Birthday – Any other Day

What is a birthday? It is a time of celebration, wishes, gifts and a party. Since it is a date in the calendar year when we were born. Really?
Or is It more like a reference to a point in time that happened a while ago.

There are two unsaid and unchallenged assumptions in this concept.

One that this is the day when we were born and two that it is an event to celebrate.

The solar calendar that we follow is a human construct, which identifies, measures and records the dimension of time, based on the physical motion of a celestial body - the Sun in this case. Which means that if we independently look at the motion of sun, it has nothing to do with the concept of time. It is only when we use a particular type of motion of sun as a standard of time, a correlation exists. And if we would have used a different measure - other than the motion of the sun - our birthday would fall on a different date. As is the case in many Hindu families in India and also in some other cultures, where the lunar calendar is used and religious festivals are tacked by the same. Naturally their birthday each year falls on a different date of the solar colander.  Some of them even end up celebrating two birthdays - one with family based on the lunar calendar and one with friends based on solar calendar.

I am compelled to wonder, what if we had chosen a measure of time which was significantly different than what we have today - and would cycle too soon or two far away!

So the day we were born is just an event in time that occurred only once. Still we find ways to believe that the day happens again and again. And the cyclic nature of our calendar makes our birthday repeat. The belief is so deep that some of us even end up believing newspaper columns predicting future based on the month we were born in.

The depth of this social construct is such that we even judge the dearness of our relationship by checking who all remembers our birthday. And the reverse if also true - we remember the birthdays of our close ones, lest they feel they have been ignored. I pity the state of the people who are poor in remembering dates - they get judged for their love and affection based on the memory power!

 

And the another unchallenged assumption is - that birthdays are events to celebrate.

We were born, just an event in our life. We will die, another event. So what is there to celebrate!

The question is : Is it because we have made birthday's repeated annual events that we have to celebrate them or we want to celebrate hence we want to believe that birthdays get repeated!

My guess is that, it is latter.

Most human beings are essentially narcissistic in nature. We simply love ourselves. We love to receive compliments, praise and recognition. It makes us feel good. Most of us don’t miss an opportunity to look ourselves up in a mirror - it sometimes is even the glass-door of our car. We adorn our photographs. While watching an old wedding video, we usually try to look for ourselves in it.

Only when we are ready to look at these beliefs and assumptions, would we be willing to challenge them and look beyond the vanity of getting caught up in the birthday mania; look at it as just another date in the calendar, don’t get mad at friends and family who forget the date; don’t get psyched-up in remembering the birthdays of our loved one - since the “birthday” has literally nothing to do with when we were actually  born.

However there is no harm in celebrating oneself. I would like us celebrate ourselves every day, why limit only to the birthday. By celebrating ourselves, we feel good, happy and confident of ourselves.

So no harm in indulging. Happy Birthdays and also Happy New Year and any other annual event!

Ameet Mattoo

Jan 2015

Movie Review: Queen through the prism of Gender Dynamics.

Queen is a story of a young girl Rani, who finds her independence after going through struggles, when her UK based fiancé refuses to marry her and to overcome the shock, she decides to go alone on her honeymoon to Europe. The movie depicts very subtle gender biases and the gender dynamics that exist in our society.

Plot:

Rani is from a very conservative family in Delhi. Two days before her marriage, her fiancé (Vijay) meets with her in a cafe and tells her that he no longer wants to marry her, claiming he has changed because of living in the UK, and she would not match his lifestyle anymore.
Shocked by this and the impact it would have on her and her family Rani shuts herself in her room for two days.
However, encouraged and supported by her family, she decides to take control of her life and plans to go alone on her pre-booked honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam.

During her Europe trip, she meets and befriends different kinds of people and in the process learns a lot about life and herself. In Paris, she meets an independent girl of Indian origin, Vijaylakshmi, who makes her feel confident about herself and helps her find courage. In Amsterdam she meets 3 men from different nationalities, with whom she shares a room.

