Sadhguru’s Huffington Post piece from last week, If the Feminine Ruled This Planet, Life Would Be About Living, really struck a chord with me. Firstly, a caveat:

When I say feminine, I am not talking about it in terms of male-female; I am talking about it in terms of masculine-feminine.

Yes, but women certainly are implicated. The feminine is under threat, not just by patriarchy and social norms, but from women ourselves. We are not choosing to speak out against the systems which suppress the feminine.

So today, there is a danger that the female is giving up the feminine because survival has once again become the dominant factor. Survival has been pushed up to a demanding scale like never before. In earlier times, survival meant just gathering the day’s food. But today, survival means a BMW, the latest technological gadgets for your children, a summer home, etc. That is very challenging. So as this happens, as the demand for this type of life increases, there will ultimately be no room for the feminine to find any place in society.

There is so much pressure on women to compete like men in the workplace, and then still maintain the household. When I was growing up, my mom worked, but I had friends whose moms were housewives and I envied them. However, nowadays it is a rare luxury if families can afford to have a stay-at-home mom.

So something needs to happen for the feminine to flower within each human being. The feminine should be nurtured right from the start. As many children go into science and technology, the same number should also go into music, art, philosophy and literature. This must happen. If this does not happen, there will be no room for the feminine in the world. So celebrating the feminine is very essential. It is not about “woman,” but rather the “feminine.”

I struggled with the division of disciplines as I was younger. I enjoyed most of the subjects, but found math really challenging. I longed to pursue music, dance, and theater, but it was difficult to accommodate everything. When it came to college and professional choices, it was obvious that intuitive, artistic pursuits could only serve as hobbies, whereas my career would have to be based in the logical aspects of life. A lot of feminist research has been about quantifying the “care economy,” and calls for better remuneration of the jobs that women typically fill.

The very nature of this continual quest for survival is masculine. The masculine is always about conquering something. The feminine is not about conquest. The feminine is about flowering, about relaxing, about living – not about getting. So what’s needed is a shift. If that shift does not happen, we will exhaust the planet too fast. If the feminine ruled this planet, there would be no ecological problems because it would not be one mindless, endless conquest – it would be about living.

What do you prefer: conquering or relaxing?

Not all of Jaipur looks like this...

Recently, I keep starting out my posts with numbers. Perhaps it helps me to establish the landmarks, to measure my success on this uncharted path. For me, these three years are the longest ever time that I’ve been settled in one place since I graduated from high school in 1999. I’m discounting the four years of college because I moved a lot from year to year.

True, I haven’t been in Jaipur for three years straight, either. I have left for at least 2 months every year to visit family, and last year I was hardly home since I spent almost half the time at the ashram or travelling. It’s probably the only way I could’ve survived.

Nonetheless, three years with my stuff in the same apartment, with or without me. Three years of having Jaipur as home base, ready for me when I return. Three year of having pigeons as my closest neighbors.

It was in April 2007 that we came here. I want to be able to say something very insightful about my experience here, a neatly packaged byte of wisdom. But in my stupor of disbelief that I’ve made it here this long, I’m struggling to make much out of it.

Actually, perhaps the real motivating force behind writing this post, behind even the realization itself that I have been here for that long, is that we are most probably leaving Jaipur. I hesitate to give more details because that deserves its own post. But the impending departure certainly has made me recognize how settled I’ve become here, and dare I say it? Attached.

To be honest, I can’t think of things off the top of my head that I particularly like about this place, but to do Jaipur some justice, I will put some effort in and make a list:

1. Central Park
2. seeing Nahargarh Fort from my window

Ok, the list idea is pointless. It’s sounding horribly negative, which has nothing to do with Jaipur in itself–it’s more to do with my own perspective and judgements.

While now I can say that I’m in a positive frame of mind, much of my time here has not been spent in that way. Furthermore, I can say that I’ve come to terms with my previous negativity, and have reached more of a state of acceptance of life, of being here, all the pros and cons included. It’s been a sacrifice, but has held certain advantages. They’ve pretty much cancelled each other out.

Pros include low cost of living, nice apartment, being close to in-laws, being close to Delhi. Cons: difficulty in going out (weather & logistics combined), weather, lack of social circle, weather, being close to in-laws, weather…

Dear Jaipur, you’re too hot and I can’t think properly. You’ve made life difficult for me, but I forgive you.

For my dissertation at LSE, I wrote about a UNICEF project for girl’s education and questioned its assumption that education was automatically empowering. A contact of mine currently at the LSE, Layla, has posted some very interesting research–conducted by the LSE, no less–that again brings these questions to my mind:  Cleverest women are the heaviest drinkers

Those with degrees are almost twice as likely to drink daily, and they are also more likely to admit to having a drinking problem.

“Reasons for the positive association of education and drinking behaviours may include: a more intensive social life that encourages alcohol intake; a greater engagement into traditionally male spheres of life, a greater social acceptability of alcohol use and abuse; more exposure to alcohol use during formative years; and greater postponement of childbearing and its responsibilities among the better educated,” says the report.

