to be a good stay-at-home dad by being a good stay-at-home single. You know what they say, stay-at-home begins at, well, home.