Dalit Veda Vyasa was India’s first nation builder. He was the child of an inter-caste union

 In ‘Makers of Modern Dalit History’, Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan write Veda Vyasa’s achievements show how Dalit communities have helped Hinduism revolutionise and reform.

A revolutionary reformer, a path-breaking poet, a writer par excellence, a brilliant editor, an inspirational sage who institutionalized teaching with passion and an institution unto himself, Veda Vyasa is one of the central names in Indian spiritual tradition. He can be referred to as ‘the first nation builder’ for his creation of the teertha-yatra pilgrimages, for ‘chitta-shuddhi’ (cleansing of the mind), that prepared the ground for national unity and as someone who changed the face of a nation that is known for its spiritual philosophies and practices even in contemporary times.

Veda Vyasa’s extraordinary achievements are evidence that those who came from the Dalit and lower-caste communities have helped Hinduism revolutionize, reorganize and reform. Krishna Dvaipayana Veda Vyasa was a product of one of ancient India’s first inter-caste unions, born to a sage, Maharishi Parashara, and a fisherwoman, Satyavati. No one would have thought that this son of unequal parents would go on to represent Hinduism and its tenets. Every year, Vyasa’s birth anniversary is observed as Vyasa Purnima (full-moon day), also known as Guru Purnima in the month of Ashada (July–August) of the Hindu calendar. The day is dedicated to gurus or teachers. 

Representational image | The battle of Kurukshetra in Mahabharata | Commons

The apple does not fall far from the tree, and Veda Vyasa’s father, too, was a sage recognized for his immense knowledge and self-realisation. He worked tirelessly to bring order and cooperation between the different sections of society by travelling extensively and setting up ashrams to impart positive values at a time when there was a lot of discord in society and little respect between communities and castes. 

Right from the time he was a child, Vyasa had a strong urge to transcend the limited and the meaningless, and venture into the unknown realms of infinitude armed with a universal outlook. He set out to present the ancient wisdom of the past in a way that it could be appreciated and absorbed by all. During his young years, there was no one equal to Vyasa. He was intelligent, with a high grasping power, learning and absorbing what his father, his guru, taught him.

Vyasa was deeply committed to the service of mankind and wanted to disseminate knowledge among people. Due to his relentless contribution to Hinduism in which he outlined that knowledge was vital for self unfoldment, the positive impact of which is felt even today, Vyasa can be considered one of the most daring religious revolutionaries to have appeared in Hindu cultural history. His work has had a tremendous impact on scholars, thinkers and seekers from across the globe. In the words of German Indologist Paul Deussen: 

‘Love your neighbour like you love yourself’: Why should I do that? The answer is not found in the Bible, but in the Vedas, namely in the great formula ‘Tat Twam Asi’, which in three words, communicates the underlying metaphysics: You should love your neighbour like yourself, because you yourself are your neighbour, whereas to see him as different is mere illusion. 

It was Vyasa, equipped with an incomparably astute intellect, who decided to give humanity the categorized and documented version of the Vedas, India’s immense book of knowledge that had, until then, had only been shared orally. To compile and document that was an onerous task. His mission was not an ordinary one. He had perhaps realized that there was a definite need to pen down the treatise amid forgotten traditions and calamities, such as famines, as it would prove beneficial for the generations to come. The visionary sage not only compiled the Vedas but segregated it into the four parts that it is known to have today, namely the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda. 

However, the systematic thinker in Vyasa was apparently not satisfied with merely classifying the entire wealth of Vedic knowledge into four volumes; in each volume he also brought about a harmonious rhythm, both in the arrangement and the classification of the contents. He divided each of the four volumes roughly into four sections: Mantras (chants or hymns), Brahmanas (rituals and rules of conduct), Aranyakas (methods of subjective worship) and Upanishads (philosophical revelations). 

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German scholar who was widely read before the Second World War and discussed in public newspapers and magazines, saw in the Upanishads the ‘fruit of the highest human knowledge and wisdom’ and in their introduction into the Western world ‘the greatest gift of the century’. In his writings, Schopenhauer confessed that reading the Upanishads had been the joy of his life and later the consolation at the hour of his death. According to him, this was such a great legacy to mankind because its study purified the mind like nothing else could.

Vyasa was an original thinker with astounding faculties of insight and foresight. In the words of Swami Chinmayananda, one of the first spiritual teachers to expound the knowledge of the Upanishads in English, ‘Vyasa was one of the sages who had a vast vision of the past and the great imagination to see the future, both of which he brought forth in order to tackle the problems of decadence in his immediate present.’

Was Vyasa reaching out to the people in a way they could understand? To explain how the subject should be understood, he brought to the fore the Brahmasutras, an analysis based on the essential thoughts contained in the Upanishads. While the Upanishads tell us who we are, the Brahmasutras analyse and clarify, shining a light on this most vital knowledge. The Brahmasutras are the substratum for the ancient Indian philosophy; Advaita Vedanta, which states that the divinity in one is the divinity in all. To Vyasa’s credit, the Brahmasutras form the umbrella of Vedantic knowledge and studies. 

Vyasa’s quest to present knowledge in simplified and easily comprehensible forms was both refreshing and relentless. He seemed to be of the belief that there could always be more creative ways to reach out to people. And to accomplish that, he perhaps decided to travel extensively, engage with and speak to various sages, cutting across the length and breadth of the nation, to write the Puranas (mystic stories based on ancient India). Vyasa compiled and wrote all of the eighteen puranas. In Vyasa’s work, one can find a unique harmony of technique, plot development, character portrayal, description of nature and cultural connections. In other words, he was the greatest producer of potboilers of the time! 

David Frawley, author, teacher and founder of the American Institute of Vedic Studies, has said, ‘As such, Veda Vyasa developed the foundation for Hindu dharma as it endures to the present day, with its main deity forms, philosophies and yogic paths. Yet Veda Vyasa stayed in the background and never made himself into an object of worship.’ 

One of Vyasa’s most applauded works is the Mahabharata. Along with the Ramayana, this epic poem is one of Hinduism’s most eminent works. The duo lies at the core of Indian national identity and culture, spanning millennia. 

