My morning today started with a very healthy discussion with
a friend of mine on these issues. What overwhelmed me in this conversation was
his sensitiveness towards this subject, him acknowledging the stinginess of all
‘our’ mindset which is so hell bent on patriarchy and him even admonishing me
for accepting all the injustices around us so easily. It was a discussion which I wanted to
continue, but time was the major constraint so we decided to carry on the conversation
some other day.
The second half of this discussion with some other person
happened some time later. It was just after lunch and me savoring the delicious
mushroom and sausage curry, I overheard a conversation which irritated me to
great extent.
I was near the wash basin, when the person next in line who
is our office boy Mr. X came to wash his Tiffin box. This person has recently
tied the knot and it is not even 15 days that he is a married man. Every day he had been complaining of only one
thing- “My wife can’t even cook properly; she is either sleeping or watching TV
all day long”. Mr. X was cleaning his
Tiffin Box when the next guy in the queue comments in Hindi “Have you lost it,
why are you cleaning your Tiffin box- have you forgotten that now you are a
married man and you have wife at home?”
Failing to curb my annoyance over hearing such a statement,
I ask him to repeat again. He gladly grins and tries to modify his statement
“You are getting me all wrong, what I meant was why you wasting your time
washing your Tiffin box, when your wife as she is a house wife can do it. In
this way, the others in the queue won’t have to wait so much for their turn”.
I smiled and pitied his up-bringing and ignorance level and
after some fracas decided to give up.
As I found, the deeper I dug, the murkier it got. I just
told him one thing that today I understood why derogatorily the area from where
you hail is referred as ‘cow belt’. He
was least bothered with the discussion and in fact again started reiterating
the fact that what else a housewife is supposed to do.
