Rare, medium or burnt to a crisp? (Or how many females are there really in India

BY ratna| IN Media Practice | 25/11/2002
All those doomsday reporters from the foreign press are looking in the wrong place. Check out the Ekta Kapoor serials in which there are at least two women for every man.

 

Ratna Rajaiah

 

It’s interesting how the Western press, especially a publication like the Time magazine, sometimes tends to look at India. Firstly that perhaps our geography teachers got it all wrong and that India is actually a whole separate little planet by itself because no reference or coverage of anything "Asian" includes India. And secondly one wonders as to what event in our country is considered to be newsworthy. For example, when Orissa was devastated by that terrible cyclone, it merited all of 4 pictures and a 450-word write-up - half the size of this article. And the death toll was put at 1300 when even the official count by then - almost two weeks after the event - had climbed to about 8 times that figure. In contrast when Taiwan was hit by an earthquake the very next month, where 1800 people died (versus the most conservative estimate of 20,000 in Orissa) it merited a cover, editorial comment, a 9 page story and 2 of the magazine photographers and reporters to cover "this big story".

 

 Similarly, in the week following the Agra Summit last year, the magazine carried a lead article on… well, what else but Ekta Kapoor, that "fat lonely child" who transformed so magically into Indian television’s Drama Queen, nay Empress. And the summit? Oh yes, it got a 4-line passing mention in a story about how the killings in Kashmir continued while Vajpayee and Musharaf gabbled on - a bit like 2 Neros fiddling while Rome burnt, eh?

 

Anyway, a few weeks ago, the Newsweek carried a story about the dwindling population of the girl child in India. I know. Yawn. Can the goras stop going on and on about this, please? Bride burning, female infanticide, sex determination tests, rape, eve-teasing - this is all part of an average day in the land of Sita and Shakti.  And not that we haven’t been doing anything about it - haven’t you seen all the strict laws that we want passed? Like the demand by the National Commission for Women that wife-batterers be refused their conjugal rights. And more importantly the demand by the Shiv Sena (Delhi) that women dress more modestly to bring down the incidence of rape?

 

But I also mention the story on Ekta Kapoor and the Newsweek story because they are linked. You see the firangis have got it all wrong. Dwindling population of women, did they say? Female to male ratio in Delhi down from 945/1000 in 1991 to 865/ 1000? What a load of poppycock. I don’t know where these people do their research. Must be through some anti-Indian, Marxist-Manu-hating, Western-chamcha-ist NGO types who want to project us Indians in a bad light. When where they should actually be looking is in those utterly marvelous chroniclers, compendiums and encyclopedias of the Bharatiya Nari - Ekta Kapoor’s serials.

 

Where on an average, there seems to be no shortage of women. At least 2 for every man. (If you can call those pretty, chikna-cheeked kootchie-wootchie crybabies men.) Let’s start with the Mother-in-Law of all saas-bahu super hits - Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.  And Mihir, till recently, India’s Beta No. 1. Who, not satisfied with Tagda Tulsi as wifey, had to go and catch a convenient dose of amnesia so that he could also have Mandira darling on the side. (Of course, since then, Mandira has been punished into oblivion for fibbing about carrying Mihir’s baby and Mihir, in light of Tulsi’s increasingly matronly look which would send any man screaming into the arms of any Other Woman, has become an inconsequential sidey as the story has moved on to the next generation…)

 

 Then there’s Kkusum. In which the resident Kutta-in-the-Manger Abhay Kapoor had Pious-puss Kkusum as his legally wedded doormat to take care of the nasty patch in his horoscope with her Akhand-Sowbhagyawati-ness and Icky-Isha to take care of the nasty stirrings of his er, loins. Not to mention at least five business associates, ex-girl friends etc. etc., who pop out of the woodwork every now and then to prop up flagging TRP’s.

 

Kasauti Zindagi Ki in which Rose Barfi lips Anuraag has Prerna to love, lust but not make an honest woman out of - even though she even bears little Prem, their pyar-ki-nishanee - because he has to marry Kruella Komolika in spite of her frightening Makdee-make-up because Mummyji says so. Naturally.

 

Kabhi Souten Kabhie Saheli. It’s all there in the title but just in case you haven’t twigged on, it’s about 2 best friends who love and marry the same man. Which turns them into bitter enemies and then, because female bonding is so much more fun than sex, they gang up as sahelis once again to ruin his happily extra-married bliss…

 

Add to this all the naanis, daadis, chaachis, buas, mausis, bhabhis and other women-without-men populating these serials and the average female to male ratio should be at least 2876/1000. And this in just a sample of 4 of the 35 or so serials with which Ekta rules India’s drawing rooms. So, a shortage of women in India? Not if we take Ekta’s word for it and why shouldn’t we?

 

But while it has been such fun to trash Ekta’s serials - and we in media have been at it for a while, haven’t we - it’s about time that we seriously examined why her serials are such resounding draws. Not just in the Hindi belt but even in the South where the same themes have worked as successfully. Maybe because what we see as regressive is only the familiar backdrop against which the heroines fight their own little battles and win. Tulsi beating her mother-in-law at her own game and becoming such a mainstay of the family that when Mihir supposedly dies, it’s her in-laws who gladly sanction remarriage. Kkusum countering her husband’s rejection and two-timing behavior not with aggression but by becoming a model bahu and an indispensable part of the family business. And maybe this is what Indian women, eternal realists that they are, identify with as the only victories that they can afford. Any other has too high a price, casting them out into a world so hard and cruel and unforgiving that they aren’t yet ready to face it.

 

Or then, maybe it’s the old argument that pulp fiction always sells. Even if that were so, why isn’t there anyone to challenge it? Why aren’t there serials with themes that empower women but which also entertain and engage? It’s a convenient cop out to say that nobody wants to see meaningful stuff anywhere. Maybe that’s because we’ve forgotten how to also make it entertaining.  When once upon a time, it was possible. Remember a gutsy, middle-class housewife called Rajni? Remember Badki, Majli and Choti lighting their own little fires of empowerment in Hum Log? And Lajjo and Veeranwali, the steel marigolds of Buniyaad? And wasn’t it not that long ago when one of the hottest shows on Indian television was a serial called Udaan?

Ratna Rajaiah is a free lance journalist based in Mysore.  Contact: ratna_rajaiah@vsnl.com