With Oleksander, one of her room mates, she seemed to connect at a deeper level. Conversations with him makes her reflect on her life back home. She relives the memories of her fiancé patronizing her and forbidding her from doing things. These conversations and reflections and questions helps her discovers her own self.

She meets an Italian restaurateur, about whom she feels free to express her femininity and to some extent her sexuality, without getting caught in the morals of her back home reality.

Once by mistake, she accidentally sends a picture of hers in a modern outfit (what she considers as revealing) to her fiancé. Seeing the picture, the mind of her fiancé changes and he comes searching for her to Europe and wants her to get back to his life. Rani, however has moved on. She refuses to go back and prefers to live an independent life of her own.

 

Gender Dynamics:

Unaware of dependence / Never questioning the status quo:

While Rani may have found independence and also happiness in this independence, what is interesting is that she was unaware of her state of dependence and dis-empowerment in her life till she discovers herself. Her worldview was limited to getting impressed (pataov) by the guy, getting married, wanting the ceremony to go well, excitement about the 1^st night, what to do in honeymoonetc.

She seeks her fiancé’s and parental approval for most decisions of her life and she would never question this dynamics.This is one big issue in women in India; that they themselves are not fully aware of their own dis-empowerment and dependence and they would never question this social system.It is interesting that mostly the family does not have ill intentions for the girl. They think that they are doing good to the girl. They are unaware that in the name of safety, security, morality and tradition, they are actually disabling and disempowering the girl and making her incapable of managing her own life. As a result, there is always the need of a male support and approval that the women needs, be it in the form of father, brother or husband.
This in-turn limits the relationships she is able to have with men, beyond these pre-defined relationships.

More so, many girls simply introject the expectations unquestioningly and hence actually do look forward to such a life of dependence, since that is what they have been conditioned to think, as the route to happiness. In a way, they somehow enjoy this disguised slavery.

Only when Rani goes to Europe, she is able to discover the person she always was, but could never be. And she might have continued to never be, if her fiancé would not have left her.

This happened, since this was probably the 1st time Rani experienced life, without the burden of expectations that her family / social setup had on her. Finding herself free to do what she wanted to, emerged the possibility of finding herself.

 

Freedom to be:

Once after the party at a night club in Paris, Rani and her Indian origin friend Vijaylakshmi are in a taxi going back to their hotel and Vijaylakshmi burps. Rani is quite amused, how someone, esp. a girl can burp so unabashedly in open. She says “we are not allowed to do so”.

While in the movie, they had fun talking about it, what touched me the most was the innocence with which Rani speaks about what all the girls are not supposed to do India. I really felt sad at the moment.

It depicts how girls in India do not have freedom to be themselves; to just be. And how they have to comply and stifle themselves in order to follow the biased societal norms.

Freedom to decide:

In one scene, Rani asks her father that she would like to do a Job.
Rani’s father is seen getting nervous with her question. He tells her that she needs to ask Vijay (her fiancé) and let him decide.  Next she is seen having this conversation with Vijay. Obviously Vijay gets uncomfortable and tries to dissuade her from doing so. He tells her, what is the need for her to work, when he is earning; does she not have trust in him! Hence no need for her to work.
Rani agrees without too much of resistance.

This scene is contrasted in Rani’s conversation with Oleksander, when she tells him that she wants to do things that she would like to. Oleksander ask her, why does she not? Who is stopping her?
This makes Rani reflect about her freedom in life, to decide for herself.

An interesting dynamics of decision making in our society is shown, where girls don’t necessarily have the freedom to make decisions for themselves and how they seem to be subservient and dependent  on the men in their lives to decide for them and how they happily seem to accept this as their fate.

Support and Encouragement:

In one scene, Rani and her friends were out partying and all three of her friends are drunk by the time they leave. And then there is a cop, who asks all of them to leave immediately. Suddenly Rani finds herself on the driving wheel of the car, with the other friends not in a state to drive. Suddenly she is left with no option but to drive. She safely drives the friends back to the hotel.

