Things I learned as faculty: Unconscious bias

As faculty, I have learned to be more cognizant of unconscious bias, how people view me and what’s going on around me. Sometimes, in a room full of people who do not know me, some assume that I am a student. This has happened at conferences and board meetings. In the same room, some people will talk to other faculty as faculty but ask me what year of my PhD program I am in.

It is tempting to get flattered and think that I look young, and hence the misunderstanding. However, this has nothing got to do with age. Many people are subconsciously primed to think of women and minorities as holding lower positions. White faculty, brown student. Male faculty, female student. Male doctor, female nurse. People are not evil but they just do not know any better.

If it was about age, they would assume I am young faculty, not an older student. I always use this as a teachable moment for my minority students. I sense those few seconds of discomfort when I calmly tell them that I am not a student. However, I do not take my position for granted.

For example, I never wear jeans and informal clothes to work. I am always in semi-formals or formals. I don’t care whether people think I am a student because those are their biases to deal with. However, I am immensely aware of the responsibility my position brings, not just for me, but for others who are training to be faculty. My colleague next door will wear denims, sports jacket and running shoes and no one will flip an eyelid. However, I cannot assume that I will be treated like a faculty if I wore the same kind of clothes. We do not live in an ideal world. We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we negotiate.

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No kidding

I overheard two women in a conversation, telling each other how many training sessions they have done over the summer. “Two,” said each. Then, one of them added, “Person so-and-so has done nine.” She paused briefly before adding, “She has no children, she has all the time to travel for these trainings.”

I flinched at the multiple assumptions being made here, not to mention the snarky, sarcastic tone. How many times have people assumed that I will do something because I do not have children? How many times have people seen me neck-deep in work and flippantly attributed it to childlessness? I work seven days a week, I go to work on the weekends too, and I have no hesitation or guilt about that. When people are traveling or entertaining friends, I spend my weekend conducting research. I do it because I treat my work as a passion, as my identity, and not as a 9-to-5 engagement. I take ownership of my work, treat my work as a means to a better, independent and intellectual lifestyle. I watched exactly one movie at a theater last year, I have not made any friends in the new city, and I am okay with that (I have other things to do with my time now). I don’t put in the extra hours merely because I do not have children. I could be pursuing a dozen different things, including sleeping, if I did not feel so strongly about my work.

I have often witnessed people looking down on others who haven’t prioritized procreation as their vocation. I pick on these implicit biases a little better than the next person, having been at the receiving end of it many times. Notice how an ambitious woman will be shamed because she has no children (often by other women), but not an ambitious man. A man who undertook nine trainings in a summer, children or no children, will be revered, treated as a role model, and depicted as an exemplary professional. Only a woman is a childless freak if she has enough energy to pursue the same amount of work.

There is more to observe and learn from the world around us than there is from fictitious, unrealistic movies. See if your married friends who once hung out with you are treating you differently, do not invite you home anymore, but are still hanging out with other married friends. You need to get better friends in that case. See how advertisements around you are sharing implicit messages about only one kind of life as an ideal, happy life, the one where you have a spouse, a pet and multiple children. Insurance ads. Home ads. Toothpaste ads will often show large, happy families smiling together, and so will cooking oil ads (with often the woman cooking). It looks like single people do not brush their teeth and do not cook for themselves. My two cents- don’t put your money where you are being marginalized.

See if your workplace is giving you job duties they are not giving your peers who have families. See if you are repeatedly being made a victim of micro aggression. When your boss asks you to stay in office till 9 pm, but not your peer who has children, there is a problem. When you are asked to travel at odd hours but your peers are not, you need to step back and voice your concerns. It is easy to assume that women who do not have children have all the time in the world and are hence available to take on extra responsibility at work (often without adequate compensation). Keep your eyes and ears open for such discrimination. You do not owe anyone an explanation about how you spend your time at home, why you spend your weekends working (or not working), or how lucky you are to have all the extra time in the world (an ill-conceived assumption at the least). You could be caring for the elderly, you could be grappling with a personal setback, and even if you are not, you do not owe anyone an explanation.

If people are talking about you in a different, derogatory way because you do not have children (or telling you that you will not understand because you do not have a child), if people at work are taking liberties and giving you extra work at odd hours because you do not have children, if your friends are making less of you or your interests because you do not have children, we have a problem.

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50 shades of patriarchy

There is a uniformed cop at the gate of CCU (Kolkata's international airport) who checks each person's passport and airplane ticket before letting them inside the airport. Since my father is standing ahead of me, the cop checks my father's passport and ticket first and nods an approval. Then the cop looks at my passport and ticket, looks visibly confused for a few seconds, looks at my father and then me, and turns around again and hands my passport to my father. In a split second, I know exactly what is happening. I grab my passport back from my father and say loud enough for the cop to hear, "My passport needs to be with me, not anyone else."

I wonder what you will call it. My father thought that it was misjudgment and confusion on the cop's part. Same last name and same destination is usually for married partners (especially if the destination is Bangkok), but I am not sure one gets to see many father-daughter duos headed there (without a mother or a son-in-law in picture). However, I am convinced that if this scenario was randomly repeated, say, a thousand times, one would observe a binary trend one could confidently predict given the power of numbers. That trend is not confusion or misjudgment, as my father thinks. It is called patriarchy. It happens when I take my father to a vacation, yet my passport is handed back to him because he is assumed to be my caregiver. It happens when I treat a male friend to lunch, yet the waiter comes and confidently hands over the check/bill to my male friend.

Patriarchy is not necessarily always practiced by men. This cop happened to be a woman. 

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When success sucks

A recent conversion with a colleague hinged on women in academia who are single. Although this conversation was based on anecdotal evidence, I would love to collect data to examine some evidence-based trends someday.