Set against the backdrop of the Mahabharata, Vyasa also produced one of India’s ‘FAQ’ handbooks—the Bhagavad Gita—which teaches human beings how to practically live the subtle philosophies of everyday life. The Bhagavad Gita occurs in the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, comprising eighteen chapters. It is Veda Vyasa’s sheer brilliance that he translated subtle Vedic maxims in his unique way, against the intricacies of politics and the edginess of a family feud. 

Vyasa’s accomplishments show that birth and background do not dictate a person’s accomplishments. 

This excerpt from ‘Makers of Modern Dalit History’ by Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan has been published with permission from Penguin Random House India.

(Source: The Print)

Ijaazat is a strangely poetic take on divorce that was rare in 1980s Hindi films

 Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha's portrayal of a divorced couple in this Gulzar film is more loving and honest than many marriages that do last.

One of the most striking scenes of Gulzar’s Ijaazat (1987) is when Mahendra (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudha (Rekha), a newly married couple, talk about his former lover, Maya (Anuradha Patel). Sudha has constantly come across Maya’s things in the house — a coat, a shawl, a pair of sunglasses and other things that Mahendra has been either too lazy or unwilling to return. It has chafed and gnawed at her, although she has done her best to be graceful about the fact that her house is full of remnants of the woman her husband is still in love with.

Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint

When Mahendra finally does return Maya’s things, she writes him a letter about all the other things he ought to return. The memories of 116 moonlit nights, for example. The rain-soaked days they spent together, the freckle on his shoulder, the smell of wet mehendi, the false promises, and a thousand other memories of their love.

An emotional Mahendra reads this letter out to his wife, who now regrets sending Maya’s things back. As it is, she is in this house day and night, what difference does it make if her things are here as well, she says.

And the letter becomes a song, Mera Kuch Saamaan — one of the most beautiful breakup songs ever to be made. Gulzar, who also wrote the film’s screenplay (adapted from a story by Subodh Ghosh) and dialogues, wrote some of the most achingly beautiful lyrics of his career for this free-verse song, put to tune by R.D. Burman and sung to perfection by Asha Bhosle, who, along with Gulzar, won a National Award for it.

The tenderness with which she sings of lost love, of bittersweet memories tinged with regret and of the sensual passion that consumes young lovers makes this the standout track from the movie, but every song, actually, is a gem. And each one is sung solely by Asha Bhosle.

In the week that the singer celebrated her 87th birthday, here is a look back at Ijaazat.

The waiting room of life

The movie actually opens five years ahead in time, at a railway station, where Mahendra and Sudha, both travelling to different destinations and caught in a heavy downpour, spend the night in the first-class waiting room, where they meet for the first time since they separated.

What happened to this marriage, to Maya, is told through flashbacks, but truthfully, it is what is happening in the present, in the dinky waiting room, that is far more interesting. After the initial awkwardness, the two settle into each other’s company, which feels so familiar and comfortable that Mahendra even says it feels like home.

They squabble over his keenness for a peg of whisky, they crack in jokes about each other’s quirks and habits, she picks up after him when he leaves his wet clothes and towel on the table and even, instinctively, picks up a towel and dries his hair after he returns from trying to find them some food.

The station master, who comes in once or twice before retiring for the night, philosophically tells Mahendra that life is a waiting room. He says it jokingly, but somewhere, there is truth to it. Five years earlier, Sudha left Mahendra abruptly and informed him via a letter, so neither of them really got closure, even though they moved on. It was as if they were in a waiting room all this time, waiting to meet, to revisit old wounds, to finally dress them with the tenderness they deserved five years earlier but never received.

All marriages are different, and so are all divorces

Divorce are not seen through the lenses of good and bad. It is treated with warmth, compassion and a certain understanding that this is a relationship no one else truly knows and has access to except the two people who were in it. And, in Ijaazat, it is shown as not any one person’s fault.

Five years earlier, for example, soon after receiving Maya’s letter, Mahendra decides to take Sudha on their delayed honeymoon. Sudha asks him if he has made this sudden plan because he wants to run away. From whom, he asks. You know the answer, she says. Maya’s presence in their marriage, made all the more apparent by her phone calls, hangs like an oppressively heavy perfume.

Mahendra explains that while he had been in love with Maya, he is trying to forget her, but he won’t be able to do that without Sudha’s help. Because, he says, Sudha thinks about Maya far more than he does.

The entire scene is a telling one for many reasons. It shows, in a few words, Mahendra’s weak selfishness, given that has never bothered to return Maya’s things and make a clean slate for his new wife, and given that he expects his wife to help him get over his lover. It shows Sudha’s unwillingness to let go of the subject, even when they’re going on their honeymoon, her almost pathological desire to talk about Maya. It shows Maya’s childlike lack of respect for the fact that her former lover is now married to someone else and her inability to let him go.

And it shows a marriage that may not be built on love in the conventional sense and didn’t last, but has friendship, brutal honesty and a quiet understanding, even through misunderstandings, that even many lasting marriages don’t have.

(Source: The Print)

Uttar Pradesh Police registers first case under new law against 'love jihad'

 The case was registered by a resident of Bareilly who accused a Muslim man of trying to forcibly convert his daughter and also for threatening to kill her.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has registered its first case under the newly-implemented anti-conversion law, accusing a Muslim man of trying to forcibly convert a Hindu girl.

The case was registered Saturday under the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020, which was cleared by Governor Anandiben Patel earlier that day.

Tikaram, a resident of the district Bareilly, filed the case at the Deorania Police Station against a youth named Uwaish Ahmed for allegedly threatening his daughter’s life and forcing her to convert to Islam.

Representational image | Photo: Pixabay

The Deputy Inspector General of Bareilly zone Rajesh Pandey told ThePrint that the Deorania Police registered the case under Sections 3 and 5 of the new law, along with the Indian Penal Code sections related to threat to life.

Pandey added that the accused, Ahmed, who is a resident of Sharifnagar in Deorania, had absconded from his residence and efforts were on to apprehend him.

Accused verbally abused girl, threatened to kill her

In his complaint, Tikaram alleged that Ahmed was acquainted with his daughter since they were students and used to frequently talk to each other.

However, recently, the latter started pressurising her to convert to Islam. According to the girl’s father, Ahmed and his family were warned on many occasions but he did not relent.

Tikaram also accused Ahmed of verbally abusing his daughter and threatening to kill her.

Based on his complaint, the police has registered an FIR against Ahmed under the ordinance that applies to cases of alleged ‘love jihad’. According to the police, a team is currently trying to apprehend the accused.

