If you want to understand how to become better allies to people with disabilities, then join us at Embracing All Abilities: Including People with Disabilities at Work.
The sphere of Work is seen as owned exclusively by men. Women can only ever be a distraction here.
In an interview today with the Hindu, well-known VJ Nikhil Chinapa has a rather curious ‘pearl of wisdom’ about the Bangalore music scene in the good ol’ days. He says, “Bangalore then had the perfect music scene with no drinks, substance abuse or women. It was the best if you liked sound hitting you square in the chest.”
Now everyone knows that us feminists get angry for no reason, so I promptly got angry. (I’m saying this upfront for the benefit of that one commentor who is sure to say, “but why are you so angry? I’m sure he didn’t mean anything.”)
Rambha was sent to ‘seduce’ Vishwamitra and distract him from his tapasya. The idea of woman is temptress is hardly new. Neither is the concept of woman as “distraction” – a tool sent to keep man away from his All Important Work that he is otherwise bent on accomplishing. Even a temptress has agency – after all, she can choose to play the role of seductress and even enjoy it, but a ‘distraction’ is just an object in one man’s war against another.
Did anyone ever ask Rambha what she felt about being a tool in the hands of Indra? Did she desire Vishwamitra? or was she repulsed by him? Who cares? Especially when the tool in question has been reduced by a curse to being a rock – another object.
The sphere of Work is seen as owned exclusively by men. Women can only ever be a distraction here, placed in the same category as ‘drinks’ or ‘substance abuse’. On the one hand, it seems like an acknowledgement of women’s power, but this power is unidimensional and refers only to a woman’s sexual attraction for a man.
The fact that a well-known media personality should be able to comfortably equate a ‘perfect’ music scene with the presence of no women is a telling comment on who we think work spaces are meant for – and it looks like no amount of ‘modernity’ will change that for some people.
Pic credit: An Apsara in Angkor Wat by Travfotos (Used under a Creative Commons license)
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
When Jaya Bachchan speaks her mind in public she is often accused of being brusque and even abrasive. Can we think of her prodigious talent and all the bitter pills she has had to swallow over the years?
A couple of days ago, a short clip of a 1998 interview of Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan resurfaced on social media. In this episode of the Simi Grewal chat show, at about the 23-minute mark, Jaya lists her husband’s priorities: one, parents, two kids, then wife. Then she corrects herself: his profession – and perhaps someone else – ranks above her as a wife.
Amitabh looks visibly uncomfortable at this unstated but unambiguous reference to his rather well-publicised affair with co-star Rekha back in the day.
Watching the classic film Abhimaan some years ago, one scene really stayed with me. It was something Brajeshwarlal (David’s character) says in troubled tones during the song tere mere milan ki yeh raina. He says something to the effect that Uma (Jaya Bhaduri’s character) is more talented than Subir (Amitabh Bachchan’s character) and that this was a problem since society teaches us that men are superior to women.
Please enter your email address