Back to the conversation, we felt that there are far more single women than men in academia- women who have faculty or non-faculty careers, women who are highly educated. In the US, I see so many women academics roughly my age who are single. Conversations with more men (those who are highly educated as well) confirm what some of them want- women with jobs but not necessarily careers, women who will have the mindset to shift cities or countries or continents or careers. That is why, perhaps, I see so many Indian men making their annual pilgrimage to get married to someone living in India, but the reverse is so rare- a guy moving with the uncertainty that he may or may not become gainfully employed in the US right away. Count the number of women you know who got married and hence moved to the US, and the number of men who did the same. Not to mention that we shared sad, yet funny stories about women who have been called "too educated," "too independent," "too liberal," and "too ambitious." The same traits like ambition, independence, and education that make men attractive may not have the same magic effect on women. Then again, we are speaking anecdotally here, and trends always have outliers. So for every ten or hundred women who have experienced similar things, one of them will always say that the world is not as bad as we think and they did not have any problems finding their suitable boy or having to choose between a suitable degree and a suitable boy.

This reminded me of a fictitious short story I had written sometime back.

The matrimonial ad said- “PhD, research professor, based in the US.”

“How many responded?” she asked.

“Three hundred,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“How many responded?” he asked.

“Three,” she said. “A schizophrenic, an unemployed man, and you.”

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Why am I not playing the “fabulous woman” tag either

A few days back, there was a lot of hullabaloo when I questioned women nominating each other to rise up to the challenge ofmotherhood and post their pictures. Thinking that two wrongs can make a right, someone with a lower IQ started this even more disturbing chain of nominating each other who are proud to be fabulous women. Here, take a look:

“I have been nominated to post a picture that makes me happy/proud to be a woman... I'm going to tag the ladies that I think are fabulous, and who do not need to be a mom or a wife or a daughter necessarily, to post a happy/proud pic of their own. If I've tagged you as one of these awesome women, copy the text and paste it to your wall with a picture, and tag more ladies who can hold their own, without any labels!!!”

Now this is what I find so wrong about this post other than the three exclamation marks, there periods and typos (picture is not pic), and the fact that you claim “without any labels” although you ARE labeling yourself happy/proud/fabulous/awesome/lady in these lines.

I don’t do these tags because I am not considered as fabulous [insert noun of your choice] by most women. Neither married, nor a grandmother or mother, nor a wife or even a pet owner, most women consider me a freak, someone not in their league. And why wouldn’t they? I am in my thirties and still single by choice. I spend my free time traveling the world or watching air crash investigation videos. I live in hostels during my travels. I try to avoid Indian potluck parties, and show no interest in bonding with women who cannot hold a conversation beyond the prices of lentils at different Indian stores or an impending visit of in-laws in summer. I am not a part of any makeup group where you post (scary) close-up pictures of all the makeup you were wearing when you went to do that weekly grocery chore. I don’t pose wearing sarees and standing in a group like the choo choo train, exactly at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground, showing shiny straightened hair and perfect dentition. I have nothing to contribute to a conversation about diapers, Gerber, or how scary it is to drive a car. Most Indian women of my generation wouldn’t even consider inviting me home, let alone tagging me in any of these posts. However, there are more important reasons.

I see these tags and labels as being not only offensive, vain, narcissist, and divisive, but also dangerous. A combination of two words often has more meaning than the simple addition of these two words. For example, to call myself fabulous is something (honest, maybe vain at the most). To call myself a woman is a truth. But when I call myself a “fabulous woman”, it has many underlying layers of meaning. Fabulous compared to whom? Other women whom I am calling less fabulous? Or a fabulous woman, compared to a fabulous man? And what exactly have I done to deserve this label? Even if I was fabulous, shouldn’t others be the one calling me that?

Now think about this. What if men started a similar chain of posts, tagging each other as fabulous and posting their pictures? What if they started describing why they are fabulous? It will not be long before someone is going to call on them, labeling them sexist (even though they never posted anything sexist). Sexism isn’t always about men propagating it and women being at the receiving end. I find this post on Facebook equally sexist. If I was a man writing this blog post, I would be instantly labelled a sexist. 

In principle, I usually post stuff that is either informative or entertaining for others. This kind of post is neither. It is not like those “ten books I read” or “twenty movies I loved” tags, which at least is informative to some. It could be vaguely entertaining for the self, but not for others. Can you tell us why do you consider yourself a fabulous woman? Have you overcome a disability? Saved someone from drowning? Climbed a mountain? Donated for a cause recently? How exactly is the narcissistic picture you just posted portraying the legacy of a fabulous woman? To call oneself fabulous (or fabulous human) is something, but the tag of a fabulous woman comes with even more accountability. And by the way, what is the credibility of the woman who just tagged you (and herself) as being fabulous? What is her claim to fame?

Would you be okay sharing stories from your life you are not very proud of? Like maybe when you hurt someone or judged someone? Would you be willing to own up to those stories? Stories of glamour and glitter don’t make you fabulous. Stories of you being first in class don’t make you fabulous unless you are willing to share stories of the times you failed. Stories of you flaunting your shiny new car don’t make you fabulous, unless you are willing to share a story of about your shortcomings. And even if you did those, let others be the judge of whether you are great or not.

You can argue that these are innocuous posts that do not mean much. For me, if you post something on social media, it comes with a lot of responsibility. Be accountable for the words you write. Take responsibility for the messages you give and the energy you bring in to a conversation. Nothing you post on social media is innocuous or without a message. It shows who you are, and what your values are (much more than your claims of who you are). I find it intriguing that men never participate in such posts (unless it is a challenge where they have to pour a bucket of ice on them in the freezing cold). It’s women who tend to propagate such divisive messages. Married versus single. Mother versus non-mother. Awesome versus not-awesome. And women versus men.

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Othering the non-mother and the lesser-mother

Update: Another post I wrote on this.

“Accepting the motherhood dare. I was nominated to publish a picture that makes me happy to be a mom. I am going to tag a few friends who I think are fabulous mothers and can rise to the challenge of publishing a picture of their own.”

