pressure to conform

I have this interesting relationship with Roshan. Roshan has been hired to keep our house clean. She is a robust, larger than life, 40+ woman, who seems to rule her world with an aggressive energy. And often I get the feeling that she would like to rule me too!

I don’t meet her often – only during the weekends I am at home. But those are the days I just prefer to hang around doing nothing… letting my world go to the dogs. The house, if W is not around, is a proverbial mess… to Roshan’s angst. She tries to prod me in many ways to get off my ass, mother-in-lawing me, often with not-even-veiled digs at how everything is done when W is around! She makes it clear that as far as she is concerned, I am a blot to being a Woman – not only doing nothing to play the Woman’s role, but letting my man do it to boot! Surprisingly she hasn’t yet made any comments to my smoking… considering that W doesn’t smoke.

I enjoy the banter too… teasing her in return whether being a woman can be much more than a tied-to-the-house-and-babies role… though she wonders at my freaking out lecture when she wastes water… and telling her I thank the good lord that I don’t have her for my m-in-law!

I wonder what she must make of the gender roles in my house. While W does a marvellous job of house-keeping, he doesn’t really fit into the typical description of a cuckolded, hen-pecked male role… and while I seem to do nothing, obviously I don’t “run” either the family or the home… the relationship equations are clearly not in favour of one over the other.

I often see Roshan struggling with herself to understand the dynamics in my house… and trying to do her best to beat us back into a shape of conformity that would fit into her social, gender role models…

Being REAL

’What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day. ’Does it mean having that buzz inside of you, and a stick-out handle?’

’REAL isn’t how you were made,’ said the Skin Horse. ’It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become REAL.’

’Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

’Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ’When you are REAL, you don’t mind being hurt.’

’Does it happen all at once like being wound up,’ he asked, ’or bit by bit?’

’It doesn’t happen all at once.’ said the Skin Horse. ’You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand… Once you are REAL, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’

- Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit“

Stories

Stories are such age-old things, told and shared since millions of years ago. Around fires, as songs, as a dance, as a heart-rending play/ drama, as poems and ballads, as paintings and artwork. So many ways have humans told stories. Some stories have died in their journies. Some have lived for thousands of years, still alive and throbbing, with their message still colouring our lives.

Stories are reminders, I think. To remind us of our pasts, our triumphs, our follies as humans, so that our futures may perhaps take a different path. We hope that through our stories we will find the intelligence to choose right, to make the right decisions.

Stories hold such powerful magic.

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