Election, wedding, disgust

There are weeks when I don’t know what to do as I sit down to write my column. Nothing happens and the world seems to be asleep. However, this time, there is such a surfeit of events that I don’t know where to start. So let’s begin with the drama unfolding in the US. After the high-octane national elections here, all those suffering from withdrawal symptoms were delighted to plug into another political battle. Initially, it seemed like a pow-wow between two well-defined political actors who had nothing but hot air to offer. We giggled at the gaffes that a doddering Biden made and, after his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate, political chatter shifted to whether he was even fit to be a candidate. Then came the ear-splitting din created by the gunshot that rang out at Trump’s rally where he escaped literally by a hair’s breadth. Memes were created and shared widely, each one funnier than the last. Seriously, though, the consequences of this election are going to affect the rest of the world in the coming years, so it’s no laughing matter any more. The latest is that Biden has tested positive for Covid. God save America is all I can say.

Come now to the Ambani wedding that soaked up all the oxygen in India and large parts of the world. The sheer scale of the vulgarity, shameless display of wealth and bad taste left many of us swooning. No matter how hard one tried to escape it, virtually every national channel (many owned by the Ambanis), social media sites and gossip columns made sure that you were compelled to see it, week after week. The size of the emeralds (bigger than tindas) Nita Ambani wore, the designer lehengas and sherwanis the rest of the assembly wore (no matter how comical they looked), the long roster of celebrity guests from around the world, the gifts received by the newly-weds — all are by now public knowledge, thanks to the well-oiled PR machinery that was pressed into service.

Jokes apart, could there have been a more dignified way of celebrating a wedding in the House of the Ambanis? The answer is an unqualified yes, but in a country that is now staring into its phones all the time, the wonder of the spectacle trumped (sorry for this word) all such considerations. Look around yourselves and tell me which Indian family has the courage today to hold a quiet, private wedding? From our helpers to our family, friends and colleagues, Indian parents pay a fortune to the beauticians to lather their daughters with fistfuls of lightening creams and make-up, to the caterers who provide the multi-cuisine feast laid out and for the clothes, jewellery and cash that they have to cough up as dowry — the difference lies only in the scale. In the aspirational society that we have created, austerity and modesty are unknown concepts. Add to that the serials and films that celebrate tamashas, there can be no going back to those days when wedding feasts were cooked at home by a halwai and the bride wore her mother or grandmother’s wedding sari. In the Punjab of the Seventies and Eighties, I recall being almost stupefied by the scale of the weddings in a land where the quiet dignity of an Anand Karaj ceremony was only a small part of the chikan-shikan and dance-doonce at other accompanying parties. Naturally, a huge industry has cropped up for curating such mega events and rare is the family that can afford to buck this trend.

I want now to shift to a topic that has made me so sick that I cannot even begin to register my disgust. Alice Munro, the iconic feminist writer, died in May this year at 92 and reams were written about her insightful gaze that revealed the lives of women in provincial Canada. It was the kind of prose that touched you deeply because it was written from the heart. Then, in a recent shocking article written by her daughter, Munro was revealed as a woman who her readers did not know.

Munro’s daughter, from her first marriage, lived with her and the stepfather and was sexually abused by the stepfather over years. Like all little girls (she was just nine when this happened first), she found it difficult to speak of it. Eventually, when she did, Alice Munro refused to confront her husband and told her daughter she could not live without him. The sordid story finally reached the court and although he was indicted and convicted, the case was hushed up and never made it to any newspaper or public platform. It was as if there was an unspoken omerta in Canada to not sully the famous writer who had been awarded its first Nobel Prize!

This story has many dimensions. The lack of space restricts me from writing a fuller account of how many girls are groped or sexually abused at some point in their early life by a family member or helper. In our childhood, many such girls were shushed up by their mothers. However, the MeToo movement lifted the veil of shame that had made silence mandatory until then.

I promise my readers I will write about this one day but until then, think about what women undergo for the sake of preserving their family’s honour.