I find the wordings of this post utterly disturbing. I repeat, I am talking about the wording of the post, and not about the concept of posting pictures of your children in general. I enjoy seeing the pictures of (most of) your children on Facebook, until you get to an obsessive point. Some of you, I do not know and do not care much. Most of you are my friends, and I feel happy. I even “Like” and of late, “Love” some of those pictures.

However, I find the above “motherhood dare” game disturbing at many levels. When I first saw a few women chip in, I shrugged it off as one of those low-IQ-but-innocuous chain posts on Facebook. Posting the color of your bra, the size of your shoe, we have seen it all. However, this post grew viral in no time, and everyone and their aunt were suddenly rising to the challenge (whatever that meant). I found a well-written article that mirrored my thoughts. So I posted it on my wall, asking what exactly was challenging about publishing pictures (that you do anyway), and what exactly was the “dare” part of it? Many got angry. Women who never write on my wall started defending themselves. Some who have not interacted with me in the last ten years “Like”d the posts of others defending themselves. Clearly, I had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

To paraphrase some of the conversation (since I cannot directly quote people without their consent), women asked what is wrong with posting motherhood pictures when people were posting pictures of their life events anyway. Everyone refused to see that I had problems with using words like “dare” and “challenge”. I had recently met a Mexican immigrant, a single mom of two who worked four jobs and earned meager wages cleaning people’s homes and toilets. If she fell sick, there would be no money coming. To me, that is a challenge. I recently met an eminent professor, a stalwart in her field, who had to bring up a child while being a graduate student, TAing three courses and doing full-time research. She had no help from parents and one day, she passed out in the parking lot out of sheer exhaustion. That to me is a motherhood challenge. I know a parent whose newborn was secretly taken away from them because the partner did not get along with them and decided that they will no longer have a role to play in their child’s life. The parent has been fighting for their rights. To me, that is a challenge. A fellow blogger has had the most difficult birth that I have known of, fighting against all the odds to keep their premature newborn safe and healthy. I know women who want children, but have not been able to conceive. That is a challenge.

To me, my own life choices are somewhat of a challenge. I wish to have children, but have never had a stable job, have been working in yearly contracts for the past several years, did not find a partner whose intellect complements mine, a person who can look beyond the money he makes and the model of the car he drives, and refused to get hitched to anyone just to get some stability and security. I know that I am running against time, and I may not have a child in this process of getting set up in life. But I do not earn enough right now to raise a child on my own, and I have decided to stay single until I find someone who believes in an equitable relationship and makes me feel that we are worthy of being with each other. There are mothers who are alone and working very hard to make ends meet. And then, there are women who want to be mothers, but cannot be due to many reasons. To think of some elite, privileged, smug women who have access to all the basic needs, who are social media savvy and posting their pictures as a challenge, a dare, seemed somewhat ridiculous, insulting, and marginalizing. Marginalizing not only to the non-mothers, but to the lesser-mothers. It’s like welcoming some people to an elite club and telling the rest that you do not belong here. As I reflected on my post and the angry comments it instigated, a few things came to mind:

1. My biggest question was, “So what exactly was so challenging and daring about this post? Did you overcome a disability? Climb Mount Everest perhaps? And when you handpick some of the so called “great moms” according to you, aren’t you marginalizing the “lesser moms”? Why did most people think I was making a personal attack against all the mothers of the world, and to the concept of motherhood in general? What might have led to such wide discrepancy in understanding?

2. Why were women writing on my wall, dissing me and defending themselves? While they posted pictures on their walls, I posted my thoughts on my wall. I never questioned them or commented on their posts. They did, to me, on my wall. Isn’t that intolerance towards alternate-opinions? Not only do you do things you assume correct, but argue and shut people who are differing in their own spaces?

3. I have heard so many women say, “Motherhood makes me complete.” Why haven’t I heard the same thing being said by men, that fatherhood makes you complete? And why don’t women (or men) say, “My job makes me complete. My degrees make me complete. My parents make me complete. My dog makes me complete.” and so on? Of course this is a general question, a reflection, and not a criticism. How can any one thing make you complete and the lack of it make you incomplete?

I had looked forwarded to some constructive comments and reflections. Something more that “You are wrong and you need to feel happy for mothers just like we feel happy for you when you visit a new country or get a new job.” None came. What came were lame, weak explanations something on the lines of, “We are modern day women. We do not judge you. It’s the older generation that did. Our generation is very progressive.” Some more sweeping generalizations on the lines of “these things never happen in our generation.” Perhaps this is what blind racism or blind casteism looks like. To totally not acknowledge that racism and casteism still exist.

Interestingly, women from our generation give me a lot of flak about my life choices, and these are women roughly my age. When I finished a PhD, they said, “Get married now, and your life will be complete.” When I found a new position and moved continents, they said the same. It is like something was always amiss according to them. With every milestone I reached, the need to be coupled to feel complete became even more profound. And the judgment came too. Big time. “This is abnormal. How long can you stay alone? Everyone needs someone. How will you have children?” People assumed things about me, that I am alone and lonely and unhappy. The discrimination was always there. Unmarried or childless women are still treated as second class citizens by our own clan. This, I speak from personal experience. 

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The traveler auntie

G’s mom us really cool. Smart, independent, vocal, no-nonsense. The kind who will love her family to death, but not be a doormat. 

We were once traveling in a crowded bus when a guy started to get naughty with me. She sensed it even without me telling her anything, and literally stared him down, coming and standing between us. She didn't say a word, just used her height to her advantage (she is a good few inches taller than I am), and scared that guy away with her overpowering presence. I have been calling her Chachi 420 ever since. When I had planned my first cross-country road trip from WA to VA, everyone asked me not to, alone woman and all that. She was the only one who said that she wants to come with me. She is as likely to go on a road trip with you as spend hours cooking up a storm for you, or even pick a stick and beat the crap out of people who might try to trouble you. 

