An excerpt from a Reuters report on Liz Hurley, filed by one Jonathan Allen:
"Indian women are commonly married off in their teens to a man of their parents' choosing, and are a cause of despair if they are still a spinster at 30. Even the humblest family will save up to make sure their children are paraded regally around the neighbourhood by lantern-bearers and a brass band."
An apt read for International Women's Day. What appalling, mindless bracketing, myopic stereotyping, West-side perspective and the inability to look beyond and rise above the "elephant-sadhu-snake-charmer" state of being!
Anyway, no fuming.
Dear Jonathan, this is for you. Please take note and do consider this a helpful "template" for all your West trend stories. Anyway, your generalisations are tantamount to saying the understated:
"In United States (or whatever country you come from), the concept of family - joint or nuclear - is redundant. Menfolk usually stray and wives make it a hobby of bearing children from all men of acquaintance. The children of a couple (married or otherwise) are occasionally subjected to paternity tests to establish if they have been borne of the same parentage. Before they hit their teens, majority of them take to drugs and abortions are as common as smoking up and sleeping around. Of course, the progressive and free society frowns upon anyone who remotely disagrees with its ideas of liberation." - Many thanks, Divisha
Rejoinder:
I know my response will have rubbed some the wrong way. I understand that two wrongs do not make a right either. I also am aware of the apathetic state of Indian girl, of child marriages, foeticides and tales that would disgust one with human nature.
However, that's not the big picture, and certainly not the only picture as comes across in Jonathan's piece. Hitherto caught in the dilemma of the "two" worlds, India is slowly, but surely rising.
It's high time the world shrugged off the archaic image of India that has long been popularised by a bunch of white-skinned-types seeking Nirvana in the sand dunes of Rajasthan or looking to purify self in the backwaters of Kerala.
Else, if skeletons are forced into tumbling out, it'd be "them" and not "us" who'll have to hide behind the closet.
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