The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants…

All this talk of sisterhood, motherhood, womanhood has left me feeling, faintly out of my depth. Really.

So what if I am the dark-skinned-using-skin-lightening cream girl, my skin is still not as thick as some people think it to be. There is also no evidence yet that suggests that sustained usage of skin lightening cream leads to forming multiple layers and therefore resulting in undue skin thickness. And I use the best brand of skin lightening cream also, thank you very much!

It seems people in the last week or so have reached this Blog, using search strings such as:
The angst of the Indian sisterhood
Symbolic signs of Sisterhood
The future of Indian womanhood
My mother the hood (!)

Admittedly these are very resilient people, because my Blog comes up as the one-millionth match or some such when this search happens. But it also makes me feel slightly important, just for a while. I mean, Sisterhood? Womanhood? Goodie good, I say!

What is the future of “Indian Womanhood”?? [For my understanding I have defined Indian Womanhood (IW) as comprising of, any person of Indian origin, who was pronounced a girl at the time of birth. Yes to keep it simple, sexual orientation and sex change operations have been kept out of it]

So, the future of IW? Most promising, I would think. However, before one gets into predictions and predilections it is always useful to take stock of the, ‘current reality’.

They say that at any point, art forms will tell you, what is the state of society and the position that the woman occupies. So you look at structures that were created in a certain period, paintings made, music composed, dance forms that flourished, etc. and can pronounce that women in a certain period led a certain kind of life.

Now I don’t suffer from delusions that I am really too much of an, ‘art-person’. Though, a wardrobe from Fab India and Chunky Jewelry might help in building this persona of an ‘Artsy Type’. But don’t judge a book by its cover, blah. To me art would be music, cinema and errrm television. Yes, now I understand why I am a sorry example of the IWIB (Indian Womanhood in Indian Blogosphere)! Heh! However, I have the IWIB Rights of Members here with me, and Clause 1.3f says, and I quote:
“As a member of IWIB, you are free to read books banned by the state, watch movies that the culture police tear the posters of, watch regressive Television soaps and manipulative advertising. In fact, you are actively encouraged to keep yourself abreast of all the happenings in the life of Tulsi and others of the sisterhood.”

So I am just following the whip here. Honest.

Now music and cinema, I will let it be for a while and focus my attention on Television- a medium that the sisterhood has almost taken over completely. And baby, that is elitism for you now. I mean, look at prime-time television, and if one were to ignore the plethora of not too newsy news channels, it is, all about loving your mommma.

Remember those days of Buniyaad and Hum Log, where the patriarch in the form of Haveliram like persona dominated our B&W TV sets (yes sir, my privileged background and whatever notwithstanding that is all we had, a hand-me-down B&W TV of a brand called ECTV)

Or a few years later, when stories moved away from quaint streets of Lahore and Delhi to semi-posh looking homes of boys who became big and hated each other a la, Junoon. And here we had rivalry between two builder boys with important sounding names like Aditya Dhanraj and such. Incidentally, Junoon was a very cult type serial and for the benefit of the Dravidian audience it was dubbed into Tamil also and showed by a regional channel. I remember that my grandmom, who believed in sleeping really early, would put an alarm for 9:30 pm to wake up and watch it.

But that was then, and then came the Big Sister of the Sisterhood; Ekta KKKK Kapoor, who changed it all. Now television is all about women – those who wear kundan jewelry and bejeweled sari even at 6 am, of perfectly shaped eyebrows and shimmering streaked hair. So what if they are completely regressive, at least they look very very posh. While the IWIB loves the sound bytes they get out of this, I think they are mostly unhappy with the poor self-image that the sisterhood suffers from as a result.

The universal truth is that as far as Indian Television soaps go, the portrayal of women is hugely regressive, but there is also I think a North-South divide here as well. Some of you who have been reading my Blog for a while will know, how much I love this whole Aryan versus Dravidian debate, and my last post on the issue generated a rather interesting debate also. But given that I am trying to be a non-controversial person (though that is not under my control really, the bug proposes but the ‘troll’ disposes) for now, I will let the AIT be for a while. But the differences as it were must be pointed out.

Down here, we have our cult serials as well. There used to be one called Metti Oli, which was the longest running serial ever and enjoyed TRP’s (Television Rating Points) higher than KSBKBT and KGGK even. It was the story of a man with five daughters and all the associated trauma in getting them married, ensuring they stayed married and so on. Or there is a currently very popular serial called, Kolangal, which is the story is of a whiney cum shrill type girl called Abhinaya – who is burdened with all the worries of the world and is the man of her almost all woman household.

Anyway coming back to the North versus South divide on TV portrayal of women, one must first understand the commonality. Most of these serials have a heightened focus on the suffering – in that aurat teri yahi kahani sort of way.

In the Hindi serials the suffering is all rather nice looking though. The people look nice (yes yes, the fair skin and all of that), they live in homes that look all posh and bejeweled. Their problems usually are often related to love gone sour or unrequited love. And of course there is always the problem that stems from, ‘too much of money’.