This scene is contrasted with another scene, where Rani is seen learning to drive while her fiancé is sitting next to her. The fiancé is shown obviously getting irritated with Rani’s driving and is seen as discouraging her.

Even while the girls might be wanting to get freedom in some aspects of their life, do the men in their lives really encourage them to achieve it. Or are men busy discouraging and dousing any desire of independence and self-reliance that might be there.

Acceptance of Femininity sans morality:

When Rani lands in Amsterdam, she is shocked to learn that her friend vijaylaxmi has booked her in a hostel, where she would need to share the room with three unknown men. She is too scared of the thought; first she decides to leave the hostel, however not finding an alternate option, she sleeps in the lobby of the hostel.
She finds the idea of a young girl to share the room with three men completely shocking and going by the culture she comes from, completely immoral.

From getting to terms with eventually sharing the room with three men, Rani explores another aspect of her personality; that of her own femininity and romance. She is shown as having a crush on an Italian Restaurateur with whom she works in a cooking festival. She consummates this crush with nothing more than a kiss, her first one ever! She is able to do so without getting trapped in morality.

 

Reflection:
A very funny reflective moment for Rani happens when she is narrating a story to vijaylaxmi.
She tells vijaylaxmi how she has become like Gupta Uncle. “Gupta uncle has got Cancer. He never drank alcohol in his life; he never smoked; still he got cancer; wouldn’t it have been better if he had done so”.
She seems to be repenting on her state, that she did all that was supposed to be done by a “nice girl” in her family (and not do things she was not supposed to do) and still she got dumped. Might as well have done all that was not allowed to be done.

Male chauvinism:

Towards the end, Vijay comes to Europe, searching for her to bring her back to his life. However The attitude demonstrated is that of, “I can come back when I want and repossess you”; the guilt is minimal; He is very un-apologetic and wants her to come back immediately with him back to India.
And not wanting to know how she is feeling; what she must have gone through post the break-up; and what does it mean to be on a honeymoon, alone.

He behaves as if all this does not matter and now that he wants her back in his life she should just come back, as if nothing had happened.
Far from being apologetic, he is on the contrary seen as questioning Rani is a very deplorable manner as to how could she share a room with three men. He even scares her by asking “What if his mom comes to know, what she will think of her”. He also patronizes her by telling her, that she does not know how these foreigners are, what all they could do to her. Eventually the conversation gets worse and he tries to physically grab her and command her to come with him.

This was the low point (high point of male chauvinism) that was depicted in the movie, where the guy feels like he owns the girl. He is completely possessive of her and all that matters is how he thinks and feels and there is no space or sensitivity towards how the girl would be feeling.

Such a malecentric attitude of our society, where what the man wants and desires is of prime importance and the woman is just an object, which the man has to possess, when he desires to, for me is the root of all the gender bias that exists in our society.

Let Go:

The let go from the past finally happens on the last day, when Rani and her friends leave the hostel room. We get to realize that in the entire trip, Rani was carrying her wedding card in her purse.

When the friends leave the hostel room, tourists, as a custom, drop a piece of themselves in the room.
Rani, as a part of herself, pins-up her wedding card on the wall of the room.

This was very symbolic, of her moving away from her past life of dependence.

From Dependence to Independence

The character of Rani moves from a state of dependence to independence, (with a small stint of counter-dependence) (and of course not yet moving into the space of interdependence).
In the beginning, Rani is shown as completely dependent on her family for anything she does. Even when she has to go out, her Kid brother is there all the time. Anywhere she needs to go, her parents send her brother with him; including her first date with Vijay.

This phenomenon, which exists mostly everywhere in our society, reeks of huge amounts of gender bias; that a girl cannot manage herself alone; she needs a man’s presence to take care of her; even if the man is a small kid brother.

