Jaseena Your Thoughts Are Interesting But You Need Better Understanding & Judgement

Dear Jaseena,

Your Facebook post and the conversation you had with your maid (http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/this-is-serious/sanskaari-bahus-facebook-post-going-viral-must-read-5148113/) is indeed interesting and thought provoking but is not devoid of gaping flaws as well (go through the link first to understand what this blog is all about). Just like your maid you too seem to have a set mind about this topic. Being a psychologist you should have had displayed a better understanding to the situation of your maid. Allow me to break down your thoughts and your conversation with your maid and highlight the important aspects of both.

1) “My son drinks”

This says nothing about the maid’s son as a person. Is he irresponsible towards his family? Is he employed? Is he spending all the money he earns on alcohol? Does he come home drunk and abuse his family? Plenty of questions can be asked here. A lot of boys start smoking and drinking alcohol from their adolescent years. That’s the age when they want to try out everything and boast around among their friends. But that’s not the age when they can explain rationally why they are hooked on to those things. When the boy grows up into a man and if the habits persist with him that’s when he has to be able to explain why. The ones who are either low on self confidence or do not have enough courage to express their thoughts and feelings are the ones creates all the noise after getting drunk. The additional benefit of this is, people either ignore or forgive them considering their intoxicated state. Easiest way to do and say whatever we want with minimum repercussions. Question here is, did you ever try to find out why he drinks and why he is addicted to alcohol? That would be the first thing for a psychologist to do in this context.

Our lives are not so simple to be explained. According to ancient Indian texts, among the innumerable factors that govern our lives, the most significant ones are our karma in this life, and karma from our previous lives. Our genetic structure is supposed to hold information from 7 previous generations so the consequences of their karma also influence our lives. With so much information governing us, what defines and becomes our personality, behaviours and habits would depend on the environment and circumstances we grow up in and get exposed to. Remember the 17 year old who was the most barbaric in the Nirbhaya case? Many criminals who committed gruesome crimes were not able to comprehend their horrific behaviour when they reflected on their actions with a sane mind. It must be the genetic information of a rapist ancestor along with the situation and the people he was with that acted as the trigger. Maybe a rapist or alcoholic ancestor is hidden inside all of us and all it would take is the appropriate fertile ground to invoke the beast.

2) Girls aren’t more mature mentally than boys their age

I would suggest that you try asking a 15 year old girl what type of man does she aspire to have as her husband. Most girls by that age would be idolizing a man in her life, mostly her father, or else one of her grandfathers or one of her uncles or even her best friend’s father. They would have already found the qualities in a man that have endeared to them and would want the same qualities in their men. Ask a 15 year old guy what type of girl would he want to have as his wife and chances are he might give you a long stare and walk away. When a boy looks at a girl, he is staring at her physical features whereas when a girl looks at a boy, she is searching for those manly qualities in her mind in him. This is all about evolution. Males are made for procreation and females for nurturing. Why do you think 22 year old girls are married off to 28 or 30 year old guys in India? Why is it the unwritten norm in the corporate world that guys have to be at least 30 years old before they can become managers? Everyone needs to learn self management before they can start managing others. Guys can take up to 28 years to start managing themselves decently. As little as 3 generations back, 16 year old girls becoming mothers were common in our society. What does this tell you? Girls can be ready for nurturing by that age if required. It is just sad that male hegemony still rules the corporate world otherwise women employees would have become managers with as little as 3 year’s work experience.

3) Wives are not teachers, mentors or coaches for their husbands.

A wife is a mother, sister, daughter, friend, teacher all rolled into one. She is capable of wearing any hat as the situation demands. That is why the role of a woman as wife is so unique. Now the problem here is the maid questioning why her son’s wife is not able to control him and you questioning the maid what she was doing with her son for 28 years. Both of them have been rendered helpless by the patriarchal society. Male hegemony has to be passed on to successive generations so the nurturing environment for boys are created appropriately, be it at home or outside. They grow up seeing women subjugated and silent so they never really understand how much women are suffering in their minds. This has again got to do with our evolution. Men were responsible for hunting for food and getting wood from the forests back in our cave dwelling days. Nothing was more important than the instincts to survive at all costs and the biggest enemies to survival instincts are empathy and compassion. In male dominated households there is no place for empathy or compassion even now. This is why men don’t like to be mothered by their wives and at times even by their mothers.

Now there is a flip side to all of this as well. Strong mothers can either make boys subjugated to them or make them despise women when they grow up. I have lived with an extremely autocratic grandmother for 34 years of my life. I was not supposed to go out and play, no going out without reason and absolute no to talking to people outside. When people come home I was not supposed to sit with them. I was only supposed to answer their questions and asking questions back especially to older people was a sin for which I would burn in hell. I had to back at home or where I stay before it becomes dark no matter where in the world I was. One day, I was late coming back from college because of an extra hour of class and the first thing I got when I came back home was sound thrashing from her with a long fat stick. This was at a time when there were no mobile phones. But somehow I never resented any of this because I realised her love for me very early in life and when I left home to work, I started loving the discipline I have in my life when the entire world around me was going haywire.

Either the maid’s son has to grow a better sense of judgement and understanding about himself and life or he has to go willingly against his male hegemonistic roots and start lending his mind and ears to his mother or wife or both. Till then they can both continue and enjoy playing the you-me (“tu tu main main”) game all they want.