So what is the Aryan Heroine doing in all of this? And who is she?

• Wicked, Wicked all the time - Well for one, she is either wicked in a bad way or is wicked in a nice way. But she is wicked.
• Home is where the TRP is - Most of the stories are set in the homes, and the woman is usually at home (most of the times, except for Kitu from Kitu sab jaanti hai, who is bringing about social change journo who covers Page 3 weddings. Huh! ), Which is why she is the center of all attention.
  
• That time of the day again - Of course you can’t make out from the way she looks/ or the way the house looks, what part of the day it is, because she and the house, always looks the same.
• What is your style number - She is usually carrying a mobile phone; all of the times and that is her modus operandi. She is ensuring another 100 weeks for the serial by one mere phone conversation (that we can hear only one side of!)
• Kal, Aaj aur Kal - She is very well preserved. Except for Ba, everyone looks like they are from the same generation. If you watch Sahara One and Zee TV, the ma-in-law looks way hotter than the daughter-in-law!
• Koo Koo - They all have names that must begin with K – Kamolika, Kavita, Kumkum, Kkusum, Kitu, Komal, Klah…
• Look Mama, I am a bad girl - The bad girls will have one overwhelming visible indicator - either a permanently raised eyebrow, dangling earrings that dangle longer than vapid heroine, or a bindi that is almost a work of art.
• What comes up, come down - so the bad girls, don’t always remain bad. Eventually they become good, only to become bad again.
• Some things never change – like the goody-two-shoes, intensely boring, terribly smug and superior heroine. Little wonder, that husband moves to greener pastures. They always remain good, unless they happen to suffer from amnesia.
• Identity – Now this is interesting because if one were to draw a link between the largest number of Hindi speaking audience and the region that these protagonists come from – there is no clear link. Rarely are the stories about MP/UP/ Bihar people. They are usually Gujratis, Marwaris or Rajasthanis (at least some of the important sounding names would suggest that). The accents are usually neutral and they are never really true to identity. As in, there will be arranged marriage situations in which Sharma boy will marry Kejriwala girl and so on. Sometimes they will dress all Gujarati (you know the way the sari pallu is draped – on the wrong side/ or the right side if you so prefer) but will have a Punjabi name. Hmmm.

In contrast to all of this, is our Southie heroine – especially Tamil soaps. First of all, most of our problems happen because of, ‘lack of money’. It is all about genteel poverty, horrible men, and horrible ma-in-law and excruciating amount of suffering. The heroine lives in a Spartan sort of home (mostly semi-urban), with no furniture, two plastic chairs and is always wearing rather simple, cotton saris. Her modus operandi is not the mobile phone but sheer endurance. She takes all the woes of the world, for the longest time, till some other fellow sister sufferer beats her to it (read rival soap protagonist) and then the misery ends (for the audience as well).

So what is the Dravidian Heroine doing in all of this? And who is she?

• Black or White – They are either painfully nice-sacrificial-lamb like or terribly mean-dictatorial like. No shades of gray here.
• Don’t switch sides – The bad people become worse and the good get more woes. Yes, the more the contrast, more the suffering. More the suffering, the more are the TRP’s.
• Super-Woman – Most of the times the women are working, not in that oooh-posh-business-tycoon way, but regular middle class kind of stuff – in banks, as typists, as computer operators. The men are usually drunk, or are truckers or work in the textile industry! The women if not at work, will be cooking; one can forever see them chopping brinjals and ladies-fingers. Can’t really understand the connection, except that both potentially have worms in them… and may be that symbolizes further amounts of pain that she will go through.
• We love our stereotypes – Everyone looks their age. And you should have no problems in knowing who the m-I-l and the d-I-l are. Complete like - Dummies Guide to knowing Who-is-Who?! Oh and the m-I-l is always the hunter and the d-I-l the hunted. Usually the conflict is around broken promises – of money that was never given, of grandsons that were never born. Ya, I know! Oh and coy girls still bite their nails and Immaculate Conception could well be a reality, if the makers of these serials are to be believed. Yes sir, we shall bring the God person.
• Identity – Here there is a huge emphasis on identity. Boss, it’s a serious issue. The accents are all authentic, and caste, sub-caste, gothram, dialect… all become very important. Great care is taken on marriage and the like. And caste is directly linked to affluence. This might have something to do with the fact that the two most popular channels here are the mouthpieces of two opposing Dravidian political parties.

So anyway, I can go on forever… but visually I can see, this is turning into one of those unwieldy posts. What is new?! (Rhetoric)

But stretching the sisterhood argument of, ‘Ek Aurat hi doosre Aurat ka dard samajh sakti hai…’, I think the sisterhood must gang up and must learn from each other. We need Pan-Indian women, now and take on drunken men, wicked mothers-in-law and the epidemic like greed among humans.

Oh after all that, I am left with the pertinent question… what is the future of IW? May be I must analyze other art forms after all. Blogs, may be?

Though given the current state of women in Television, it is reassuring in some ways. After all there is only one way to go from here. Up, up to infinity and beyond.

Long live the Sisterhood!