The Uttar Pradesh government approved the ordinance, Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion Bill 2020, that seeks to bar “forceful religious conversions”, including for marriage, on 24 November

The ordinance provides for an imprisonment of 1-10 years and a fine of Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000 under different categories.

(Source: The Print)

Marriage between first cousins illegal, says Punjab and Haryana High Court

 Court rules after youth, who was in a live-in relationship with a minor girl who was his relative, files for anticipatory bail

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has stated that marriage between first cousins is illegal. The assertion came after a youth moved the High Court against the State of Punjab for anticipatory bail.

The petitioner, a 21-year-old youth, had sought anticipatory bail in a case registered under Sections 363 (kidnapping), 366A (Procuration of minor girl) of the Indian Penal Code at Khanna city-2 in Ludhiana district.

The counsel for petitioner submitted that his client had also filed a criminal writ petition, along with the girl, praying for grant of protection to their life and liberty. The State however argued the duo were first cousins and their fathers were real brothers.

Justice Arvind Singh Sangwan, while hearing the petition, said, “..the submission in the present petition that as and when she [the girl] attains the age of 18 years, they will perform marriage is per se illegal.”

During the hearing, the court file of the criminal writ petition was also summoned and as per its memorandum of parties, the girl’s age was stated as 17 and the petitioner had filed the said petition with the submission that both of them were in a live-in-relationship.

Along with the petition, a representation was also annexed, in which the girl had stated that while her parents had love and affection for their sons, she was ignored by them. Therefore, she decided to live with her friend and, on that account, she was apprehending that her parents could harass them and disturb their peace of mind. This petition was disposed on September 7.

Justice Sangwan, in the current case, pointed out “...in the present petition also, the petitioner has not disclosed the fact that he is the first cousin of the girl and, therefore, the submission in the present petition that as and when she attains the age of 18 years, they will perform marriage is also per se illegal.”

The counsel for the State, who opposed the bail, raised objections, including that the girl was a minor. Besides, the boy and the girl were first cousins as their fathers were brothers. Hence, the petitioner concealed yet another fact in the said criminal writ petition that they fall in the prohibited ‘sapinda’ under the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) and could not marry each other. The HMA prohibits marriage between two individuals if they have common ancestor.

(Source: The Hindu)

The family in 2050: Artificial wombs, robot carers and the rise of single fathers by choice

Technology and economics could radically change our understanding of the family in years to come – and deepen inherited privilege

In 2004, when the year 2020 sounded futuristic, the Guardian predicted it would by now be “very hard” to talk about a “typical family”. Domestic units would be formed in myriad ways and “children living with both their biological parents in the same household” would be in the minority.

This hasn’t quite panned out. In the UK today, 84% of babies are born to parents who are married, in a civil partnership or co-habiting, although the statistics don’t reveal all the real-life complexities (many of the parents will be starting second families, for instance). In 2019, 61% of families with dependent children have married or civil-partnered parents (the children may not be biologically related to both). In the US, fewer than half of children are living with two biological parents who are in their first marriage.

We correctly predicted that, in heterosexual couples, an increasing number of women would be the breadwinner, but don’t imagine these are all high-earning women easily carrying the financial burden; most are low-earners, and the figures include single mothers. And we said that financial pressures on young adults would lead to people staying at home for longer. There has been a 46.3% increase in the number of young adults living with their parents in the two decades to 2019.

But we overstated the attention we would be giving to the issue of how to care for an ageing population. “By 2020,” we predicted, “we will be in the middle of the debate on the care deficit.” The crisis is still there, and growing, but it is one of those issues that has been overshadowed, and exacerbated, by Brexit (there are 104,000 EU citizens working as carers in the UK). And we understated the extent to which we would invite technology into our family lives. 

“Webcams might by 2020 be playing the role the telephone did in the 20th century, a vital communication link for families who might live hundreds of miles apart,” we predicted in 2004. This wasn’t wrong, but the quaint idea of “webcams” – this was three years before Apple launched its iPhone, and everyone started uploading photographs of their children to a new site called Facebook – doesn’t quite describe the proliferation of tech in everyday life.

It’s certainly true that the family has changed immensely over the past few decades, and those trends are continuing. The number of people living alone is increasing, as is the number of women choosing not to have children, and we are having fewer children than before, too. “A key change in family structure since the 1980s has been the rise of childbearing within cohabitation,” says Ann Berrington, professor of demography and social statistics at the University of Southampton. 

Composite: Guardian Design; The Good Brigade/Getty Images; Getty Images; Alamy

“The proportion of births that take place in England and Wales outside marriage has doubled from around a quarter in 1988 to just under half today. Cohabiting families – with and without children – are the fastest-growing type of family in England and Wales. Evidence from qualitative research that we have undertaken suggests that while marriage is being rejected by a minority as an outdated, patriarchal institution, most people still view it in a positive light and as an ultimate goal.” 

The number of same-sex couples has also risen, she says: “An increase of 53%, from 152,000 in 2015 to 232,000 in 2018. It seems likely that this diversity in family life will continue to increase in the coming decade, along with complex families – for example, stepfamilies resulting from repartnering.”

There have been developments in reproductive technology alongside changing social attitudes. “Certainly, since the turn of this century, the two have come together to create family types that just wouldn’t have been possible before,” says Susan Golombok, the director of the Centre for Family Research at Cambridge University, and author of the forthcoming book We Are Family. But, she adds: “It’s hard to tell whether they are going to explode into something or not. One thing that we are studying is a small but growing number of people who are meeting each other over the internet in order to have children together, without a romantic relationship. We don’t know how that works out for them or for the children yet, but it’s certainly happening.

“Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen quite a rise in the number of single mothers by choice – the single women who decide to go it alone and have children, through donor insemination – but we’re now beginning to see single fathers by choice. It’s a very small group, but they do exist. Some of them are gay men, so that, in a way, is more obvious, but there are also single heterosexual men having children through surrogacy and egg donation. That’s something that may grow.”

There is also a rise in the number of transgender parents. “Until very recently, transgender parents had children and then transitioned afterwards, but because of developments in assisted reproduction and people being able to preserve eggs and sperm, more transgender people are having children after their transition.” She says this is likely to increase in the coming decades.

