Pink and Blue

Background

There is no doubt that I was born into a male dominated society. We all are. From time immemorial, man dominated the society. Considering that society basically consisted of men and women, it is not a great deal I think. Still therein lies man’s smartness. He knew that women are actually, intuitively smarter and so he found ways to keep them subdued. The only thing he had was his superior physical raw strength, to hunt and provide. The women who succeeded in this battle of supremacy were the ones who used their smartness very unobtrusively, very innocuously and very intelligently. But this is not an essay on social sciences.

An Image

Ever since I remember I had noticed that the women in the Kerala house hold were quite smart. Being smart, they had honed the expertise in keeping quiet to near perfection. They would voice their opinion only when asked or when they felt that something was going horribly wrong. And both were not too rare either, it appeared! Since matriarchal system was the norm then in Kerala, in all major decisions they were consulted. From the outcome of the discussions I could sense that it was their opinions and views that made the cut. It must be told that we, us children had no business to be sitting around and listening to the elders’ discussions. If seen in the vicinity, we were shooed off, pronto.  But I was a smart kid. I found ways and means to catch snippets to understand enough, as enough for a child.

A Fact

Though I, even as a child revelled in this male supremacy, did feel bad for the women. Primarily in the field of education. Those days, say more than seventy, eighty years ago for any higher education, one invariably had to go out to bigger towns. That involved administrative bandobust. They could find solutions if a boy had proved his mettle for such an adventure and if the family had sufficient resources. Such a thought never crossed the minds of those who mattered if it were a girl in question. Obviously those who stayed in the big towns had an advantage. The unfairness of it stayed somewhere in me. May be because my mother was a victim, as I learnt.

Toe in the Door

As I began to get dry behind the ears, I began to hear the feminists making noise. So I began to pay attention, particularly when they said that the society conditioned the females to be so, that the parents brought up a girl to be a girl and a boy to be a boy and all that. Simon de Beauvoir in her book “Second Sex” formulated that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”.  She was a feminist. Ever since I read that book borrowed from the British Council Library while in college, and taking the saying at its base value without getting in to the sex versus gender issue, I kept wondering. My instinct and what I had seen and picked up till then told me that they were born so. Or was it bringing up? But I had to wait.

Nascence

When I married the wait ended. (Notice that I did not get married. I married and my wife got married. You got that?) When my wife became parturient, we both desired a girl, seriously. As her state became more and more prominent, every one, the experts and those who considered themselves experts, all said in one voice that our first child would be a boy. So we too got influenced. We did not mind either way. I even made up a shlokam, if you can call it as such, for the supposedly boy, kicking inside. Oh, let me insert it here, with your permission, though it was and is absolutely private and not up to the mark at all.

Ayur Arogya Sambannanayum

Kayikabhyasangalil Midukkanayum

Budhimanayum

Eyullavane Nee Eashwara

Kathu Rakshikkename.

It was a simple prayer to no particular God, asking to bless the ‘boy’ with a long, healthy and wealthy life, to make him good in sports and games, to make him intelligent and to generally take care of him. I used to recite this on her glorious belly. Don't question me on the priorities, please.

And she delivered a girl! It made no difference, is another matter.

Newborns

When I saw the small bundle for the first time, what I noticed was her eyes going in different directions! As far as I knew, this could be done only by those trained in Kathakali, while enacting a particular female character from the mythologies, who looks at two people with two different emotions in the two eyes. I don’t think my girl expressed any complicated emotions as such except that of utter boredom by yawning, may be for having brought out of the most comfortable place in all the three worlds. She was so tiny, I was afraid to carry her, but not Prasanna who was doing the Degree Engineering course with me in Pune at that time as a bachelor! As I kept looking at the wondrous baby, Prasanna picked her up with nary a thought! My wife has not yet pardoned me for this lapse of mine in not picking the baby up in a rush as any excited first time father would or should.