When G and the kids (Baby Kalyani and Baby D) were visiting her in India, I was expecting that she might be slaving away all day, cooking their favorite things and giving them the same celebrity status my mom gives me. When I visit home, I literally do not move a finger. Things just keep coming to me. I know that it is not right, but I still do it. However, I was informed otherwise.

Looks like G is in charge of the household now, while aunt has gone on a trip. Not some family trip, or a visit to the family deity or a day trip. She has taken off to explore a part of India for a few days with her school buddies. 

I'd love to be like her when I am her age. 

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Some food (and clothes) for thought

I have never been a more curious spectator of the sartorial idiosyncrasies of mommies of a certain demography living in the west, a self-appointed, judgmental vigilante in no way though. Now if you are a mommy whose dressing doesn't stand out when you go to drop your kids to school or the school bus, good for you! Please don't go protesting and shouting, "I don't! I don't! How could you write about me?" here. Really, you are not who I am thinking about. I am merely sharing my observations about mothers of the other kind. 

A month well-spent dropping and picking up the little ones to and from school every day, G's kids actually, and I consistently watched so many come to drop their kids off in their nightclothes. Mostly nightclothes of the desi kind, with a hint of innovation thrown around. Like, a nightie with a dupatta around the neck. Or a pajama I would never wear outside home. As if a dupatta makes the nightie and the pajama more official, almost as if it was never a nightie or a pajama in the first place, but something more formal like a business suit. 

At first, I discarded it as a figment of my imagination. I am sure that the nightie-wearers I see everyday are no lesser mortals; they are entrepreneurs and networkers. They are independent women who drive their Hondas and Toyotas to drop their kids. They might even be frequenting pubs and shaking a leg at night clubs. Yet early in the morning, in the freezing cold, the nightie or the pajama is omnipresent, peeking from the coats and jackets. With the dupatta of course.

Perhaps this is a strange form of liberation for the immigrant woman trying to fit in a western country, or a self-proclaimed liberation from the bondage of being forced to wear something in order to blend in. Perhaps the desire to be the 5% located around the two tails of that "Normal Distribution Curve". Perhaps a sartorial compromise between the past homeland and the current homeland, a thin thread of nostalgia connecting the two. I imagine a dozen floral-printed nighties bought from Calcutta or some place in Chennai (two randomly picked cities) making their way across the Pacific Ocean as a part of a wedding trousseau. As a curious spectator trying to read people's minds, I wonder if it is sheer nostalgia, old habits, laziness, or rebellion to stand out.

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Nightie, the All Mighty

I have never been a more curious spectator of the sartorial idiosyncrasies of the women living in our community in Calcutta, the city where my parents now live. I do not live in Calcutta anymore, not since the last six years, and this is perhaps why little things that did not stand out earlier tend to do so. I am an outsider now. I see things that I had never noticed before. Let us take the nightie, for example. I have never seen something that has popularized itself more than the nightie has. The women of the extended family still remember my dida (grandmother) for her unconventional modernism. Dida has been gone for 13 years (maybe more), and is more of a distant memory for me. She would be close to ninety if she was alive today. Every female acquaintance of hers remembers her for, no, not her unconventional outlook or her lack of prejudices as a sign of modernity, but the fact that she owned and wore nighties. Yes, I have distant memories of that too, of the time when I was five years old. Dida would take a shower late at night, after finishing the chores, organizing food in the fridge and cleaning up the kitchen, and emerge in her green and white nightie, smelling of Boroline and Cuticura talcum powder. She would switch on the table lamp by the bedside, take out her collection of books and magazines, and read for the next few hours until I hugged her and fell asleep. Now when I talk about my dida, an epitome of a modern woman in the family, I am talking of no flimsy sheer Victorian secret. Victorian it was, covering her from head to toe, full sleeves and a high neckline. There were no laces, frills, or buttons, but a pair of strong fasteners securing the nightie, which was pure heavy cotton, the stuff you use to make heavy curtains at home. You could not see a square inch of bare skin below the throat, even if you tried to. The nightie was a companion for a few hours at night, emerging from her wardrobe much after everyone fell asleep, and vanishing much before anyone else woke up. Every morning when I woke up before seven for school, she would be back in her sari, preparing for the morning puja. Yet she was a modern woman, as the women of the extended family teased her, perhaps with a mix of jealousy and hypocrisy in their voices. The nightie was her id to modernism.

            The sight of the nightie is so common during my annual visits to Calcutta these days, but sadly, nothing like the sight my dida made, reading by her night lamp, her face glowing in the soft yellow, a nightly sight, almost a figment of my imagination because I have never ever seen her in a nightie in broad daylight. My parents live in a community interspersed with buildings five stories high, and during summery evenings, it is a common sight watching women, mostly elderly, prancing around in the terrace of other apartments wearing a nightie. They are seen doing every possible activity- taking evening walks, drying the chilies and mangoes for pickles, haggling with food vendors and salesmen, socializing with other women from adjacent apartments, untangling knots of the nylon rope with frayed edges tied to a dirty little piece of bag, also known as the “bajaarer tholi” that holds the keys to the entrance door, or conversing with anyone who has some information about the missing maid. I am yet to see an elderly Bengali woman from Calcutta who does not own a few pairs of sleeveless nighties. She takes a shower during summery evenings, dabs a generous amount of talcum powder on her visible upper extremities, including the armpits, and takes a stroll on the terrace. Hanging lards from the biceps or an endowed physique have never been deterrents. The term nightie is a misnomer, for you can easily find women performing a good portion of their morning chores in nighties. The milkman brings milk, the maid arrives and leaves, the newspaper guy delivers newspapers, the salesmen continue with their unwanted solicitation, the mailman delivers mails, and random strangers ask for “dada” (usually the husband), to which they have to crane their necks out of the windows and iron railings of the balcony or the stairs from the fifth floor and scream, “dada barite nei” (Dada is not home). The nightie remains a faithful accompaniment, never leaving your side.

