Our travels have been, I now see, through some of the poorest states and the richest states and so I contrast that first India with my observation of village life and in the comments and reminiscences about women that I have heard.
What made me start thinking about this is that we have only ever dealt with men, except in the international hotels where women are also employed. From what I have seen, for example, there are very few women shopkeepers in India, although I have run into a couple. This becomes comical when you are shopping for clothes. Some men love to shop but Cameron has always adopted a point and shoot attitude toward shopping that I have observed in other men too.
I find shopping relaxing and like to look at all the options, compare qualities, think about how the item will be used and whether it will be used at all. The shopkeepers here are very comfortable with Cameron’s notion of shopping but not so comfy with mine. They point and shoot and have little patience for the subtleties of good shopping or clothing detail and styling. They want you in and out with a favourable (for them) deal concluded and will want you to sit, drink tea and look at all the things THEY want to show you. They will never ask you the crucial questions that you are trying to answer for yourself before you buy an item. They are there to sell you on the excellent qualities of the item as THEY see it, and could care less whether you also deem them excellent, likely because you are a woman and how could you possibly know what is best for you?
That is the paternalistic side of this country. There is also this funny obsession with romance. As Vinesh tells us, 90% of Indian movies are about romance. Based on the Bollywood movies we have watched (or tried to watch – I am with Russell Peters on this one – acting talent, decent scripts and good camera work have nothing to do with Bollywood) the romance is very high school, based on notions of love that we all shed round about Grade 12. A recent movie line (this is true!), “There is nothing about you that I like. You are coarse and a murderer. But my heart tells me that you are the one for me – that I love you and cannot live without you.” Blechhh!!!
I speculate this is because most marriages are arranged and, although there is truly a decent case (really!) to be made for arranged marriages, most people are never allowed the simple, slavish, all encompassing heart ache of having loved and lost. Because it is not really part of everyday life, for the most part, people have to get their fix somehow. And because they have not really experienced it themselves, their perceptions of it will likely be what we would regard as shallow and wholly divorced from the reality of love. Of course, that doesn’t mean there is not a lot of extra-marital funny business going on – I have feeling that this country is a little like an Indian version of Melrose Place or more accurately for those who have seen this movie “The Ice Storm”.
You forget after awhile that you only ever talk to men. Women seem to be backlit here, at least in the more traditional other India, at least from what I have seen. The concept of woman is wrapped in a golden aura that allows men to project anything they want, or need onto a woman. She becomes that fragile flower. I have heard “the ladies” described in the most romantic and flattering of terms. Can't deny all that rosey language feels good until you realize there could not possibly be a real woman under all that.
Yet in all our hours of driving through the countryside, I never once saw women gathering in the villages for tea and chat as the men do regularly. If I saw them at all, they were always engaged in washing, minding children, planting, buying food or walking in groups to work at a local factory. Apparently, all that veneration comes with a lot of plain, hard work and the fragile flower is made of steel.
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