Partial Inspiration for my female super hero – Rajani

When I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s, India went from having only one government TV channel to multiple channels, some of which constantly ran reruns of American TV shows from the 80s (which I believe has influenced so many from my generation to emigrate to the US, instead of Britain, which was the previous destination of choice). The one government channel was called Doordarshan, which literally translates to \”a view of something thats far\”. It showed news, and programs on better farming practices as far as I can remember. In fact now that I think of it, I am surprised people thought it worth buying a TV to see that. But then again, it was the only screen in your house, and perhaps the novelty of having a moving picture tell you the news instead of the stationary radio was exciting.

Women were an unfortunate class of people, based on my childhood impressions from news stories, and older women conversation (dare I say  gossip). Even in the educated middle class, people wanted sons not daughters for many reasons. Dowry was a given. If you had a daughter you\’d have to give up almost all your savings to get her married. Somehow from popular culture, I gathered that the dowry would be an amount thats all your savings plus a little more, so the grooms family would always be harassing you for the remaining amount. And they would be harassing the bride who was now their property. Since she was a stranger in their house to everyone including her husband, she was at their mercy. The concept of showing the new bride her place was well accepted. It wasn\’t just verbal abuse, beatings were par for the course. There were news stories of bride killing and burning pretty regularly, and I personally know one person whose aunt was murdered for dowry.

So if you were a girl, your parents would become paupers in getting you married to a stranger, who along with his family would likely abuse you and could kill you. No wonder people did not want a daughter. A son would bring them dowry, a slave, who would live with them and take care of them when they were old. It seems so bizarre now, but those were the rules. No one I know in the educated middle class has told me that they were physically beaten, but it was also taboo to talk about it because it would bring dishonor to the abusers. I witnessed many husbands, and in-laws ordering the bride around like a slave in the presence of company though. Almost a 100% of the women who worked in our house as cooks or cleaners, were beaten on a regular basis by their husbands (hiring servants is common in the middle class and richer, because the poor are so poor, you can afford to hire them for very little). Sometimes they were beaten because the husband\’s mother would tell him to beat her, to keep her in check because she disagreed with her during the day when he wasn\’t home.

This was the India I was growing up in. To make matters worse, I read voraciously, and characters like Jane Eyre and Scarlett O\’Hara were making there own decisions (at least some of them) and despite how regressive their settings were, somehow India in the 90s was worse. I was exposed to the idea that women deserve equal rights and all around the world they have fought for them, and are continuing the fight. Perhaps if I didn\’t read, I\’d accept the situation around me more happily. It was pretty dismal, and my brain isn\’t wired to dissociate misery around me and live happily in my isolated safer world. I\’d say until I was 10, I probably hated all men other than my father (and some boy in class I might have had a crush on), because almost every man was guilty to some extent of mistreating a woman. It always felt like men thought of women as an animal they owned, higher than cattle or dog but nowhere near their equal at all.

It was then that this TV show called Rajani showed up on Doordarshan. Rajani was a housewife. She was pleasant, hardly every lost her temper, she cooked food and wore sarees. She looked like every woman. But she would solve problems faced by everyday people and some of them were women focused stories that dealt with dowry, preference for a son, etc. But it was the fact that she was a woman herself and could go up against established corrupt institutions, which was the most feminist thing about the show. None of the rules set for women seemed to apply to her. Seeing that none of the rules applied to her, suddenly made all the rules seem breakable. She was an inspiration to millions of women around the country, and most definitely to me.

Its worth noting that while a lot of women loved it, some thought Rajani was \”an adult fantasy, simplistic and implausible\” and questioned \”How many husbands are there like Rajani\’s?\” To those woman who were already in the grinder it was implausible because to be like her you needed her husband, but to young girls like me she was an inspiration because we could imagine a future where the rules wouldn\’t apply to us.

I think Rajani would be a good partial role model for my superhero.