Advances in technology will create ever-bigger ethical debates. So-called “designer babies” are already a reality, with parents able to select embryos to screen out inherited diseases and conditions. But by 2050, prospective parents could pay to select not only for good health but for traits such as intelligence, attractiveness or athleticism – the babies of rich parents could be genetically superior to those born to lower-income families.

“Artificial eggs and sperm are on the horizon,” says Golombok, “which will not just be helpful for infertile heterosexual couples but will allow same-sex couples to both be the biological parents of their children, because that will mean men can produce eggs and sperm, and so can women. For single people who want to have children, it would even be possible for them to produce eggs and sperm.”

Genetic testing will become more popular, and it will be harder for parents to keep secret from their children that they were conceived using donated eggs or sperm (although disclosure is widely considered to be a good thing). Ancestry websites will be used to discover genetic half-siblings. But genetics are not all-important to the concept of family. “Family is no longer necessarily about biological relatedness – that is something that has changed a lot,” says Golombok.

We are already seeing uterus transplants, but by 2050, we may be relying on artificial wombs to grow our babies. “They are being developed at the moment initially to help with very premature babies to replicate, as far as possible, the human uterus. But eventually it’s possible that artificial wombs will be used instead of pregnancy.” That could free up women for whom pregnancy – and its related physical and psychological toll, as well as the financial hit they take when taking time out from their careers – is something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. “I think first it will probably be used for women who don’t have their own wombs – the women who might, at the moment, turn to surrogacy,” says Golombok. “But actually, anybody could do this, so it could be quite liberating in some ways for women. Some women wouldn’t like the idea at all. Also, I can see ways in which it could be used in a rather worrying way, almost like ‘baby farms’.”

A growing number of women are freezing their eggs, and the age at which women have their first child is also rising. In 2050, will it be more normal for women in their 50s, or even 60s and beyond, to become mothers? “It is technically possible,” says Golombok. “Whether many women would actually want to do that seems unlikely to me. But, generally, there will certainly be more women having babies in their 40s, unless there is a huge change in mindset.” Experts have already called for children to be educated about natural fertility decline, which could mean future generations decide to have children earlier. But society isn’t set up to support that, Golombok points out – from the price of education to the lack of state support, and the cost of housing. “The age at which women are having children is going up and up, and I can’t really see an end to that.”

Will we have men travelling abroad for work? What will happen to their skills as dads?

Brexit – with prolonged trade negotiations and predicted economic decline – will affect families in the coming decades. 

“Economic insecurity is associated with an increased preference for cohabitation as opposed to marriage,” says Berrington. “Furthermore, economic hardship is related to increased risks of family breakdown.”

Berrington points out that families have become more transnational, “especially since women have made up an increasingly large proportion of migrants. In previous decades, migrants to the UK from South Asia often migrated for the purpose of family formation or reunification. Today, migration to the UK is more often for purposes of education and work. So the future link between international migration and family formation is unclear.” This is particularly so as policies around migration are tightened up.

If the economy suffers post-Brexit, as numerous economists warn, increasing numbers of British people may seek work abroad – and this could disproportionately mean men. Fathers have become more engaged with their children in recent years, with the number of stay-at-home dads rising (although in 93% of heterosexual couples, the bulk of the housework, including caring responsibilities, still falls to women). “Will we have men travelling to the Commonwealth, Europe and the like to work? And if they do, what will happen to their skills as dads?” asks Charlie Lewis, a professor of psychology at Lancaster University who researches fatherhood.

“Thirty years ago when I started working on fathers, all the trends were for women to enter the professions,” he says, “but there’s no good evidence that there will be this [female] takeover of the workplace.” Work is still a largely hostile environment for family life. “And it’s going to be much more volatile in future years.” Policies such as a four-day week would allow “the family to balance better”.

Women will continue to make strides in the workforce, but this will put pressure on childcare, which still disproportionally falls to mothers. In the UK, we don’t have the “extensive childcare to match what happens in Germany and northern Europe”, says Lewis. “We don’t think carefully about protecting the next generation.”

Stay-at-home dads are still a minority, but Lewis says he remains surprised by the still-small number of fathers who are the resident parent after family breakdown, even if they have been the main carer prior to that. Will that change by 2050? Not if the past few decades are anything to go by. “It hasn’t changed much since the early 70s. We think that 40 or 50 years ago was a time when the children always went to the mother, but a government report in 1974 documented that 10% of children lived with their dads, and it’s not much more than 10% now.”

Inherited advantage will entrench the privilege of some families at the expense of everyone else. “The inequality that we currently see between families will only continue to grow,” says Jessica Calarco, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University. “We know that affluent white families hoard opportunities and often demand new opportunities to give them access to even more resources. That cycle perpetuates itself over time and inequalities grow.” It starts with early education, but quickly escalates, as children from well-off families are funnelled into the “right” universities and jobs. “Without some policy interventions, we will see affluent white families continuing to have power over schools and workspaces,” says Calarco, “even as the demographics of society change in terms of white people becoming a smaller share of the population.”

We are an ageing population. By 2035, there will be 44% more people over the age of 65 than there were in 2017. Age UK estimates “around 650,000 extra care jobs will be needed”. In October, the government announced a £34m investment programme to try to teach robot carers to be more empathetic to their humans, making it more likely that by 2050, robots will – as has long been predicted – be one answer to the growing social care crisis. Will they also provide childcare? This has long been more controversial than elder care, but nurseries in Japan have already trialled the use of robots to help out.

The birth of social media has provided a new view of what “perfect” parenting is supposed to look like. We are encouraged to compare ourselves with others, and we are also, says Thomas Curran, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics, becoming more perfectionist. “Parenting has changed in recent years. Parents are more expectant, and are becoming more critical. That is because they are passing down pressures that they feel from society. Things have become tough, the job market has become more precarious, educational achievement has become very important for – I hate to put it in these terms – their children’s ‘future market price’. There’s a lot of pressure on parents now to ensure they raise successful children.”

This will become more acute, he believes, at least in the shorter term. By 2050, it could have reversed. “This current generation of young people, as they become parents themselves, my sense is that they will do things differently. They are pushing back against societal pressures.” In terms of social media, they may not share endless photographs of their children, or do the kind of performative parenting that now often plays out online. “I think they will be much better at educating and building awareness in their own children about [how manufactured] social media is.”