When the hemline is too low or the design perhaps a tad too modern, a dupatta, usually sheer and gauzy, is used as an accompaniment. I have seen so many women who feel no hesitation stepping out of the house, even as far as the “moodikhana’r dokan” or the “kirana” (a small shop in the locality selling groceries) for some potatoes and lentils, or venturing out to the nearby “mishtanno bhandar” (sweet shop) for some evening snacks of “shingara- kochuri”.  A dupatta makes the nightie more official, almost as if it was never a nightie in the first place, but something more formal like a business suit. Or a swim suit. For I have seen nighties with dupatta in pictures all the way from the beaches of Puri, Digha, Pondicherry, and the southern shores of the country. Honeymoons, wedding anniversaries, birthdays and threading ceremonies, you name it. The nightie wearers are no lesser mortals; they are entrepreneurs and social networkers. The owner of Jasmine Beauty Parlor (“we have no branches”) in our community is often seen threading, waxing, snipping, and giving orders to her subordinates wearing her deadly nightie-dupatta combination.

I do not know if they are women of the modern strata in Calcutta. I do not know if they frequent pubs or shake a leg in clubs. These mashimas and boudis do not go around giving driving directions to their chauffeurs, cocktail in hand. Yet this seems like a strange form of liberation for the middle class Bengali women, liberation from the bondage of wearing something strictly Indian, a compromise between the extreme westernization of the miniskirts and jeans and the eastern sari. When the mailman rang the bell one afternoon, I was about to get the door in my tee shirt and sweatpants (that barely reached my knees) when my mother instructed me to don a nightie on top of what I was wearing. Confused, I wondered how ridiculous that would look, when I realized that it was the obvious choice over the somewhat contour hugging fabric I was wearing. I never donned that ridiculous combination of a nightie over sweatpants, much to her consternation.

Living outside Calcutta for the last six years, I got used to seeing and wearing different kinds of nightwear, those that were restricted to the sleeping quarters and were not worn during conversations with the neighbor or the salesman. I was meeting my newly married ex-colleague, Mr. Basu, during a certain business trip to the bay area in California. I was a little lost in their parking lot, and Mrs. Basu, who had recently moved from Calcutta, kindly volunteered to step outside and show me the door. I was parking my car when I saw the silhouette of a newly married lady in her mid-twenties emerging, an unmistakable silhouette of someone wearing a nightie with a dupatta thrown in. I smiled to myself as I realized that I might have left Calcutta years ago, but Calcutta hasn’t left me yet. I imagined a dozen bandhni-printed nighties bought from Dakshinapan in south Calcutta making their way across the Pacific Ocean as a part of Mrs. Basu’s wedding trousseau. That was when I realized the power of the nightie, the almost all mighty. 

27 and Unmarried?

This is a work of f(r)iction, and should not be confused with the author’s intentions of documenting her subdued desires of getting hitched, or claiming that she is 27, when she is long past that age.

"27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Are you romantically challenged? Kuch gadbad hai kya? Aren’t most girls your age already married?"

You know what shaped my romantic conditioning while growing up. The fantasy world I created from reading hundreds of Mills & Boon (MB) romantic novels, and Harlequin romances. Crumpled yellow pages, a cover best hidden in a newspaper jacket. No matter how much I tried to look indifferent, the size of the book and the fervent way I skimmed through the yellow pages always gave away what I read. Yeah yeah we all know about “the lack of variety in plotlines and their inevitable happy endings”. So what?

The problem is- my imaginary world of romantic hunks sauntering half naked in towels became more real than my real world and the men I met there. In school and college when my friends were mate hunting, I drowned myself in books with these fantastic men, vicariously deriving my romantic stimulus from them. A decade later when my friends have found their mates, I have woken up to the realization that I am perhaps running a good 10 years behind schedule. I haven’t been able to find someone on my own, and the random men I talk to every weekend as a routine of this arranged marriage drill, barely live up to my expectations.

My Indian forefathers had turned in their graves when at 14 I was convinced I was marrying an Italian. To my understanding, all my fantasy men resided in Italy, Greece, and France. Brought up with middle class values and dozens of Mills & Boons hidden between my text books, I have always wondered why the fantasy men I read about were so different from the real men around me - lovers, non-lovers, ex-lovers, buddies, colleagues and the ones I talk to these days, hoping that I would end up marrying one of them. Why was it that the Kamal Kishores, the Venkat Rajans and the Obhrokanti Kumars never stood a chance to these Jakes, Lukes, and Nicks?

No prizes for guessing that the fiction writers had transported me to this imaginary world of men who didn’t exist in reality. But it didn’t make the fantasy men any less appealing. You know why? Because they are self made. Born with a silver spoon, yet a go-getter. Exceptionally tall, always towering and above 6 feet (something which Bengali men rarely are). My mother never really understood my need to tiptoe to the man I marry, and still makes me talk to these short men with the notion that “a good character and a secure job is more important than height”.

My MB men are always dark. Brooding. Broad chested. Very angry with life. It seems every woman wants to chain him down, though frankly, I don’t know why none of his flings ever made it to the altar. His charm and virility increases as an exponential function with age. Very devoted to his huge family of 4 generations residing somewhere in Italy. Usually Greek or Italian (but never Indian). He travels all around the world and he owns a chain of art galleries or Victoria’s secret stores. Drives Porsches and Ferraris. Sleeps in boxer shorts. Doesn’t snore or fart or scratch himself like a hairy porcupine. Well toned. No hanging pot bellies or a receding hairline. Never found shopping in Walmart, IKEA or Target. Unparalleled sartorial elegance. He doesn’t do menial jobs like – coding, writing software, or cloning animals in the lab.

Reality bites. I remember talking to a doctor as a part of my mate hunting routine. I placed him in the genre of medical romances where the doctor always fell for the nurse. Then I discovered that the man got his kicks describing gory details of what went in the operating rooms. He was too engaged in conversation to notice me cringe as he described the entire process of childbirth over a cup of coffee. Who did he think he was, Dr. Gregory House? I mean, for all my dreams of him undressing me mentally, who knows if he was dissecting me mentally. No, things never really went anywhere with him.