 After Vijay dumps Rani just before the wedding, Rani goes into a complete shock. She locks herself in the room and does not listen to her mother or father. She does reverse of what they say. These were her brief moments of counter-dependency.

When Rani goes to Paris, her friend vijaylaxmi helps her develop self-confidence which makes Rani get comfortable to be alone. Initially she had been contemplating of going back to India from Paris, since she was too scared to manage herself, she later get confidence to got to Amsterdam and continue her journey.

However this encounter with vijaylaxmi and Paris does not make her independent yet. At the railway station, to catch the train to Amsterdam, she is seen persuading vijaylaxmi to join her. She is seen very upset by the prospects of leaving vijaylaxmi behind.

While explicitly it comes across as an emotional loss of leaving a friend behind, it still demonstrates her dependence only that the dependence has shifted from her family to the new found friend.

Only after more experiences in Amsterdam, which include participating in a cooking competition along with the Italian cook; confronting Vijay and not going back with him to India and instead joining her friends in the rock show; does independence seep in and she starts to assert herself.
In her last evening in Amsterdam, while dancing in the rock show along with her three friend, her friends take her leave as they need to go someplace else.

In the next scene, Rani is not seen as gloomy, missing her friends. Instead she, after completing the farewell formalities, is back in the rock show and very happy and confident dancing alone.

According to me, this completed her cycle from dependence to Independence.

This independence gets demonstrated further, when back in India, she visits Vijay’s home. She chooses to leave him and returns the engagement ring. But now she is not stricken with remorse; she even goes as far as thanking him and having Gratitude for him, for giving her the opportunity to discover herself.
Had he not dumped her, she may never have found herself !

Ameet Mattoo
Aug 2014

Published in ISABS Newsletter "Here and Now" - Aug 2014
http://www.isabs.org/newsletter/aug2014/Here_n_Now_vol27__Aug2014.html   Page 8.

 

The Unfolding Of The Unconscious

The Unfolding Of The Unconscious is an amazing process.

While it is effort-full and also at times painful,
the usual clichéd states ascribed to this process.

What however amazes me is that,
what it reveals in nothing new!

We already know it well.
It appears so fresh and alive, when it emerges.
We get aware of it so quickly
and realize how it has been impacting our being and our life.

And the cost we have been paying for being that way.
Just that it has not been in our conscious awareness!

We know it, but are not aware of it.

A very intriguing state.
Knowing but not being aware.
And by not being aware, our life seems to be running in an auto mode.

That is how our unconscious is driving our life.
And without awareness we becomes victims of our own self.

There seems to be a strong membrane of “living” that
separates this hidden knowing from coming into awareness.

This “living” is the mindless rush of tasks, of doing, of achieving,
of making things happen, of setting things right......
Without creating any space to reflect.

Only with reflection, with moments of silence, does awareness
emerge and the possiblity to uncover the unconsciousness.

While it indeed is effort-full to break-into the unconscious,
the more we are persistent, the more it will happen.

And once this membrane of living is permeated,
it becomes all too easy to make sense of what has been
really happening in this so called “living”.

And emerges the possibility of altering the life script we
have been so mindless following.

There is immense empowerment and freedom in this new being.

As Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

 

I hope the Nightmares stop now.

It took 21 years for me to build courage and visit it again.
21 years is a long time, a very long time. Much had changed in these 21 years. The joint family I grew up in, had disintegrated. Many of them were dead. I now had my own small family. Life had changed completely and as they say, I had moved on.

However the one thing that had not changed, were the dreams I had. Those lanes where I grew up; those people who were more family than friends, the neighborhood, my room, our lawn, my school and much more. They used to be always there. They used to haunt me. Very often and for last 21 years. Many of my friends and family members did go back and visit it. I had heard stories of disappointment. How things were no more the same. I had seen pictures. Still the new picture never set in. My dreams continued to be from the past.

