I guess I finally have an answer to the question that has been
so often asked ...."A PhD in the area of Science Fiction? Really? Whatever
for?!” Some questions have no tangible answers and this to me has always been
one of them. I thought I had exhausted them all till today!!! From ‘PKD being
my favorite Sci-Fi writer’ to ‘I have been stuck in a time warp of my own’,
have given them all! Today is my day of enlightenment….
I am an alien from Pluto and thus my obsession with Sci Fi!!! I
have been told (at least from the book titles) that Men are from Mars and Women
from Venus. Well, let me break the news to you today… I am from Pluto – the
planet whose orbit ostensibly is so extended that it crosses the orbit of
another planet. Now presumably that is something you are not allowed to do; especially if
you want to call yourself a planet (sic). There is something so offensive about
that!!!!!!! I have crossed the line, jumped orbits and guess that also explains
the wander lust in me.
So, it all begins with my journey to work today. Have you ever
tried to make sense of how people cross the road in India? Well, it’s like
nowhere else. The temptation is always to look the other way of the oncoming
traffic. The intent is to turn away from disaster! So we have women charging
across the road (you can’t growl at their butt) with children on toe with the
single minded determination of getting to school on time (you can’t display anger
at innocent indifference). Young couples, hand in hand, eye in eye, sailing on
the tide of time (your heart bleeds to disturb two people so much in love). Old
men and women who strongly believe that the zebra crossing should move with
them (senior citizens I guess is the word for them)… and last but not the least
the young college student who believe that diagonal is the rule of the land (why
why Gen Y?). None of the above mentioned look AT you! I read somewhere that the
pessimist is the one who looks both ways (even on a one way street) when
crossing the street and the optimist is the one who looks the “other” way when
crossing a one way street. We are a land full of optimists. We survive issues,
problems, disasters, catastrophes …. We look the other way and do it with absolute
confidence and trust in the almighty.
Navigating through the numerous optimists, I walk in to work with the almost quixotic passion that grips me most of the time only to see
that someone was “mildly agitated” at a comment I made at a women’s leadership
forum. The thought of what agitated her was not as intriguing as the reference to
her state of mind. How can one be ‘mildly’ agitated? The law of the binary
continues to befuddle me. The thought that disturbed her was my remark that
we do not reside in a ‘male dominated society’!
“The notion that a successful woman doesn’t view the society as being
male dominated is disconcerting”… or so she quips. Since she was so sure that my views were
contrary to reality, am confused on why she equated my gender and /or my
successful career to a notion!!!!
I like pink, fancy expensive underclothes, love diamonds and
babies, curious about pornography, do not care if I am objectified, love men, thrive
on their attention, like sex and am not career focused. So, yes, I am not a
feminist. I do not believe in this tension that so grips most women – the pressure
to simulate the “idea of the right essential woman” who is struggling to
survive in a so-called male dominated society!
I strongly believe that we (men and women alike) are struggling
towards our own definition of self-actualization and in this pursuit tend to
give birth to half-truths that have a way of authenticating themselves. Perhaps
the world is dominated (at best, statistically speaking) by men. However, that
doesn’t make them controlling in its entirety.
And again in this pursuit to prove this half-truth, many women seem to inadvertently
become the men they want to marry thereby snowballing the notion of domination.
We
are like the people who I bumped into this morning – crossing the road by
looking the other way. We just need a
higher and different perspective to cross over by looking at the oncoming
traffic in its eye!