The article doesn’t mention stress–and that alcohol happens to be society’s most acceptable and easiest available antidote. What would be helpful to look at is how women’s involvement in “traditionally male spheres of life” is inherently stressful; even more helpful would be examining methods to eliminate stress so that this kind of abuse need not happen.

Granted, this research is from the UK with notoriously high rates of alcohol consumption. But still, it’s quite tragic to think that the most educated and qualified women are wasting their potential by getting sloshed.

Is it because they cannot handle the pressure of being in such high positions in society and conforming to roles with which they are not comfortable? Is inebriation a more empowering alternative?

Chennai is already facing chronic water problems with fast depleting surface and ground water sources. This event is organized to ignite awareness among all citizens to make everyone save, recycle and reuse water. A 6km Walk/Run from Besant Nagar beach (Elliot’s Beach) through adjoining roads, highlights the fact that 6km is the average distance many women and children in the world walk every day to secure the minimum requirement of water for their families.

After the walk, live beats from ‘Sounds of Isha’ and other renowned artists will entertain participants on the Beach–Webstream available, check for details!

Someone is rejecting me, Someone is dying for me… Some work is falling apart, Some work is coming together… Simultaneously, the dualities of life are manifesting around me… And neither is affecting me… Inside I am joyful regardless of what is happening… What I want or what I don’t want… It matters not… For my inner climate is independent of outer events, circumstances and people… Ah, everyone should do Isha… Ah, everyone should be as fortunate as me to have a Master like I do…

It matters not if people love me or hate me, It matters not if I get what I want or I don’t, It matters not if life is good or bad… I wonder with wonder, how am I becoming like this! Such tremendous Grace is being showered on me… I am watching the play of life like a spectator, playing my role as an actor on the stage of life, yet moving away from identification with the roles, faster and faster…

Some new research featured in the NYT on the gender gap contends counterintuitively that more traditional societies have smaller gender differences than modern ones.

For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the variation is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.

These findings are so counterintuitive that some researchers have argued they must be because of cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But after crunching new data from 40,000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level external barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being revived.

The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

Utterly fascinating. While I’m loathe to just take the latest study at face value, it certainly is thought-provoking–especially the bit about how the men differ. I can’t help but think of the white man’s burden: how the imperialists portrayed the colonised men as alternatively ‘effeminate’ (in India) or ‘lazy, savage beasts’ in Africa. Yet this research could be interpreted as saying that the imperialists were the brutes (as indeed I think they were)!

Personality is more complicated than height, of course, and Dr. Schmitt suggests it’s affected by not just the physical but also the social stresses in traditional agricultural societies. These villagers have had to adapt their personalities to rules, hierarchies and gender roles more constraining than those in modern Western countries — or in clans of hunter-gatherers.

“Humanity’s jaunt into monotheism, agriculturally based economies and the monopolization of power and resources by a few men was ‘unnatural’ in many ways,” Dr. Schmitt says, alluding to evidence that hunter-gatherers were relatively egalitarian. “In some ways modern progressive cultures are returning us psychologically to our hunter-gatherer roots,” he argues. “That means high sociopolitical gender equality over all, but with men and women expressing predisposed interests in different domains. Removing the stresses of traditional agricultural societies could allow men’s, and to a lesser extent women’s, more ‘natural’ personality traits to emerge.”

I can definitely agree that our current state of civilization is unnatural, but I guess I have a hard time seeing how ‘modern progressive cultures are returning us psychologically to our hunter-gatherer roots’. Well, certainly the jury’s out on any hard and fast conclusions, but I like the way the article finishes:

Things could get confusing if the personality gap widens further as the sexes become equal. But then, maybe it was that allure of the mysterious other that kept Mars and Venus together so long on the savanna.

Allure indeed…

For more, see Broadsheet’s take.

“A patriarchal ethos dominates both the societies, American and Indian, but they operate in different ways. In India, despite the patriarchal ethos, powerful women leaders have emerged,” says political scientist Imtiaz Ahmed.

The most famous examples are BSP chief Mayawati and AIADMK head Jayalalitha. Both emerged from the shadow of iconic godfathers, to establish themselves as leaders with grassroots support.

It is not enough to be someone’s wife, sister or mistress in Indian politics. Neerja Gopal Jayal, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s centre of law and governance points out that “Even at the panchayat level, we have had women from the member families being nominated. But the first time, patronage may work but not the second time. And this is true at the national level too.”

I myself have often wondered how, especially in the super-conservative state of Rajasthan, female leaders have established themselves. (See today’s article about Sonia Gandhi criticizing “the corrupt and inefficient [Vasundhara Raje] government.”)

Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research says, “What is unique to India, is the fact that women have the space to grow as leaders. Maybe, it has to do with our cultural ethos, where women are worshipped as goddesses.’’

I’m not so sure about the goddess worship argument, considering the low status of the majority of women; I think it could be more likely the ethos of ‘Mother India’ and the self-sacrificing stereotype of mothers/women.