Many people told me to visit once. They said it is Important to close the loop of emotional disconnect. Somehow I was fearful. Wasn't sure if I could handle the loss in my face. The loss of a childhood, place where I grew up, place which was once my home. Place were my mom used to be there - always to help. Place were my brothers and I used to play. Place were my uncle and I used to fight and play. Place were all my friends were left back.
And now today, none of that was going to be there.

And, It was just a matter of chance that i landed there last month - for just a few hours.

I just wanted to give it all a miss and just drive past.My friend, however coaxed me to visit my home. And after a lot of anxious thoughts, i did.

And i was there, right outside what used to be my home, my world – and in my mind, it was just a few years ago. The place however looked so alien yet so close.It was not a picture from the past. The past needed to be really dug out from it.I could recognize my room from outside. With the burnt windows still smelling of the wonderful past.I found myself searching for the cherry tree i used to climb on and the lawn where i used to play. All had gone.It was now replaced by a concrete courtyard. Looked like the past was sealed under the mortar.And the industrial feel of the place made sure no familial touch remained.
The neighborhood looked familiar, however I could not find any known face around.
It was getting dark and my friend told me, it was the time to leave.I did not want to.I wanted to look more. In hope of finding something familiar.But I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.I wasn't even sure of my own emotions. I was quite perplexed.

And decided to leave. With no desire to come back again.
Am not sure if the emotional disconnect has been resolved or it had become further complicated. My only hope is that the Nightmares stop now so that I can really move on.

- Aug 2011
About my visit to my hometown – Kashmir.

Non Violence – How does it happen?

Most of the western media is intrigued by the current non violent movement happening in India, under the leadership of Anna Hazare. While the world has witnessed many violent protests in the recent past in Lybia, Egypt, Tunisia etc, for them it is amazing to see how India has managed a non violent movement of such a big scale.

The question that then arises is, are Indian’s inherently non violent?
Since non-violent protests have existed from the times of Gandhi to Anna and have had many different avatars in between – from the famous Chipko movement in Doon Valley to Appiko movement in Karnataka and many more.

However that does not seem to be the case, since India has also witnessed many bloody violent protests from the recent Gujrat and Mumbai riots to the 1984 riots and also riots in the past in UP, Bihar, to the deadliest of them all in 1947 after partition. This list is many folds longer than the history of non-violent protest.

So what is it then that makes the non-violent protests to happen?

The answer, according to me, lies in the Leadership. What is happening today in this Jan Lokpal protest is all due to the leadership of Anna Hazare, who claims to be a Gandhian and has deep belief in the power of non-violent protests. And same was true for Gandhi also. Even in the time of Gandhi, there were violent protests happening. However Gandhi’s protests remained non-violent in nature.

So, what is it that makes some protests non-violent and most of them violent?

It is because non-violence is not a tactic, which can be learnt and picked up by any one. It is not a magic wand, which just anyone can use. It has to do with deep beliefs and value system of the people involved. For most people, it is very easy to get angry and even resort to violent methods of protest. Non-violence on the other hand is a deep rooted belief in tolerance and acceptance of everyone and every view. In this belief, even if the other person or other party does not agree to you, you don’t feel offended. You let them have their view. However, you still hold on to your own view and you hold on to it so dearly that you are even ready to fast indefinitely for it. And at the same time, you give space to the other people to have their view. You have unconditional love for everyone that no matter what they say or what they do, you still love them. Even if in their arrogance, they come and hit you, you still remain unmoved and don’t hit back. (in fact, you put forward your other cheek!).

That is where non-violence comes from. A deep seated belief in humanity, a deep seated love for everyone, a deep seated acceptance of others, no matter what their views are, no matter what their beliefs are and no matter what they do !

And people like Mahatma Gandhi developed such beliefs over his life time, which inspired people all over the globe and continue to inspire even to this day.

Ameet Mattoo
August 2011