..Point of View..
Synopsis: How to deal with a marriage arranged when one was a child of twelve? What are the answers to the whys and what-ifs of one personal history in a context of general female disempowerment? How to resolve the key conflict of a displaced life after years of nomadic life abroad? Chandra Siddan, a Canadian immigrant, returns to Bangalore, India after 12 years' absence with these questions. Long divorced and newly remarried, she enquires into the reasons for her early first marriage arranged in the mid 70s by her Hindu urban middle-class family and confronts her parents and relatives with her lost childhood, while also presenting them her new husband. Reuniting with her daughter, Smruthi (now in her twenties), Chandra finds her refreshingly liberated. But the life of her parents’ teenage servant, Sudha, shows that that the past is anything but over. Simultaneously a family drama and a social history, "Remembrance of Things Present" rejects a reactionary notion of "home" and theorizes global female migrant labour as an anti-odyssey, a journey without a return.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
One more reason to Divorce
Now many or any reason is good enough for divorce. but then when someone decides to divorce- do they really need a reason!?
Marriages are no longer made in heaven, nor are they ‘Fevicol ki jodis’. Our society and socio-political structures have changed. Relationships are no longer defined by love or commitment alone. They have Unique Identification Criteria of their own; therefore, I shall desist from making blanket statements on what makes for a good/bad relationship or marriage.
Our parents of course can’t even identify with the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the same breath as ‘marriage’. A marriage, they say, is a bond, not just between two individuals, but between their ‘aatmas’ according to the Sanskrit slokas that we’re expected to repeat after the pundit as we sweat and cramp before the ‘homagni’. So, how can something that God proposes and parents arrange be bad? After all, marriages are still arranged based on astrology, caste, creed, religion, gotras, looks, colour of skin and blood, as well as culinary, housekeeping, and pampering skills, the kind of job you hold and your bank balance, amongst a laundry list of other criteria.
Sadly though, none of the above proves good enough for a marriage to last forever.
Most marriages these days are either a compromise or an abscess that you nurse till it splits open and oozes pus. And that’s when it gets really messy these days. There are theories and conspiracy theories about why marriages don’t work. The most common one being ‘stress’— professional stress, stress at home because the maid didn’t turn up and the ‘man of the house’ won’t lift a finger to help, parenting stress—just name it and it’s stressful. Look at what it did to the supposedly perfect marriage of Al and Tipper Gore, even after 40 years of togetherness. And stress is often the easiest excuse to slip up on commitment leading to emotional infidelity, sometimes even the physical kind and for stoking the killer instinct in you. So, the two supposedly mature adults scream, shout, yell, fight, and hurt each other till they decide they’ve had enough and should now part ways, amicably or otherwise.
When things don’t work, we call it a ‘breakdown’, right? And we need a mechanic to either repair it or tow it away, if it can’t be fixed. That’s where the Indian divorce laws come handy. http://www.indlaw.com/display.aspx?2739
Source: Yahoo
Marriages are no longer made in heaven, nor are they ‘Fevicol ki jodis’. Our society and socio-political structures have changed. Relationships are no longer defined by love or commitment alone. They have Unique Identification Criteria of their own; therefore, I shall desist from making blanket statements on what makes for a good/bad relationship or marriage.
Our parents of course can’t even identify with the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the same breath as ‘marriage’. A marriage, they say, is a bond, not just between two individuals, but between their ‘aatmas’ according to the Sanskrit slokas that we’re expected to repeat after the pundit as we sweat and cramp before the ‘homagni’. So, how can something that God proposes and parents arrange be bad? After all, marriages are still arranged based on astrology, caste, creed, religion, gotras, looks, colour of skin and blood, as well as culinary, housekeeping, and pampering skills, the kind of job you hold and your bank balance, amongst a laundry list of other criteria.
Sadly though, none of the above proves good enough for a marriage to last forever.
Most marriages these days are either a compromise or an abscess that you nurse till it splits open and oozes pus. And that’s when it gets really messy these days. There are theories and conspiracy theories about why marriages don’t work. The most common one being ‘stress’— professional stress, stress at home because the maid didn’t turn up and the ‘man of the house’ won’t lift a finger to help, parenting stress—just name it and it’s stressful. Look at what it did to the supposedly perfect marriage of Al and Tipper Gore, even after 40 years of togetherness. And stress is often the easiest excuse to slip up on commitment leading to emotional infidelity, sometimes even the physical kind and for stoking the killer instinct in you. So, the two supposedly mature adults scream, shout, yell, fight, and hurt each other till they decide they’ve had enough and should now part ways, amicably or otherwise.
When things don’t work, we call it a ‘breakdown’, right? And we need a mechanic to either repair it or tow it away, if it can’t be fixed. That’s where the Indian divorce laws come handy. http://www.indlaw.com/display.aspx?2739
Source: Yahoo
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
I loved you first: but afterwards your love by Christina Rossetti
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
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