My MB man owns private islands in the Bahamas, while the common man, even after topping the JEE, the IIT, and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Seattle. My MB man always gets attracted to the plain Jane no-non-sense girl with oodles of self esteem. In fact, I never wore makeup for years, just to live up to the plain Jane image. My MB man always initiates the first kiss and is never slapped for such unwarranted animal lust. Sometimes, my MB man is the father of the baby he never knew existed because he did not want to be tied down to marriage despite his miraculous procreative abilities. Sometimes, he is the only employer in the vicinity and offers marriage when you are least expecting it. Sometimes he is that man you find in the desolate island where you went for your last field trip. Soon, you are thrown into a situation where neither of you can do without each other. A hurricane strikes the island, he discovers a secret of his life you are the key to, or he simply realizes that you belong to an exotic species naïve enough to not use contraceptives during these accidental, unplanned acts of passionate love making.

I grew up firmly believing that the man I marry would be like one of these characters. The ones who would pin me down against the wall to initiate the first kiss. Not the ones who describe how pancreatic cancers are cured. My world of romantic fantasy came crashing down with every relationship gone haywire. Tainted are those, marred by the gory wrath of society, who are unable to sail through the trials and tribulations of a socially acceptable relationship. I saw this train filled with potential grooms leaving the station while someone pushed me frantically to run after the train. I thought of my MB men and my make-believe world in Italy and how happy I was there. I wondered why I didn’t find the Indian version of my MB man. While the world eagerly awaits Mr. Right’s arrival to put an end to my miseries of singlehood for life, Mr. Right is a split personality, who in his other personality, is a mama’s boy brought up with good values who only listens to mama.

My conflicting worlds confuse me – the one with the Jakes and Lukes, the one with people pushing me to get married to whoever was smart enough to make it to the US, and the world of these prospective grooms sitting in a train, one of which might be kind enough to marry me someday. While these worlds of mine collide, I bear a heavy burden on my chest, traumatized at the thought of dying an old spinster. My feelings remain unresolved so far- call it tragedy or consider it comical. Like my friend says, “27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Aren’t most girls your age already married?”

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The Zillionth Post on International Women’s Day

A random moment in my life came and went like a thought, a brief moment of pause that brought with it a million memories of rumination. From the warmth of the womb to the protection walls of this world. Memories of a soft pair of hands teaching me to hold a pencil and write my first alphabets without smudging on the edges of the lines. Memories of learning how to add, subtract, and learn my numbers for a life full of calculations and decision making to come. The feel of the blue inland with a confident writing that made me reminisce about a wrinkled, aged, yet deft and strong pair of hands. Memories of feeling protected, hiding my face in thy bosom and crying, knowing that you were my safety net, and everything in the world would be fine as long as I had the corner of your saree to hold on to. Then, there were a little pair of hands, six years littler than my already little hands were, that had the perfect nails, perfect fingers, and the perfect shape. The hands that held on to mine as we took the steps to school together. Such was the bonding of sisterhood.

As I grew, the soft hands, the wrinkled hands, and the little hands gave way to more hands, hands that built more beautiful memories together. The hands that made narkol nadu (coconut sweet) for me and gave me some coconut scrapings every time I stood greedily in front of her in the verandah. The hands that made alpona (rangoli) during the pujas. The hands that shared homemade food during school tiffin breaks. The hands that held the cane, strict and firm, yet caring and loving, that took me on beautiful journeys of learning, from the positives and negatives of algebra, to the alluvial soils and the red soils in geography. The hands that taught me to learn, to hold, to draw, and to dissect. The hands that shared. From the memories of the hands of childhood, to the hands of a teenager. A teenager excitedly putting red nail polish without smudging the edges. The hands that took copious notes on Wuthering Heights so that we could share it and study together. The hands that switched off the table lamp when I fell asleep at my study desk studying for exams. The hands that cooked fish curry and rice so that I never went hungry while studying. The hands that got me the glass of warm milk and Bournvita without even asking for it.

Those hands gave way to more hands of support. A pair of hands that taught me to cook my first shrimp curry, when I was lonely and friendless in Seattle. A pair of hands that touched my head with the flames of the puja fire (aarti) and gave me my share of Saraswati Puja prasad so that I do well in academics. A pair of hands that wiped my tears when I was crying over the betrayal of a friend turned foe. Hands that reassured me when I took the first steps toward my safety. Hands that pumped mine as they wheeled me to the doctor’s clinic. I held on to her as we spent the evening shopping in the streets of Kolkata. We shared a sinful helping of Shrikhand, our favorite afternoon indulgence from Mayuri Grocery. The tiniest pair of hands I have seen in years that held on to mine as we walked by the children’s play area of the Bellevue Square Mall, singing Sa-Re-Ga-Ma and Hattima Tim Tim together. The hands that held on to mine as I secured her in her car seat.

For years, you have loved me and cared for me in different forms. You were my mother, teaching me my alphabets. You were my grandmother, writing me letters from distant lands. You were my dida, making me narkol nadu. You were my friend, teaching me to solve those mathematical derivations. You were G, teaching me to take my baby steps in America. You were Baby Kalyani, playing with me as if I were your best friend, only 28 years elder. You were teaching me to cook to be able to sustain myself. You were comforting me when my heart was breaking. You were inspiring me to be a writer, and to publish my work. You were challenging me to go on stage and break my mental barriers, by acting, by public speaking, and by giving dance performances. You were playing the harmonium so that I could relearn my sa-re-ga-ma. You were giving me the keys to your house, because I was unemployed and homeless. You were traveling the world, from Banaras to Greece, all alone, and inspiring me to be like you. You were bemoaning the killing of your cousin, a victim of domestic violence, and my heart wept with you. You were a mother, a professor, an actor, a student of medicine, and as successful an economist as a humor writer.

