What I call regressive attitudes are these:
1. A woman has to be married while she's young; a man can wait and choose.
2. A muhūrta is more important than the careful choice of a marriage partner.
3. A wife who wakes up early to cook and clean before work should wake up earlier to exercise, while her husband still goes to work with a packed lunch and comes home from work to relax.
4. The principle that "we don't divorce" is valued above mental health. How long someone has been miserably married is cited not as his experience to know what he doesn't want, but as proof that it's too late to change course.
5. A father decides whether his daughter can meet her husband or talk to him by phone.
6. A mother-in-law sarcastically asks whether her daughter-in-law is being beaten and starved; why else would someone want divorce? Why isn't she content to be the wife of an educated, handsome man, never mind that he hasn't offered her emotional or physical intimacy?
7. A divorced man can and should remarry; a divorced woman will be alone all her life, which is presumed to be miserable.
Reformation of regressive attitudes is the culture of India. Poetry that celebrates escape from abusive marriages is thousands of years old in India. My great-great-grandparents were reformers in India and paid the price of excommunication for speaking up against regressive marriage traditions. So, my family legacy is to evolve my thinking and celebrate diversity and individual freedom, not to impose a one-size-fits-all façade of happiness on every marriage.
A hypocrite is someone whose words and actions don't match. Back-stabbing is betrayal of someone's trust. Aba Nimbalkar deserves these labels; Latika does not. Latika is just changing her mind and actions at the same time, as Abhimanyu did before. Latika didn't have the confidence to refuse Sajjan a year ago, but she has that confidence now. She used to be self-deprecating, but now she's assertive about her man. Abhimanyu is the one who wants to behave like a dog who executes the planning of his mistress. We'll see: is Latika willing to become a dominatrix to satisfy Abhimanyu?
One thing I love about Abhimanyu is that he has never once told anyone about the bujhagāvaṇaṃ remark. He isn't keeping score. He isn't asking anyone to understand how he felt a year ago. He only cares about soothing Bapu's hurt feelings in the present, so that he can take back Latika with Bapu's blessing.
If Indu talked about Abhimanyu marrying Nandini (which is unthinkable for Indu, Abhimanyu, and Nandini all around), Latika would probably keep a respectful silence, because she wouldn't laugh in Indu's face as she did to Kamini: śakyaca nāhī!
Edited by BrhannadaArmour - 4 years ago
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