The second baby who came after a little over three years turned out to be a boy. This time the predictions were quite mixed. We ourselves thought a boy would complete the family. The same shlokam was recited for him also in the same fashion. And when he was born, Prasanna was not there, thank God, as he was somewhere in the Punjab and I was in Ranchi. This time picking up the baby did not give me the jitters. His tiny eyes did not give any Kathakali looks and didn’t express any boredom. He was, well, ‘cool’.

After this slightly long introduction, it is time for me to come to the point of this dissertation, to illustrate the contrary view to those of the feminists, first hand.

Babies

We, the parents, of these two children brought them up the same way. I must credit my wife for not insisting on their difference and the consequent upbringing. As babies, both were same, as is universal. Only, the boy used to shake his bum to the beat of any music, on all his fours when he was in the crawling stage. Perhaps the only partiality the lady of the house showed was in stitching extremely pretty frocks for the girl, regularly, that were the cynosure of all. But she could not stitch anything for the boy. For him everything had to be purchased from the reluctant (you won’t believe), lazy shopkeepers of Ranchi.

Pre-Nursery

Before the school stage, the girl took to wearing her mother’s wedding sandals, and wrapped herself in my lungis, imagined as sarees, in spite of the pretty frocks. So we managed to get a couple of those baby sarees that those cute small Bengali girls wear. It is typical of Bengal! The boy, on the other hand, wanted to know how I shave! He used to slink in behind me and watch. So I had to provide him with a bladeless razor and apply the shaving cream on his face. He used to follow me stroke for stroke and I must say he used to manage smooth shaves! The girl fancied her mother’s dressing table stuff and to play with those and to use them surreptitiously, she used to pretend as if she were cleaning the table. And we dutifully pretended as if we were not noticing. Sure enough there would be some item missing after this exercise, which was okay. The boy not only went near this table but did nothing to upset any fixed pattern.

As for toys, the girl collected all the cleaned out cream bottles and such from the dressing table and other such small containers from the kitchen. She was more keen on such toys. She never even demanded a doll. But once she got a doll, she wouldn’t let go of it. So she went around in her so called saree and her mother’s golden sandals, clutching the doll, carrying it perfectly like one would a baby. She also used to imitate the aunties talk of rising prices of vegetables, problems with the maid and what not, to whom else but to the aunties in the neighbourhood to their utter amusement. Also the girl could dance excellently well, in the pursuance of which she sadly showed no interest while growing up. The boy on the other hand would act as a villain in the movies getting beaten up by the hero, with accompanying sound effects made by himself! He explained that it was with villains that he found manliness and better and well built bodies. He was quite a movie buff even at that age!

Nursery

When in nursery classes in their own time frame, it was all of a sudden that they started writing. They were making mistakes in the alphabets till then. One day suddenly the girl wrote the entire alphabets in one go without any mistake. She did it in her note book. Same thing happened to the boy too. The difference was that he wrote it with crayons from right to left on the wall behind his class teacher! When I went to pick him up, the teacher showed me with a smile – triumphant perhaps, his accomplishment.  I was shocked at his action and was surprised at the nonchalance of the teacher. The girl, instead of attending her own classes used to walk around her school with a ruler in her hand, disciplining the children of other classes where teachers were missing! The wife and I had to report to the Principal (that was his post in that nursery school!) once too often to listen to the complaints, which were handed over to us but with beaming smiles. The son in contrast was a much disciplined boy in class and we as parents were never hauled over the coals by the teachers!

When we used to go on annual leave to my parents in Madras, the girl drove my mother and sisters mad with her antics. She used to harass my father no end and he enjoyed being helpless. My sisters shiver in dread and laugh uncontrollably even now while narrating the stories of her outright naughty but hilarious activities. She was simply a terror to my mother right from the age of one. We never curtailed her. On the other hand our son earned a name and was ‘respected’ for best behaviour personified, with a sweet, disarming smile, come what may. All that was needed for him was a full belly.