You were traveling for hours in crowded local trains. From Naihati to New York, from Sealdah to Seattle, I saw you in the hustle and bustle, traveling to work. I saw you come home and fend for your family. I saw you take care of your babies, study, and work, and take exams, all at the same time. I saw you indulge in self-care, in those manicures and pedicures that made your beautiful hands and feet even more beautiful. I saw you bravely live through abortions, abuses, and subjugation. I proudly beamed when you went to space as a rocket scientist or won the Grand Slam. I proudly saw you get your well-deserved movie awards. You cooked, coded, and cured with equal deftness. Most importantly, you shaped me, helped me be who I am, and inspired me to define and redefine my boundaries, and to resurrect and break my boundaries, and not stop until I had reached for the sky.

This post is dedicated to my mother, my grandmothers, my sister, my friends in schools and colleges, my friends in U.S., my YKB sisters, my roommates, my colleagues, my students, my fellow bloggers and readers, the women who inspired me to write, to travel, to self-design my life, to be fearless, to strive for the best, the women who have struggled for what they believed in, be it their freedom or their rights, and all the other women in this world I have idolized. Happy International Women’s Day!

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Link to the article.

Expecting Changes

You would find me writing about graduate school, relationship woes, Facebook, or other random things, but that is it about the depth and range of my writings. Had I been a different person, I would have written about different things. For example, you will never see me writing about how pregnant women feel, because I have no insight or firsthand experience with that. Well, now I somewhat do, have the insight I mean. I overheard a woman talking to another pregnant woman the other day, and what she said was interesting.

She said two things. First, whatever can go wrong will go wrong when you are pregnant. She pointed to the pregnant woman’s injured toe as an example. It seems that the pregnant woman had mysteriously injured her toe, and although it was not a fracture, the doctor could not point out what it was. It could be incipient signs of gout, a minor twist, or something else, but no one knows. That is what the woman said, that things will happen to you that have no logic or explanation, when you are pregnant. You will injure your toe, develop indigestion, have short term memory loss, lose your purse, keep your car keys in the refrigerator, and everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

The second thing she said was that whoever you are as a person gets 100 times magnified when you are pregnant. She referred to friends who had typical characteristic traits that got exaggerated. A friend who was obsessive about cleaning became so a hundred times more when she was expecting. She would go around cleaning stuff at random times. Another friend who had a short temper in general and was not a very amicable or a hospitable person acted like a total bee aai tee see eich when she was expecting. She would throw temper tantrums and go around pissing people off. Another friend was a shopaholic and it got so worse during that time that she would spend all her money buying stuff. Another friend, who was a narcissist, would do nothing else than talk about herself when she was expecting. Hence whoever you are as a person gets multiple times magnified when you are pregnant, usually more for the worse than for the better.

I don’t have enough information to decide if I should buy her logic, but I found her theory pretty interesting. The second one more so compared to the first one. What do you think?

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Remembering Yoni Ki Baat

Come February-March, I fondly remember the excitement and the gusto with which I would wait for Yoni Ki Baat. I don’t know how I found Yoni Ki Baat (or how Yoni Ki Baat found me). In the past, I have written about my hesitation in performing for this play. Honestly, the hesitation left me the first time I went up on stage for my performance. It was a Eureka moment, a life defining moment for many reasons. From there, there was no looking back.

2008 and 2009, I performed in Seattle’s Yoni Ki Baat. I don’t know if anyone of you was there for the show, or if anyone remembers my performance. I have never been a stage and spotlight loving person. In school, I would be the last person you would see voicing her opinions. The darkness, the sharp stares of the audience I could feel, with the bright lights on my face has always made my knees jelly-like. The whole world staring at you from a dark vista point is not a very comfortable feeling to live with. Stage performance was so not me. Then, Yoni Ki Baat happened.

Was I scared? Hell, yes! No matter how much you have rehearsed your lines, nothing can help those butterflies flapping their wings inside your stomach. You know that your friends and the entire Seattle/greater Seattle community is going to be there to listen to you. In some ways, you are the most important person on the stage that evening. In some ways, the stage is the most important and the defining thing of your life that evening. It is natural to feel queasy, for it is much more than a performance. You know you are about to talk about some really personal and taboo topics. No amount of hand holding and good wishes can dispel the fears that are nagging you. Was it the right thing to do, to be on stage and talk about things that can turn away a potential boy friend if he found out? Is it okay to talk about things you would rather your mother did not hear of? I am reputed to have made some daring stunts on stage, now that I think of it. Do not get me wrong, my issues were not always sad issues. I have had some very happy scripts as well. They were taboo issues nevertheless.

A girl in the 6^th grade orgasms in class without knowing what an orgasm is, and believed for years that she had a “happy blackout”. The writer Juno spoke of unfulfilled dreams of motherhood. That was me performing on stage. Sometimes I was a 6^th grader wondering what exactly hit my world that day and gave me a blackout. Sometimes I was that twenty-something old woman who wants to experience motherhood. Sometimes I was 27 and unmarried, unable to find a connection between the Jakes and Lukes from Harlequin Romances she dreamt of, and the Kamal Kishores and the Neelkanth Kumars she actually met in life. Sometimes she was a happy yoni, sometimes confused, sometimes angry, and sometimes scared. At the moment whatever her emotions were, she always found her voice on stage, a truthful and authentic voice that belonged to her and never failed her.

I realized in the process of scripting my play, that comically cynical, sarcastic satiric writing is my forte. I wrote about grave and serious issues in a way that had the audience in splits. It just came naturally to me. Here I was talking about how “the common man, even after topping the IIT and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Bellevue”, and here my audience was laughing uncontrollably. When I was sad, the audience laughed. When I was angry, the audience laughed. Once, all I had to do was go up on stage to start my performance, and some people (probably my friends who knew me) started laughing J

It was an important realization, that this is perhaps where my voice came from. I found it immensely therapeutic. It is not that I intended to become a standup comedian. However, no matter how I said my story, and how sad my story was, the audience always laughed. I am glad they did because I did not want them to weep, feel sad, or shift uncomfortably in their seats. Yoni Ki Baat gave me a blank canvas on which I could paint whatever I wanted to. And I found my voice in humor. Some of my best writings turned out to be the ones coated with a cynical, satirical overtone.