Besides the horrible way this article refers to the actresses, I just wanted to highlight that two upcoming films will be featuring women on motorcycles, and here’s what they have to say about it:

“Riding a bike was liberating. It was something I always wanted to do — it’s feminine, fiesty and fun. The thrill of speeding and the wind gushing in your face is a freedom of a different level,” says Minissha. She’s peeved that Hindi films don’t show women riding heavy bikes. But Kareena Kapoor isn’t complaining… [and] told BT, “It was a great experience.”

Minissha now wants to do more of such riding. “In the western world, not only are women truck, bus and taxi drivers, but a lot of them ride heavy bikes for pleasure. From Pamela Anderson to Halle Berry to Charlize Theron, they have all shown their biker attitude on the silver screen. Why shouldn’t Indian women push their speed limits!”

See my longer post on women riding motorbikes.

The O-zone on Sunday covered the new trend among 20-30 something women, most of whom are still single, going all out for one-night stands and no strings attached.

Sexcapades of young women, their casual attitude towards flings and open declaration that sex is just a physical need like any other, lead one to wonder how this new-found sexual freedom affects society and in particular, matrimony.

A good enough opening, but the article actually emphasised women’s personal empowerment more than any larger social impact. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, there was little analysis of traditional gender roles. For example,

“I get a great sense of liberation from being able to just get up in the morning, put on my clothes and walk away without any emotional baggage or need for commitment.”

Sounds like a man, some would say. Yes, that’s exactly what seems to have happened. Women have joined the guys in their uninhibited, no-responsibility nocturnal romps. And, much to the delight of the men, they come to them without baggage — no clinging, no tears, no emotional breakdowns and above all, no demands to declare everlasting love and attachment. In fact, the new woman seems to run away as fast as any man from the ‘C’ word — commitment.

Even though some young women may still be having fun while they still can, there’s still an understanding that at the end of it all, they’ll eventually ’settle down’ and become good wives.

The freedom brought about by stepping out of home (very often, small towns), financial independence and jobs that entail wide travel, is a heady one. Marriage, whatever said and done, does bring with it restrictions that girls wish to push off as far as possible. So these young girls are happy being in relationships that mean good fun and sex, but no settling down. That can come later, it seems. As a young IT professional from Mumbai confesses, “I have asked my parents to start looking for a match for me. I’ve had my fun, gone through lots of relationships and want to settle down now.”

The article briefly touched upon Indian ‘morality’, saying that those who talk about it

find themselves pretty marginalised today. There is a fairly widespread tolerance for, if not acceptance of, women’s need for fun. Moral strictures and codes of conduct sound not just outdated, but anachronistic. Enough that even those who mouth them question their validity!

This kind of sweeping generalisation gets to me. BJP (India’s conservative party), marginalised? Widespread tolerance for women’s fun needs? Yes, they may be anachronistic, but the strictures and codes are still very much the norm for the majority of women in India. It is the tiniest of minorities of women, in India’s biggest cities, that can even think of enjoying the kind of freedoms that this article claims to be the privilege of the many.

Nonetheless, this group of women may be rather numerically large, even if not a significant proportion of the greater population. And regardless, the mere fact of a shifting pattern of relationships among certain women must be cause for celebration, in that they are going against the tide and trying out different arrangements for themselves. That too, in a county where kissing in public is still taboo. (There was another article on “Unkissable Indians,” how foreigners doing business here have been warned to keep their cheeks to themselves.) I just hope they are using protection…

Interestingly, on the front page of the TimesLife! section was an article called “Casual Casanovas,” featuring the trend among men to take numerous lovers. Yet the articles seem to speak over one another.

The Washington Post had an in-depth piece on Indian women’s status. It starts off discussing ‘eve-teasing’, i.e. harrassment, but then delves into the whole range of issues from dowry to sex-selective abortion:

For India’s middle-class urban women, the past decade has brought unprecedented opportunities to advance in a social order long dominated by men. But a powerful male backlash has accompanied the women’s revolution, an upwelling of resentment that has expressed itself in sexual violence and harassment.

At the same time, however, the number of reported instances of domestic violence, rape and dowry killings is spiking in South Asian cities, according to women’s groups, demographers and sociologists.

Violence against women is the fastest-growing crime in India, a recent study concluded. Every 26 minutes a woman is molested, every 34 minutes a rape takes place, and every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped, according to the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau.

Novellist and commentator Shobhaa De is quoted as saying:

“The latest statistics are terrifying. And it clearly points to male rage. Underneath our incredible social change, the Indian male is experiencing nothing short of a psychological frenzy.”

The article highlights the Smile Foundation for its attempts to address the issues through “self-respect and self-esteem sessions” and street theater.

It’s worth noting that while India ranks fifth highest in reported rapes, the United States ranks highest in the world. Yet I don’t think an article discussing gender dynamics in the US is likely to be covered by the WashPo in a similar manner.