Wo-man, Wo-wife, Wo-mom by Debayoti Ghosh
Domesticate culture. Doemesticate identity. The ideal wife in India is seen running around in circles at her husband’s house and then continuing her rounds at the temple while circling Gods like Krishna, Rama, and Hanuman chanting mantras for the wellness of her husband and children and never once for herself. While they bathe Lord Shiva with milk for his fierce nature, they offer sindoor and Alta to Goddess Durga, addressing her matrimonial status. While the Goddess Kali is worshipped for her outburst onto Earth, a wife from a common household cackling senselessly is pinned by her ankles and shoulders to the floor with a flat stone on her back and buttocks for priests to chant mantras liberating the woman from a believed preta, as seen at the Witch Temple of Mehandipur. There is no questioning the cause of the preta nor the nature of the preta. To me, the preta seems to be the woman’s self-discipline, maddened by the matrimonial patriarchy. While the society addresses this as a careless devotion of the woman as a wife and mother, I prefer to perceive it as a forced alienation of identity. An imposed culture with superstitious threats created by the patriarchal society taking advantage of the emotions a woman can express. The wife tormented out of fear. The mother manipulated out of greed. The woman subdued out of failed relatability.
Saheb Bibi Golam by Bimal Mitra introduces us to the wife, Chhoto Bou, who has subjected her entire identity to win back her husband’s compassion. Her focus on becoming the perfect wife is not based on her own principles, but rather on the grounds of her husband’s preference over addicts. The commitment performed is so intense that she cannot survive without alcohol, behaving much like the women being exorcised at the Mehandipur Temple. The wife of India is not a woman of India, but a woman made for Indian men. Their identity has been designed on the definition of hysteria, where silence stands as muttering disrespect and anger as revolting disrespect.
The 21st century is riding in an illusory change and advancement where females are raised to be a wife before a woman. In common households, the girl child is subjected to seemingly equal work as the rest of the children. However, upon a precise inspection, we identify the change in vocabulary towards the girls and women over the boys and men. Men indefinitely become stamps of approval and denial in the actions of the wife and daughter. Alongside this stands the woman willingly partaking in the commitments – a mother raises her daughters in a hesitator’s mindset, as they question the degree of their success to meet the gratification of the family, particularly the father or older males. The wife refuses to picture herself in a world of slow movement, much like her childhood days, when she would be offered care rather than being forced to offer care.
The little girls once secretly running after her mother’s sindoor packet from the thakurghar (prayer room), now rushes to apply the same after washing her hair because she feels incomplete without it. The women’s wrists are cuffed by shakha pola, an imposed material with spirituality, love, and fertility, while they crave to wear layers of old friendship bracelets.
What is it like to be a woman?
Is it draping yourself with a dupatta while you cook near open flames for your husband?
A motherly figure to your brother or a motherly figure to your husband?
If so, who will be the woman’s mother or the woman’s wife? When will the woman be a woman?
Chhoto Bou, is ostracized by her family after their false assumption of her being in a relationship with Bhoothnath. The truth of her gathering alcohol from Bhoothnath to satisfy her husband and later her own fractured womanhood is blatantly ignored, leading to her death at the hands of her family and her husband’s henchmen. Chhoto Bou places herself as most Indian wives do, a representative to the husband. The husband is not only allowed to become wealthy in his own identity, but also grows upon the woman’s identity.
In The Witch Temple of Mehandipur, the narrator asks the local guide Praful if the terrace was lined with “tombstones”, to which Praful responded, “No, they are markers for preta who were left behind. If a family buys a marker, the preta must stay here under it, not bother the people after they go home.” The now exorcised woman stands in the crowd with half her identity, one that shall not torment the family with her womanity. The story holds nothing besides gasps, breaths, and growls of the women subjected to horror. There is no identity offered to the women besides their ability to be a wife, a sister, or a mother.
On the streets of India, women begging by day, scavenging and feeding by night, all to bring home a version that shall not be beaten or ruthlessly objectified by the men or the other women contoured in patriarchal linings. Once again, a mother and wife, rather than a woman buying a new newspaper to sit on or a cup of tea to wash away the dizziness from rash men refusing to draw cash from their pockets. If the women begin to fight for themselves in the crowd, they are enjoyed, beaten, burnt, or buried. If the women give in to the voices that yell for liberty, their souls are exorcised out as preta. The borders of the idea of discipline have been mainly male concentric, such that women think along the same lines. The question is not why women choose to wear sindoor or shaka pola to feel whole rather why it is worn only after marriage if it signifies feminine strength and power. What is this feminine strength? Is it the ability to stay subdued for years under the post-marriage multiplicity of patriarchal structures, or the woman’s strength to bear pain every month in a painstakingly ignorant world?
Women have been treated as domesticated and harvested workers by the patriarchal system, such that the created injustice has been embedded deep into generations of women’s minds and language. For a woman to think of herself is a taboo as she identifies herself as a subject to her husband and his orders.
The texts present the language of patriarchy presents itself in the chronology of the man. The name Saheb Bibi Golam, which translates to Master, Wife and Slave, presents the man not as a husband, a son, or a father but rather a Lord to whom others stand answerable. What is the true narrative of the Wife?
The wife who stands behind the closed door after her husband has left mutters a soft prayer for him to be safe. The husband mutters silence assuming she is safely trapped in his prison. Upon the return of her husband, she is to offer water, folded laundry, and keep the food warm for his hungry stomach after his bath. The husband stands clueless and ignorant to the fact that the wife had quite possibly passed out from exhaustion and not bothered to feed herself horrified by her return to the kitchen to hear the loud clanking of vessels that resembles her husband’s screams.
Here stands a mother in the eyes of the sons, a wife in the eyes of the husbands, a married woman who must know her ways and words to the family that once raised her to be a daughter who serves while the brother idles. The brother who once played with cars and planes has barely ever taken the sister or the wife on a guilt-free trip, yet the sister who was given a kitchen set to play with, continues to cook for everyone besides herself. The daughter never celebrated hitting puberty, but considered a lady because she is capable of fertility. The mother craves for the marriage of her daughter so that she can wear her gaudy saree and necklace with pride. The son is never forced to be married by the mother, for she knows he is to return to the house with more of his kind, thereby, more to serve.
Upon the tombstones, the woman continues to be identified on grounds for her contribution to others – her salary in the mouths of her children and family, her sanity in the minds of her husband and family. Over the decades, there have been endless revolts of women fighting to claim a highly individualized identity for themselves, but how must one do so when the ratio of patriarchy to womanity is running in negatives?
The women must change the language to one that is dissociative and illegible to the men, one invested in gossip and love over clothes, bodies, weight, and coming last in a sports race rather than discussing the store that sells bright pink kitchen sets with a plastic baby to feed, the brightest shade of sindoor or the toughest shakha polas.
About the Author
Debayoti Ghosh is a literary enthusiast and writer with a passion for exploring language as a being. She is currently as student pursuing her Bachelors in literature. She attempts to construct narratives in a modernist displacement, encouraging the reader to construct the story rather than the authoress guiding it.
