Tales of male chauvinism

CV Sukumaran

ARTHUR Koestler’s The Act of Creation mentions the story of a prince. While travelling through his territory, he spotted a man in the cheering crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. He beckoned him and asked: ‘Was your mother ever employed in my palace?’ ‘No, sire,’ the man replied, ‘but my father was.’ The prince was seemingly untroubled by a promiscuous father but could not approve of an unchaste mother — a perfect example of male chauvinism.

A late uncle of mine, my mother’s cousin, had such a mindset. My mother’s much younger sisters and I went to school together, carrying our afternoon lunch in a tiffin. Since we were brought up by my grandparents, my aunts and I grew up under one roof. This naturally made me think that they were my siblings!

The tiffin box, with six or seven tiers, was heavy. It was tiring to carry it alone. So, we shared the burden. However, this arrangement came to a halt — to my advantage, so to speak — when my uncle happened to cross our path as we were once heading for school. It was I who was holding the tiffin at that moment. He raised his eyebrows and right hand simultaneously – the former in surprise and the latter to stop us. What was it that I was carrying, he enquired. ‘Lunch,’ I responded. ‘Only for yourself?’ was his next question. ‘No, for all of us,’ we said in unison. ‘Oh, is that so?’ he asked incredulously. ‘But why do you carry it alone?’ he wondered. ‘We take turns,’ I said. ‘From tomorrow, they will carry it, not you,’ he said, pointing at my ‘siblings’.

He promptly told my granny that henceforth the lunch tiffin would be carried by the girls as it was not a boy’s job. And she, without an iota of hesitation, agreed. I naively and selfishly thought that he had liberated me from a weighty task, and it was only later that I realised the import of his patriarchal interference.

I remember another male chauvinist in my village. Even his mother was scared of him. Whenever she wanted to go out of the house to meet friends or relatives or her married daughters living in neighbouring villages, she had to take his permission. Since talking to him directly was beyond her, she took outside help to that end.

His behaviour was like that of Napoleon — the tyrannical pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. He basked in the feeling of superiority over the female members of the house. It was always his way or the highway. No wonder he was persona non grata with many a woman in his village.