The family in 2050 will be subject to external pressures nobody I speak to wants to confidently predict; the only certain thing is how diverse families will be in the coming decades. The moral panic about the rapid decline of the nuclear (heterosexual) family hasn’t proved justified. “What we’re finding is that family structure is actually less important for children than the quality of relationships within families,” says Golombok. “And also the social acceptance of their family in the wider world. Families are changing and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for children or parents.”

(Source: The Guardian)

A bluebeard of wives

“Sabrina,” says my husband’s first wife, “is married to my husband.” I hear this through The Grapevine, a multibranched root system resembling the hearts of my husbands’ two ex-wives planted in the same plot of deep, fertile soil. Vines like earthy veins, growing tough and twisty. A friend brings me cuttings. I hold them to my ear and listen.

I tell my husband I am writing about Bluebeard. “Oh fuck,” he says.

I look in the mirror. I have become uglier and stronger. I look out the window. A white shed glows in my yard. I live in “the unguessable country of marriage.”

“Bluebeard” first appeared in Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century Tales of Mother Goose. A man with a blue beard, several missing wives, and extraordinary wealth gives his newest wife all the keys to all the doors of his very fine house. “Open anything you want,” he says. “Go anywhere you wish.” Except for the “little room,” he says.

I ask my husband to clean out the garage, but instead, while I am gone for the summer with our sons, he builds in our backyard—dead center—a white shed. As the walls go up, his second wife drops their daughter off to live with us, possibly forever. She also drops off many boxes. Contents unknown. The garage is half empty now. The shed is half full. I call my mother. “Now there’s a shed in my yard,” I say. “Of course there’s a shed,” says my mother. “Better check it for wives.”

There are doors no third wife should ever open.

BLUEBEARD ILLUSTRATION, “WHAT SHE SEES THERE,” BY WINSLOW HOMER, 1868

My husband, possibly the gentlest man on earth, came to me in a coat of old vows. I married him knowing he arrived with wives. Maybe I married him a little bit because the vows had somehow deepened the lines on his face. Like handwriting I wanted to read, but never could. I married him knowing, but I didn’t know the wives would keep growing in a locked room in my heart. Sometimes they move around, angrily. Sadly. Wives, like peeling wallpaper. Curling wives. Wives like skin. Wives who tell their daughters things that their daughters, my husband’s daughters, don’t tell me. That silence breathes inside me. “What did she say?” I am always asking. “What did who say?” my husband answers.

“Perhaps,” writes Angela Carter, “in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.”

I am not an incredibly jealous person, but it hurts to think of my husband saying, “I do. I do. I do.”

Once a month, for over a year, I am told my husband’s first wife is moving to our town any day now, but she never does. It’s like when my sons put silver spoons under their pillows hoping it will snow in Georgia. Neither the snow nor the wife ever comes. Except for once. But it wasn’t snow, it was hail.

“That’s a terrible comparison,” says my mother. “Wives? Snow? Who is putting what under whose pillow? Who wants the wives to come? You?”

Marriage is hard. There are days when all the dead wives are me. The wife who is never sad. Dead. Hanging on a hook. The wife with a good paying job. Dead. The wife with a clean garage and a window that looks out her kitchen. Dead. The dancing wife. Dead. The famous wife. The wife with straight teeth. The wife who throws sparkling dinner parties filled with brilliant poets. Dead, dead, dead.

What do you call more than one wife? A bluebeard of wives?

For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out. I prick a pinhole through the story so I don’t go blind staring directly at the sun. The deleted text message. The old regret. The surrender. My husband and I have been married for ten years. Longer than he’d been married to the other two wives, but not collectively. I don’t want my sons anywhere near the wives. As if they’d fall in, and I wouldn’t be there to jump in and save them. “‘Sinkhole’ and ‘quagmire’ are not flattering ways of speaking about other women,” writes Margaret Atwood in her version of the fairy tale, “but this was at the back of Sally’s mind.”

Few fairy tales have as rich an afterlife as “Bluebeard.” Sometimes it’s a bloody key, sometimes a withering flower, or an egg, or a rotten apple, or a heart-shaped mark on the forehead that is proof of the wife’s disobedience. Sometimes it’s the mother with her “black skirts tucked up around her waist” who saves the last wife from decapitation. “A crazy, magnificent horsewoman in widow’s weeds.” Sometimes it’s a dragoon and a musketeer. Sometimes it’s the wife who saves herself.

Like marriage, the cultural resilience of “Bluebeard” is mystifying.  And like a fairy tale, marriage belongs to a never-ending circulation of happily-ever-afters in the shape of a cliff. I rummage through a big box of gowns and beards. Someone has worn these before. Now my husband wears the beard. Now I wear the gown. I do. He does. We wear it like skin.

In Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber,” the nameless wife and the marquis’s matrimonial bed is surrounded by so many mirrors that when the marquis undresses his new bride what she sees is dozens of husbands undressing dozens of wives. And when the marquis tells his wife to prepare for her death, “twelve young women combed out twelve listless sheaves of brown hair in the mirrors.” On the edge of sex and death, the wife multiplies. She becomes the army of wives coming up over the hill. Are they coming to save her or join her? It’s hard to know.

I shouldn’t be writing any of this down. It is not a good idea. This essay is the bloody key. It’s my act of disobedience.

In the 1812 “Bluebeard,” published in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Wilhelm Grimm (in the annotations) makes a handwritten comment that Bluebeard believed the blood of his wives could cure his beard of its blue. This is why the wives’ blood is collected in basins. He bathes in it. His dead wives are his medicine. An imaginary disease needs an unimaginable cure. “Magic,” writes Maria Tatar, “happens on the threshold of the forbidden.”

I look through old photographs of my husband. In one, he is with his second wife and their newborn daughter, who is asleep on a pillow. The pillowcase is gray and white and I recognize it as the same soft, worn pillowcase I now sleep on. Have slept on for years. My head fills up with hot static. A biting shame. I pull the pillowcase off and put it with the rags. I should give it to my stepdaughter, but I don’t and I don’t know why I don’t. I just don’t.

I am married to a man I love very much who had many lives before the life I now share with him. Sometimes I look around for myself in those lives. Under the bed. Behind a tree. One day I might just jump out, whispering boo.

Or maybe the wives should put me in a barrel stuck full of nails and roll me downhill into the river.