I discovered my comfort zone in writing scripts. I got hold of my stage fears. I learnt to get there in front of people and talk about things that were important for people to think of. Not only this, I made a set of wonderful friends during the process of rehearsing for the play who are my sisters I will cherish all my life. These are not just friends who I’d watch a movie with or have dinner with. These are my sisters I would call up and talk for hours. They are the friends who know me as I am, know of my fears, and still love me for who I am without the glitter and the makeup. Unconditional love is what I got from them. This is why Yoni Ki Baat has been such a life defining moment for me.

I missed Yoni Ki Baat in 2010. Last year, I moved out of Seattle and hence, I will be missing Yoni Ki Baat 2011 as well. Yoni Ki Baat 2011 is special. My good friend Shahana Dattagupta who I met through this play, and performed with for two consecutive years, is directing it this time. I know I am going to be there in every sense, except physically. If it were not the middle of the semester, I would have flown to Seattle in a heartbeat. But I realize that is not going to happen.

If you happen to be fortunate enough to live in or around Seattle, I would strongly recommend you to go watch the show. My best wishes go out to the participants this year. I know you will be nervous on stage, but it is very important that you get on stage and tell your story to the world. From personal experience, once you are there on stage and the show has begun, you realize nothing can hold you back, and nothing really matters anymore. I went up and told my stories as if nervousness or hesitation had never mattered to me.

Lastly, dear Shahana, congratulations on your new role as a director. You have all my love and best wishes. You have made quite a positive impact in my life, and congratulations on your journey from being a performer for 3 years to being the director this year. Someone out there 3000 miles away will be cheering for you and is very proud of you. Good luck to you and the entire team of Yoni Ki Baat 2011.

Link to Facebook page

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34 C

Yes you heard me right. 34 C. That’s what I semi-whispered to the only woman in the lingerie shop amid a bunch of men whose ages ranged from 14 to 54. I was not really on a bra-hunting spree, I’d much rather go to a shopping mall and help myself without the world knowing of what I needed. I’m not really in the age range where I turn tomato-red when sanitary napkin ads come during commercial breaks or I flip channels to hear the mellifluous voice of a bunch of village chicks singing naughtily “Bol sakhi bolt era raaz kya hai” [What is thy secret, o sister?]. However I didn’t see any need to get hold of a microphone and declare to the world what I was looking for. But when a friend from the US asked me to get her a few of those 34Cs from Kolkata, I had to oblige.

I wasn’t really happy seeing so many men ready to serve you in a lingerie shop. Where were the women? I hushed my needs to the only woman I could spot in the store. First, she must have been hard of hearing, for she looked at me and urged me to voice myself louder. I was half-tempted to indicate the bus route 34C telling her, “Remember the bus route that goes from Esplanade to Baranagar? I want that bus number”. I realized how funny I would sound without making myself understood, first, because the odds were high that she would get more confused, and second, because who knows if the buses 84, 109, and 203 also went between the same places. So I braced myself and muttered only a few decibels louder- 34C.

“Color?”

“Uh …. White, black, pink, whatever”

“Design? Lace? What type?”

Uhh… I was shifting uncomfortably, wishing I’d be anywhere but here. “Anything will do. Laces?”

And just when I thought my plight was over, I found something akin to a nightmare coming true. For she turned to the boy, barely 20, and repeated, “34C. Show white, black, pink. With laces. Show it to her”, she pointed at me.

I was tempted to protest, “Not me, my friend”, but shut up as it sounded so lame.

The boy rummaged through the hinterlands of the shop with neatly stacked boxes with pictures of voluptuous women showing half covered assets and looking at various angles away from the camera. Unable to find what I was looking for, he further turned to the man in his 50s and repeated the instructions given to him verbatim.

How I wished I had turned to powder and vanished.

So after what seemed like a lifetime of searching, rummaging, and asking questions about suitable alternatives, the old man came up with a few boxes of what I needed, handed it over to the young man, who in turn handed it to the lady who dutifully bared the contents of the box in front of everyone. I was thinking of ways to conceal my embarrassment when I heard a thick, authoritarian voice from behind me, “42 C dikhaiyega” [Show me 42C]. Where were these liberated women when I was looking for them? The woman attendant quickly went to interact with the 42C woman, and I was left at the mercy of two men who insisted the product I was seeing was world class.

“Take this, it’s export quality, very comfortable, very stylish”. To emphasize his point, he held the piece of cloth in between his hands like he would hold an elastic band, and stretched it a couple of times. “Ekdum stretchable kapda hai. Export quality”.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. No longer able to witness a person from the opposite gender stretching a piece of cloth of supreme privacy to me, coaxing me to buy it just because he could stretch it anyway he wanted to, emphasizing the ultimate comforting experience I will be embarking on if I wore it, I left the boxes at the counter, muttered something incoherent, and started towards the exit. To which the man looked confused, wondering if he had got me the wrong stuff by mistake. He shouted, “34C nahi chalega kya?” [Won’t 34C do?]

Whatever hope of privacy I had left like the smoke out of the chimney. The whole world now knew what size I was looking for. It was barely any consolation that I was not looking something for myself. I finally paused and looked one last time at the man, “It’s for a friend. I will ask and come back”, and sped out of the door.

I felt so stupid, trying to convince the world that it wasn’t something for me but for a friend. As if they cared. I know I am going back to nowhere except the shopping mall in Seattle where I can settle things within the four walls of the fitting room without the world knowing about what exactly I wanted to buy. As far as my friend goes, I’d recommend her she do the same.

sunshine