Of incest, women, abuses and power

Is incest fairly common in India?” asked my friend Yoav Masiach, who is in Delhi to pursue a doctorate in humanities.

Shocked at both the question and way it was worded nonchalantly over a cup of coffee at Khan Market, I asked him whatever gave him the idea.

“That’s all I get to hear from the way people talk. Nobody seems to talk without liberal doses of bhen*#$d, madar*#$d or even beti*#$d,” he pointed out.

After telling him not to generalise and mumbling some explanation, I switched the topic and forgot all about that biting cold January afternoon exchange till a week ago.

Aboard a relatively empty local train (one of the perks of working on weekends), I’d barely settled down to reading at the prized window seat, when two stations later a duo got in.

More than their perfume cloud and the very visible costly brands they flaunted, it was their loud conversation and the gaalis that got the attention of nearly the entire compartment.

“Bhen*#$d, if this Dhoni & Co keep doing such g^^#d masti then our chances at the World Cup will go phut,” one of them called out loudly to his friend from the door to his friend, who had decided to sit down. His friend laughed and replied back with more references to genitals of female relatives.

I am still not going to concede to what Yoav had observed. What then, was my problem? Why was I getting riled with this random exchange?

A senior colleague in office who uses the Marathi version of motherf%$#@r as some sort of endearment brushed this off as a “nonsensical thing only convent-educated types like you will be bothered about”.

To make it worse, he added, “You guys think it’s so cool to swear in English but anyone who does the same in Hindi or any regional language is looked down upon.”

I began thinking if this discomfort with swearing was a class construct of my mind and was transported back to a classroom at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, nearly two decades ago, where a workshop on Gender & Language had seen a panel discussion on profanities.

Irrespective of the language or culture, most bad-words target a woman and her sexuality. “The man who hits out at another man for giving him gaalis is not so angry about the gaalis, but about the questions raised on the character and sexuality of the women at home who they treat as property,” Dr Laxmi Lingam of the Women’s Studies Unit had said.

Last Sunday, when I went early to the Goregaon fish market, the catch was still being loaded on the stalls and the fiery Koli fisherwomen were supervising.

“Lai madar*#$d zhaalet! Paisa paaije pan kaam nako!” (“They’ve become such motherf%$#@rs. They want money but shirk work!”) one of them was loudly telling the other.

It is tragic that despite being a matriarchal community where most wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of the women, the Koli women take the cues from male role models when it comes to asserting that power.