The first time I met my husband’s father was at his funeral. The casket was open. To this day, my husband’s father is the only dead person I have ever laid eyes on. Our son, Noah, would have his eyes, his mouth, but I didn’t know this yet. After my husband gave the eulogy, but before he could return to the nave, my husband’s first wife flew toward him like a soft white bat. A blur in the air that had been locked in a chamber for years. She collapsed into his arms. Shaking and sobbing and coming into focus, as if she was returning to life. I sat in the pew like a dumb little girl. They shared grief and they shared daughters. And by the time they had broken each other’s hearts, I was still nothing but a child.

If Bluebeard’s wives were killed for having laid their eyes on all the dead wives who came before them, then why did the first wife die? What could she have seen?

At the funeral I say hello to the first wife. She just stands there. Doesn’t say hello back. Just looks at me. I don’t know what to do so I hug her. And there we are. In each other’s arms. Swaying in a church. She is old enough to be my mother.

This is how you make a chain of paper wives: Cut a piece of paper lengthwise. Fold it into quarters, accordion-style. Draw half a wife on the top layer. Cut the wife out and unfold. Voila. You will get a chain of paper wives holding hands.

I’m the wife all the way at the end of the paper chain. I look to the left down the long hallway. I see the little room. The little room where writing is safe. Here is the combination: key, flower, egg, apple, heart. I open the door. I go in. Look at this place. It smells like being alive. If I could do it all over again I’d marry my husband in this little room. I’d give birth to my sons in this room. I’d die in this room. I would. I will. I do.

(Source: The Paris Review)

Taiwan becomes first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage

Supporters celebrate as legislation is passed giving gay couples right to marry

Taiwan has legalised same-sex marriage, the first of any Asian state, with the passage of legislation giving gay couples the right to marry.

Lawmakers on Friday comfortably passed part of a bill that would allow gay couples to enter into “exclusive permanent unions” and apply for marriage registration with government agencies.

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who campaigned on a platform of marriage equality, tweeted after the vote: “We took a big step towards true equality, and made Taiwan a better country.”

Thousands of gay rights supporters gathered in heavy rain outside parliament in the capital, Taipei, to watch a live broadcast of the proceedings. Supporters shouted “First in Asia!” after the article was passed.

“What we have achieved is not easy,” said Victoria Hsu, the founder and executive director of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights. “The law will not be 100% perfect, but this is a good start and this is a major step to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Now the law says everyone should be treated equally no matter who you are, who you love.”

Two years ago, Hsu’s team represented the LGBT activist Chi Chia-wei in a lawsuit that led Taiwan’s constitutional court to rule that the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples was unconstitutional.

Judges had given the government until next Friday to pass legislation. As the deadline approached, three bills were introduced for voting on on Friday, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

Two other versions backed by conservatives avoided the word marriage and described same-sex partnerships as a “same-sex familial relationship” or “same-sex union”.

The government’s bill, the most progressive of the three, is the only one to offer some adoption rights to same-sex couples, allowing spouses to adopt the biological children of their partner. Same-sex couples cannot co-adopt. Lawmakers were still debating adoption rights on Friday.

Cindy Su, one of thousands of gay marriage supporters gathered outside parliament, told the crowd: “We are just a group of people who want to live well on this land and who love each other.”

Hsu said she and her partner had made plans to register as a married couple as soon as the law went into effect on 24 May, at the same office that rejected their attempt to marry five years ago. The department of civil affairs said that, as of Thursday, 151 couples had made appointments to register on that day.

Taiwan, whose annual gay pride parade is the largest in the region, has long been a hub for LGBT activism. Advocates called for other Asian nations to follow its lead.

“We hope this landmark vote will generate waves across Asia and offer a much-needed boost in the struggle for equality for LGBTI people in the region,” said Annie Huang, the acting director of Amnesty International Taiwan. “This is a moment to cherish and celebrate, but it has been a long and arduous campaign for Taiwan.”

In a referendum last year, citizens overwhelmingly voted in favour of restricting the definition of marriage in Taiwan’s civil code to between a man and a woman.

Tsai said earlier that she recognised the issue had divided “families, generations and even inside religious groups”. She defended the government’s bill as the only one to respect both the court judgment and the referendum.

Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP) has a majority in parliament, occupying 68 of 113 seats. Instead of amending the existing civil code, the bill creates a new law under which same-sex marriages will be regulated.

The Coalition for the Happiness of our Next Generation said on Friday that it “regrets and condemns” the parliament’s decision, describing it as a “malicious misinterpretation” of the referendum result.

Others warned of a backlash. “The cabinet’s bill ignores the referendum results and that is unacceptable,” said Lai Shyh-bao of the opposition Kuomintang party, who proposed one of the bills backed by conservatives.

Activists said they would continue to push for more rights, such as recognition of transnational same-sex marriages, where one partner is from a country that does not recognise gay marriage.

“We will just enjoy this victory for today, and continue our fight tomorrow,” Hsu said.

(Source: The Guardian)

Girl beaten to death by brothers for refusing to marry man who offered family 40 cows

'The patriarchal practice of forcing young girls and women to marry is a cruel manifestation of the large inequality between men and women in South Sudan. Women and girls are treated as communal commodities,' says campaigner

A young woman in South Sudan has been beaten to death by her brothers for refusing to marry a suitor who is said to have offered her family 40 cows as dowry.

Taban Abel, a state minister in Sudan, said the 20-year-old was punished by her brothers in the town of Yirol in Eastern Lakes State because she turned down a marriage proposal from a suitor her family had chosen.

Mr Abel, Minister of Information in Eastern Lakes, told Radio Tamazuj that Nyaluk Magorok’s parents forced the girl to marry a man who offered 40 cows to the family as dowry – an amount of property or money brought by a bride to her husband on their marriage.

He said the man allegedly responsible for the girl’s death had been arrested to face murder charges – adding that the girl’s father had also been jailed to face the law.

“The father was [the] one who ordered people to kill his daughter because she refused to get married,” he said.

He condemned the killing and said forced marriage continues to be a challenge in the state.

The official added: “This is a barbaric act that needs immediate intervention from the government. This is the second incident of its kind because last year a girl was impregnated and then her father beat her to death”.

Many families in South Sudan forcibly marry off their daughters for dowry – including girls who are under the age of 18. In November 2018, a girl aged between 16 and 17 was forcibly married after a controversial auction on Facebook.