Being born in Ranchi perhaps, when he started speaking, it was in fluent, impeccable, grammatically correct Hindi, without any Bihari accent! That was something intuitive! The girl had a tinge of Bihari accent. On growing up, that they both spoke in Haryanvi style to our irritation, is another case! Delhi’s influence, what else.

School

The girl was in Class III and the boy in Class I when the incident happened. The children used to occupy seats which had by custom got dedicated to each in the school bus. One day one older boy occupied our son’s seat. When our son demanded that he vacate, that fellow is supposed to have bullied him. Upon hearing this commotion, our daughter who was also in the bus, walked up to that boy and gave him one tight slap, dropping a tooth of his! It’s okay that the milk tooth of that boy might have been on the verge of falling. He slunk away and our boy reclaimed his seat. I never admonished the girl for this un-girly act. On the other hand, I applauded it.

One thing me and my lady had in common was interest in reading. So library books floated around in the house. It was a natural fall out that we purchased sufficient children’s books and comics. For children it is important to own books first. Visits to book shops therefore, were a regular phenomenon. In the book shop it took more time for the boy than the girl to finish browsing and choosing. The boy picked up the habit of reading and became a voracious reader subsequently. Not the girl!

Sports

Physically, the girl was thin, much more flexible and agile whereas the boy was rotund and hence not so agile. I tried to introduce them to sports, including swimming. The boy picked up steam by the time he reached 8^th standard but the girl was practically a non starter. Once the son claimed that he could swim 30 lengths of the pool, an Olympic size one. I didn’t believe. So next time I went. He did 50 lengths in slow breast stroke! I told him to stop. He claimed that he could go on further. I told him, enough and to try and develop speed. The daughter could barely complete one breadth! The boy also took to a variety of games and reached a decent degree in all. The girl merely toyed around though I think she could have taken to it easily and should have somewhat seriously.

Cultural

At high school level the boy took to contemporary English music seriously. I felt he was wasting his time listening to the transistor. When he proclaimed his interest, I questioned him about his knowledge. He said that other than the technical aspects I could ask him anything. Since I didn’t know what to ask, I kept shut. He used to study with music playing by the side, much to my consternation. He claimed that, that is the way he could concentrate! Well, who was I to say “No” and bring him down to my level of thinking. The girl dabbled around in some debates, but nothing to write home about.

As for dressing up, right from the small age, the boy was particular about smart and proper dress, while the girl couldn’t care less. The boy wanted clean white bed sheets well pressed every day to sleep on. If there was a wrinkle, he would stand aside, puff his face in anger and wait till it was properly done up. The girl should have been like that, but she never bothered about such finesse. In fact we had to enforce proper dressing on her. She was happy in her well worn comfortable ones. Never interested in fashion!

To End

In general, the girl was a firebrand and scatterbrained while the boy was quiet but with substance. Otherwise she was a girl and the boy, a boy. As for giving opportunities and guidance, both the children were dealt that in equal measure. We never pushed the boy to be a boy or the girl to be a girl, I swear. That's how as I wanted it from my formative days.

Though our girl did not show any particular liking to pink colour, supposed to be a girl’s colour, I have seen many small girls needing everything pink, even before they could name the colours. The boys in general do not insist on blue anyway. Mostly they break open the toy to study its mechanism!

As our kids grew up, they chose their own subjects and specialisations and also their own professions and I think they are okay, now. With no complaints against us, I hope.

The End

I wonder why the latter day feminists, unlike Simone de Beauvoir (she was in a different league altogether), Germaine Greer or even Gloria Steinem, make so much noise! The pretenders like our intellectually challenged Indian movie actresses, make me chuckle. “Man smart woman smarter”, sang Harry Belefonte. An axiom I always believed in. But women don’t know it yet, I think. Hence man rules the roost. From time immemorial to now anyway. Pink is pretty but Blue is red!