Some 52 per cent of South Sudanese girls are married by the time they are 18, according to a 2017 UNICEF study.

Article 15 of the South Sudan constitution stipulates that any person of marriageable age has the right to form a family and Article 17 guarantees women and girls the right to consent to marriage.

Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and Great Lakes Region, said forcing someone to marry against their will is a clear violation of South Sudan’s own constitution as well as its international human rights obligations.

“The marriage and killing are not only illegal, but also inhumane. We call on the government to immediately hold the responsible individuals to account,” he added.

“The patriarchal practice of forcing young girls and women to marry is a cruel manifestation of the large inequality between men and women in South Sudan. Rather than being resourceful and inspirational leaders and members of society, women and girls are treated as communal commodities.”

Amnesty is calling on the government of South Sudan to take urgent steps to end early, forced and child marriage and make sure those perpetrating this “heinous form of gender-based violence” and violating the country’s laws are brought to justice. The organisation said women and girls’ rights must be protected.

Judy Gitau, of Equality Now, a non government organisation that aims to promote the rights of women and girls, said: "Women and girls who are subjected to forced and child marriage are already victims of gross violations of their rights, and face the risk of further physical, sexual, and emotional violence. These violations are often visited on the next generation.

"South Sudan must end the tradition of selling daughters into marriage and end with finality this cycle of violations.”

The Co-ordinator for Equality Now's Africa office added: "The government needs to strengthen existing laws aimed at ending child and forced marriages, and engage with local authorities and community leaders to eliminate this form of gender-based violence."

(Source: Independent)

Like most couples, I can't explain why my marriage ended in divorce

Nobody ever really knows exactly why they fall in or out of love. All that was clear amid the turmoil was that we could no longer stay together

The government has announced that married couples will soon be allowed to divorce without having to prove fault or apportion blame. It’s an important step that will remove the legal requirement to rehash and document personal grievances at a time when people are already wrestling with a tsunami of emotions, shattered hopes and dreams, and feelings of loss and betrayal. For couples with children, it can only help the parents to move towards a relatively stable and peaceful truce.

Currently, a partner who petitions for divorce has a choice of “adultery”, “unreasonable behaviour” and “desertion” as acceptable grounds for divorce, unless they can prove that that the two parties have already been separated for a number of years.

I’ve been divorced myself. The very idea that amid the pain of separation one of you has to sit down and list exactly why you are splitting up, just to clear a legal hurdle, makes no sense at all. Nobody ever really knows exactly why they fall in or out of love. In my own divorce, my ex-husband and I came up with the grounds together. In fact, it was the only part that was amicable, as the whole idea of a clear “reason” was nonsense; all that was clear was that we could no longer stay together.

There is no stability in a marriage that doesn’t work ( Getty/iStock )

“Divorce”, a friend advised me when I called her up in a flood of tears, my heart in tatters and my mind completely unable to accept what was going on, “is a decision that one of you makes and the other has to live with.” This is so often true. Perhaps there has been a couple who sat down to breakfast one morning and one partner calmly and rationally said: “I’m not really feeling this anymore. Are you?” And the other responded: “Not particularly, no. I was wondering when to bring it up.”

Perhaps. But I think the more common way to do it would involve some screaming of “YOU PROMISED YOU’D LOVE ME FOREVER!” and the lobbing of a fruit bowl at the wall.

In our case, I was very much the one who had to “live with it”. My view of marriage had been shaped by Disney and the example of my parents, Mr Chalk and Ms Cheese, for whom splitting up was (and still as) about as realistic an option as going to live in outer space. My husband, however, was raised on Star Trek by a single mum.

The one thing that we didn’t discuss, as we giddily planned our wedding, is what we would do if it didn’t work out. Perhaps we should have, but when you’re deeply in love and swaddled in oxytocin the possibility of falling out of it seems so much less of a priority than hiring a chocolate fountain.

Needless to say, not everyone is delighted by the proposed reforms. Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, asked: “How can the justice secretary say in one breath that he wants to uphold the institution of marriage when he is tearing it down, allowing people to walk away from their solemn promises to hold together in life-long commitment?”

These objections always seem to revolve around “stability”, and the vital importance of forcing strangers to drown in misery “for the children”. But, of course, there is no stability in a marriage that doesn’t work, and nor can it provide a happy home to grow up in. Marriage doesn’t even guarantee that the relationship was stable in the first place; there’s no minimum period of cohabitation or legally mandated questionnaire that you have to fill out before you’re allowed to get hitched.

As it stands, we’re subjecting the transgressions – real and invented – of divorcing couples to a forensic examination in the courts, without ever bothering to establish acceptable grounds to tie the knot in the first place.

Centuries ago, when the state first got involved in marriage, it served as a kind of business contract that allowed people to survive, flourish, and foster allegiances, but in modern Britain, people get married most often because they are in love. Convention and tax breaks still play a part but, first and foremost, it is the ultimate way of declaring your love in front of everyone you know. If that love dies, then for many people their reason for being married goes with it, irrespective of whether their partner has cheated or even acted in an unreasonable way.

Just as marriage has changed, divorce laws have to change to keep up.

That all said, there is an institution that I want to uphold, and that is the institution of happy marriages. Thankfully, there will not be a single happy marriage affected by this reform. But a marriage where one partner wants to leave and the other won’t let them go is only an “institution” in the way that Wormwood Scrubs is.

(Source: Independent)

David Beckham admits marriage 'hard work'

"Hard work" is the key to his 19-year marriage, David Beckham has admitted.

He has "grown to ignore some of the negative stuff" that is said about him and wife Victoria, he told Australian TV show The Sunday Project.

The pair are "proud of the family" and teach their four children - Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper - the importance of hard work, he added.

Beckham spoke to the programme before joining the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Australia for the Invictus Games.

Beckham said he and wife Victoria teach their children the importance of hard work

"I think if you know each other well, if you know you've got great friends and great family behind you, the thing we have to do is protect our children and we are very proud of the family," he said on the show.

"We are hard working and we feel that is the right way to bring up our children to prove and to show to them you have to work really hard to be successful," he went on.

The retired footballer also touched on a recent Vogue front cover image of the Beckham clan - which he was absent from.

"Difficult situations"
He explained that the cover was "all about Victoria's 10 years in fashion".

"The amount she has achieved in such a short space of time - four beautiful young children, we have a beautiful dog - but obviously in her business world to be on the front cover of Vogue was a huge thing and then we did a separate picture for another cover," he said.

"But to be married for the amount of time that we have, it's always hard work, everybody knows that but you make it work.

"You make difficult situations like travelling away, being away from each other, you make it work."

Looking ahead to his attendance at the Invictus Games for wounded service personnel, he commented: "With Harry, to have come up with something that changes people's lives is incredible and I'm going over as an ambassador of the games but I'm really going over as a fan."

(Source: BBC)

Committed to the screen: Women, marriage and cinema

One of the first questions the press asked actor Anushka Sharma after her marriage to Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli was whether she will continue to act. It remains the standard query to every female actor if she chooses to walk down the aisle when she is still working in cinema. When it comes to heroines, this decidedly sexist theory has worked in almost all the film industries even as a male actor’s marital status never stands as a deterrent to his being the leading man. Bollywood, however, has been successful in breaking this glass ceiling to a large extent.

In fact, it began much earlier with Sharmila Tagore, Tanuja, Saira Banu, Dimple Kapadia - all of whom worked more after marriage and essayed some of the most memorable roles of their career. Probably because the media wasn’t that high-pitched, and no one really made a fuss about it, it wasn’t discussed. But it’s also true that the ratio is not in their favour with just too many actresses, across time, calling it a day post marriage—from Poonam Dhillon to Genelia Dsouza. But then slowly actresses also chose to make their respective comebacks post marriage and motherhood. Like with Sridevi, Kajol, Madhuri Dixit, Rani Mukherjee, Vidya Balan, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai. "I think the definition of success with this film, for me, is the fact that it has broken the perception that married actresses, or actresses who are making their comeback after motherhood do not work and are a dead commodity. After this, I hope more women come out and work in movies," Rani Mukherjee was quoted after the success of Hichki.

Though it is not always hunky dory and there have been instances which made it plain that the marital status quo marred many a filmmaker’s casting choices. Sanjay Leela Bhansali reportedly dropped Kareena Kapoor from Goliyon Ki Raasleela-Ram Leela, as he felt “his Juliet cannot be a married woman.” There have been instances when actresses were forced to hide their marital status fearing exit from films. Juhi Chawla kept her marriage to Jay Mehta under wraps for a long time as was the case with Rani Mukherjee (who married Aditya Chopra).

In Tamil cinema, Jyothika waltzed back into screen in her late 30s after marriage and two children and got to pick her roles (her first comeback film coincidentally was the remake of Manju Warrier’s How old are you? and was produced by Suriya’s film production) while Simran struggled to find a place in Tamil cinema, making that odd appearance now and then. There was also the late Soundarya who stayed relevant even after marriage.

In Malayalam cinema, though Kavya Madhavan was able to make a comeback post marriage, it was really Manju Warrier who successfully broke the stereotype.  One reason could also be her overwhelmingly strong fan base who always missed her when she away. Her comeback films were all solid author-backed roles (save for a Villain) which required no starry heroes. “As a viewer I am not concerned about the heroines off screen marital status when I watch a film, nor do I personally think it affects her desirability quotient. But yes, for most part it also depends on the general desirability factor for the particular actress,” says journalist Krishna Kumar.

Thankfully, filmmakers seem to have taken a hint from Warrier’s success. Rima Kallingal, after her marriage to filmmaker Aashiq Abu, continued her acting career and was part of interesting films like Rani Padmini (directed by Aashiq Abu), Chirakodinja Kinavukal, Kaadu Pookkunna Neram to her latest release Aabhasam.

Drishyam had two married actors getting equal billing with Mohanlal—Meena and Asha Sarath (who later played lead roles opposite both the superstars). Mamta Mohandas also starred in several films where she was on equal footing with the hero and her last release was Carbon.

“I don’t think it has to do with the viewer’s intolerance. It can be attributed to the heroes who in their prime chose to act with fresh faces to retain their youth and refuse to oversell their pairing with any particular heroine, however talented they are. Since heroes remained the biggest selling point in cinema, they exercised that power to full use. And if some of the heroines decided to opt out of films after marriage it is more a personal choice I think. Just like in households where some women decide to stay back to look after family and children instead of going to work,” says journalist A Ranganath. The other big elephant in the room remain their spouses/families. The double standards which make Dileep admit that he cannot sit through his wife romancing another man on screen and he can very well do it and his wife wouldn’t mind. Aishwarya Rai’s intimate scenes in Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hain Mushkil and lip lock with Hrithik Roshan in Dhoom 2 didn’t go down well with her seemingly progressive in-laws, the Bachchan’s.

 In the recent past, more and more married actresses are getting author-backed roles in Malayalam cinema. Anu Sithara was chosen to play Malini in Ramante Edenthottam, a complex human drama that touched on extramarital relationships and it also kickstarted the much-married actress’ journey in Malayalam cinema, which is on a roll now. “It never even crossed my mind that I am about to sign a married actress or that people might view her differently because of that or it might affect the film’s success. Anu was perfect as Malini and that’s been the only criteria. Then and now. Honestly, I don’t think such tags matter anymore,” says director Ranjith Sankar.

Others who have broken the status quo include Nyla Usha, who debuted with Mammootty in Kunjananthante Kada to the recent Diwanji Moola Grand Prix where she played a stunning character; Sshivada, who played the central character in Shikari Shambu; and Vinitha Koshy, who came up with a stellar performance in Ottamuri Velicham.

“In Manju Warrier’s case, it was as if she just took a break and Malayalam cinema was always waiting for her comeback and the years hadn’t taken a toll on her appearance or talent. No other actress could achieve what she did through her comeback. With Anu Sithara apart from her undeniable talent, there is also the matter of age by her side. As is with other said married actresses. Another pertinent point is that it also coincides with the decline of superstardom and the new wave fresh cinema where a lot of experimentation is going on. They would rather invest in talents than pretty young things,” says media analyst Preethi.

 True, this is a welcome change in Malayalam cinema, but it will remain consistent only if there will be writers and makers who recognise the importance of celluloid women rising above the male gaze, pitch in real and fleshed out characters where they get to share a space as relevant as the male and not just end up as superficial feminist icons. Only when that change happens will a lot of stereotypes and myths go for a toss.

(Source: Full Picture)